2. The elemental gods were Seb and Nut, of whom Seb is the earth and Nut the heavens. These two, like heaven and earth in almost all mythologies, are represented as the parents of many of the gods. The other elemental deities are but obscurely known.
3. Among solar deities are at once recognised Ra and others, but there was a strong tendency to identify each of the gods with the sun, especially to identify Osiris with the sun in his nightly absence.** Each god, again, was apt to be blended with one or more of the sacred animals. "Ra, in his transformations, assumed the form of the lion, cat and hawk."*** "The great cat in the alley of persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Ra, crushed the serpent."****
* Their special relation to the souls of the departed is
matter for a separate discussion.
** "The gods of the dead and the elemental gods were almost
all identified with the sun, for the purpose of blending
them in a theistic unity" (Maspero, Rev. de l'hist. des
Rel., i. 126).
*** Birch, in Wilkinson, iii. 59.
***Le Page Renouf, op. cit., p. 114.
In different nomes and towns, it either happened that the same gods had different names, or that analogies were recognised between different local gods; in which case the names were often combined, as in Ammon-Ra, Sabek-Ra, Sokar-Osiris, and so forth.
Athwart all these classes and compounds of gods, and athwart the theological attempt at constructing a monotheism out of contradictory materials, came that ancient idea of dualism which exists in the myths of the most backward peoples. As Pund-jel in Australia had his enemy, the crow, as in America Yehl had his Khanukh, as Ioskeha had his Tawiscara, so the gods of Egypt, and specially Osiris, have their Set or Typhon, the spirit who constantly resists and destroys.
With these premises we approach the great Osirian myth.
THE OSIRIAN MYTH.
The great Egyptian myth, the myth of Osiris, turns on the antagonism of Osiris and Set, and the persistence of the blood-feud between Set and the kindred of Osiris.* To narrate and as far as possible elucidate this myth is the chief task of the student of Egyptian mythology.
Though the Osiris myth, according to Mr. Le Page Renouf, is "as old as Egyptian civilisation," and though M. Maspero finds the Osiris myth in all its details under the first dynasties, our accounts of it are by no means so early.**
* Herodotus, ii. 144.
** The principal native documents are the Magical Harris
Papyrus, of the nineteenth or twentieth dynasty, translated
by M. Chabas (Records of the Past, x. 137); the papyrus of
Nebseni (eighteenth dynasty), translated by M. Naville, and
in Records of Past, x. 159; the hymn to Osiris, on a stele
(eighteenth dynasty) translated by M. Chabas (Rev. Archeol.,
1857; Records of Past, iv. 99); "The Book of Respirations,"
mythically said to have been made by Isis to restore Osiris—
"Book of the Breath of Life" (the papyrus is probably of
the time of the Ptolemies—Records of Part, iv. 119); "The
Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys," translated by M. de
Horrack (Records of Past, ii. 117). There is also "The Book
of the Dead": the version of M. Pierret, (Paris, 1882) is
convenient in shape (also Birch, in Bunsen, vol. v.). M. de
Naville's new edition is elaborate and costly, and without a
translation. Sarcophagi and royal tombs (Champollion) also
contain many representations of the incidents in the myth.
"The myth of Osiris in its details, the laying out of his
body by his wife Isis and his sister Nephthys, the
reconstruction of his limbs, his mythical chest, and other
incidents connected with his myth are represented in detail
in the temple of Philae" (Birch, ap. Wilkinson, iii. 84).
The reverent awe of Herodotus prevents him from describing
the mystery-play on the sufferings of Osiris, which he says
was acted at Sais, ii. 171, and ii. 61, 67, 86. Probably the
clearest and most consecutive modern account of the Osiris
myth is given by M. Lefebure in Les Yeux d'Horus et Osiris.
M. Lefebure's translations are followed in the text; he is
not, however, responsible for our treatment of the myth. The
Ptolemaic version of the temple of Edfou is published by M.
Naville, Mythe d'Horus (Geneva, 1870).