Thoth.
Thoth, the reputed inventor of hieroglyphs and the recorder of human actions, was a human deity, and represented both the light moon and the dark moon. He is also called Har and Haremakhu—the Harmachis of Greek writers—and is the personification of the vigorous young sun, the conqueror of night, who each morning rose triumphant from the realms of darkness. He was the son of Isis and Osiris, and is the avenger of his father. Horus appears piercing with his spear the monster Seth or Typho, the malignant principle of darkness who had swallowed up the setting sun. The parable of the sun rising was designed to teach the great religious lesson of the final triumph of spiritual light over darkness, and the ultimate victory of life over death. Horus is represented at the coronation of kings, and, together with Seth, places the double crown upon the royal head, saying: “Put this cap upon your head, like your father Amen-Ra.” Princes are distinguished by a lock of hair hanging from the side of the head, which lock is emblematic of a son. This lock was worn in imitation of Horus, who, from his strong filial affection, was a model son for princes, and a pattern of royal virtue. The sphinx is thought to be a type of Horus, and the obelisks also seem to have been dedicated, for the most part, to the rising sun.
There were also sky divinities, and these were all feminine. Nu was the blue mid-day sky, while Neit was the dark sky of night. Hathor or Athor, the “Queen of Love,” the Egyptian Venus, represented the evening sky.
There were other deities and objects of worship not so easily classified. Hapi was the personification of the river Nile. Anubis, the jackal-headed deity, was the friend and guardian of the souls of good men. Thmei or Ma, the goddess of truth, introduced departed souls into the hall of judgment.
Amenti, the great western desert, in course of time was applied to the unknown world beyond the desert. Through the wilderness of Amenti departed spirits had to pass on their way to the judgment hall. In this desert were four evil spirits, enemies of the human soul, who endeavoured to delude the journeying spirits by drawing them aside from the way that led to the abode of the gods. On many papyri, and on the walls of tombs, scenes of the final judgment are frequently depicted. Horus is seen conducting the departed spirits to the regions of Amenti; a monstrous dog, resembling Cerberus of classic fable, is guardian of the judgment hall. Near to the gates stand the dreadful scales of justice. On one side of the scales stands Thoth, the recorder of human actions, with a tablet in his hand, ready to make a record of the sentence passed on each soul. Anubis is the director of the weights; in one scale he places the heart of the deceased, and in the other a figure of the goddess of truth. If on being weighed the heart is found wanting, then Osiris, the judge of the dead, lowers his sceptre in token of condemnation, and pronounces judgment against the soul, condemned to return to earth under the form of a pig. Whereupon the soul is placed in a boat and conveyed through Amenti under charge of two monkeys. If the deeds done in the flesh entitle the soul to enter the mansions of the blest, then Horus, taking the tablet from Thoth, introduces the good spirit into the presence of Osiris, who, with crook and flagellum in his hands, and attended by his sister Isis, with overspreading wings, sits on a throne rising from the midst of the waters. The approved soul is then admitted to the mansions of the blest.
To this belief in a future life, the custom among the Egyptians of embalming the dead was due. Each man as he died hoped to be among those who, after living for three thousand years with Osiris, would return to earth and re-enter their old bodies. So they took steps to ensure the preservation of the body against the ravages of time, and entombed them in massive sarcophagi and in splendid sepulchres. So well did they ensure this end that when, a few months ago, human eyes looked upon the face of Thothmes III., more than three thousand years after his body had been embalmed, it was only the sudden crumbling away of the form on exposure to the air, that recalled to the remembrance of the onlookers the many ages that had passed since men last saw that face.
It is with the worship of the sun that the obelisk now on the Embankment is associated, as it stood for many ages before one of the great temples at Heliopolis, the Biblical On.
Impressive as this ancient Egyptian religious life was, it cannot be compared for a moment, judged even on the earthly standard of its moral power, to the monotheism and the religious life afterwards revealed to the Hebrews, when emancipated from Egyptian bondage. The religion first made known through God’s intercourse with the Patriarchs, continued by Moses and the Prophets, and culminating in the incarnation and death of Christ the Lord, lacks much of the outward splendour and magnificence of the Egyptian religion, but satisfies infinitely better the hearts of weary sinful men. The Egyptian worship and religious life testify to a constant degradation in the popular idea of the gods and in the moral life of their worshippers. The worship and religious life of which the God of the Hebrews is the centre, tends ever more and more to lead men in that “path of the just, which is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”[1] Now in Christ Jesus those that once “were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”[2] “The times of ignorance” are now past, and God “commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent: inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained.”[3]
