The Cat of Bubastes: A Tale of Ancient Egypt

by G. A. Henty

“You have frequently asked me questions, Chebron, which I have either turned aside or refused to answer. It was, indeed, from seeing that you had inherited from me the spirit of inquiry that I deemed it best that you should not ascend to the highest order of the priesthood; for if so, the knowledge you would acquire would render you, as it has rendered me, dissatisfied with the state of things around you. Had it not been for this most unfortunate accident I should never have spoken to you further on the subject, but as it is I feel that it is my duty to tell you more.

“I have had a hard struggle with myself, and have, since you left me, thought over from every point of view what I ought to do. On the one hand, I should have to tell you things known only to an inner circle, things which were it known I had whispered to any one my life would be forfeited. On the other hand, if I keep silent I should doom you to a life of misery. I have resolved to take the former alternative. I may first tell you what you do not know, that I have long been viewed with suspicion by those of the higher priesthood who know my views, which are that the knowledge we possess should not be confined to ourselves, but should be disseminated, at least among that class of educated Egyptians capable of appreciating it.

“What I am about to tell you is not, as a whole, fully understood perhaps by any. It is the outcome of my own reflections, founded upon the light thrown upon things by the knowledge I have gained. You asked me one day, Chebron, how we knew about the gods—how they first revealed themselves, seeing that they are not things that belong to the world? I replied to you at the time that these things are mysteries—a convenient answer with which we close the mouths of questioners.

“Listen now and I will tell you how religion first began upon earth, not only in Egypt, but in all lands. Man felt his own powerlessness. Looking at the operations of nature—the course of the heavenly bodies, the issues of birth and life and death—he concluded, and rightly, that there was a God over all things, but this God was too mighty for his imagination to grasp.

“He was everywhere and nowhere, he animated all things, and yet was nowhere to be found; he gave fertility and he caused famine, he gave life and he gave death, he gave light and heat, he sent storms and tempests. He was too infinite and too various for the untutored mind of the early man to comprehend, and so they tried to approach him piecemeal. They worshiped him as the sun, the giver of heat and life and fertility; they worshiped him as a destructive god, they invoked his aid as a beneficent being, they offered sacrifices to appease his wrath as a terrible one. And so in time they came to regard all these attributes of his—all his sides and lights under which they viewed him—as being distinct and different, and instead of all being the qualities of one God as being each the quality or attribute of separate gods.

“So there came to be a god of life and a god of death, one who sends fertility and one who causes famine. All sorts of inanimate objects were defined as possessing some fancied attribute either for good or evil, and the one Almighty God became hidden and lost in the crowd of minor deities. In some nations the fancies of man went one way, in another another. The lower the intelligence of the people the lower their gods. In some countries serpents are sacred, doubtless because originally they were considered to typify at once the subtleness and the destructive power of a god. In others trees are worshiped. There are peoples who make the sun their god. Others the moon. Our forefathers in Egypt being a wiser people than the savages around them, worshiped the attributes of gods under many different names. First, eight great deities were chosen to typify the chief characteristics of the Mighty One. Chnoumis, or Neuf, typified the idea of the spirit of God—that spirit which pervades all creation. Ameura, the intellect of God. Osiris, the goodness of God. Ptah typified at once the working power and the truthfulness of God. Khem represents the productive power—the god who presides over the multiplication of all species: man, beast, fish, and vegetable—and so with the rest of the great gods and of the minor divinities, which are reckoned by the score.

“In time certain animals, birds, and other creatures whose qualities are considered to resemble one or other of the deities are in the first place regarded as typical of them, then are held as sacred to them, then in some sort of way become mixed up with the gods and to be held almost as the gods themselves. This is, I think, the history of the religions of all countries. The highest intelligences, the men of education and learning, never quite lose sight of the original truths, and recognize that the gods represent only the various attributes of the one Almighty God. The rest of the population lose sight of the truth, and really worship as gods these various creations, that are really but types and shadows.

“It is perhaps necessary that it should be so. It is easier for the grosser and more ignorant classes to worship things that they can see and understand, to strive to please those whose statues and temples they behold, to fear to draw upon themselves the vengeance of those represented to them as destructive powers, than to worship an inconceivable God, without form or shape, so mighty the imagination cannot picture him, so beneficent, so all-providing, so equable and serene that the human mind cannot grasp even a notion of him. Man is material, and must worship the material in a form in which he thinks he can comprehend it, and so he creates gods for himself with figures, likenesses, passions, and feelings like those of the many animals he sees around him.

“The Israelite maid whom we brought hither, and with whom I have frequently conversed, tells me that her people before coming to this land worshiped but one God like unto him of whom I have told you, save that they belittled him by deeming that he was their own special God, caring for them above all peoples of the earth; but in all other respects he corresponded with the Almighty One whom we who have gained glimpses of the truth which existed ere the Pantheon of Egypt came into existence, worship in our hearts, and it seems to me as if this little handful of men who came to Egypt hundreds of years ago were the only people in the world who kept the worship of the one God clear and undefiled.”

Chebron and Amuba listened in awestruck silence to the words of the high priest. Amuba’s face lit up with pleasure and enthusiasm as he listened to words which seemed to clear away all the doubts and difficulties that had been in his mind. To Chebron the revelation, though a joyful one, came as a great shock. His mind, too, had long been unsatisfied. He had wondered and questioned, but the destruction at one blow of all the teachings of his youth, of all he had held sacred, came at first as a terrible shock. Neither spoke when the priest concluded, and after a pause he resumed.