THE GODS OF EGYPT
The incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the representations on the ancient monuments of Egypt is at first glance very striking. Nearly every illustration in the works of Egyptologists brings before us the figure of some deity receiving with an impassive countenance the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. One would think that the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and contained just sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship.
1 The goddess Naprît, Napît; bas-relief from the first
chamber of Osiris, on the east side of the great temple of
Denderah. Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.
On penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an actual rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but a limited and almost unconscious existence. They severally represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe; thus Naprît was identified with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;[**]
** The word naprît means grain, the grain of wheat. The
grain-god is represented in the tomb of Seti I. as a man
wearing two full ears of wheat or barley upon his head. He
is mentioned in the Hymn to the Nile about the same date,
and in two or three other texts of different periods. The
goddess Naprît, or Napît, to whom reference is here
made, was his duplicate; her head-dress is a sheaf of corn,
as in the illustration.
*** This goddess, whose name expresses and whose form
personifies the brick or stone couch, the child-bed or
-chair, upon which women in labour bowed themselves, is
sometimes subdivided into two or four secondary divinities.
She is mentioned along with Shaît, destiny, and Raninît,
suckling. Her part of fairy godmother at the cradle of the
new-born child is indicated in the passage of the Westcar
Papyrus giving a detailed account of the births of three
kings of the fifth dynasty. She is represented in human
form, and often wears upon her head two long palm-shoots,
curling over at their ends.
Maskhonît appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth;[*] and Raninît presided over the naming and the nurture of the newly born.[*] Neither Raninît, the fairy godmother, nor Maskhonît exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. Every day of every year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in travail; by the other, in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious sound, and one which would afterwards serve to exorcise the influences of evil fortune. No sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place than they hastened to another, where approaching birth demanded their presence and their care. From child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if they fulfilled the single offices in which they were accounted adepts, the pious asked nothing more of them. Bands of mysterious cynocephali haunting the Eastern and the Western mountains concentrated the whole of their activity on one passing moment of the day. They danced and chattered in the East for half an hour, to salute the sun at his rising, even as others in the West hailed him on his entrance into night.[**]
* Raninît presides over the child's suckling, but she also
gives him his name, and hence, his fortune. She is on the
whole the nursing goddess. Sometimes she is represented as a
human-headed woman, or as lioness-headed, most frequently
with the head of a serpent; she is also the urseus, clothed,
and wearing two long plumes on her head, and a simple urous,
as represented in the illustration on p. 169.
** This is the subject of a vignette in the Book of the
Dead, ch. xvi., where the cynocephali are placed in echelon
upon the slopes of the hill on the horizon, right and left
of the radiant solar disk, to which they offer worship by
gesticulations.
It was the duty of certain genii to open gates in Hades, or to keep the paths daily traversed by the sun.[*] These genii were always at their posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than that of punctually fulfilling their appointed offices. Their existence, generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. These being completed, the divinities fell back into their state of inertia, and were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next occasion.[***]