He was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the East by the celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with its rays.[**]
** These are the very expressions used in the seventeenth
chapter of the Book of the Dead (Naville's edition, vol.
i. pl. xxv. lines 58-61; Lepsius, Todtenbuch, pl. ix. 11.
50, 51).
1 The twelve forms of the sun during the twelve hours of
the day, from the ceiling of the Hall of the New Year at
Edfu. Drawing by Faucher-Gudin.
Nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might come out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of Horus, one of the beautiful golden sparrow-hawks of Southern Egypt. A Sun-Hawk, hovering in high heaven on outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image; but what can be said for a Sun-Calf? Yet it is under the innocent aspect of a spotted calf, a "sucking calf of pure mouth,"[**] that the Egyptians were pleased to describe the Sun-God when Sibu, the father, was a bull, and Hâthor a heifer.
* The lapwing or the heron, the Egyptian bonû, is
generally the Osirian bird. The persistence with which it is
associated with Heliopolis and the gods of that city shows
that in this also we have a secondary form of Râ.
** The calf is represented in ch. cix. of the Book of the
Dead (Naville's edition, pl. cxx.), where the text says
(lines 10, 11), "I know that this calf is Harmakhis the Sun,
and that it is no other than the Morning Star, daily
saluting Râ." The expression "sucking calf of pure
mouth" is taken word for word from a formula preserved in
the Pyramid texts (Ûnas, 1. 20).
But the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was likened to the life of man. The two deities presiding over the East received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive a new-born child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and of its life. It soon left them, and proceeded "under the belly of Nûît," growing and strengthening from minute to minute, until at noon it had become a triumphant hero whose splendour is shed abroad over all. But as night comes on his strength forsakes him and his glory is obscured; he is bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old man leaning upon his stick. At length he passes away beyond the horizon, plunging westward into the mouth of Nûît, and traversing her body by night to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along which he had travelled on the preceding day.
A first bark, the saktit, awaited him at his birth, and carried him from the Eastern to the Southern extremity of the world. Mâzît, the second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of Manu, which is at the entrance into Hades; other barks, with which we are less familiar, conveyed him by night, from his setting until his rising at morn.[*] Sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then they were magic and self-directed, having neither oars, nor sails, nor helm.[**]
* In the formulæ of the Book of Knowing that which is in
Hades, the dead sun remains in the bark Saktit during part
of the night, and it is only to traverse the fourth and
fifth hours that he changes into another.
** Such is the bark of the sun in the other world. Although
carrying a complete crew of gods, yet for the most part it
progresses at its own will, and without their help. The bark
containing the sun alone is represented in many vignettes of
the Book of the Dead, and at the head of many stelæ.