4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green enamelled figure in
my possession (Saïte period).
We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Græco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siût?[**] How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined their choice.
** Uapuaîtû, the guide of the celestial ways, who must not
be confounded with Anubis of the Cynopolite nome of Upper
Egypt, was originally the feudal god of Siût. He guided
human souls to the paradise of the Oasis, and the sun upon
its southern path by day, and its northern path by night.
*** Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, have held that the
Typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and Wilkinson
says that the Egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by
representing it along with other fantastic beasts. This
would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual
existence (cf. p. 112 of this History). Plbyte thinks that
it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or
oryx.
The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the east, or passed away in the west.
If Râ was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the Nile-gods, Khnûmû, Osiris, Harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving Nile and the overflowing of its waters? It is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the Fayûm or of Ombos. The crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices. When instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. The crocodile is amphibious; and Sobkû was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank.
Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were assigned to them later.[*]
* The existence of the Egyptian triads was discovered and
defined by Champollion. These triads have long served as the
basis upon which modern writers have sought to establish
their systems of the Egyptian religion. Brugsch was the
first who rightly attempted to replace the triad by the
Ennead, in his book Religion und Mythologie der alten
Ægypter. The process of forming local triads, as here set
forth, was first pointed out by Maspero (Études de
Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes, vol. ii. p. 269,
et seq.).