2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a water-colour published by
Lepsius, Denkm., i. 56. The view is taken from the midst
of the ruins at the foot of the obelisk of Usirtasen. A
little stream runs in the foreground, and passes through a
muddy pool; to right and left are mounds of ruins, which
were then considerable, but have since been partially razed.
In the distance Cairo rises against the south-west.
In the beginning, Râ was the sun itself, whose fires appear to be lighted every morning in the east and to be extinguished at evening in the west; and to the people such he always remained. Among the theologians there was considerable difference of opinion on the point. Some held the disk of the sun to be the body which the god assumes when presenting himself for the adoration of his worshippers. Others affirmed that it rather represented his active and radiant soul. Finally, there were many who defined it as one of his forms of being—khopriû—one of his self-manifestations, without presuming to decide whether it was his body or his soul which he deigned to reveal to human eyes; but whether soul or body, all agreed that the sun's disk had existed in the Nû before creation. But how could it have lain beneath the primordial ocean without either drying up the waters or being extinguished by them? At this stage the identification of Râ with Horus and his right eye served the purpose of the theologians admirably: the god needed only to have closed his eyelid in order to prevent his fires from coming in contact with the water.[*]
* This is clearly implied in the expression so often used by
the sacred writers of Ancient Egypt in reference to the
appearance of the sun and his first act at the time of
creation: "Thou openest the two eyes, and earth is flooded
with rays of light."
He was also said to have shut up his disk within a lotus-bud, whose folded petals had safely protected it. The flower had opened on the morning of the first day, and from it the god had sprung suddenly as a child wearing the solar disk upon his head. But all theories led the theologians to distinguish two periods, and as it were two beings in the existence of supreme deity: a pre-mundane sun lying inert within the bosom of the dark waters, and our living and life-giving sun.
1 Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger of an
outer wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. Harmakhis grants
years and festivals to the Pharaoh Seti I., who kneels
before him, and is presented by the lioness-headed goddess
Sokhît, here described as a magician—Oîrît hilcaû.
One division of the Heliopolitan school retained the use of traditional terms and images in reference to these Sun-gods. To the first it left the human form, and the title of Râ, with the abstract sense of creator, deriving the name from the verb râ, which means to give. For the second it kept the form of the sparrow-hawk and the name of Harma-khûîti—Horus in the two horizons—which clearly denoted his function;[*] and it summed up the idea of the sun as a whole in the single name of Râ-Harmakhûîti, and in a single image in which the hawk-head of Horus was grafted upon the human body of Râ. The other divisions of the school invented new names for new conceptions. The sun existing before the world they called Creator—Tûmû, Atûmû [**]—and our earthly sun they called Khopri—He who is.