* We know the words which Plato puts into the mouth of an
Egyptian priest: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always
children, and there is no old man who is a Greek! You are
all young in mind; there is no opinion or tradition of
knowledge among you which is white with age." Other nations
disputed their priority—the Phrygians, the Medes, or rather
the tribe of the Magi among the Medes, the Ethiopians, the
Scythians. A cycle of legends had gathered about this
subject, giving an account of the experiments instituted, by
Psamtik, or other sovereigns, to find out which were right,
Egyptians or foreigners.
** At Philæ and at Denderah, Phtah is represented as piling
upon his potter's table the plastic clay from which he is
about to make a human body, and which is somewhat wrongly
called the egg of the world. It is really the lump of earth
from which man came forth at his creation.
*** At Philas, Khnûmû calls himself "the potter who
fashions men, the modeller of the gods." He there moulds the
members of Osiris, the husband of the local Isis, as at
Erment he forms the body of Harsamtaûi, or rather that of
Ptolemy Cæsarion, the son of Julius Cæsar and the celebrated
Cleopatra, identified with Harsamtaûi.
Râ at his first rising, seeing the earth desert and bare, had flooded it with his rays as with a flood of tears; all living things, vegetable and animal, and man himself, had sprung pell-mell from his eyes, and were scattered abroad with the light over the surface of the world.[*] Sometimes the facts were presented under a less poetic aspect. The mud of the Nile, heated to excess by the burning sun, fermented and brought forth the various races of men and animals by spontaneous generation, having moulded itself into a thousand living forms. Then its procreative power became weakened to the verge of exhaustion. Yet on the banks of the river, in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found whose condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the larger kinds. Some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling to free themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect, feebly stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters were completing their articulation and taking shape within the matrix of earth.[**]
* With reference to the substances which proceeded from the
eye of Râ, see the remarks of Birch, Sur un papyrus magique
du Musée Britannique. By his tears (romîtû) Horus, or his
eye as identified with the sun, had given birth to all men,
Egyptians (romîtû, rotû), Libyans, and Asiatics, excepting
only the negroes. The latter were born from another part of
his body by the same means as those employed by Atûmû in the
creation of Shû and Tafnûît.
** The same story is told, but with reference to rats only,
by Pliny, by Diodorus, by Ælianus, by Macrobius, and by
other Greek or Latin writers. Even in later times, and in
Europe, this pretended phenomenon met with a certain degree
of belief, as may be seen from the curious work of Marcus
Fredericus Wendelinus, Archipalatinus, Admiranda Nili,
Franco-furti, mdcxxiii., cap. xxi. pp. 157-183. In Egypt all
the fellahîn believe in the spontaneous generation of rats
as in an article of their creed. They have spoken to me of
it at Thebes, at Denderah, and on the plain of Abydos; and
Major Brown has lately noted the same thing in the Fayûm.
The variant which he heard from the lips of the notables is
curious, for it professes to explain why the rats who infest
the fields in countless bands during the dry season,
suddenly disappear at the return of the inundation; born of
the mud and putrid water of the preceding year, to mud they
return, and as it were dissolve at the touch of the new
waters.
It was not Râ alone whose tears were endowed with vitalizing power. All divinities whether beneficent or malevolent, Sit as well as Osiris or Isis, could give life by weeping; and the work of their eyes, when once it had fallen upon earth, flourished and multiplied as vigorously as that which came from the eyes of Râ.
1 Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gayet. The scene is
taken from bas-reliefs in the temple of Luxor, where the god
Khnûmû is seen completing his modelling of the future King
Amenôthes III. and his double, represented as two children
wearing the side-lock and large necklace. The first holds
his finger to his lips, while the arms of the second swing
at his sides.
The individual character of the creator was not without bearing upon the nature of his creatures; good was the necessary outcome of the good gods, evil of the evil ones; and herein lay the explanation of the mingling of things excellent and things execrable, which is found everywhere throughout the world. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Sit and his partisans were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. Daily their eyes shed upon the world those juices by which plants are made poisonous, as well as malign influences, crime, and madness. Their saliva, the foam which fell from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared. When any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, and produced something strange and baleful—a serpent, a scorpion, a plant of deadly nightshade or of henbane. But, on the other hand, the sun was all goodness, and persons or things which it cast forth into life infallibly partook of its benignity. Wine that maketh man glad, the bee who works for him in the flowers secreting wax and honey, the meat and herbs which are his food, the stuffs that clothe him, all useful things which he makes for himself, not only emanated from the Solar Eye of Horus, but were indeed nothing more than the Eye of Horus under different aspects, and in his name they were presented in sacrifice. The devout generally were of opinion that the first Egyptians, the sons and flock of Râ, came into the world happy and perfect;[*] by degrees their descendants had fallen from that native felicity into their present state.
* In the tomb of Seti I, the words flock of the Sun, flock
of Râ, are those by which the god Horus refers to men.
Certain expressions used by Egyptian writers are in
themselves sufficient to show that the first generations of
men were supposed to have lived in a state of happiness and
perfection. To the Egyptians the times of Râ, the times of
the god—that is to say, the centuries immediately
following on the creation—-were the ideal age, and no good
thing had appeared upon earth since then.
Some, on the contrary, affirmed that their ancestors were born as so many brutes, unprovided with the most essential arts of gentle life. They knew nothing of articulate speech, and expressed themselves by cries only, like other animals, until the day when Thot taught them both speech and writing.