Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

When God smote the cattle, her especial symbol, He struck a mighty blow at the tottering system for which Pharaoh had confidently expressed his preference. The other forays were but skirmishes: this was a real and decisive battle! This shrewd and telling victory was the beginning of the end of the conflict. If the divine Hathor could not protect her faithful following from the power of Jehovah, who could?

For not only Hathor was thus challenged and defeated, but other important members of the Heavenly Company met defeat and disgrace in the plague that smote the cattle. A common object in the Egypt of that day was the sacred bull, Apis, whose power was vast indeed. His temples dotted the land, and the priests of his cult were many and their power was impressive in the extreme. On the forehead of Apis appears the sacred triangle of eternity, and on his back is always seen the sacred scarab, with spread wings.

Apis was the theophany of the god whose name was Ptah-Seker-Asar, and he also was one of the triune resurrection gods. The living worshipped him that they might live again in the world to come, and the dead, of course, all worshipped him because he had made them to live again. Now, alas, for those who trusted in him against Jehovah! He could not even defend his own earth-form from the blight that his new enemy, Jehovah, had sent on all that represented the great and powerful Ptah-Seker-Asar. Thus God humbled the sacred Apis in the same stroke that crushed the cult of Hathor.

To this record must also be added the name of Nut, the goddess of the sky, and the wife of Geb. She it was who produced the egg out of which the sun hatched, so in reality she preceded Horus and even Amon-Ra, even though they ascended to a higher power and authority later. She is depicted with a female human body, and the head of a cow. However, she does not wear the solar disk, nor the headdress of Hathor, as she was a little lower in the social company of the weird organization of nonsense and mysticism that was the religion of Egypt.

The simple summary of the whole record is just this: all the gods of Egypt were not able to defend the cattle, when the Lord God Jehovah stretched out His hand to smite them! This the people of Egypt were forced to concede, as their cattle died by the thousand before their bewildered eyes, while not one of the herds of Israel lost so much as one head of cattle by the murrain.

Reshpu

The Sixth and Seventh Plagues are simple to deal with, as the record of Egypt gives valuable aid to the unprejudiced student here. Imhotep was the god of medicine, and the guardian of all the healing sciences. Prayers were made to him for protection as well as for cures, and he was greatly revered. In like manner, Reshpu and Qetesh were the gods of storm and of battle, and they controlled all the natural elements except the light. So the noisome and painful boils struck the devotees of Imhotep and left him powerless to aid his praying following, and their plight was pitiful indeed. How little it helped to see that the followers of the god Jehovah, at whom Pharaoh had sneered with ridicule, were comfortable, and with unblemished skins! No suppurating sores advertised the pain of the Hebrews; the good hand of their God was upon them, to protect them from the very disaster that came upon all the Egyptians for Israel’s sake!

The medical man of the twentieth century, whose article we are now considering, attributes all this painful consequence to the bacteriological pollution of the Nile, which was accomplished by the skill and wisdom of Moses. The present writer of this refutation is not utterly ignorant of the science of bacteriology, but he humbly confesses that he does not know of any pathogenic micro-organism that would bite everybody except a Hebrew! We would like to know the name and the nature of such a bacterium or bacillus! The Hebrews were exposed to the same flies, the same germs, the same stench of the dead frogs, the same epidemic that was consequent upon this chain of events, unless Moses vaccinated or inoculated them all, some three and a half millions in number. Truly the natural explanations of the supernatural cause reason to totter on her throne!