"And this nicety of philosophical speculation," I said, "must have given rise to the several grades of deities in Egypt."
"Yes; the gods of the first, second, and third orders: each with its system of priesthood and rituals."
"In all this, I see you give no divine honors to departed heroes," I remarked.
"No. Our gods are none of them deified men. They are not like Bacchus, and Hercules, and other of the ancient and Syriac deities, who were human heroes. Our mythology is a pure spiritualism: its object, Divinity, worshipped by emblems, symbols, signs, figures, and representative attributes."
"It is a pantheism, then, rather than a polytheism," I remarked.
"You speak justly, Sesostris," he said. "The figures of our gods, which you see hewn in marble, painted on temples, standing colossal monoliths in the entrance of the city, are but vicarious forms, not intended to be looked upon as real divine personages. Not a child in Egypt believes that a being exists, with the head of a bird joined to the human form—as the statue of Thoth, with the ibis head, in front of the temple; or under the form of a Cynocephalus, having the horns of the moon upon his head; or as the goddess Justice, without a head; or a bird with the head of a woman; or a god with a ram-headed vulture's head, or that of a hawk, like the deity Horus; or Anubis, with the head of a dog. Why these unnatural forms were chosen as emblems of these gods, the priests fancifully explain, and perhaps in many cases truly. They are all, simply personifications of divine attributes."
"Abuses," I remarked, when he had thus eloquently spoken, "must naturally flow from such representations, and these emblems, among the people, soon assume the importance of the divine personages to which they appertain. The mass of the population must be idolaters."
"You speak truly. They are. The distinction between the image and the idea which it represents is too subtle for the ignorant; they lose sight of the attribute, by filling the whole horizon of their minds with its image. Thus the Egyptian mind is clearly more and more being drawn away from its ancient spiritual worship, to a superstitious veneration for images, which originally were intended only to control and fix attention, or to represent some religious tradition or idea of divinity."
"Are not Apis, the sacred bull, at Memphis, and Mnevis at On, regarded as gods?" I asked.
"Only as the soul of Osiris. The bull is the most powerful animal in all Egypt, and hence a type of the Deity. But this subject, my dear Sesostris," added the prince, with a fine look of friendship, "you will know more of by and by, as you dwell among us. I will command that you shall have every facility from the priests, and also from the philosophers and wise men, in your further studies of our people. I am happy to have given you your first lesson in Egyptian lore."