NOTE III.
Page 29.
"The Greater Pthah."
IT is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated in function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each other in mysterious triads, uniting always symbolism of physical phenomena with real spiritual power. I have endeavored partly to explain this in the text of the tenth Lecture here, it is only necessary for the reader to know that the Greater Pthah more or less represents the formative power of order and measurement he always stands on a four-square pedestal, "the Egyptian cubit, metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth," his limbs are bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has a measuring-rod in his hand, and at Philas, is represented as holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this symbol occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is the "Lord of Truth". Others, very beautiful "King of the Two Worlds, of Gracious Countenance," "Superintendent of the Great Abode," etc., are given by Mr. Birch in Arundale's "Gallery of Antiquities," which I suppose is the book of best authority easily accessible. For the full titles and utterances of the gods, Rosellini is as yet the only—and I believe, still a very questionable—authority, and Arundale's little book, excellent in the text, has this great defect, that its drawings give the statues invariably a ludicrous or ignoble character Readers who have not access to the originals must be warned against this frequent fault in modern illustration (especially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing to any willful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in a figure depend merely on emphasis of touch, and, in barbaric art most draughtsmen emphasize what they plainly see—the barbarism, and miss conditions of nobleness, which they must approach the monument in a different temper before they will discover and draw with great subtlety before they can express.
The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to say, of Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in the text of the third Lecture, only the reader must be warned that the Egyptian symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful one, it expressed only the idea of his presence in the first elements of life. But it may not unjustly be used, in another sense, by us, who have seen his power in new development, and, even as it was, I cannot conceive that the Egyptians should have regarded their beetle headed image of him (Champollion, "Pantheon," p. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the most painful of all their types of any beneficent power, and even among those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except its opposite, the tortoise headed demon of indolence.
Pasht (p. 27, line 9) is connected with the Greek Artemis, especially in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is usually lioness headed, sometimes cat headed, her attributes seeming often trivial or ludicrous unless their full meaning is known, but the inquiry is much too wide to be followed here. The cat was sacred to her, or rather to the sun, and secondarily to her. She is alluded to in the text because she is always the companion of Pthah (called "the beloved of Pthah," it may be as Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth), and it may be well for young readers to have this fixed in their minds, even by chance association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British Museum than of any other Egyptian deity; several of them fine in workmanship, nearly all in dark stone, which may be, presumably, to connect her, as the moon, with the night; and in her office of avenger, with grief.
Thoth (p. 31, line 12), is the Recording Angel of Judgment; and the Greek Hermes—Phre (line 16), is the Sun.
Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom, and the Athena of the Greeks. No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still less of their meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be noted respecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by vulture wings—that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air, this bird, the most powerful creature of the air known to the Egyptians, naturally became her symbol. It had other significations; but certainly this, when in connection with Neith. As representing her, it was the most important sign, next to the winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture; and, just as in Homer, Athena herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of wisdom, giving victory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian Kings. The Greeks, representing the goddess herself in human form, yet would not lose the power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed it into an angel of victory. First seen in loveliness on the early coins of Syracuse and Leontium, it gradually became the received sign of all conquest, and the so called "Victory" of later times, which, little by little, loses its truth, and is accepted by the moderns only as a personification of victory itself,—not as an actual picture of the living Angel who led to victory. There is a wide difference between these two conceptions,—all the difference between insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I have also endeavored farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture, there is however one part of Athena's character which it would have been irrelevant to dwell upon there, yet which I must not wholly leave unnoticed.