Now to return to Denderah in the light of the preceding discussion. A curious and interesting thing is that we find that the temple of Isis, which is very much ruined, does not contain emblems of the Sirius worship; but that all these appear in the temple of Hathor, which, of course, pointing as it does to the north-east, could never have received any light from a star south of the equator. There has been a change of cult.
On the other hand, the temple of Isis presents so many emblems thought to relate to the worship connected with γ Draconis, to which the temple of Hathor was in all probability directed, that it was named the Typhoneum by the French Commission.
There has been an apparent change of rôle and cult, due either to the fact that in time the observation of the rising of Sirius superseded that of the rising of γ Draconis, or that the worship of Set was replaced.
With regard to this change of cult, we moderns should have no difficulty. We go to Constantinople and see Mahommedans worshipping in St. Sophia; we go to Greece or Sicily and find Christian worship in many of the old temples. Thus the change of cult in Egypt, which I claim to have demonstrated on astronomical grounds at Denderah, is a thing with which we are perfectly familiar nowadays. The great point, however, is that in Egypt the change of cult might depend upon astronomical change—upon the precession of the equinoxes, as well as upon different schools of religious or astronomical thought. We gather from this an idea of the wonderfully continuous observations which were made by the Egyptians of the risings and settings of stars, because, if the work had not been absolutely continuous, they would certainly never have got the very sharp idea of the facts of precession which they undoubtedly possessed; and it is also, I think, pretty clear that future astronomical study will enable us to write the history of those changes which are now hidden by that tremendous mythological difficulty, which has not yet been faced. That, of course, is not the only difficulty, because the question is clouded by the absence of authentic dates and the perpetual reference to the past which is met with in all the monuments. The Egyptians were much more anxious to bring back to knowledge what happened 1000 years before than to give an idea of the current history of the country.
We have, then, at length arrived at a possible explanation of the difficulties acknowledged in regard to the temples of Denderah in Chapters XIX. and XX.
It is, briefly, that at some epoch observations of the star Sirius replaced, or were added to, those made of γ Draconis. Mythologically, a new Isis would be born.
This point will be referred to later; one of the longest-lasting astro-theological strifes in Egypt was the fight for supremacy between the priests of Amen and the priests of Set. At Denderah the former were ultimately victorious, and hence the change of cult.
This suggestion is based on the following considerations:—
(1) While the Denderah Hathor was represented by the disk and horns on a hippopotamus, at Thebes (the city of the "Bull" Amen) Hathor is represented by a cow with a like head-dress.
(2) Isis, represented originally as a goddess with the two feathers of Amen, standing in a boat, is now changed to a cow with the disk and horns.