[473] The popular conception of the Noachian Deluge is a study. There have been millions of local and partial floods; but wherever and whenever a traveller finds the legend of an inundation he incontinently applies it to ‘the Flood.’ Dr. Livingstone could not refrain from so doing at the petty Lake Dilolo. And it is to be noted that the Egyptians, accustomed to annual freshets, utterly ignored one general cataclysm as held by the Greeks.
[474] ‘Nuhu’ is found in the Nahrai tomb, Beni Hasan (Osburn, i. 239); other names are Noum, Nouf, and Nef.
[475] Amun Ra (Hephæstus, Vulcan), the veiled Osiris, the ‘Hidden One of Thebes,’ is thus addressed in a papyrus:—
He is One only, alone sans equal,
Dwelling above in the Holy of Holies.
Another describes him as ‘Maker of all things; whose beginning was the beginning of the world; whose forms are various and manifold; the first to exist; the one only Being, and the Parent of all who live.’
[476] Mr. Froude metaphysicises when he tells us that the religion of Egypt is the adoration of physical forces. Mankind do not worship abstractions; they begin (and mostly end) by adoring man.
[477] Blind because she saw with insight, not physical vision. Her eyes are hidden by blinkers or ‘goggles.’ Her usual name is Ma, and her ideograph is the ell-measure.
[478] Even ‘God save the King’ must be referred back to them.
[479] It is an aorist from ‘Havah;’ so φύσις from φύω, and natura from nascor. Mystically, Ya is the past, Ha the present, and Vah the future.