On the east side of the wall of the terrace at Denderah a similar inscription reads: “Uar-kher-ta is the name of this locality. The name of the place of the cradle of Isis is named Adut, which is the house where the ‘accouchement’ of Nut, the goddess of heaven, takes place. It is here that, at the time of the ‘night of the child in its cradle,’ the god-mother is brought into the world, in the form of a dark female, named Khnum-ankhet, the lady of love and the queen of the gods and goddesses. On seeing her, her mother exclaimed: As, îs i. e. lo, or behold, I have become a mother! Thence the origin of her name Isis.... She is the lady of the temple of Egypt with her son Horus and brother Osiris, now and forever into eternity.” The most instructive account of the festival which has come under my notice is the following, contained in another inscription in the temple at Denderah.
“The fourth day, supplementary to the year (of 360 days, i. e. the 364th day) is the beautiful day of the ‘night of the child in its cradle’ and is a great festival of preparation. During the night preceding this day there takes place the procession of the goddess Hathor and the divinities with her. The circuit of her temple is made and all is duly fulfilled according to the custom. Upon this follows the return to their places (chambers in the temple). The golden one (Nubet, the ordinary appellation of Hathor-Isis as the star Sothis-Sirius, Brugsch) rises, shining, above the brow of her progenitor, and her mysterious (literally, full of secrets) form is at the prow of the boat of the sun. As soon as she reaches the āk (centre) of her city in the presence of her Nomos, she beholds her dwelling with the most joyful feelings. When she enters her house her body is full of delight. When she has taken possession of her exalted dwelling, surrounded by her fellow-gods, who stand at each side of her, her soul in her body is full of rejoicings. When they join the rays of her father (the sun god) and are united to the radiance of his disk, the city Anet (Tentyra) is happy. Adoration is made in Adut (the lying-in chamber) and Pi-anet is in festive state, when it beholds the great, the powerful leader, she who creates the festival in the holy city on that beautiful day of the New Year.”
Elsewhere we read: “The city of Anet is in a constant exaltation when the goddess Isis is born in it (in the small Isis temple) in the [pg 435] form of a dark red woman, whose name is Khnum-Ankhet, the lady of love, the queen of goddesses and women, the bride. It is beautiful to see the shining appearance of the ray of light in the heaven, in the dusk, at the time when she is born in this city.... A flying beetle (?) is born in the sky in the primæval city of Tentyra at the period of ‘the night of the child in its cradle.’ The sun shines in the heaven at dusk when her birth has taken place. Gods and goddesses praise the name of her majesty....” “Ra-Hur of Apollinopolis magna, god Sam-ta, comes forth, or arises, in the dawn (akhekh) when the birth takes place in ‘the night of the child in its cradle,’ on the great festival of the entire world (or the entire land). He shines for her majesty when she has brought forth (the child). Her child is in the form of a beautiful boy, who is the lord of Tentyra. The gods and goddesses came to her carrying the symbol of life (the ankh) and the sceptre of power (the tam) so as to fulfil their desire and her wish” (p. 103).
The following extract from a papyrus which belonged to a priest of Amon, named Horsiesis of Thebes, of the time of Augustus, affords an extremely interesting insight of the mysterious ceremonial which had gradually developed. It is evident that the text, though apparently clear, must have been intelligible to the initiated only, who alone were able to understand the allusions to secret, sacred rites and their symbolical meaning.
“Thou raisest thyself to heaven, in the region of the city Ka ... thou goest with the king when he goes to Thebes ... thou seest the Sktt bark on its arrival in the city of Thebes and the two sisters united in Pi-ubkt ... thou seest the goddess Hathor who becomes the mother of her own mother[117] on the day ... of the Tx festival ... thy name is called amongst those of the judges on the great Hermopolis in the night of the festival of he who remains [pg 436] in the middle or centre of his city ... thou seest the immovable ones united into a quatuor, in form like a young bull ... thou seest their wives united together in the form of the goddess Anthat ... thou visitest the caves of Thebes when his majesty betakes himself to the zone of Smu.... The mistress of heaven comes to her house ... thou receivest a cloak from his hand ... the divine eye ... thou watchest at night in the chamber of birth on the day of the [lying in] birth of the goddess Mut....[Nut?] Thou goest in with those who go in and comest out with those who come out like the great Horus in his temple ... thou seest in her domain(?) mysterious actions performed by the Pastophores. No one sees, no one hears (of them) ... thou hearest the voice of the singer in the temple, in varied modulations ... thou ascendest the stairway of the eternal circle of light, thou seest the strong ram in its domain ... thou seest ... in his first form, Osiris, in the house of purification.” (Brugsch, op. cit. ii, pp. 518 and 520).
A careful perusal of the preceding texts conveys an idea of the immense lapse of time it must have required for the state religion of Egypt to have developed itself and crystallized into a complicated ritual, the true significance of which, doubtlessly, gradually receded from view. The naïve primitive symbolization of the union of heaven and earth by the actual marriage of king and queen, followed by general marriage festivities, had naturally created, in course of time, a distinct privileged caste rendered “divine” by the circumstances attending their conception and birth. Once in existence the maintenance and insurance of the divine line of descent would naturally enforce the intermarriage of its members and the sequestration and guarded seclusion of the royal women and the virgin priestesses from whose ranks the destined mothers of the divine children were selected.
A more ancient form of symbolizing the union of heaven and earth seems to have been the cult of Apis, which, according to Maspero, preceded the building of the pyramids and could scarcely have arisen before the adoption of the cow or bull, ua, as the rebus of Polaris, the One=ua. A survival of Apis cult seems to be the allegorical sacred title “bull” (Osiris-Apis) bestowed upon the king, of “cow” upon the queen and “calf” upon their offspring, the young Horus. In later times the king was entitled “the ram” and wore his fleece and horns on visiting the queen. As a natural [pg 437] sequence, the fruit of their union was spoken of as “the lamb.” According to Herodotus (ii, pp. 27-29, Cary's translation), “the sacred Apis, or Epaphus is the calf of a cow incapable of conceiving another offspring; and the Egyptians say that lightning descends upon the cow from heaven and that from thence it brings forth Apis.” “The Egyptian magistrates said ... the god [in the form of Apis] manifested himself at distant intervals ... and when this manifestation took place the Egyptians immediately put on their richest apparel and kept festive holiday.”
As stated by Mr. Wallis Budge, Apis worship was established at Memphis by Ka-kau, the second king of the second dynasty B.C. 4100. The veneration accorded to the bull, cow and calf, as embodiments of the dual principles of nature, in separate and in single form, seems to have been accorded in other localities to different animal forms and to have been replaced, in later times, by triads, composed of a god, goddess and their offspring, each great centre ultimately possessing their particular triad, the living images of which were the high-priest, high-priestess and their “divine” offspring. It should be noted that a group consisting of 8+1=nine gods, high priests or prophets, accompanied the triad, the result being twelve “deities” in all, of which one=the child, was an embodiment of two principles and was the ka=the divine twain.
The transition of Apis worship from the animal to the human form was accomplished during the reign of the Ptolemies (B.C. 305-42) when Serapis or Osiris-Apis was introduced into Egypt and represented as a man with the head of a bull, wearing a disk and uræus. Long before this, however, androsphinxes and other combinations of the human and animal form had existed in Egypt. At Thebes the divine triad was formed by Amen-Ra, Mut-Hathor and Chonsu; at Edfu and Denderah we find Osiris, Isis-Sothis-Hathor and Horus. On the other hand, a curious inscription in the temple at Denderah, translated by Brugsch (ii, p. 512), actually describes Amen-Ra as “the great god in Denderah, who periodically rejuvenates himself and becomes a beautiful boy, who is the concealed or hidden god, whose name is hidden; who is the Horus with colored wings, coming forth in the upper hemisphere of Edfu, the lord of the double heaven.”
The inference one might be tempted to make from this and other texts is that, at one period, a human babe, the fruit of a [pg 438] royal or sacerdotal union, was born in the temple on what constituted New Year's Day and was secretly worshipped there during the ensuing year, as the living image of Amen-Ra, the hidden god and “divine twain.” I venture to point out that the adoption of the child as the image of the divinity was the logical sequence to the preceding employment of the bull as a rebus for the words ua=one and ka=twain; that the consecration of the human form must, undoubtedly, have given a strong impulse to statuary, and that the sanctification of the child correspondingly exalted motherhood and lent a particular consecration to the marriage of its “divine parents.” The following facts, culled at random, afford a limit of the transitions and further developments which took place in Egypt in course of time.