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Development of Religion
and
Thought in Ancient Egypt
I
THE ORIGINS: NATURE
AND THE STATE IN THEIR IMPRESSION ON RELIGION—EARLIEST SYSTEMS
The recovery of the
history of the nearer Orient in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic and
Babylonian cuneiform brought with it many unexpected revelations, but none more
impressive than the length of the development disclosed. In Babylonia, however,
the constant influx of foreign population resulted in frequent and violent
interruption of the development of civilization. In Egypt, on the other hand,
the isolation of the lower Nile valley permitted a development never seriously
arrested by permanent immigrations for over three thousand years. We find here
an opportunity like that which the zoologist is constantly seeking in what he
calls "unbroken series," such as that of the horse developing in
several millions of years from a creature little larger than a rabbit to our
modern domestic horse. In all the categories of human life: language, arts,
government, society, thought, religion—what you please—we may trace a development
in Egypt essentially undisturbed by outside forces, for a period far surpassing
in length any such development elsewhere preserved to us; and it is a matter of
not a little interest to observe what humankind becomes in the course of five
thousand years in such an Island of the Blest as Egypt; to follow him from the
flint knife and stone hammer in less than two thousand years to the copper
chisel and the amazing extent and accuracy of the Great Pyramid masonry; from
the wattle-hut to the sumptuous palace, gorgeous with glazed tile, rich
tapestries, and incrusted with gold; to follow all the golden threads of his
many-sided life, as it was interwoven at last into a rich and noble fabric of
civilization. In these lectures we are to follow but one of these many threads,
as its complicated involutions wind hither and thither throughout the whole
fabric.
There is no force in the life of ancient man the influence of which so
pervades all his activities as does that of the religious faculty. It is at
first but an endeavor in vague and childish fancies to explain and to control
the world about him; its fears become his hourly master, its hopes are his
constant mentor, its feasts are his calendar, and its outward usages are to a
large extent the education and the motive toward the evolution of art,
literature, and science. Life not only touches religion at every point, but
life, thought, and religion are inextricably interfused in an intricate complex
of impressions from without and forces from within. How the world about him and
the world within him successively wrought and fashioned the religion of the
Egyptian for three thousand years is the theme of these studies.
As among all other early peoples, it was in his natural surroundings
that the Egyptian first saw his gods. The trees and springs, the stones and
hill-tops, the birds and beasts, were creatures like himself, or possessed of
strange and uncanny powers of which he was not master. Nature thus makes the
earliest impression upon the religious faculty, the visible world is first
explained in terms of religious forces, and the earliest gods are the
controlling forces of the material world. A social or political realm, or a
domain of the spirit where the gods shall be supreme, is not yet perceived.
Such divinities as these were local, each known only to the dwellers in a given
locality.
As the prehistoric principalities, after many centuries of internal
conflict, coalesced to form a united state, the first great national
organization of men in history (about 3400 B.C.), this imposing fabric of the
state made a profound impression upon religion, and the forms of the state
began to pass over into the world of the gods.
At the same time the voices within made themselves heard, and moral
values were discerned for the first time. Man's organized power without and the
power of the moral imperative within were thus both early forces in shaping
Egyptian religion. The moral mandate, indeed, was felt earlier in Egypt than
anywhere else. With the development of provincial society in the Feudal Age
there ensued a ferment of social forces, and the demand for social justice
early found expression in the conception of a gracious and paternal kingship,
maintaining high ideals of social equity. The world of the gods, continuing in
sensitive touch with the political conditions of the nation, at once felt this
influence, and through the idealized kingship social justice passed over into
the character of the state god, enriching the ethical qualities which in some
degree had for probably a thousand years been imputed to him.
Thus far all was national. As the arena of thought and action widened
from national limits to a world of imperial scope, when the Egyptian state
expanded to embrace contiguous Asia and Africa, the forces of imperial power
consistently reacted upon the thought and religion of the empire. The national
religion was forcibly supplanted by a non-national, universal faith, and for
the first time in history monotheism dawned. Unlike the social developments of
the Feudal Age, this movement was exclusively political, artificial, and
imposed upon the people by official pressure from above. The monotheistic movement
also failed for lack of nationalism. The Mediterranean world was not yet ripe
for a world-religion. In the reversion to the old national gods, much of the
humane content of the monotheistic teaching survived, and may be recognized in
ideas which gained wide currency among the people. In this process of
popularization, the last great development in Egyptian religion took place
(1300–1100 B.C.), a development toward deep personal confidence in the goodness
and paternal solicitude of God, resulting in a relation of spiritual communion
with him. This earliest known age of personal piety in a deep spiritual sense
degenerated under the influence of sacerdotalism into the exaggerated
religiosity of Græco-Roman days in Egypt.
Such is the imposing vista of development in the religion and thought of
Egypt, down which we may look, surveying as we do a period of three thousand
years or more. To sum up: what we shall endeavor to do is to trace the progress
of the Egyptian as both the world about him and the world within him made their
impression upon his thought and his religion, disclosing to us, one after
another, nature, the national state, the inner life with its growing sense of
moral obligation, the social forces, the world state, the personal conviction
of the presence and goodness of God, triumphant sacerdotalism, scribal
literalism, and resulting decay—in short, all these in succession as felt by
the Egyptian with profound effect upon his religion and his thought for three
thousand years will constitute the survey presented in these lectures.
The fact that a survey of exactly this character has not been undertaken
before should lend some interest to the task. The fact that objective study of
the great categories mentioned has ranged them chronologically in their effect
upon thought and religion in the order above outlined, disclosing a religious
development in the main points analogous with that of the Hebrews, though with
differences that might have been expected, should also enhance the interest and
importance of such a reconstruction. Indeed one of the noticeable facts
regarding the religious and intellectual development of the Hebrews has been
that the Oriental world in which they moved has heretofore furnished us with no
wholly analogous process among kindred peoples.
It will be seen that such a study as we contemplate involves keeping in
the main channel and following the broad current, the general drift. It will be
impossible, not to say quite undesirable, to undertake an account of all the
Egyptian gods, or to study the material appurtenances and outward usages of
religion, like the ceremonies and equipment of the cult, which were so
elaborately developed in Egypt. Nor shall we follow thought in all its
relations to the various incipient sciences, but only those main developments
involved in the intimate interrelation between thought and religion.
One characteristic of Egyptian thinking should be borne in mind from the
outset: it was always in graphic form. The Egyptian did not possess the
terminology for the expression of a system of abstract thought; neither did he
develop the capacity to create the necessary terminology as did the Greek. He
thought in concrete pictures, he moved along tangible material channels, and
the material world about him furnished nearly all of the terms which he used.
While this is probably ultimately true of all terms in any early language, such
terms for the most part remained concrete for the Egyptian. We shall discern
the emergence of the earliest abstract term known in the history of thought as
moral ideas appear among the men of the Pyramid Age in the first half of the
third millennium B.C. Let us not, therefore, expect an equipment of precise
abstract terms, which we shall find as lacking as the systems which might
require them. We are indeed to watch processes by which a nation like the
Greeks might have developed such terms, but as we contemplate the earliest
developments in human thinking still traceable in contemporary documents, we
must expect the vagueness, the crudities, and the limitations inevitable at so
early a stage of human development. As the earliest chapter in the intellectual
history of man, its introductory phases are, nevertheless, of more importance
than their intrinsic value as thought would otherwise possess, while the climax
of the development is vital with human interest and human appeal.As we examine
Egyptian religion in its earliest surviving documents, it is evident that two
great phenomena of nature had made the most profound impression upon the
Nile-dwellers and that the gods discerned in these two phenomena dominated
religious and intellectual development from the earliest times. These are the
sun and the Nile. In the Sun-god, Re, Atum, Horus, Khepri, and in the Nile,
Osiris, we find the great gods of Egyptian life and thought, who almost from
the beginning entered upon a rivalry for the highest place in the religion of
Egypt—a rivalry which ceased only with the annihilation of Egyptian religion at
the close of the fifth century of the Christian era. He who knows the
essentials of the story of this long rivalry, will know the main course of the
history of Egyptian religion, not to say one of the most important chapters in
the history of the early East.
The all-enveloping glory and power of the Egyptian sun is the most
insistent fact in the Nile valley, even at the present day as the modern
tourist views him for the first time. The Egyptian saw him in different,
doubtless originally local forms. At Edfu he appeared as a falcon, for the
lofty flight of this bird, which seemed a very comrade of the sun, had led the
early fancy of the Nile peasant to believe that the sun must be such a falcon,
taking his daily flight across the heavens, and the sun-disk with the outspread
wings of the falcon became the commonest symbol of Egyptian religion. As falcon
he bore the name Hor (Horus or Horos), or Harakhte, which means "Horus of
the horizon." The latter with three other Horuses formed the four Horuses
of the eastern sky, originally, doubtless, four different local Horuses. We find them in the Pyramid Texts as "these four youths
who sit on the east side of the sky, these four youths with curly hair who sit
in the shade of the tower of Kati."
At Heliopolis the Sun-god appeared as an aged man tottering down the
west, while elsewhere they saw in him a winged beetle rising in the east as
Khepri. Less picturesque fancy discerned the material sun as Re, that is the
"sun." While these were early correlated they at first remained
distinct gods for the separate localities where they were worshipped. Survivals
of the distinction between the archaic local Sun-gods are still to be found in
the Pyramid Texts. Horus early became the son of Re, but in the Pyramid Texts
we may find the dead Pharaoh mounting "upon his empty throne between the
two great gods" (Re and Horus). They ultimately
coalesced, and their identity is quite evident also in the same Pyramid Texts,
where we find the compound "Re-Atum" to indicate the identity. The favorite picture of him discloses him sailing across the
celestial ocean in the sun-barque, of which there were two, one for the morning
and the other for the evening. There were several ancient folk-tales of how he
reached the sky when he was still on earth. They prayed that the deceased
Pharaoh might reach the sky in the same way: "Give thou to this king Pepi
(the Pharaoh) thy two fingers which thou gavest to the maiden, the daughter of
the Great God (Re), when the sky was separated from the earth, and the gods
ascended to the sky, while thou wast a soul appearing in the bow of thy ship of
seven hundred and seventy cubits (length), which the gods of Buto built for
thee, which the eastern gods shaped for thee."
This separation of earth and sky had been accomplished by Shu the god of the
atmosphere, who afterward continued to support the sky as he stood with his
feet on earth. There, like Atlas shouldering the earth, he was fed by
provisions of the Sun-god brought by a falcon.
Long before all this, however, there had existed in the beginning only
primeval chaos, an ocean in which the Sun-god as Atum had appeared. At one
temple they said Ptah had shaped an egg out of which the Sun-god had issued; at
another it was affirmed that a lotus flower had grown out of the water and in
it the youthful Sun-god was concealed; at Heliopolis it was believed that the
Sun-god had appeared upon the ancient pyramidal "Ben-stone in the
Phœnix-hall in Heliopolis" as a Phœnix. Every sanctuary
sought to gain honor by associating in some way with its own early history the
appearance of the Sun-god. Either by his own masculine power self-developed, or by a consort who appeared to him, the Sun-god now begat Shu
the Air-god, and Tefnut his wife. Of these two were born Geb the Earth-god, and
Nut the goddess of the sky, whose children were the two brothers Osiris and
Set, and the sisters Isis and Nephthys.
In the remotest past it was with material functions that the Sun-god had
to do. In the earliest Sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life
and increase. Men said of him: "Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast
expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds."
These were his enemies, and of course they were likewise personified in the
folk-myth, appearing in a tale in which the Sun-god loses his eye at the hands
of his enemy. Similarly the waxing and waning of the moon, who was also an eye
of the Sun-god, gave rise to another version of the lost eye, which in this
case was brought back and restored to the Sun-god by his friend Thoth the
Moon-god. This "eye," termed the
"Horus-eye," became one of the holiest symbols of Egyptian religion,
and was finally transferred to the Osirian faith, where it played a prominent
part.
As the Egyptian state developed and a uniformly organized nation under a
single king embraced and included all the once petty and local principalities,
the Sun-god became an ancient king who, like a Pharaoh, had once ruled Egypt.
Many folk-myths telling of his earthly rule arose, but of these only fragments
have survived, like that which narrates the ingratitude of his human subjects,
whom he was obliged to punish and almost exterminate before he retired to the
sky.
While the Egyptian still referred with pleasure to the incidents which
made up these primitive tales, and his religious literature to the end was
filled with allusions to these myths, nevertheless at the beginning of the
Pyramid Age he was already discerning the Sun-god in the exercise of functions
which lifted him far above such childish fancies and made him the great arbiter
and ruler of the Egyptian nation. While he was supreme among the gods, and men
said of him, "Thou passest the night in the evening-barque, thou wakest in
the morning-barque; for thou art he who overlooks the gods; there is no god who
overlooks thee"; he was likewise at the same time
supreme over the destinies of men.
This fundamental transition, the earliest known, transferred the
activities of the Sun-god from the realm of exclusively material forces
to the domain of human affairs. Already in the Pyramid Age his supremacy in the
affairs of Egypt was celebrated in the earliest Sun-hymn which we possess. It
sets forth the god's beneficent maintenance and control of the land of Egypt,
which is called the "Horus-eye," that is the Sun-god's eye. The hymn
is as follows:
"Hail to
thee, Atum!
Hail to thee, Kheprer!
Who himself became (or 'self-generator').
Thou art high in this thy name of 'Height,'
Thou becomest (ḫpr) in this thy name of 'Beetle' (ḫprr).
Hail to thee, Horus-eye (Egypt),
Which he adorned with both his arms.
"He permits thee (Egypt) not
to hearken to the westerners,
He permits thee not to hearken to the easterners,
He permits thee not to hearken to the southerners,
He permits thee not to hearken to the northerners,
He permits thee not to hearken to the dwellers in the midst of the earth,
But thou hearkenest unto Horus.
"It is he who has adorned
thee, It is he who has built thee,
It is he who has founded thee.
Thou doest for him everything that he says to thee
In every place where he goes.
"Thou
carriest to him the fowl-bearing waters that are in thee;
Thou carriest to him the fowl-bearing waters that shall be in thee.
Thou carriest to him every tree that is in thee,
Thou carriest to him every tree that shall be in thee.
Thou carriest to him all food that is in thee,
Thou carriest to him all food that shall be in thee.
Thou carriest to him the gifts that are in thee,
Thou carriest to him the gifts that shall be in thee.
Thou carriest to him everything that is in thee,
Thou carriest to him everything that shall be in thee.
Thou bringest them to him,
To every place where his heart desires to be.
"The doors that are on thee
stand fast like Inmutef,
They open not to the westerners,
They open not to the easterners,
They open not to the northerners,
They open not to the southerners,
They open not to the dwellers in the midst of the earth,
They open to Horus.
It was he who made them,
It was he who set them up,
It was he who saved them from every ill which Set did to them.
It was he who settled (grg) thee, In this thy name of 'Settlements'
(grg-wt).
It was he who went doing obeisance (nyny) after thee,
In this thy name of 'City' (nwt)
It was he who saved thee from every ill
Which Set did unto thee."
Similarly the Sun-god is the ally and protector of the king: "He
settles for him Upper Egypt, he settles for him Lower Egypt; he hacks up for
him the strongholds of Asia, he quells for him all the people, who were fashioned under his fingers."
Such was his prestige that by the twenty-ninth century his name appeared in the
names of the Gizeh kings, the builders of the second and third pyramids there,
Khafre and Menkure, and according to a folk-tale circulating a thousand years
later, Khufu the builder of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, and the predecessor of
the two kings just named, was warned by a wise man that his line should be
superseded by three sons of the Sun-god yet to be born. As a matter of fact, in
the middle of the next century, that is about 2750 B.C., the line of Khufu, the
Fourth Dynasty, was indeed supplanted by a family of kings, who began to assume
the title "Son of Re," though the title was probably not unknown even
earlier. This Fifth Dynasty was devoted to the service of the Sun-god, and each
king built a vast sanctuary for his worship in connection with the royal
residence, on the margin of the western desert. Such a sanctuary possessed no
adytum, or holy-of-holies, but in its place there rose a massive masonry
obelisk towering to the sky. Like all obelisks, it was surmounted by a pyramid,
which formed the apex. The pyramid was, as we shall see, the chief symbol of
the Sun-god, and in his sanctuary at Heliopolis there was a pyramidal stone in
the holy place, of which that surmounting the obelisk in the Fifth Dynasty
sun-temples was perhaps a reproduction. It is evident that the priests of
Heliopolis had become so powerful that they had succeeded in seating this Solar
line of kings upon the throne of the Pharaohs. From now on the state fiction
was maintained that the Pharaoh was the physical son of the Sun-god by an
earthly mother, and in later days we find the successive incidents of the
Sun-god's terrestrial amour sculptured on the walls of the temples. It has been
preserved in two buildings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the temple of Luxor and
that of Der el-Bahri.
The legend was so persistent that even Alexander the Great deferred to
the tradition, and made the long journey to the Oasis of Amon in the western
desert, that he might be recognized as the bodily son of the Egyptian Sun-god; and the folk-tale preserved in Pseudo-Callisthenes gave the
legend currency as a popular romance, which survived until a few centuries ago
in Europe. It still remains to be determined what influence the Solar Pharaoh
may have had upon the Solar apotheosis of the Cæsars, five hundred years later.
From the foundation of the Fifth Dynasty, in the twenty-eighth century
B.C., the position of the Sun-god then, as the father of the Pharaoh and the
great patron divinity of the state, was one of unrivalled splendor and power.
He was the great god of king and court. When King Neferirkere is deeply
afflicted at the sudden death of his grand vizier, who was stricken down with
disease at the king's side, the Pharaoh prays to Re; and
the court-physician, when he has received a gift from the king for his tomb,
tells of it in his tomb inscriptions with the words: “f ye love Re, ye shall
praise every god for Sahure's sake who did this for me.”
The conception of the Sun-god as a former king of Egypt, as the father
of the reigning Pharaoh, and as the protector and leader of the nation, still a
kind of ideal king, resulted in the most important consequences for religion.
The qualities of the earthly kingship of the Pharaoh were easily transferred to
Re. We can observe this even in externals. There was a palace song with which
the court was wont to waken the sovereign five thousand years ago, or which was
addressed to him in the morning as he came forth from his chamber. It began:
"Thou wakest
in peace,
The king awakes in peace,
Thy wakening is in peace."
This song was early addressed to the Sun-god, and
similarly the hymns to the royal diadem as a divinity were addressed to other
gods. The whole earthly conception and environment of the
Egyptian Pharaoh were soon, as it were, the "stage properties" with
which Re was "made up" before the eyes of the Nile-dweller. When
later on, therefore, the conception of the human kingship was developed and
enriched under the transforming social forces of the Feudal Age, these vital
changes were soon reflected from the character of the Pharaoh to that of the
Sun-god. It was a fact of the greatest value to religion, then, that the
Sun-god became a kind of celestial reflection of the earthly sovereign. This
phenomenon is, of course, merely a highly specialized example of the universal
process by which man has pictured to himself his god with the pigments of his
earthly experience. We shall later see how this process is closely analogous to
the developing idea of the Messianic king in Hebrew thought. While there is no
question whatever regarding the natural phenomenon of which Re, Atum, Horus,
and the rest were personifications, there has been much uncertainty and
discussion of the same question in connection with Osiris.
The oldest source, the Pyramid Texts, in combination with a few later
references, settles the question beyond any doubt. The clearest statement of
the nature of Osiris is that contained in the incident of the finding of the
dead god by his son Horus, as narrated in the Pyramid Texts: “Horus comes, he
recognizes his father in thee, youthful in thy name of ‘Fresh Water’.” Equally unequivocal are the words of King Ramses IV, who
says to the god: “Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the
beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is in thee.”
Similarly in the Pyramid Texts, Osiris is elsewhere addressed: "Ho,
Osiris, the inundation comes, the overflow moves, Geb (the earth-god) groans:
'I have sought thee in the field, I have smitten him who did aught against thee
... that thou mightest live and lift thyself up.'" Again
when the dead king Unis is identified with Osiris, it is said of him:
"Unis comes hither up-stream when the flood inundates.... Unis comes to
his pools that are in the region of the flood at the great inundation, to the place
of peace, with green fields, that is in the horizon. Unis makes the verdure to
flourish in the two regions of the horizon"; or
"it is Unis who inundates the land."
Likewise the deceased king Pepi I is addressed as Osiris thus:
"This thy cavern, is the broad hall of Osiris, O
King Pepi, which brings the wind and guides the north-wind. It raises thee as Osiris, O King Pepi. The winepress
god comes to thee bearing wine-juice. ... Those who behold the Nile tossing in
waves tremble. The marshes laugh, the shores are overflowed, the divine
offerings descend, men give praise and the heart of the gods
rejoices." A priestly explanation in the Pyramid
Texts represents the inundation as of ceremonial origin, Osiris as before being
its source: "The lakes fill, the canals are inundated, by the purification
that came forth from Osiris"; or "Ho this Osiris,
king Mernere! Thy water, thy libation is the great inundation that came forth
from thee" (as Osiris).
In a short hymn addressed to the departed king, Pepi II, as Osiris, we
should discern Osiris either in the life-giving waters or the soil of Egypt
which is laved by them. The birth of the god is thus described: "The
waters of life that are in the sky come; the waters of life that are in the
earth come. The sky burns for thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the
divine birth. The two mountains divide, the god becomes, the god takes
possession of his body. Behold this king Pepi, his feet are kissed by the pure
waters which arose through Atum, which the phallus of Shu makes and the vulva
of Tefnut causes to be. They come to thee, they bring to thee the pure waters
from their father. They purify thee, they cleanse thee, O Pepi.... The libation
is poured out at the gate of this king Pepi, the face of every god is washed.
Thou washest thy arms, O Osiris." As Osiris was
identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even become the sea and the
ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: "Thou art great, thou art green,
in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou art round as the Great Circle
(Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou art round as the circle that
encircles the Haunebu (Ægeans)." "Thou includest
all things in thy embrace, in thy name of 'Encircler of the Haunebu'
(Ægeans)." Or again: "Thou hast encircled
every god in thy embrace, their lands and all their possessions. O Osiris ...
thou art great, thou curvest about as the curve which encircles the
Haunebu." Hence it is that Osiris is depicted on the
sarcophagus of Seti I, engulfed in waters and lying as it were coiled, with
head and heels meeting around a vacancy containing the inscription: "It is
Osiris, encircling the Nether-World." We may
therefore understand another passage of the Pyramid Texts, which says to
Osiris: "Thou ferriest over the lake to thy house the Great Green
(sea)."
While the great fountains of water are thus identified with Osiris, it
is evidently a particular function of the waters with which he was associated.
It was water as a source of fertility, water as a life-giving agency with which
Osiris was identified. It is water which brings life to the soil, and when the
inundation comes the Earth-god Geb says to Osiris: "The divine fluid that
is in thee cries out, thy heart lives, thy divine limbs move, thy joints are
loosed," in which we discern the water bringing life and causing the
resurrection of Osiris, the soil. In the same way in a folk-tale thirteen or
fourteen hundred years later than the Pyramid Texts, the heart of a dead hero,
who is really Osiris, is placed in water, and when he has drunk the water
containing his heart, he revives and comes to life.
As we have seen in the last passage from the Pyramid Texts, Osiris is
closely associated with the soil likewise. This view of Osiris is carried so
far in a hymn of the twelfth century B.C. as to identify Osiris, not only with
the soil but even with the earth itself. The beginning is lost, but we perceive
that the dead Osiris is addressed as one "with outspread arms, sleeping
upon his side upon the sand, lord of the soil, mummy with long phallus....
Re-Khepri shines on thy body, when thou liest as Sokar, and he drives away the
darkness which is upon thee, that he may bring light to thy eyes. For a time he
shines upon thy body mourning for thee.... The soil is on thy arm, its corners
are upon thee as far as the four pillars of the sky. When thou movest, the
earth trembles. ... As for thee, the Nile comes forth from the sweat of thy
hands. Thou spewest out the wind that is in thy throat int the nostrils of
men, and that whereon men live is divine. It is alike in thy nostrils, the tree and its verdure, reeds—plants,
barley, wheat, and the tree of life. When canals are dug, ... houses and
temples are built, when monuments are transported and fields are cultivated,
when tomb-chapels and tombs are excavated, they rest on thee, it is thou who
makest them. They are on thy back, although they are more than can be put into
writing. [Thy] back hath not an empty place, for they all lie on thy back; but
[thou sayest] not, 'I am weighed down.' Thou art the father and mother of men,
they live on thy breath, they eat of the flesh of thy body. The 'Primæval' is
thy name.
The earlier views of the Pyramid Texts represent him as intimately
associated with vegetable life. We find him addressed thus: "O thou whose
ab-tree is green, which (or who) is upon his field; O thou opener of the
ukhikh-flower that (or who) is on his sycomore; O thou brightener of regions
who is on his palm; O thou lord of green fields."
Again it is said to him: "Thou art flooded with the verdure with which the
children of Geb (the Earth-god) were flooded. ... The am-tree serves thee, the
nebes-tree bows its head to thee." In addition to his
connection with the wine-press god above, he is called "Lord of
overflowing wine." Furthermore, as the inundation
began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis, sister of Osiris, they said to
him: "The beloved daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in this her
name of 'Year' (rnpt)." These are the fruits on which
Egypt lives; when therefore the dead king is identified with Osiris, his birth
is called "his unblemished birth, whereby the Two Lands (Egypt)
live," and thereupon he comes as the messenger of Osiris announcing the
prosperous yield of the year. In the earliest versions of
the Book of the Dead likewise, the deceased says of himself: "I am Osiris,
I have come forth as thou (that is "being thou"), I have entered as
thou ... the gods live as I, I live as the gods, I live as 'Grain,' I grow as 'Grain.' ... I am barley." With these early
statements we should compare the frequent representations showing grain
sprouting from the prostrate body of Osiris, or a tree growing out of his tomb
or his coffin, or the effigies of the god as a mummy moulded of bruised corn
and earth and buried with the dead, or in the grain-field to insure a plentiful
crop.
It is evident from these earliest sources that Osiris was identified
with the waters, especially the inundation, with the soil, and with vegetation.
This is a result of the Egyptian tendency always to think in graphic and
concrete forms. The god was doubtless in Egyptian thought the imperishable
principle of life wherever found, and this conception not infrequently appears
in representations of him, showing him even in death as still possessed of
generative power. The ever-waning and reviving life of the earth, sometimes
associated with the life-giving waters, sometimes with the fertile soil, or
again discerned in vegetation itself—that was Osiris. The fact that the Nile,
like the vegetation which its rising waters nourished awl supported, waxed and
waned every year, made it more easy to see him in the Nile, the most important
feature of the Egyptian's landscape, than in any other form.
As a matter of fact the Nile was but the sourceand visible symbol of that
fertility of which Osiris was the personification.
This ever-dying, ever-reviving god, who seemed to be subjected to human
destiny and human mortality, was inevitably the inexhaustible theme of legend
and saga. Like the Sun-god, after kings appeared in the land, Osiris soon
became an ancient king, who had been given the inheritance of his father Geb,
the Earth-god. He was commonly called "the heir of Geb," who
"assigned to him the leadership of the lands for the good of affairs. He
put this land in his hand, its water, its air, its verdure, all its herds, all
things that fly, all things that flutter, its reptiles, its game of the desert,
legally conveyed to the son of Nut (Osiris)."
Thus Osiris began his beneficent rule, and "Egypt was content therewith,
as he dawned upon the throne of his father, like Re when he rises in the
horizon, when he sends forth light for him that is in darkness. He shed forth
light by his radiance, and he flooded the Two Lands like the sun at early
morning, while his diadem pierced the sky and mingled with the stars—he, leader
of every god, excellent in command, favorite of the Great Ennead, beloved of
the Little Ennead." In power and splendor and
benevolence he ruled a happy people. He "established justice in Egypt,
putting the son in the seat of the father." "He overthrew his
enemies, and with a mighty arm he slew his foes, setting the fear of him among his
adversaries, and extending his boundaries."
His sister Isis, who was at the same time his wife, stood loyally at his
side; she "protected him, driving away enemies, warding off danger, taking the foe by the excellence of her speech—she, the
skilful-tongued, whose word failed not, excellent in command, Isis, effective
in protecting her brother." The arch enemy of
the good Osiris was his brother Set, who, however, feared the good king. The Sun-god warned him and his followers: "Have ye done
aught against him and said that he should die? He shall not die but he shall
live forever."
Nevertheless his assailants at last prevailed against him, if not openly
then by stratagem, as narrated by Plutarch, although there is no trace in the
Egyptian sources of Plutarch's story of the chest into which the doomed Osiris
was lured by the conspirators and then shut in to die.
The oldest source, the Pyramid Texts, indicates assassination: "his
brother Set felled him to the earth in Nedyt"; or
"his brother Set overthrew him upon his side, on the further side of the
land of Gehesti"; but another document of the Pyramid
Age, and possibly quite as old as the passages quoted from the Pyramid Texts,
says: "Osiris was drowned in his new water (the inundation)."
When the news reached the unhappy Isis, she wandered in great affliction
seeking the body of her lord, "seeking him unweariedly, sadly going
through this land, nor stopping until she found him."
The oldest literature is full of references to the faithful wife unceasingly
seeking her murdered husband: "Thou didst come seeking thy brother Osiris,
when his brother Set had overthrown him." The Plutarch
narrative even carries her across the Mediterranean to Byblos, where the body
of Osiris had drifted in the waters. The Pyramid Texts refer to the fact that
she at last found him "upon the shore of Nedyt," where
we recall he was slain by Set, and it may be indeed that Nedyt is an ancient
name for the region of Byblos, although it was later localized at Abydos, and
one act of the Osirian passion play was presented at the shore of Nedyt, near
Abydos. The introduction of Byblos is at least as old
as the thirteenth century B.C., when the Tale of the Two Brothers in an Osirian
incident pictures the Osirian hero as slain in the Valley of the Cedar, which
can have been nowhere but the Syrian coast where the cedar flourished. Indeed
in the Pyramid Texts, Horus is at one point represented as crossing the
sea. All this is doubtless closely connected with the
identification of Osiris with the waters, or even with the sea, and harmonizes
easily with the other version of his death, which represents him as drowning.
In that version "Isis and Nephthys saw him. ... Horus commanded Isis and
Nephthys in Busiris, that they seize upon Osiris, and that they prevent him
from drowning. They turned around the head (of Osiris) ... and they brought him
to the land." Nephthys frequently accompanies her sister in the long search, both of
them being in the form of birds. "Isis comes, Nephthys comes, one of them
on the right, one of them on the left, one of them as a het-bird, one of them
as a falcon. They have found Osiris, as his brother Set felled him to the earth
in Nedyt." "'I have found (him),' said
Nephthys, when they saw Osiris (lying) on his side on the shore ... O my
brother, I have sought thee; raise thee up, O spirit."
"The het-bird comes, the falcon comes; they are Isis and Nephthys, they
come embracing their brother, Osiris ... Weep for thy brother, Isis! Weep for
thy brother, Nephthys! Weep for thy brother. Isis sits, her arms upon her head;
Nephthys has seized the tips of her breasts (in mourning) because of her
brother." The lamentations of Isis and Nephthys
became the most sacred expression of sorrow known to the heart of the Egyptian,
and many were the varied forms which they took until they emerged in the
Osirian mysteries of Europe, three thousand years later.
Then the two sisters embalm the body of their brother to prevent its perishing, or the Sun-god is moved with pity and despatches the ancient
mortuary god "Anubis ... lord of the Nether World, to whom the westerners (the
dead) give praise ... him who was in the middle of the mid-heaven, fourth of
the sons of Re, who was made to descend from the sky to embalm Osiris, because
he was so very worthy in the heart of Re." Then when
they have laid him in his tomb a sycomore grows up and envelops the body of the
dead god, like the erica in the story of Plutarch. This sacred tree is
the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris, which in the earliest
references was already divine and might be addressed as a god. Already in the
Pyramid Age men sang to it: "Hail to thee, Sycomore, which encloses the
god, under which the gods of the Nether Sky stand, whose tips are scorched,
whose middle is burned, who art just in suffering ... Thy forehead is upon thy arm (in mourning) for
Osiris ... Thy station, O Osiris; thy shade over thee, O Osiris, which repels
thy defiance, O Set; the gracious damsel (meaning the tree) which was made for
this soul of Gehesti; thy shade, O Osiris.
Such was the life and death of Osiris. His career, as picturing the
cycle of nature, could not of course end here. It is continued in his
resurrection, and likewise in a later addition drawn from the Solar theology,
the story of his son Horus and the Solar feud of Horus and Set, which was not
originally Osirian. Even in death the life-giving power of Osiris did not
cease. The faithful Isis drew near her dead lord, "making a shadow with
her pinions and causing a wind with her wings . . . raising the weary limbs of
the silent-hearted (dead), receiving his seed, bringing forth an heir, nursing
the child in solitude, whose place is not known, introducing him when his arm
grew strong in the Great Hall" (at Heliopolis?)
The imagination of the common people loved to dwell upon this picture of
the mother concealed in the marshes of the Delta, as they fancied, by the city
of Khemmis, and there bringing up the youthful Horus, that "when his arm
grew strong" he might avenge the murder of his father. All this time Set
was, of course, not idle, and many were the adventures and escapes which befell
the child at the hands of Set. These are too fragmentarily preserved to be
reconstructed clearly, but even after the youth has grown up and attained a
stature of eight cubits (nearly fourteen feet), he is obliged to have a tiny
chapel of half a cubit long made, in which he conceals himself from Set. Grown
to manhood, however, the youthful god emerges at last from his hiding-place in
the Delta. In the oldest fragments we hear of "Isis the great, who
fastened on the girdle in Khemmis, when she brought her censer and burned incense before her son Horus, the young child, when he was
going through the land on his white sandals, that he might see his father
Osiris." Again: "Horus comes forth from Khemmis,
and (the city of) Buto arises for Horus, and he purifies himself there. Horus
comes purified that he may avenge his father."
The filial piety of Horus was also a theme which the imagination of the
people loved to contemplate, as he went forth to overthrow his father's enemies
and take vengeance upon Set. They sang to Osiris: "Horus hath come that he
might embrace thee. He hath caused Thoth to turn back the followers of Set
before thee. He hath brought them to thee all together. He hath turned back the
heart of Set before thee, for thou art greater than he. Thou hast gone forth
before him, thy character is before him. Geb hath seen thy character, he hath
put thee in thy place. Geb hath brought to thee thy two sisters to thy side: it
is Isis and Nephthys. Horus hath caused the gods to unite with thee and
fraternize with thee. . . . He hath caused that the gods avenge thee. Geb hath
placed his foot on the head of thy enemy, who hath retreated before thee. Thy
son Horus hath smitten him. He hath taken away his eye from him; he hath given
it to thee, that thou mightest become a soul thereby and be mighty thereby
before the spirits. Horus hath caused that thou seize thy enemies and that
there should be none escaping among them before thee ... Horus hath seized Set,
he hath laid him for thee under thee, that he (Set) may lift thee up and
tremble under thee as the earth trembles ... Horus hath caused that thou
shouldest recognize him in his inner heart, without his escaping from thee. O
Osiris, ... Horus hath avenged thee." "Horus hath
come that he may recognize thee. He hath smitten Set for thee, bound. Thou art
his (Set's) ka. Horus hath driven him back for thee; thou art greater than he.
He swims bearing thee; he carries in thee one greater than he. His followers
behold thee that thy strength is greater than he, and they do not attack thee.
Horus comes, he recognizes his father in thee, youthful (rnp) in thy name of
'Fresh Water' (mw-rnpw)." "Loose thou Horus
from his bonds, that he may punish the followers of Set. Seize them, remove
their heads, wade thou in their blood. Count their hearts in this thy name of
'Anubis counter of hearts.'"
The battle of Horus with Set, which as we shall see was a Solar
incident, waged so fiercely that the young god lost his eye at the hands of his
father's enemy. When Set was overthrown, and it was finally recovered by Thoth,
this wise god spat upon the wound and healed it. This method of healing the
eye, which is, of course, folk-medicine reflected in the myth, evidently gained
wide popularity, passed into Asia, and seems to reappear in the New Testament
narrative, in the incident which depicts Jesus doubtless deferring to
recognized folk-custom in employing the same means to heal a blind man. Horus
now seeks his father, even crossing the sea in his quest,
that he may raise his father from the dead and offer to him the eye which he
has sacrificed in his father's behalf. This act of filial devotion, preserved
to us in the Pyramid Texts, made the already sacred Horus-eye doubly revered in
the tradition and feeling of the Egyptians. It became the symbol of all sacrifice;
every gift or offering might be called a "Horus-eye," especially if
offered to the dead. Excepting the sacred beetle, or scarab, it became the
commonest and the most revered symbol known to Egyptian religion, and the
myriads of eyes, wrought in blue or green glaze, or even cut from costly stone,
which fill our museum collections, and are brought home by thousands by the
modern tourist, are survivals of this ancient story of Horus and his devotion
to his father.
A chapter of the Pyramid Texts tells the whole story of the
resurrection. "The gods dwelling in Buto approach, they come to Osiris at the
sound of the mourning of Isis, at the cry of Nephthys, at the wailing of these
two horizon-gods over this Great One who came forth from the Nether World. The
souls of Buto wave their arms to thee, they strike their flesh for thee, they
throw their arms for thee, they beat on their temples for thee. They say of
thee, O Osiris:
"'Though thou departest, thou comest (again); though thou sleepest,
thou wakest (again); though thou diest, thou livest (again).'
"'Stand up, that thou mayest see what thy son has done for thee.
Awake, that thou mayest hear what Horus has done for thee.'
"'He has smitten (ḥy) for thee the one that smote thee, as an
ox (yḥ); he has slain (sm’) for thee the one that slew thee, as a wild
bull (sm’). He has bound for thee the one that bound thee.'
"'He has put himself under thy daughter, the Great One (fem.)
dwelling in the East, that there may be no mourning in the palace of the gods.'
"Osiris speaks to Horus when he has removed the evil that was in
Osiris on his fourth day, and had forgotten what was done to him on his eighth
day. Thou hast come forth from the lake of life, purified in the celestial
lake, becoming Upwawet. Thy son Horus leads thee when he has given to thee the
gods who were against thee, and Thoth has brought them to thee. How beautiful
are they who saw, how satisfied are they who beheld, who saw Horus when he gave
life to his father, when he offered satisfaction to Osiris before the western
gods."
"Thy libation is poured by Isis, Nephthys has purified thee, thy
two great and mighty sisters, who have put together thy flesh, who have
fastened together thy limbs, who have made thy two eyes to shine (again) in thy
head."
Sometimes it is Horus who puts together the limbs of the dead god, or again he finds his father as embalmed by his mother and
Anubis: "Horus comes to thee, he separates thy bandages, he throws off thy
bonds;" "arise, give thou thy hand to
Horus, that he may raise thee up." Over and over again the rising of
Osiris is reiterated, as the human protest against death found insistent
expression in the invincible fact that he rose. We see the tomb opened for him:
"The brick are drawn for thee out of the great tomb,"
and then "Osiris awakes, the weary god wakens, the god stands up, he gains
control of his body." "Stand up! Thou shalt
not end, thou shalt not perish."
The malice of Set was not spent, however, even after his defeat by Horus
and the resurrection of Osiris. He entered the tribunal of the gods at
Heliopolis and lodged with them charges against Osiris. We have no clear
account of this litigation, nor of the nature of the charges, except that Set
was using them to gain the throne of Egypt. There must have been a version in
which the subject of the trial was Set's crime in slaying Osiris. In dramatic setting
the Pyramid Texts depict the scene. "The sky is troubled, earth trembles,
Horus comes, Thoth appears. They lift Osiris from his side; they make him stand
up before the two Divine Enneads. 'Remember O Set, and put it in thy heart,
this word which Geb spoke, and this manifestation which the gods made against
you in the hall of the prince in Heliopolis, because thou didst fell Osiris to
the earth. When thou didst say, O Set, "I have not done this to him,"
that thou mightest prevail thereby, being saved that thou mightest prevail
against Horus. When thou didst say, O Set, "It was he who bowed me down"
... When thou didst say, O Set, "It was he who attacked me" ... Lift
thee up, O Osiris! Set has lifted himself. He has heard the threat of the gods
who spoke of the Divine Father. Isis has thy arm, Osiris; Nephthys has thy hand
and thou goest between them.'"
But Osiris is triumphantly vindicated, and the throne is restored to him
against the claims of Set. "He is justified through that which he has done
... The Two Truths have held the legal hearing. Shu
was witness. The Two Truths commanded that the thrones of Geb should revert to
him, that he should raise himself to that which he desired, that his limbs
which were in concealment should be gathered together (again); that he should
join those who dwell in Nun (the primeval ocean); and that he should terminate
the words in Heliopolis."
The verdict rendered in favor of Osiris, which we translate
"justified," really means "true, right, just, or righteous of
voice." It must have been a legal term already in use when this episode in
the myth took form. It is later used in frequent parallelism with
"victorious" or "victory," and possessed the essential
meaning of "triumphant" or "triumph," both in a moral as
well as a purely material and physical sense. The later development of the
Osirian litigation shows that it gained a moral sense in this connection, if it
did not possess it in the beginning. We shall yet have occasion to observe the
course of the moral development involved in the wide popularity of this
incident in the Osiris myth.
The gods rejoice
in the triumph of Osiris.
"All gods dwelling in the sky are satisfied;
All gods dwelling in the earth are satisfied;
All gods southern and northern are satisfied;
All gods western and eastern are satisfied;
All gods of the nomes are satisfied;
All gods of the cities are satisfied;
with this great and mighty word that came out of the mouth of Thoth in
favor of Osiris, treasurer of life, seal-bearer of the gods."
The penalty laid upon Set was variously narrated in the different
versions of the myth. The Pyramid Texts several times refer to the fact that
Set was obliged to take Osiris on his back and carry him. "Ho! Osiris!
Rouse thee! Horus causes that Thoth bring to thee thy enemy. He places thee
upon his back. Make thy seat upon him. Ascend and sit down upon him; let him
not escape thee"; or again, "The great Ennead
avenges thee; they put for thee thy enemy under thee. Carry one who is greater
than thou,' say they of him ... 'Lift up one greater than thou,' say
they." "'He to whom evil was done by his
brother Set comes to us,' say the Two Divine Enneads, 'but we shall not permit
that Set be free from bearing thee forever, O king Osiris,' say the Two Divine
Enneads concerning thee, O king Osiris." If Osiris is
here the earth as commonly, it may be that we have in this episode the earliest
trace of the Atlas myth. Another version, however, discloses Set, bound hand
and foot "and laid upon his side in the Land of Ru," or slaughtered and cut up as an ox and distributed as food to
the gods; or he is delivered to Osiris "cut into
three pieces."
The risen and victorious Osiris receives the kingdom. "The sky is
given to thee, the earth is given to thee, the fields of Rushes are given to
thee, the Horite regions, the Setite regions, the cities are given to thee. The
nomes are united for thee by Atum. It is Geb (the Earth-god) who speaks
concerning it." Indeed Geb, the Earth-god and father
of Osiris, "assigned the countries to the embrace of Osiris, when he found
him lying upon his side in Gehesti." Nevertheless
Osiris does not really belong to the kingdom of the living. His dominion is the
gloomy Nether World beneath the earth, to which he at once descends. After his
death, one of the oldest sources says of him: "He entered the secret gates
in the splendid precincts of the lords of eternity, at the goings of
him who rises in the horizon, upon the ways of Re in the Great Seat." There he is proclaimed king. Horus "proclaimed the royal
decree in the places of Anubis. Every one hearing it, he
shall not live." It was a subterranean kingdom of the
dead over which Osiris reigned, and it was as champion and friend of the dead
that he gained his great position in Egyptian religion.
But it will be discerned at once that the Osiris myth expressed those
hopes and aspirations and ideals which were closest to the life and the
affections of this great people. Isis was the noblest embodiment of wifely
fidelity and maternal solicitude, while the highest ideals of filial devotion
found expression in the story of Horus. About this group of father, mother, and
son the affectionate fancy of the common folk wove a fair fabric of family
ideals which rise high above such conceptions elsewhere. In the Osiris myth the
institution of the family found its earliest and most exalted expression in
religion, a glorified reflection of earthly ties among the gods. The
catastrophe and the ultimate triumph of the righteous cause introduced here in
a nature-myth are an impressive revelation of the profoundly moral consciousness
with which the Egyptian at a remote age contemplated the world. When we
consider, furthermore, that Osiris was the kindly dispenser of plenty, from
whose prodigal hand king and peasant alike received their daily bounty, that he
was waiting over yonder behind the shadow of death to waken all who have fallen
asleep to a blessed hereafter with him, and that in every family group the same
affections and emotions which had found expression in the beautiful myth were
daily and hourly experiences, we shall understand something of the reason for
the universal devotion which was ultimately paid the dead god.
The conquest of Egypt by the Osiris faith was, however, a gradual
process. He had once in prehistoric times been a dangerous god, and the
tradition of his unfavorable character survived in vague reminiscences long
centuries after he had gained wide popularity. At that
time the dark and forbidding realm which he ruled had been feared and dreaded. In the beginning, too, he had been local to the Delta, where
he had his home in the city of Dedu, later called Busiris by the Greeks. His
transformation into a friend of man and kindly ruler of the dead took place
here in prehistoric ages, and at an enormously remote date, before the two
kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united under one king (3400 B.C.), the
belief in him spread into the southern Kingdom. He
apparently first found a home in the south at Siut, and in the Pyramid Texts we
read, "Isis and Nephthys salute thee in Siut, (even) their lord in thee,
in thy name of 'Lord of Siut.'" But the Osirian
faith was early localized at Abydos, whither an archaic mortuary god, known as
Khenti-Amentiu, "First of the Westerners," had already preceded
Osiris. There he became the "Dweller in Nedyt," and even in the Pyramid Texts he is identified with the
"First of the Westerners."
"Thou art on the throne of
Osiris,
As representative of the First of the Westerners."
As "Lord of Abydos," Osiris continued his triumphant career,
and ultimately was better known under this title than by his old association
with Busiris (Dedu). All this, however, belongs to the historical development
which we are to follow.
In spite of its popular origin we shall see that the Osirian faith, like
that of the Sun-god, entered into the most intimate relations with the
kingship. In probably the oldest religious feast of which any trace has been
preserved in Egypt, known as the "Heb-Sed" or "Sed-Feast,"
the king assumed the costume and insignia of Osiris, and undoubtedly
impersonated him. The significance of this feast is, however, entirely obscure
as yet. The most surprising misunderstandings have gained currency concerning
it, and the use of it for far-reaching conclusions before the surviving
materials have all been put together is premature.
One of the ceremonies of this feast symbolized the resurrection of
Osiris, and it was possibly to associate the Pharaoh with this auspicious event
that he assumed the rôle of Osiris. In the end the deceased Pharaoh became
Osiris and enjoyed the same resuscitation by Horus and Isis, all the divine
privileges, and the same felicity in the hereafter which had been accorded the
dead god.
Some attempt to correlate the two leading gods of Egypt, the Sun-god and
Osiris, was finally inevitable. The harmonization was accomplished by the Solar
theologians at Heliopolis, though not without inextricable confusion, as the
two faiths, which had already interfused among the people, were now wrought
together into a theological system. It is quite evident from the Pyramid Texts
that the feud between Horus and Set was originally a Solar incident, and quite
independent of the Osiris myth. We find that in the mortuary ceremonies, Set's
spittle is used to purify the dead in the same words as that of Horus; and that Set may perform the same friendly offices for the
dead as those of Horus. Indeed we find him fraternizing
with the dead, precisely as Horus does. We find them
without distinction, one on either side of the dead, holding his arms and
aiding him as he ascends to the Sun-god. Set was king of
the South on equal terms with Horus as king of the North;
over and over again in the Pyramid Texts they appear side by side, though
implacable enemies, without the least suggestion that Set is a foul and
detested divinity. There are even traces of a similar ancient correlation of
Osiris himself with Set! Set appears too without any
unfavorable reflection upon him in connection with the Sun-god and his group, and in harmony with this an old doctrine represents Set as
in charge of the ladder by which the dead may ascend to the Sun-god—the ladder
up which he himself once climbed. Set was doubtless some
natural phenomenon like the others of the group to which he belongs, and it is
most probable that he was the darkness. He and Horus divided Egypt between
them, Set being most commonly represented as taking the South and Horus the
North. The oldest royal monuments of Egypt represent the falcon of Horus and
the strange animal (probably the okapi) of Set, side by side, as the symbol of
the kingship of the two kingdoms now ruled by one Pharaoh. It is not our
purpose, nor have we the space here, to study the question of Set, further than
to demonstrate that he belonged to the Solar group, on full equality with
Horus.
By what process Set became the enemy of Osiris we do not know. The
sources do not disclose it. When this had once happened, however, it would be
but natural that the old rival of Set, the Solar Horus, should be drawn into
the Osirian situation, and that his hostility toward Set should involve his
championship of the cause of Osiris. An old Memphite document of the Pyramid
Age unmistakably discloses the absorption of the Set-Horus feud by the Osirian
theology. In dramatic dialogue we discern Geb assigning their respective
kingdoms to Horus and Set, a purely Solar episode, while at the same time Geb
involves in this partition the incidents of the Osirian story.
"Geb says to Set: 'Go to the place where thou wast born.'"
"Geb says to Horus: 'Go to the place where thy father was
drowned.'"
"Geb says to Horus and Set: 'I have separated you.'"
"Set: Upper Egypt."
"Horus: Lower Egypt."
"[Horus and Set]: Upper and Lower Egypt."
"Geb says to the Divine Ennead: 'I have conveyed my heritage to
this my heir, the son of my first-born son. He is my son, my child.'"
The equality of Horus and Set, as in the old Solar theology, is quite
evident, but Horus is here made the son of Osiris. An ancient commentator on
this passage has appended the following explanation of Geb's proceeding in
assigning the kingdoms.
"He gathered together the Divine Ennead and he separated Horus and
Set. He prevented their conflict and he installed Set as king of Upper Egypt in
Upper Egypt, in the place where he was born in Sesesu. Then Geb installed Horus
as king of Lower Egypt, in Lower Egypt in the place where his father was
drowned, at (the time of) the dividing of the Two Lands."
"Then Horus stood in (one) district, when they satisfied the Two
Lands in Ayan—that is the boundary of the Two Lands."
"Then Set stood in the (other) district, when they satisfied the
Two Lands in Ayan—that is the boundary of the Two Lands.
"It was evil to the heart of Geb, that the portion of Horus was
(only) equal to the portion of Set. Then Geb gave his heritage to Horus, this
son of his first-born son, and Horus stood in the land and united this
land."
Here the Osirian point of view no longer permits Set and Horus to rule
in equality side by side, but Set is dispossessed, and Horus receives all
Egypt. The Solar theologians of Heliopolis certainly did not take this position
in the beginning. They built up a group, which we have already noted, of nine
gods (commonly called an ennead), headed by the ancient Atum, and among this
group of nine divinities appears Osiris, who had no real original connection
with the Solar myth. As Horus had no place in the original ennead, it was the
more easy to appropriate him for the Osirian theology. As the process of
correlation went on, it is evident also that, like Osiris, the local gods of
all the temples were more and more drawn into the Solar theology. The old local
Sun-gods had merged, and we find five Solar divinities in a single list in the
Pyramid Texts, all addressed as Re. A distinct
tendency toward Solar henotheism, or even pantheism, is now discernible. Each
of the leading temples and priesthoods endeavored to establish the local god as
the focus of this centralizing process. The political prestige of the Sun-god,
however, made the issue quite certain. It happens, however, that the system of
a less important temple than that of Heliopolis is the one which has survived
to us. A mutilated stela in the British Museum, on which the priestly scribes
of the eighth century B.C. have copied and rescued a worm-eaten papyrus which
was falling to pieces in their day, has preserved for two thousand seven
hundred years more, and thus brought down to our time, the only fragment of the
consciously constructive thought of the time, as the priests endeavored to
harmonize into one system the vast complex of interfused local beliefs which
made up the religion of Egypt.
It was the priests of Ptah, the master craftsman of the gods, whose
temple was at Memphis, who are at this juncture our guides in tracing the
current of religious thought in this remote age. This earliest system, as they
wrought it out, of course made Ptah of Memphis the great and central figure. He
too had his Memphite ennead made up of a primeval Ptah and eight emanations or manifestations
of himself. In the employment of an enneadto begin with, the theologians of
Memphis were betraying the influence of Heliopolis, where the first ennead had
its origin. The supremacy of the Solar theology, even in this Memphite system,
is further discernible in the inevitable admission of the fact that Atum the
Sun-god was the actual immediate creator of the world. But this they explained
in this way. One of the members of the Memphite ennead bears the name
"Ptah the Great," and to this name is appended the remarkable
explanation, "he is the heart and tongue of the ennead," meaning of
course the Memphite ennead. This enigmatic "heart and tongue"
are then identified with Atum, who, perhaps operating through other
intermediate gods, accomplishes all things through the "heart and
tongue." When we recall that the Egyptian constantly used "heart"
as the seat of the mind, we are suddenly aware also that he possessed no word
for mind. A study of the document demonstrates that the ancient thinker is
using "heart" as his only means of expressing the idea of
"mind," as he vaguely conceived it. From Ptah then proceeded "the
power of mind and tongue" which is the controlling power in "all
gods, all men, all animals, and all reptiles, which live, thinking and
commanding that which he wills."
After further demonstrating that the members of Atum, especially his
mouth which spake words of power, were made up of the ennead of Ptah, and thus
of Ptah himself, our thinker passes on to explain his conception of the
function of "heart (mind) and tongue." "When the eyes see, the
ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to theheart. It is he (the
heart) who brings forth every issue, and it is the tongue which repeats the
thought of the heart. He fashioned all gods, even
Atum and his ennead. Every divine word came into existence by the thought of
the heart and the commandment of the tongue. It was he who made the kas and created the qualities; who made all food, all
offerings, by this word; who made that which is loved and that which is hated.
It was he who gave life to the peaceful and death to the guilty."
After this enumeration of things chiefly supermaterial, of which the
mind and the tongue were the creator, our Memphite theologian passes to the
world of material things.
"It was he who made every work, every handicraft, which the hands
make, the going of the feet, the movement of every limb, according to his
command, through the thought of the heart that came forth from the
tongue."
"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated
concerning Ptah-Tatenen: 'He is the fashioner of the gods, he, from whom all
things went forth, even offerings, and food and divine offerings and every good
thing! And Thoth perceived that his strength was greater than all gods. Then
Ptah was satisfied, after he had made all things and every divine word."
"He fashioned the gods, he made the cities, he settled the nomes.
He installed the gods in their holy places, he made their offerings to
flourish, he equipped their holy places. He made likenesses of their bodies to
the satisfaction of their hearts. Then the gods entered into their bodies of
every wood and every stone and every metal. Everything grew upon its trees
whence they came forth. Then he assembled all the gods and their kas (saying to
them): 'Come ye and take possession of "Neb-towe," the divine
store-house of Ptah-Tatenen, the great seat, which delights the heart of the
gods dwelling in the House of Ptah, the mistress of life . . . whence is
furnished the "Life of the Two Lands."'"
In this document we are far indeed from the simple folk-tales of the
origin of the world, which make up the mythology of Egypt. Assuming the
existence of Ptah in the beginning, the Memphite theologian sees all things as
first existing in the thought of the god. This world first conceived in his
"heart," then assumed objective reality by the utterance of his
"tongue." The utterance of the thought in the form of a divine fiat
brought forth the world. We are reminded of the words in Genesis, as the
Creator spoke, "And God said." Is there not here the primeval germ of
the later Alexandrian doctrine of the "Logos"?
We should not fail to understand in this earliest philosophico-religious
system, that the world which Ptah brought forth was merely the Egyptian Nile
valley. As we shall discover in our further progress, the world-idea was not
yet born. This Memphite Ptah was far from being a world-god. The world, in so
far as it was possible for the men of the ancient Orient to know it, was still
undiscovered by the Memphite theologians or any other thinkers of that distant
age, and the impression which the world-idea was to make on religion was still
over a thousand years in the future when this venerable papyrus of the Pyramid Age was written. The forces of life which were first to react upon religion were those which spent themselves within the narrow borders of Egypt, and especially those of moral admonitionwhich dominate the inner world and which had already led the men of this distant age to discern for the first time in human history that God “gave life to the peaceful and death to the guilty.”
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