ment of administration, together with a wealthy yeomanry, and we have before us a marvellous picture of civilisation six thousand years ago, and the conviction is more and more forced upon our minds that such a state of civilisation must necessarily have required some thousands of years to accomplish."1 The greater pyramids (with the exception of the pyramid of Sakkarah, which is thought to be 1000 years older than those of Gizeh) were not built till 200 years after Menes. But 200 years wrought little change in the Egyptians. The scenes portrayed on their chamber walls, the hieroglyphs on the stones left in the quarries, show that the habits of the people were then what they are now, and that the art of writing was familiar to them. "The position too of each pyramid, corresponding as it does with the four cardinal points, and the evident object they had in view of ascertaining by the long line of one of its faces the return of a certain period of the year, prove the advancement made by the Egyptians in mathematical science, and all the evidences, being obtained from the oldest monuments that exist, introduce them to us as a people already possessing the same settled habits as in later times. . . . The blocks in the pyramids of Gizeh, many of which were brought from the cataracts of Syene, were put together with a precision unsurpassed by any masonry of ancient or modern times; and all these facts tend to the conclusion that the Egyptians had already made very great progress in the arts of civilisation before the age of Menes, and perhaps before they immigrated into the Valley of the Nile." 2 What lapse of ages we are to allow for the ripening of a civilisation which seems always to have been stagnant, is rather a matter for fancy than for reason. Bunsen, who had confidence in his own figures, says, "Egypt was an organised state 5863 years prior to Menes, during which 1 The Egypt of the Past, Erasmus Wilson, F.R.S. period it possessed a language, and in part of it a written character." He is satisfied that "the first commencement of Egypt belongs to the antediluvian period." The principal ground for this assumption is that the Egyptians know nothing whatever of the Flood. "There are traditions about the Flood amongst those only who evidently, from their language, did not exist till after that event.”1 We are apt to think of the Deluge as following closely upon the creation of the world, the two events being recorded in the Bible within four or five chapters of each other. But Hebrew traditions, nay, the Hebrew people, are modern as compared with the hieroglyphs of Egypt. If we accept the rabbinical date of the Flood at 2288 B.C., this (according to the age fixed by Mariette and M. Lenormant for the twelfth dynasty) would be nearly 800 years later than the obelisk of Usertesen at Heliopolis, and only 600 years or so earlier than the obelisk on the Thames embankment; or taking the modest computation of 3000 B.C. for the Gizeh pyramids, this makes them 652 years older than the Deluge, according to the date of the latter as reckoned from our Bible. To be sure, 5000 B.C. would, I should say, be much nearer the time of the Noachian Flood. Even then, Egypt was probably very much what it was in the days of the Pharaohs. The Egyptian religion, and the deeper meaning which its mysterious rites were meant to symbolise, is still, more or less, a sealed book to us. Outwardly some confusion arises from the excessive numbers of divinities that crowd its pantheon. Also, in Upper and Lower Egypt the gods are not precisely the same. The Memphian and Theban deities are not equivalent either in function or in dignity. Thus the "king of the gods" at Thebes was Amon-Ra. The name Amon stood for the Secret or the Invisible, Ra being the same as Re and Phrah (whence Pharaoh), who was a god of an inferior order. Ra was also the name of the inevitable Sun-God, and may therefore perhaps have 1 Egypt, Book v. stood for an attribute of the greater deity. At Memphis Pthah was "the Father of the gods." He was worshipped as the architect of the world; Patah signifying architect, former, constructor. In this character as creator of all material things, the Greeks identified him with their Hephæstus. On the walls of the temple of Denderah, Patah is described as "the chief of the society of the gods, who created all being. All things came into existence after he existed. He is the Lord of Truth and the King of the Gods." "On the walls of the temple of Isis, it is said of the same god, that it is 'he who created all being, who formed men and gods with his own hands.' He is God the Creator, who existed before the creation of the universe, his own exclusive work." 1 There were many orders of gods. The number usually given in the first rank is eight; twelve being allotted to the second. Below these there are several grades; and each town had its own divinity. Still, a supreme God, with all the attributes appropriate to such a Being, was worshipped throughout the land. And the multiplicity of names here again, may often point rather to the diverse aspects of a central conception, than to an endless variety of spiritual existences. Doubtless, to the upper ranks of the priesthood and to superior minds, this higher notion was by no means unfamiliar.2 In the adoration of the sun-god Re or Ra, as the generative or vivifying power of nature, we appear to discover a remnant of the Sabianism or worship of heavenly bodies prevalent amongst the Akkadians and other nations of primitive Asia. The idea is strengthened by the representation of figures in the attitude of prayer conjoined with a star, and by the sun and moon over the head to denote the figure of a 2 66 1 History of Egypt under the Pharaohs. Dr. Henry Brugsch Bey. 'The Egyptians, as they advanced in religious speculation, adopted a pantheism, according to which (while the belief in one Supreme Being was taught to the initiated) the attributes of the Deity were separated under various heads, as the 'Creator,' the divine wisdom, the generative and other principles." -Sir G. Wilkinson, Notes, Herodotus, Book ii. god. If this surmise is correct, we have strong proof of the development of religious belief. For "when some 'stranger kings' from Asia reintroduced the worship of the real sun's disc, the innovation was odious to the Egyptians; and was expelled for ever with the usurpers who had forcibly established it in the country." Among the many striking features of analogy which present themselves, the Egyptian fondness for the doctrine of a Trinity is not the least remarkable. It would be more accurate, perhaps, to speak of their triple alliance of gods. as a triad composed of two principal deities from which a third proceeded. Memphis, for instance, had its great triad, of which Ptâh and Pasht were the two chiefs. At Thebes Amun and Maut were the pair from which sprang the third member, Khons. The "stranger kings" of the eighteenth dynasty had their triad of Atin-re, Moni, and Re. The great triad of the Cataracts, Ethiopia, and the oases, was composed of Noum or Nu, and Sáté, whence proceeded a third, Amonké. But, as before remarked, variety of name did not always imply diversity of object. Noum sometimes took the name of Amun, and was worshipped as the "Soul of the World." His emblem was the ram. "The very general introduction," says Wilkinson, "of the ram's head on the prow of the sacred boats or arks of other gods seems to point to the early and universal worship of this god, and to connect him, as his mysterious boat does, with the Spirit that moved on the waters." race. By far the most interesting member of the Egyptian pantheon is Osiris. He is the one god whose functions and whose fate specially associate him with the human Both in the Babylonian and Phoenician systems, no less than in the Egyptian, the worship of Osiris, as moral Ruler and God of the Soul, is a predominant and fundamental doctrine. Osiris, in many respects, bears the closest analogy to the ideal Christian Avatar.1 He is the 1 Osiris also reminds us of the Babylonian Merodach, the son of Hea, who was called "the Redeemer of mankind," "the restorer of life," 1 God-man, or incarnate presence of the Deity. "Osiris," says Bunsen, "seems to be the purely Egyptian form of an early Asiatic idea of the Deity sacrificing himself in creation and coming to life again in man. So Baal, so Adonis." Himself the "good being," Osiris is murdered by Typhon, the representative of evil. His life is afterwards restored. He prevails over sin, and becomes the Final Judge of the Dead, dispensing judgment or reward exactly in accordance with the deserts of each. It may be observed in passing, that the doctrine of immortality is one of the most ancient of Egyptian creeds. On some of the oldest monuments of Egypt the winged soul is drawn taking its departure from the body. The Hebrews, on the contrary, knew nothing whatever of a resurrection : indeed they distinctly denied it until after the Babylonian captivity.2 To return to the Egyptian god, "The sufferings and death of Osiris were the great mysteries of the Egyptian religion, and some traces of it are perceptible among other people of antiquity. His being the divine goodness, and the abstract idea of 'good,' his manifestation upon earth (like an Indian god), his death, and resurrection, and his office as judge of the dead in a future state, look like the early revelation of a future manifestation of the deity converted into a mythological fable; and are not less remarkable than that notion of the Egyptians menand "the raiser of the dead." The Zoroastrian Sosiosh is another divine person possessed of similar attributes; though Sosiosh resembles more closely than either the conception of the Jewish Messiah. He is the restorer of life and the Judge of the world. He is also one of a divine Trinity, and was begotten of Zarathustra by a supernatural birth. 1 Egypt, vol. iv. p. 332. 2 "We might naturally expect that a principle so essential to religion would have been revealed in the clearest terms to the chosen people of Palestine, and that it might safely have been entrusted to the hereditary priesthood of Aaron. It is incumbent on us to adore the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when we discover that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is omitted in the law of Moses : it is darkly insinuated by the prophets; and during the long period which elapsed between the Egyptian and the Babylonian servitudes the hopes as well as fears of the Jews appear to have been confined within the narrow compass of the present life.". Gibbon, Roman Empire, chap. xv. |