\'(
>n J-
;•■'<
IS"^
o
MikmmfiM.
5
w^ e
~tTuTid
AMERICAN LECTURES ON THE
HISTOR Y OF RELIGIONS
FIFTH SERIES-1903-1904
THE RELIGION OF THE
ANCIENT EGYPTIANS
BY
GEORG STEINDORFF, Ph.D.
Professor of Egyptology at the University
of Leipzig
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
^be IRnicfierbocftci: jpress
1905
i
>J>
'%
b'io4lc
Copyright, 1905
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
?
.37
/^05
' . > fc-
TLbc IRnicftccbocfter prces, 'Flew irjotft
TO MY FRIEND
EDWIN BECHSTEIN
IN TOKEN OF HEARTY GOOD-WILL
ANNOUNCEMENT.
THE American Lectures on the History of Re-
ligions are delivered under the auspices of
the American Committee for Lectures on the His-
tory of Religions. This Committee was organised in
1892 for the purpose of instituting " popular courses
in the History of Religions, somewhat after the style
of the Hibbert lectures in England, to be delivered
annually by the best scholars of Europe and this
country, in various cities, such as Baltimore, Bos-
ton, Brooklyn, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and
others."
The terms of association under which the Com-
mittee exists are as follows :
I. — The object of this Association shall be to provide
courses of lectures on the history of religions,
to be delivered in various cities.
2. — The Association shall be composed of delegates
from Institutions agreeing to co-operate, or
from Local Boards organised where such co-
operation is not possible.
3. — These delegates — one from each Institution or
Local Board — shall constitute themselves a
vi Announcement
Council under the name of the " American
Committee for Lectures on the History of
Religions."
4. — The Council shall elect out of its number a
President, a Secretary, and a Treasurer.
5. — All matters of local detail shall be left to the In-
stitutions or Local Boards, under whose aus-
pices the lectures are to be delivered.
6. — A course of lectures on some religion, or phase
of religion, from an historical point of view, or
on a subject germane to the study of religions,
shall be delivered annually, or at such inter-
vals as may be found practicable, in the differ-
ent cities represented by this Association.
7. — The Council (a) shall be charged with the selec-
tion of the lecturers, {d) shall have charge of
the funds, {c) shall assign the time for the
lectures in each city, and perform such other
functions as may be necessary.
8. — Polemical subjects, as well as polemics in the treat-
ment of subjects, shall be positively excluded.
9. — The lecturer shall be chosen by the Council at
least ten months before the date fixed for the
course of lectures.
10.— The lectures shall be delivered in the various
cities between the months of October and
June.
Announcement vil
II. — The copyright of the lectures shall be the pro-
perty of the Association.
12. — One half of the lecturer's compensation shall be
paid at the completion of the entire course,
and the second half upon the publication of
the lectures.
13. — The compensation to the lecturer shall be fixed
in each case by the Council.
14. — The lecturer is not to deliver elsewhere any of
the lectures for which he is engaged by the
Committee, except with the sanction of the
Committee.
The Committee as now constituted is as fol-
lows :
Francis Brown (Union Theological Seminary).
Richard J. H. Gottheil (Columbia University).
W. R. Harper (University of Chicago).
Paul Haupt (Johns Hopkins University).
Franklin W. Hooper (Brooklyn Institute).
Morris Jastrow (University of Pa.), Secretary.
George F. Moore (Harvard University).
John P. Peters (New York), Treasurer.
F. K. Sanders (Yale University).
F. C. Southworth (Meadville Theological Semi-
nary).
C. H. Toy (Harvard University), Chairman.
The lecturers in the course of American Lectures
viii Announcement
on the History of Religions and the titles of their
volumes are as follows :
1 894- 1 895— Prof. T. W. Rhys-Davids, Ph.D.,— Bud-
dhism.
1896-1897— Prof. Daniel G. Brinton, M.D., LL.D.,—
Religion of Primitive Peoples.
1 897-1 898 — Rev. Prof. T. K. Cheyne, D.D., — Jewish
Religious Life after the Exile.
1 898- 1 899— Prof. Karl Budde, D.D.,— Religion of
Israel to the Exile.
The fifth course of lectures, contained in the pre-
sent volume, was delivered in the spring of 1904 by
Prof. Georg Steindorff, Ph.D., Professor of Egypt-
ology in the University of Leipzig, on the Religion
of Egypt. Prof. Steindorff enjoys a high reputa-
tion as a scholar and has had, in addition, the
advantage of practical experience in investigations
and explorations in Egypt. Among his larger and
better known works are his KoptiscJie Graminatik,
Die Bliitezeit des Pharaonenreichs, and DiircJi die
Libysche Wilste zur Amonsoase. Perhaps the work
which makes him best known to people at large is
his guide-book to Egypt in the Baedeker series. He
is also editor of the series Urkunden des dgyptischen
Altertums, and, together with Prof. Erman of Ber-
lin, conducts the Zeitschrift fiir dgyptische Sprache
und Alter tumskunde.
Announcement ix
The lectures in this course were deHvered before
the Lowell Institute, Boston ; Yale University, New
Haven ; Union Theological Seminary, New York ;
Brooklyn Institute, New York ; University of Penn-
sylvania, Philadelphia ; Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore ; Theological Seminary, Meadville, Pa. ;
University of Chicago, and, by special arrangement,
three lectures of the course were also delivered
before the University of California.
John P. Peters, ^ Committee
C. H. Toy, I on
Morris Jastrow, ) Publication.
April, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Lecture I. The Egyptian Religion in the
Earliest Times i
Lecture IL The Development of the Egyp-
tian Religion 39
Lecture IIL Temples and Ceremonies . . 74
Lecture IV. Magic Art. — The Life after
Death 106
Lecture V. Graves and Burials. — The Egyp-
tian Religion outside Egypt . . . 138
Index 173
XI
THE RELIGION OF
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
LECTURE I.
The Egyptian Religion In the Earliest
Times.
THERE is probably no people in the world's
history, not even the people of Israel, into
the innermost life of which religion penetrated so
deeply as was the case with the ancient Egyptians.
To describe the Egyptian religion, therefore, is to
tell the most important part of the story of ancient
Egyptian civilisation. The materials now at the
command of the investigator into Egyptian religion
and mythology, as into the details of Egyptian
worship and ceremonial, are of vast extent and
are daily increasing.
Formerly, none but foreign sources were open
to the student — the reports of Greek classical
writers, such as Herodotus, Diodorus, Plutarch,
2 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Horapollo, together with the biblical narrative
of the Old Testament. Now, however, the de-
ciphering of the hieroglyphic characters and the
systematic exploration of the Nile valley during
the course of the last century have made native
sources accessible and intelligible to us as well.
The number of them is almost incalculable. There
is hardly an Egyptian text that does not contain
some statement bearing on ancient Egyptian re-
ligion. Every wall of a temple or tomb, every
memorial stone, nearly every papyrus, even such
simple objects as limestone fragments or potsherds
covered with writing — all give us help of greater or
less importance towards understanding the religious
thoughts and feelings of the Egyptian people. It
may be said boldly that quite nine-tenths of the
Egyptian writings preserved to us were devoted to
some religious purpose, and that of the remaining
tenth the bulk contains more or less information on
religion.
But in spite of this abundance of religious texts
and descriptions, of figures of gods, of amulets,
of temples and tombs, that have been preserved
to us from ancient Egypt, our knowledge of the
Egyptian religion is still relatively small; and, for
the present, no scientific treatment of the subject
is possible which does not leave large gaps and in
In the Earliest Times 3
part depend on hypothetical constructions. The
causes of this peculiar, and at first surprising, fact
are very various. It must not be forgotten that the
whole of the material preserved to us owes its ex-
istence to chance. A certain part of the religious
literature has been preserved for the sole reason that
it was copied on the wall of such and such a tomb,
or contained in a papyrus deposited with the dead
in his last resting-place. But other religious writ-
ings of equal importance have been lost, because no
such multiplication of copies of them was required
by any custom. Many a document, again, may still
slumber beneath the arid sand of the desert, await-
ing the hour of its discovery.
To this must be added that the greater part
of the documents, inscriptions, and papyri which
have been preserved owe their existence to certain
funeral customs, and relate to the life hereafter.
Thus we are very well informed on the " Last
Things"; but of the numerous legends connected
with the gods which were current among the peo-
ple, and which in many instances must have re-
ceived literary treatment and so been committed
to writing, only a very few have been handed
on to us, and those few in a fragmentary con-
dition. There is an absence, finally, of any com-
prehensive account of Egyptian philosophy — a
4 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
defect which we cannot hope to see remedied by
some happy accident, since no such account ever
existed, any more than in the case of Egyptian his-
tory, or Egyptian poHtics.
To these deficiencies of external tradition must be
added others of an internal order. Those religious
writings which have reached us present very great
difficulties of interpretation which scientific research
will not surmount for a long time to come. Many
religious works — I will only mention the so-called
Book of the Dead — are known to us only in late
editions and late copies. By the comparison of
different copies we are often enabled to restore a
passage to its original form ; but not infrequently
the text is so corrupt that, with the means now at
our disposal, we are obliged to abandon all hope of
emendation. Linguistic difficulties also occur, and
sometimes there are stumbling-blocks in the subject-
matter.
The consequence is that while a great number
of Egyptian gods are known to us by name and
aspect, while we know in what shrines and by what
priests they were worshipped, their true character,
the significance attached to them by priests and
people, the legends that clustered round their per-
sonality, are largely unknown to us. Still, for all
the gaps in our knowledge, the Egyptian religion
In the Earliest Times 5
possesses abundance of interest for us : it is the re-
ligion of a highly civilised people, a religion which,
like the whole of Egyptian culture, followed its own
development in entire independence of all foreign
influence, a religion which for almost four thousand
years occupied a position of central importance in
one of the greatest states of antiquity.
But before I enter upon my main task — that of
presenting to you an account of the ancient Egyp-
tian faith — it will be necessary for me, in order to
make the course of religious development more easily
intelligible, to give first a short sketch of ancient
Egyptian history, or at least of its most important
periods. Following Manetho, an Egyptian priest
who wrote an historical work in Greek, and who was
guided on this point by native tradition, we divide
the Egyptian rulers, from Menes, the first king, down
to Alexander the Great, into thirty-one Dynasties.
These correspond, on the whole, to the different
royal families which ruled successively, at times
simultaneously, in the valley of the Nile.
For the sake of convenience in dealing with facts
on a large scale, it is usual to combine several Dy-
nasties into larger groups, which are called "Ages"
or "Kingdoms." Thus, to select three of the most
important among these groups, corresponding to
three culminating epochs of Egyptian history, we
6 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
speak of an ''Old/' a "Middle," and a "New King-
dom." It is extremely difficult to assign exact dates
to the several Dynasties, or even to the reigns of par-
ticular kings. We must be content with approximate
dates, so far as the earliest period is concerned, and
bear in mind that the figures we adopt are not final,
but may need to be varied by as much as a hundred
years or even more. It is not until we reach the
Twelfth Dynasty, from which dates have come down
to us guaranteed by astronomical evidence, that we
find ourselves upon chronologically safe ground.
" Egypt is a gift of the Nile." This phrase of the
geographer Hecataeus, first repeated by Herodotus
and afterwards by many others, expresses the true
character of the land of Egypt with inimitable
brevity and appropriateness. In the lofty desert
plateau which occupies the whole north-east por-
tion of the African Continent, the Nile has by the
long labour of thousands of years carved itself a
valley out of the sandstone and limestone, while its
regular deposits of mud have made the lower part
of this valley, Egypt proper, one of the most fertile
regions of the earth.
In primitive ages not only the upper Nile valley,
below the modern Khartoum, but Egypt as well,
was peopled by African negroes. Their language
was an African tongue ; their religion hardly to be
In the Earliest Times 7
distinguished from the rude fetishism practised by
so many African tribes of to-day. The Egyptian
peasant tilled his field with hoe and plough after
the subsidence of the autumn floods. The fens
of the Delta gave pasture to numerous herds of
cattle. The stagnant branches of the river and
the stretches of swamp which extended through
wide tracts of both Upper and Lower Egypt were
fringed with thick clumps of papyrus and tenanted
by hippopotami, crocodiles, and waterfowl in great
abundance. To these wild regions the Egyptian
would come in his boat of bulrushes to subdue
with boomerang and harpoon the denizens of the
marshes. Or else he would climb the desert mount-
ains to the east or west of the valley, and turn his
weapons against the lion, the jackal, or the hyena.
Hard necessity educated the people gradually into
civilisation and culture. The superabundance of
water which inundated the land every summer
needed to be divided equally among the fields. For
this purpose dams and canals, sluices and embank-
ments had to be constructed. Marshy regions
required to be drained and transformed into arable
land. All these were works which the individual
could not execute unaided ; the inhabitants were
compelled to band themselves together in large
associations and place themselves under the orders
8 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
of a common head. Thus small principalities arose,
governed by petty chieftains.
Such is the stage of political development and
civilisation which the Egyptians of the primitive
age must have reached when there burst upon the
land a flood of Bedouins, streaming across the Isth-
mus of Suez from Arabia, the ancestral home of
the Semites. As in Mohammed's day, six centuries
after Christ, the invaders took the land by storm.
The African population were unable to withstand
the Asiatics ; they even adopted the language of the
strangers, impressing upon it, however, the stamp of
their own individuality. On the other hand, the
Arabian intruders gladly subjected themselves to
the doubtless superior civilisation of the natives,
and with great rapidity conquerors and conquered
became fused into a single people. Nothing remains
in later ages to remind us of this prehistoric Semitic
conquest ; it is solely on the foundation of linguistic
kinship that we are able to construct an hypotheti-
cal account of the events which I have just roughly
sketched.^
In that early period there were formed, out of the
^ Cf. Erman, " Das Verhaltniss des Agyptischen zu den semitischen
Sprachen" {Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschaft,
xlvi., pp. f^zffX a"d " I^is Flexion des agyptischen Verbums " {Sitz-
ungsbericht der Konigl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1900, pp. 350^
In the Earliest Times 9
various small principalities into which the land was
divided, two states of larger dimensions : a Lower
Egyptian Kingdom occupying the "North Land/'
corresponding to the Nile Delta, and an Upper
Egyptian Kingdom, the " South," which extended
from the neighbourhood of the modern Cairo up-
river as far as the rapids of Assuan. The chief city
of the North Land was Behdet, which stood on the
site of the modern Damanhur, in the west of the
Delta. The King of the South, on the other hand,
resided at Ombos, on the west bank of the Nile, a
little to the north of the modern Luxor. For cent-
uries these two states existed side by side, each in-
dependent of the other, till at last they became fused
into a single empire. Upper Egypt was conquered
by Lower Egypt. The capital of the new Empire
was probably Heliopolis^ situated on the border of
the two states, and named On by the ancient Egyp-
tians ; a city which at the same time became the
intellectual metropolis of the country.^
^ For the above-mentioned hypothesis, that before the division of
Egypt into the dominions of the kings of Buto and Eileithyiaspolis
the country had been already portioned out into two separate king-
doms with the capitals Behdet and Ombos, I am indebted to my
friend Professor Kurt Sethe of Gottingen. It rests on the fact that
as late as historic times Ilorus, the god of Behdet, and Set, the god
of Ombos, were still worshipped as patrons of Lower and Upper
Egypt respectively, on certain features of the Horus-Set legends, on
formulae of the titles of the Pharaoh {e.g.^ the title " Horus who is
lo The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
We cannot determine, even approximately, the
length of time during which this unified Egyptian
empire maintained its existence under the sway of the
Kings of the Delta. Gradually the bonds of empire
became loosened, and Egypt was once more divided
into two states. As before, one of these comprised
the Delta, the other the upper Nile valley as far as
the cataracts of Assuan. The capital of the North
Land was now transferred to the later Buto, in the
marshy region near the Mediterranean coast ; the
kings of Upper Egypt took up their residence far
to the southward, in the city of Nekheb, afterwards
known as Eileithyiaspolis. After this division, again,
it would seem that the relations between the Upper
Egyptian kings of Eileithyiaspolis and the Lower
Egyptian kings of Buto were not of the friendliest
character. Not infrequently wars broke out in
which the Upper Egyptians carried " terror into the
hearts of the Lower Egyptians who are in Buto."
From these struggles Upper Egypt finally emerged
victorious ; the Delta was subdued by force of arms,
and the two kingdoms united into a new state. We
are probably not wrong in identifying Menes, whom
Egyptian tradition, followed herein by the Greek
historians, names as the first human king of Egypt,
standing on the god of Ombos," di^riTtaXaDv vTCeprepo'sy whichwas
formerly erroneously translated as " the golden Horus"), etc. Com-
pare Sethe, Beitrdge zur dltesten Geschichte Agyptens, p. 31.
In the Earliest Times ii
with the ruler who accomplished this work of
reunion (Ca. 3315 B.C.)/
But little is known of Menes and his successors,
the kings of the first two dynasties (Ca. 3315-2895
B.C.). On the border of the "two Lands" Menes
founded the " white walls " of the later Memphis, a
citadel designed to overawe the conquered Delta.
The kings resided at Thinis, a city of Upper Egypt,
in the neighbourhood of which, near the modern
Nakada, as well as farther north near the sacred city
Abydos, their modest tombs were discovered in the
closing years of the last century.
The Third Dynasty (Ca. 2895-2840 B.C.) transferred
the royal residence northward to Memphis. Here
we fix the beginning of the Old Kingdom, which
comprises the dynasties from the third to the sixth,
and is placed by us in the period 2840-2360 B.C.
It is an epoch of great power, in which Egypt at-
tained a culminating point in its civilisation and art.
From this period date also the Great Pyramids, espe-
cially the Pyramids of Ghizeh, which owe their
existence to the three famous kings of the Fourth
Dynasty, Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus. For
this reason the Old Kingdom has also been named
the "Age of the Pyramids."
1 As to the dates of Egyptian history compare Eduard Meyer,
Aegyptische Chronologic (Berlin, 1904).
12 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Towards the end of the Sixth Dynasty the empire
is disintegrated ; internal disorders break out, which
last until the princes of the Eleventh Dynasty — a
family sprung from Thebes in Upper Egypt — suc-
ceed in reuniting Egypt and restoring settled gov-
ernment (Ca. 2160-2000 B.C.). With the rulers of
the Twelfth Dynasty, who bear the names Amenemes
and Sesostris, there begins a new era of prosperity
for the country — the Middle Kingdom. The dura-
tion of this period is taken to be from 2000 to about
1790 B.C. The rulers of this brilliant epoch con-
quered the upper part of the Nile valley, or Nubia,
and constructed great works, such as the celebrated
Labyrinth. Literature, too, flourished so greatly in
this age, that the Middle Kingdom was regarded by
later generations as the classical period par excellence
of ancient Egyptian authorship.
A fresh disruption of the state brought the Mid-
dle Kingdom to an inglorious end. To this period
belongs an event of great importance in religious as
well as political history : the invasion of the land by
hordes of Semitic Bedouins, who came from the
Syrian desert under the leadership of the Hyksos or
'* Shepherd Kings." Taking advantage of Egypt's
political weakness they possessed themselves of the
country " without striking a blow," and held it for
a century (1680-1580 B.C.).
In the Earliest Times 13
It was by Theban princes that the ancient state
was again restored and the Asiatic invaders driven
out of the Nile valley after a series of conflicts ex-
tending through many years. Here begins a new
period of Egyptian greatness, — the New Kingdom
as we often term it, — comprising the dynasties from
the eighteenth to the twentieth, and extending from
1580 to 1 100 B.C. The great Pharaohs of the Eigh-
teenth Dynasty, Amenophis and Thutmosis, lead
their armies into Asia, penetrate as far as the banks
of the Euphrates, and make the whole of Syria an
Egyptian province.
Close intercourse was thus established between
Egypt and the civilisation of the East, Assyria and
Babylon in particular, as well as with the civilisa-
tion known as the Mycenaean ; and this intercourse
exerted a great influence on the whole life of the
people, their politics no less than their art. Under
the kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty, a Sethos and
a Ramses, Egypt in a great measure lost its position
as a great power ; and in spite of several military
successes the Ramessid^ of the Twentieth Dynasty
were unable to arrest the decline. At last the
powerful high-priests of the Theban divinity, Amon,
ascended the throne. They in turn were displaced
by Libyan commanders of mercenary troops, who
maintained themselves in power for about a century.
14 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Gradually the state fell once more into decay,
and dissolved into small principalities. These,
again, were destroyed by the Negro kings of
Ethiopia (Nubia), who descended from the south
and conquered the Nile valley, which they held till
they were driven out of the land by the great kings
of Assyria, and Egypt became for some time a
province of the Assyrian empire. This period of
foreign dominion, comprising the dynasties from the
twenty-second to the twenty-fifth, during which the
throne of the Pharaohs was occupied successively
by Libyans, Ethiopians, and Assyrians, is one of
the most melancholy epochs in ancient Egyptian
history.
At last Prince Psammetichus of Sais succeeded
in shaking off the Assyrian yoke, ended the rule
of the petty native princes, and reunited Egypt.
Under him and his successors of the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty (663-525 B.C.) the land enjoyed a new era
of prosperity. Trade flourished, thanks to the rela-
tions established with Greece, and the arts received
a new impetus. A tendency had already set in
during the rule of the orthodox Ethiopians to-
ward the imitation of the models supplied by the
classic period of Egyptian art, the Old Kingdom,
and the revival of early forms. Nor was art alone
affected by this movement ; in the worship of the
-■%
In the Earliest Times 15
gods and the early kings, in literature, in the or-
thography of the inscriptions, in the titles of the
officials we find the same imitation both of the Old
and the Middle Kingdom ; so that the period of the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty may justly be termed the
" Egyptian Renaissance."
But with the year 525 B.C. the independence of
Egypt came to an end. The land was conquered by
Cambyses, and became a Persian province until the
year 332, when it fell into the hands of Alexander
the Great. The world-empire of the latter broke up
after its founder's early death, and Egypt finally came
into the possession of Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, and
his successors, known as the Ptolemies or Lagldae.
Under them the valley of the Nile became for three
more centuries the seat of a brilliant monarchy, till
at length, torn by civil wars and involved in the in-
ternal troubles of Rome, it passed, after the battle
of Actium, into the hands of Augustus. Both the
Ptolemies and the Roman emperors posed before
the native population as the successors of the
Pharaohs, and kept up the fiction of a national
Egyptian state. They respected the religious views
of their subjects, and even engaged in the construc-
tion of great temples. But the intellectual force of
the people was destroyed ; the old national life
had died out; and there was little to hinder the
1 6 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
triumphal entry of Christianity into the land of the
Pharaohs.
He who would understand the religious thoughts
and feelings which prevailed among the Egyptians
of the '* historical period " must turn his gaze back-
ward and seek acquaintance with the w^orship of
those dark primeval ages when the " two Lands,"
Upper and Lower Egypt, were still independent
neighbours, and as yet there was no union of all
Egypt into a single state. The Semitic immigrants
had assimilated the superior civilisation of the Afri-
can population and at the same time accepted their
rude religion. You will ask, perhaps, whether they
did not also retain the divinities of their desert home,
whether some of these were not deemed worthy of
worship by the conquered Egyptians — whether, in a
word, ancient Semitic elements did not gain a footing
in the primitive religion of Egypt. To this question
we can return no scientifically satisfactory answer.
It is easy enough to play with etymologies and on the
strength of them to set down particular Egyptian
divinities as Semitic, or, again, to eject summarily
from the Egyptian Pantheon all the members of it
which do not fit into a superficial scheme. Such
hypotheses, however, are none the more probable
for their boldness ; and we shall do well, provision-
In the Earliest Times 17
ally at least, to abstain altogether from speculations
on the possibly Asiatic or Semitic origin of any ele-
ments whatever in the primitive Egyptian religion.
So much only may be regarded as certain, —
that in the beginning there was no uniformity of
religion in Egypt. Every city, every town, every
hamlet, possessed its own protecting deity, its own
patron. To him the inhabitants turned in the hour
of need or danger, imploring help ; by sacrifice and
prayer they sought to win his favour. In his hand
lay the weal and woe of the community ; he was the
"Lord of the district," the "urban god," as he is
named in the texts, one who, like a secular prince or
duke, controlled the destiny of those committed to
his care, and protected their life, their goods and
chattels against external foes. His goodwill pro-
cured blessings for men ; his wrath was destruction.
So closely was the deity linked to his district that
frequently he even lacked a name of his own, and
was designated simply by the name of the locality
which was under his rule and in which he manifested
himself. Thus the local deity of the Upper Egyp-
tian city Edfu was spoken of shortly as " he of
Edfu," the female saint of Elkab was " the lady of
Elkab." As a rule, it is true, each local god had a
special name. The god of Memphis was named
Ptah; the patron saint of the cataract district near
1 8 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Elephantine was Khnum (Chnubis) ; the patron
saint of Ombos, near Nakada in Upper Egypt, bore
the name Setekh or Set; the god of Koptos, on
the caravan route from the Nile to the Red Sea, was
known as Min ; the guardian deity honoured in the
Fayoum, the region of Lake Moeris, was called
Sobek, Among female divinities we may mention
Hathor^ the name borne by the " Lady of Dendera,"
Neit^ the goddess of Sais in the Delta, Sekhmet,
the patroness of a suburb of Memphis. It is impos-
sible to repeat to you the names of all the local
divinities ; it would be necessary for me to go
through the entire list of ancient Egyptian locaHties,
and that would take us too far afield.
As to the significance of the names borne by these
divinities, it is only in a few cases that we are able to
state anything with certainty. Thus we know, for
example, that Sekhmet means '* the powerful one."
The etymology, too, of these names is unknown to
us in most cases. If, for instance, the name of the
god PtaJi has been connected with the Hebrew
patachy " to open" or '' to carve," and explained as
meaning "the carver" or ** the artist"; if, again,
the name of the god Hones has been interpreted
in accordance with the Egyptian language as " the
lofty one "or ''the heavenly one" — all this is more
than problematical. The theologians of ancient
In the Earliest Times 19
Egypt, moreover, applied themselves in their day to
the study of these etymologies, for which they had
a great predilection, and by playing upon words
endeavoured at once to explain the names of the
gods and set forth their attributes. Thus Amon,
the name borne by the god of the later empire, is
interpreted by them as '' the hidden one," *' the
mysterious one," from the root 'emen, "to be hidden";
and even Plutarch says, in his work De hide^ that
according to Manetho the name Ajaovv signifies ro
K£Kpv/xju€vor Koi n)y upvipiv, " that which is con-
cealed and concealment." The theologians doubt-
less had in mind a divinity who early appeared in
their inner or secret doctrine — the god '' whose
name is hidden " ; but the original meaning of
Amon cannot by any means be regarded as thus
made known to us.
Originally the mission of these guardian deities
was exhausted in the protection of their cities, out-
side of which their power ended. But with refer-
ence to many of them we find a deepening or
expanding of religious ideas at quite an early period.
Particular functions of their nature were brought
into special prominence. Thus Amon, who was
worshipped at Thebes, was a god of fertility and
generation ; the god Min of Koptos, whom the
Greeks identified with their Pan, protected the
20 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
herds and the roads, especially the desert track
leading from Koptos through the mountains to the
Red Sea ; the " mighty " Sekhmet of Memphis was
regarded chiefly as a terrible goddess of war who
annihilated her enemies; with Hathor of Dendera
the stress was more on the pleasant side of her
character, and she was honoured as a goddess of
love and festivity.
More especially were these local deities, in many
cases, connected with the great powers of nature,
particularly the heavenly bodies. Thus Thout, the
local god of Shmun or Hermupolis, whom the
Greeks identified with Hermes, was regarded as
a god of the moon, and appears as such in the
venerable Pyramid texts. He was deemed to have
appointed the seasons and the order of nature,
for which reason he was also looked upon as the
inventor of writing and language, as the creator of
time and measure, as the god of learning. Above
all, a great number of local divinities were connected
with the greatest luminary of the heavens, the sun,
and represented as sun-gods in quite the earliest
ages. But in the case of one of the most widely
worshipped and most national gods of Egypt, Horus,
who is found as a local divinity in several different
Egyptian cities, and who was worshipped every-
where as god of the sun, the course of religious de-
In the Earliest Times 21
velopment was probably of another kind. We shall
shortly have occasion to treat the subject fully.
Besides the great '' urban deities," there was a
not inconsiderable number of minor gods, spirits,
and dcsmons, who were able to benefit or injure men
on particular occasions, whose favour, therefore, was
much sought after. Thus worship was paid to cer-
tain benignant goddesses who succoured women in
their hour of need, and could hasten or retard de-
livery. There were also fairies who were believed
to visit the cradles of new-born infants " in order
to decide their fate." Exceptional popularity was
enjoyed by the little grotesque god Bes. He was sup-
posed to have come to Egypt from Punt, the legend-
encircled land of frankincense, and his protecting
care was over perfumes, rouge, the mirror, and other
articles of the toilet.
Equipped with higher, superhuman power, the
deity works upon men within a limited sphere, and
receives in return their gifts, their sacrifices. But
he also manifests himself under a definite form. As
the human soul dwells in the visible body, so also
the godhead makes his abode in particular objects.
As a rule it is in stones, trees, pillars, and animals
that the gods choose their residence. The local god
of the Delta-city Tetu, the later Busirls, was a rough
stake. The god of the highways, MIn of Koptos,
22 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
likewise revealed himself in a stake or in a heap of
stones, which latter was probably set by the way-
side, and may well have received a new stone from
the hand of every passer-by, as is now the custom
among the Bedouins. A Hathor dwelt in a syca-
more, a nameless dcemon in an olive-tree.
But it was more common to conceive of the deity
as an animal. Thus the water-god Sobek, the patron
of the lake district of the Fayoum, manifested him-
self as a crocodile ; the god of Mendes appeared to
the faithful as a he-goat ; similarly, a he-goat was
the embodiment of Khnum, the god of the cataract
district. Amon of Thebes took the shape of a ram
with downward-curving horns that covered his ears.
Wep-wet, the god of Siut, was a wolf ; the moon-god,
Thout of Hermupolis was a baboon or an ibis.
Many gods appeared in the form of hawks ; the sun-
god Horus, the moon-god Khons of Thebes, the god
Montu who was worshipped in a part of Thebes and
in Hermonthis.
The various local goddesses were imagined by
preference as dwelling in cats, lionesses, vultures,
or snakes: thus Sekhmet of Memphis and Pekhet
of Speos Artemidos (near Minjeh) were lionesses-,
the goddess of Bubastis a cat. Hathor of Dendera
bore the likeness of a cow ; Mut of Thebes and
Nekhbet, the goddess of Elkab, appeared as vul-
In the Earliest Times 23
tures ; the goddess of Buto assumed the form of
a snake, though she was also worshipped as an
ichneumon or as a shrew-mouse. It is thus a
fully developed fetishism that we have to deal
with.
These crude notions about the gods may at first
sight, perhaps, strike us as peculiar and unworthy of
a civilised people. When the Greeks and Romans
first made the acquaintance of the Egyptians, they,
too, shook their heads over this conception of deity
and turned it into ridicule. And yet similar notions
are to be met with in the case of other civilised peo-
ples, both among the Semites and in the oldest Greek
religion. As you are doubtless aware, the Semites
also worshipped the deity in trees, in stones, the
so-called masseba, in pillars, the asJicra, as also in
animals. And as for the Greeks, we know that
Hermes, the god of pastures and highways, revealed
himself in a heap of stones exactly as did his Egyp-
tian counterpart, the god Min. We know, too, that
Apollo revealed himself in the guise of a wolf, Ar-
temis as a she-bear, Hera, the consort of Zeus, as a
cow. We need but call to mind the Homeric epithet
y5oc57rz? " the cow-eyed." And when we are told that
the sacred bird of Zeus was an eagle, that of Aphro-
dite a dove, that of Athena an owl, the meaning is
only that these divinities originally manifested
24 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
themselves to their worshippers under these animal
forms/
One step in advance of this crude fetishism was
taken by the Egyptians somewhere about the Second
Dynasty, when they began to represent their deities
in human form. A god would now appear with
human limbs. He wore the same clothing as the
Egyptians themselves : a simple tunic, behind which,
as in the dress of the earliest rulers, there hung
down the long tail of an animal. His head was
adorned with a helmet, a crown, or with lofty plumes.
As the symbol of his power he carried a sceptre and
general's staff ; the goddesses carried in their hands
long papyrus-stalks.
This new conception of deity also reacted upon
the old fetishistic ideas and modified them. The
sacred stakes were transformed into images of the
gods in human form — a transformation usually
effected by giving the stake the appearance of a
body swathed in bandages. It v/as thus, in all
probability, that the image of Min had its origin,
and probably that of the Memphian Ptah as well.
Even those deities which were conceived of as ani-
mals were now transferred to human forms, except
that the place of the human head was taken by the
head of the animal sacred to the god. Sobek was
^ Cf. Ed. Meyer, Geschrifte des Altertujns, ii,, §§ 64, 65.
In the Earliest Times 25
represented as a man with the head of a crocodile,
Thout with the head of an ibis, other gods with
the heads of sparrow-hawks ; the goddess Sekhmet
received a lion's head, Heket that of a frog. Ex-
travagant and absurd as all this seems to us, it must
be admitted that both in the statues and in the bas-
reliefs of animal-headed gods the artists shewed ad-
mirable skill in contriving the transition from the
animal head to the human body. For the rest, the
Egyptians still retained the old crude notions about
their deities, which they portrayed in the form of
their fetishes.
But besides the local divinities imagined in animal
shape, there were other animals which were wor-
shipped as gods and made the centre of special cults.
Particularly was this the case with those animals
which aroused the admiration of the Egyptian
peasant by their more than human strength. Of
such there are two the worship of which began very
early and continued to the latest period : the di-
vine Mnevis-buU of Heliopolis and the Apis-bull of
Memphis. The latter, so the Egyptians related,
was engendered by a flash of light which came down
from heaven and impregnated a cow that never
afterwards produced any more young. He was
black with white spots. On his forehead he had a
white triangle, on his right side the figure of the
26 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
crescent-moon ; on his back he generally wore a red
cloth. The priests exercised themselves in theo-
logical speculations in which they sought to estab-
lish a connexion between this highly regarded bull
and Ptah, the local divinity of Memphis ; the former,
so they concluded, was the son of the latter, or, to
use their mystic language, a " living repetition " of
Ptah.
So far I have laid continual stress on the particu-
larism of the Egyptian religion, and have pointed
out that the original state of things was one in
which each locality had its own tutelary god. Yet
at the same time the Egyptians possessed a definite
stock of common religious ideas, the intellectual
heritage of the nation just as much as the common
language which every Egyptian spoke. Thus, in
spite of all political disunion, the whole people,
without distinction of locality, believed in definite
superhuman beings, manifesting themselves in nat-
ure. Among these was the sun-god Horus. He
was universally imagined in the likeness of a fal-
con with brilliant plumage, soaring in the heavens
and dispensing light to the world. But in particu-
lar places this heavenly god entered into closer
relations with men ; in such instances he has under-
taken the special care of a smaller human commun-
ity, has, in short, become a local god. Accordingly,
In the Earliest Times 27
Horus, who originally dwelt only on the horizon,
occurs again as protecting deity in various cities.
It was the same with the water-god Sobek; through-
out Egypt he was known as a dcemoii residing in the
waters, who revealed himself to man in the form of
a crocodile. But he received special honour and
the rank of a local divinity in cities the weal and
woe of which were dependent upon water — in the
lake region of the Fayoum, on the islands of Gebelen
and Ombos in Upper Egypt, or at Khenu, a city
situated near the many whirlpools of the modern
Silsile. In the same way the different forces of
nature became local gods in many instances and
received special homage.
We have thus accounted in one way for the fact
that the cult of one and the same god is found
in different cities. But this fact is also to be ex-
plained in part by migrations which took place in
the earliest ages. Let us imagine the inhabitants
of a particular locality leaving their home and set-
tling in a new region. They will certainly take
their local god with them and prepare him a sanctu-
ary in their new abode. Again, doubtless men re-
marked that a certain god protected his district
with a strong hand, that he showered benefits on
its inhabitants and performed miracle on miracle
in their midst. Other places would then resolve
28 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
on pilgrimages to this great god, or even build
him a new house, set up his image in it, and offer
sacrifices to him, in order to participate in his
mighty favour. Thus gods came to live in cities
where they were not native, and, taking their place
by the side of the local divinities proper, acquired
fresh circles of worshippers, or even became them-
selves patrons and guardians of their new abode.
When the inhabitants of a place lived at peace
with their neighbours and kept up a close and
friendly intercourse with them, their respective di-
vinities would naturally have their share in these
amicable relations. Like men, they paid and re-
ceived visits on particular days ; indeed, the temple
of a city god contained a chapel for the special use
of foreign divinities, where the latter were wor-
shipped according to their own rites. Thus the
local god, while remaining the chief god of a dis-
trict, was by no means the only divinity to whom
the inhabitants paid homage. Side by side with
him, and regarded in a manner as his guests, were
other deities who likewise received divine honours.
And something of the same kind took place when
several smaller localities, each possessing a patron
of its own, became merged into a larger unit : the
old gods would then necessarily possess in the new
community a centre of worship.
In the Earliest Times 29
The priests early endeavoured to introduce order
among the different gods thus domiciled in a city
and to determine their relative rank. For reasons
which remain unknown to us they grouped them in
Triads or threes. This was generally done by as-
signing to the chief god a goddess as his wife and
to the pair a third god as their son. Thus in Thebes
the principal god, Amon, was accompanied by a
goddess, Mut, " the Mother," and her son, the moon-
god Khons. In Memphis the worship received by
Ptah, the patron of the city, was shared by the
goddess Sekhmet as his consort and by the god
Nefertem as their son. In some other places, for
example, at Elephantine, on the southern frontier
of Egypt, Khnum, the god of the cataracts, was asso-
ciated with two goddesses, Satis and Anukis.
In many cases, no doubt, the popular belief allot-
ted to a particular local deity a religious significance
above his fellows ; more often it was the political
position of a city that augmented the celebrity and
power of its patron. If, for example, a small city
gained the hegemony of a wide district, the "urban
god" became the god of a region, the patron of a
whole province, worshipped in its temples along
with the local gods.
When two great kingdoms arose in Upper and
Lower Egypt, then the local god of the city from
30 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
which the king came and in which he resided be-
came privileged above all other gods ; he was
elevated into the tutelary divinity and patron of
the whole state. Thus Horus of Behdet was god
of Lower Egypt, Set of Ombos the god of Upper
Egypt. The kings themselves came to be regarded
as the earthly representatives, as incarnations of
these guardian gods, and were designated simply
as "Horus" or as "Set." And again, when the
two states had been in conflict with each other
for a series of years and Lower Egypt had emerged
the victor, it was thought that the patrons of the
two realms had taken part in the strife, and that
Horus had finally defeated Set. The destinies of
the peoples became the destinies of their protectors.
Li later times the memory of those primeval
wars faded away ; but men still told how the
two gods had fought together. The priests now
read a deeper meaning into the legend : Horus was
the bright god of the sun who sustains a perpetual
conflict with Set, the husband of Darkness ; every
evening he is defeated, but only to rise again the
following morning in a new form and enter upon
the conflict once more. When Egypt was for the
first time united into a single state and came under
the sway of one ruler, the Pharaoh was regarded
as the earthly embodiment of the two patron gods,
In the Earliest Times 31
as Horus and Set in one person, or rather (for the
northern half of the realm had subdued the south-
ern) as '' Horus, who stands above the god of
Ombos." '
Later a similar part was played in the second
dual conflict by the guardian divinities of the two
capitals Buto and Elkab : here, again, the snake-
goddess of Buto became the patroness of the Delta,
and the vulture-goddess of Elkab of Upper Egypt,
while after the second unification the two patron-
esses became the special guardians of the Pharaoh
and remained so ever afterwards. Thus a part of
the political history of Egypt had in the earliest
ages left its imprint on the religion of the people.
A very special part, which is as yet not explained,
was played among the local Egyptian deities by the
god Osiris. He was originally domiciled in the
Delta, probably in the city of Busiris. From here
the worship of Osiris spread over the whole land.
Abydos became one of the chief places of his cult,
and there, among the tombs of the ancient kings, a
later time placed also the grave of this god. The
legend which is related of him was a favourite among
the tales of the Egyptian gods, and allusions to it
are found at every step in the earliest texts which
we possess, the Pyramid texts. Unfortunately we
' Cf. Sethe, Beitrdgc zur iiltesten Geschichte Aegyptens, p. 73.
32 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
possess no connected narrative of the myth dating
from antiquity and must therefore reproduce it in
the late and quite corrupt form in which it is pre-
served by Plutarch.
The celestial goddess Rhea (in Egyptian, Nut)
and the god Kronos (the Egyptian earth-god Geb)
had, according to the Egyptian belief, four child-
ren : the gods Osiris and Set (the Greek Typhon),
and the goddesses Isis and Nephthys. Osiris ac-
quired the sovereignty over Egypt and made his
subjects happy. He gave them laws, taught them
to honour the gods, and introduced agriculture.
Later he travelled over the whole earth as an apostle
of civilisation, making little use of armed force, but
winning the hearts of men for the most part by per-
suasion and teaching, by all manner of song and
music. For this reason also the Greeks believe that
he is the same as Dionysos. After his return Set
plotted against him and gained seventy-two men as
fellow conspirators. He secretly took the measure
of Osiris's body, constructed to this measure a beauti-
ful chest with rich adornments, and brought it with
him to the banquet. While all the guests were en-
joying and admiring the sight of it, Set jestingly
promised to give the chest to him who could lie
down in it and fill it exactly. All tried in turn, but
no one would fit. At last Osiris himself stepped in
In the Earliest Times 33
and lay down. The conspirators hastened forward,
nailed down the box from outside, poured molten
lead over it, carried it out to the river, and de-
spatched it to the sea, down the Tanitic branch of
the Nile.
When Isis learned of the death of her husband
she set herself to search for his corpse and was
at last informed by children that the box had
been carried down the Nile to the sea. She further
learned that the box had been washed ashore in the
neighbourhood of Byblos. A magnificent heather
plant had grown round it and enclosed it in its
stem. When the King of the land saw the plant
he had it cut down, still containing the coffin, and
set it up as a pillar to support the roof of his house.
Isis heard of this and went to Byblos, where she
was received in the palace and appointed by the
Queen as nurse to her child. The goddess one day
revealed herself to the Queen, requested that she
might have that pillar, easily drew it away from
under the roof, and cut the coffin out of the tree-
trunk. Then she threw herself upon the still closed
chest, and took it away with her in a ship. It was
not until she reached Egypt and found herself alone
that she opened the coffin, laid her face upon that
of the dead, and kissed it tearfully. She then went
to her son Horus, who was being brought up in
34 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Buto, and concealed the coffin with the corpse of
Osiris. One night, when Set was hunting by moon-
light, he found the coffin, recognised the corpse,
tore it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them
abroad. No sooner had Isis heard this, than she
began to collect the separate parts ; for which pur-
pose she went about the swamps of the Delta in
a skiff of papyrus. Wherever she found a member
she buried it. That is why there are so many
graves of Osiris in Egypt.
When Horus was grown to manhood he prepared
himself with the help of Isis to take vengeance on
Set for the death of his father. The fight lasted for
many days, till at length Horus gained the victory.
Set was bound and handed over to Isis ; the latter,
however, did not kill him, but let him go free. In
a fit of anger Horus tore the crown from her head ;
but Thout (or Hermes) replaced it by a cow's head.
Such, roughly, is the main content of the legend
as handed down to us by Plutarch.
I shall return to Osiris and his life and give them
closer consideration later on.
In Egypt, as elsewhere, men's ideas of the uni-
verse, in particular of the heavens and the heavenly
bodies, were closely connected with their religious
thoughts, properly so called, though perhaps less so
than was the case with the ancient Babylonians.
In the Earliest Times 35
The picture which they drew of the world shows
how narrow was the geographical horizon of an
Egyptian in the earliest times. Egypt for him is
the entire earth : it is an elongated oval surface,
traversed in the direction of its length from north to
south by a broad river, the Nile. Round about it
there rise high mountains, the desert heights which
enclose Egypt. Upon these rests heaven, often
conceived as a flat plate, from which the luminaries
hang like lamps. According to another view heaven
is supported by four pillars which stand at the four
corners of the earth. Others think that the heavens
are fashioned exactly like the earth — that they, too,
are traversed by a river and intersected by numerous
canals. Under the earth, too, a counter-earth is
supposed to lie, the Dwet, which is made exactly
like the earth and the heavens, and is peopled by
the dead. There was yet another way in which the
heaven was conceived, viz., as a great cow held fast
by several minor divinities and supported by the
god Show. The stars are attached to her belly, while
the sun-god rides by day upon her back in a boat.
The world, gods, and men, are naturally not im-
agined as having existed from the beginning, but
as having been created. In the individual priestly
colleges different theories were held about this crea-
tion, just as about the nature of the world itself.
36 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
The most common belief was that the local god, the
lord of the city in question, was at the same time
the creator of the heavens and the earth. Thus it
was believed in Memphis that the god Ptah, the
great artist, had carved the earth as if it were a
statue. In places, such as Elephantine, where
Khnum was worshipped as guardian, the god was
supposed to be the creator of the world. He had
taken mud from the Nile and out of it had formed
the world-egg, as a potter working with his wheel.
In Sais the goddess Neit was believed to have made
the whole world as a weaver weaves a piece of cloth.
These local cosmogonies must not be understood
too literally ; in many of them there can be no
doubt that poetic fancy played a considerable part.
The most widespread of all was a belief which
perhaps proceeded from the priestly college of
Heliopolis. According to this there was in the be-
ginning a great primordial body of water called Nun,
which contained all male and female germs of life.
Out of it came the sun, the Re as it is called in
Egyptian. In this water, too, lay the earth-god
Geb and the heavenly goddess. Nut, locked in a
close embrace, until the god of the air. Show, parted
them from one another and carried the goddess of
heaven in his arms into the upper regions.*
' Cf. Maspero, Histoire ancienne de rOrie^it, i., p. 129.
In the Earliest Times 37
The Nile, too, " which gives Egypt life, which
preserves all men by food and nourishment," was
considered as a divine being. It was represented as
a man-woman, with the bosom of a woman and a
long beard framing the face. The dress was that of
an Egyptian seaman.
It was the heavenly bodies above all of which the
Egyptians conceived as divine beings. Must not
the Egyptian peasant, when of an evening he cast
his gaze upwards to the wonderful brightness of the
starry heaven, have been inclined to the thought
that up there, too, gods dwell ? Thus in the most
beautiful of all the Egyptian constellations, Orion,
he saw a god, and in the brilliant Sirius a goddess,
Sopdet, or Sothis ; but above all he regarded the
sun as a divine being who governs the course of the
world. There was great variety in the theories
which were held about the greatest of luminaries
in the different priestly schools of the country. I
have already mentioned what I believe to be the
common Egyptian idea, according to which the sun
was a hawk, the god Horus, who soars in the
heavens with his brilliant plumage. Otherwise the
sun-god sailed during the day over the waters of
the heavens just like an Egyptian seaman, only
every evening he must descend into the lower world
and there continue his voyage. Others, again, repre-
38 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
sent the sun-god in the somewhat ridiculous form
of a dung-beetle, or scarabaeus. Just as the latter
rolls in front of it a little ball containing its egg, so
the god rolls in front of him through the heavens
the round globe of the sun. Yet others think that
every morning a lotus-flower springs from the water
bearing a little boy — the sun-god — sitting in its
blossoms.
Thus the picture which I have been able to sketch
to you to-day of the oldest form of the Egyptian
religion accessible to us is composed of extremely
varied elements ; on the one hand we have seen the
local divinities, on the other, cosmic beings standing
at an infinite distance from man. How the two be-
came blended by theological speculation, and how
from the combination an almost new religion arose,
will form the chief theme of my second lecture-
y
LECTURE II.
The Development of the Egyptian Religion.
A FAVOURITE thing to say of the ancient
Egyptians is that they were a pre-eminently
conservative people. This is doubtless true. The
Egyptian clung as stubbornly as the Low German
to the manners and customs which were his heritage
from the earliest days. But it must not be inferred
that the Egyptian civilisation was a barren one ;
that it remained for thousands of years at the stage
which it had reached before the dawn of Egyptian
history. In the language of the Egyptians, in their
writing and their literature, as also in their pohtical
life and their art, there is discernible a continuous
development. This, to be sure, does not at once
strike the casual observer, whose first impression, on
being introduced to a mass of new and strange facts,
however diverse, is generally one of uniformity.
Only by degrees does the student find the convic-,
tion growing upon him that in all peoples, the
Egyptian as well as others, mental and spiritual life
is never stagnant but always in motion.
39
40 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
There is certainly one respect in which the civilisa-
tion of the Egyptians was more conservative, more
continuous, than that of other peoples. The laws
which had been evolved in the earliest times retained
their authority for thousands of years ; and the de-
velopment of civilisation almost always followed the
paths which primitive ages had traced out for it.
This is true in the sphere of writing, of art, and also
in that of religious ideas. New thoughts, no doubt,
were afterwards woven into the primitive fabric ; but
the Egyptian religion, in Its earliest form the pro-
duct of special political relations, never underwent
radical revision, and the only attempt in this direc-
tion of which history tells was a dismal failure.
In the earliest times, as you will remember, there
were formed out of the various minor states of
Egypt two kingdoms, a Lower and an Upper Egyp-
tian Kingdom. It was by the subjection of the lat-
ter that the land first became a political whole. The
capital of this united Egypt, as we may assume with
great probability, was Heliopolis, or, to give it its
Egyptian name, On. This name is doubtless known
to you from the Bible, for Joseph's wife, Asenath,
was the daughter of Potipherah, a high priest of On
(Gen. xli., 50 ; xlvi., 20). The city lay only a few
miles to the north-east of the modern Cairo.' Its
^ Cf. Baedeker's Egypt^ 5th edition, p. 107.
Its Development 41
guardian was the god Atum. His worship was
accompanied by that of the sun-god, and here it
would seem that it was the visible luminary, the Re,
to which men paid homage. He was regarded as
the god *' who resides in an egg [that is, the sun],
who sends forth light from his celestial abode, who
rises in his horizon and swims upon his brass [that
is, the brazen plate of heaven], whose like is not
found among the gods, and who illuminates the
world with his brightness."
Within the temple, probably beneath the open
sky, stood a pillar of stone as the direct recipient
of the worship paid to the great god. Later, this
pillar was given a symmetrical artistic form, and
thus the obelisk took its rise — a gently tapering
column with a pyramidal apex.
Whereas in other instances the great cosmic di-
vinities followed their own courses far above the
doings of men, the sun-god of Heliopolis entered
into special relations with the human race and re-
ceived a special worship. He was the greatest and
mightiest of the gods. The priesthood of Heli-
opoHs, however, did not rest content with the mere
proclamation of these attributes, but applied them-
selves with a certain amount of logic to deducing
their consequences ; by which means they arrived at
a deeper conception of the vgod's nature. They
42 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
discovered, first of all, that there was only one sun-
god. Re, and that the old sun-god Horus, who
soared as a hawk above the heavens, was the same
in essence as Re. The two differed only in name.
The god was therefore named '' Re-Horus, who is in
the horizon," and the same fusion appeared in his
picture, where the hawk-headed Horus is seen sur-
mounted by the sun.
Similarly the old local god Atum was identified
with the sun-god Re-Horus; and he, too, was as-
sumed to be the same being as Re, only known
by a different name. The old sun-god Kheperi,
who was represented as a scarabaeus, furnishes an-
other example of this process. All these divinities
were regarded as particular forms or *' Names " of
the one single god.
Now this view was perfectly consistent with the
assignment of special functions to each of these sun-
gods — with the conception, for example, of Re-
Horus, or of Kheperi as the evening, or of Atum as
the morning sun. The sun traversed the heavens in
a vessel, but while he went for his morning sail in the
good ship Menezet, he took his seat for the evening in
the bark Mesektet, which carried him over the western
horizon to the fabulous mountain Menu. The mani-
fold legends which in the various localities had been
woven round the dail}* course of the sun were now
Its Development 43
transferred to the one sun-god of Heliopolis. Con-
tradictions thus arose, sometimes of the most
curious kind, but no attempt was made at recon-
cihation. The number of sun-myths must have
been simply enormous ; allusions to them occur in
almost every religious text. It is, however, only a
very small part of them that has been preserved to us.
Of these legends relating to the sun-god there is
one which I should like to relate somewhat fully,
in order to give a fair idea of what these ancient
Egyptian myths were.' In this particular instance
the sun-god Re is presented to us as a king who
exercises sovereignty over gods and men. Like an
earthly prince he sits on his throne and communes
with his subjects. But he shares in the sorrows as
well as in the joys of earth. In particular, he is not
gifted with eternal youth ; old age is advancing
upon him, and men begin to refuse him obedience,
much as the Egyptians might treat a grey-headed
king. Such is the situation to which the legend
introduces us :
" His Majesty was old : his bones were of silver, his
flesh of gold, and his hair of pure lapis lazuli. But men
conspired against him. Thereupon his Majesty per-
ceived the designs of men and spoke to his attendants :
* Call hither to me my Eye [/. e.^ the goddess Hathor],
* Cf. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 267 _^,
44 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
the god Show, and the goddess Tefnut, together with
the divine fathers and mothers who were with me when
I still lay in the primordial ocean Nun ; call also the
god Nun himself. He will surely bring his servants
with him. But let them come hither in secret, that men
may not see. Come with them to the palace, that they
may give me counsel.' Then these gods were con-
ducted thither, and they prostrated themselves before
him so that their foreheads touched the ground.
Then said they to his Majesty : ' Speak to us, that we
may hear.* Then said Re to Nun : ' Thou oldest among
gods, from whom I had my being, and ye, my divine
ancestors, ye see how men, that are sprung from mine
eye, have devised rebellion against me. Now, therefore,
tell me what may be done against them, for I will not
slay them until I have heard your counsel on the matter.*
Then the Majesty of Nun answered : ' My son Re,
thou god that art greater than thy father, and mightier
than they who created him, remain [in peace] on thy
throne, for great is the fear of thee if only thine eye
[be turned] upon those that have conspired against thee.'
Then the Majesty of Re spoke : ' Behold how they flee
into the desert ; their heart is afraid because of that
which they have said.' Then said they to his Majesty :
* Let thine eye [/. ^., the goddess Hathor] descend, that
she may smite those that have sinfully blasphemed
against thee.' (Thus it was done).
Then the goddess returned, after she had slain many
men in the desert. Then said the Majesty of this god
[namely Re] : ' Welcome, Hathor, hast thou performed
that for which thou wast plucked out ? Hathor an-
swered : * By thy life, I have gained the mastery over
men, and this is pleasant to my heart.'
Its Development 45
But the pouring out of blood was not yet ended ; on
the next morning Hathor desired to continue her work.
But now Re had compassion upon men, and took
thought how the slaughter might be stayed. He sent
messengers in haste to the city of Elephantine and
caused a special kind of fruit to be brought from there.
This he commanded to be trodden at Heliopolis, and
out of the juice slave-women made beer — seven thou-
sand jugs full. Now this beer had the appearance of
human blood, and it was by this intoxicating beverage
that men were to be saved. Early in the morning Re
caused the jugs to be brought to the place where Hathor
desired to slay men. The peculiar beer was poured out,
and the fields were flooded with the red liquid.
In the morning when Hathor came she found a lake
of beer, in which her features were beautifully mirrored.
She drank of it, and returned home drunk, being unable
to distinguish men. Thus men were saved from the
wrath of Hathor by a device of the sun-god. But his
heart was tired of residence among them ; he therefore
returned on the back of the heavenly cow, and nomi-
nated Thout [the god of wisdom] as his vicar on earth."
But the priests of On-Heliopolis were not content
to elaborate only the legends of the sun-gods. They
also cast into fixed and final shape the story of Osiris,
which I narrated to you in my former lecture, ac-
cording to Plutarch's version, and the history of
the struggle between the provincial gods Horus
and Set. It was probably through this process of
priestly elaboration that the figure of Horus came
46 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
to be introduced into the Osiris-myth at all : Horus
was made into a son of Osiris, and Set, the national
enemy of Lower Egypt, was denominated the hostile
brother of Osiris. Through the expansion of the
roles assigned to these gods, and through the fusion
of certain features in the old legends, a host of con-
tradictions was very naturally introduced into the
whole mythology. But, as I have already stated,
the priests of Heliopolis did not feel these absurd-
ities as such ; they saw profound wisdom in the
contradictions, and set themselves with unparalleled
ingenuity to disentangle the perplexities of their
own creating. Their ultimate aim was to ascertain
the '' names " of the great gods and find learned in-
terpretations of the various names and appella-
tions.
Nearly all the religious texts bear the stamp of the
priesthood of On ; and it is probably within the
mark to say that the greater part of Egyptian re-
ligious literature was produced, or at least published,
in that city. The literary activity of these priests
lasted down to the Greek period, and their fame
extended to Greece itself. As late as in the time
of Herodotus the Heliopolitans were deemed the
** most learned " {XoyiGotaroi, Herod., ii., 3) of all
the Egyptian priests ; and scholars, such as Plato
and Eudoxus, went on pilgrimages to the "City of
Its Development 47
the Sun," in order to hear the last word of wisdom
in the school of its priests.
The development of mythology was accompanied
in Heliopolis by the endeavour to comprehend in
a single system the creation of the universe. At
the beginning of all things, and thus at the head
of the series of gods, was placed the local god
of Heliopolis — Atum, identified with Re-Horus.
After him, in order of creation, came the earth-god>
Geb, and the goddess of heaven, Nut, together with
the god of the air, Show. As Geb had a female
divinity by his side, a similar companion was found
for Show — the goddess Tefnut, who was afterwards
explained as the " dew." Next to these came
Osiris, as the son of Geb and Nut, and Set, with
their female counterparts, Isis and Nephthys. A
cycle of nine gods was thus constructed, represent-
ing the origin of the world and the early history of
Egypt; to this theology gave the name of *' T/ie
Ennead {i. e., the group of nine gods) of On."
A second or ^^ Lesser Ennead'' was afterwards con-
structed on the pattern of the first, and in it various
local gods found a shelter. Foremost among them
was a special form of Horus, Harsiesis, that is, Horus
the son of Isis, the youthful hero of the Osiris-
legend, who was born in the lonely marshes of the
Delta and there brought up by his mother Isis.
48 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
In this new position he was regarded as a sun-god
and the eight divinities who came after him, whose
names are not given with certainty by our authori-
ties, were his defenders against his enemies.
Among these eight, according to Maspero, were
first of all the Horus of Edfu ; he pierced with his
lance the hippopotami and the serpents which dis-
port themselves in the celestial waters and menace
the safe voyage of the sun's vessel ; there was further
Thout, the god of wisdom, who guides the vessel's
course by his magic songs ; lastly there was the local
god of Siut, Wep-wet, who steers the vessel and in
case of need tows it by a rope over the shallows.
These two sets of nine were finally completed by
a third, composed of the ''children of Horus" and
the *' children of the god Khenti-Kheti," the local
god of Athribis. In the texts these beings are com-
monly designated as " spirits," sometimes also as
"gods," and it would appear that they were not
gods in the full sense, but occupied an intermediate
position between gods and men. As to the signifi-
cance of this third set of nine, we are in complete
uncertainty.'
The dogma of the creation and of the early his-
tory personified in the '' Great Ennead of On " was
^ C/. Chassinet, Recueil de travaux^ 19, 22, ff; Sethe, Beitriige zur
dltesten Geschichte^ p. 9.
Its Development 49
now adopted by other priestly colleges of the coun-
try, and by them brought into harmony with local
feeling on the principle of setting up the local god
in the place of Atum, the patron of Heliopolis, to
head the list and receive honour as creator of the
heavens and the earth. Thus at Memphis we find
the god Ptah, at Thebes, later on, the god Amon,
holding the first position among the primordial gods.
In priestly colleges devoted to the worship of a
female patron no difficulty was felt in transferring
the honours of Atum-Re-Horus to her. Thus Neit,
at Sais, and Hathor, at Dendera, were raised to the
rank of leading divinity.
Besides the cosmogonic system of Heliopolis, there
were naturally others. But only one of these suc-
ceeded in maintaining its position in Egyptian theo-
logy and acquired a reputation at all comparable
with that of its great rival of Heliopolis. This was
the system of Hermupolis, a city of Upper Egypt,
which worshipped as its patron Thout, the god of
wisdom. In this system the creation was repre-
sented by an octave (Ogdoas) of gods. The num-
ber, so it would appear^ was fixed at eight because
the Egyptian name of Hermupolis, KhmunuiShmun),
likewise means *' eight." This simple circumstance is
by itself enough to show that these eight cosmogonic
gods owe their existence not to popular legend but
4
50 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
to theological speculation. Here, too, we find four
male divinities paired each with a goddess invented
expressly to be his companion. The gods are : Nu,
Hehu, Kek, and Nunu ; the goddesses: Nut, Hehut,
Keket, and Naunet. At the head of them appears
the local god Thout-Hermes. The gods are depicted
as men with frogs' heads, the goddesses with the
heads of serpents/ otherwise all eight take the form
of their master Thout and appear as baboons. It is
in this form that we find them again and again greet-
ing the rising sun with their hymns. We have un-
fortunately no knowledge of the significance attached
to these four pairs of gods. Lepsius saw in them
the four elements : water, fire, earth, and air. Brugsch
explained Nu and Nut as primordial matter, Hek
and Heket as active force, Kek and Keket as dark-
ness, Nunu and Naunet as cosmic precipitation.
This, however, is bold speculation, which can hardly
reproduce the thoughts of the old priests of Her-
mupolis.
The priestly doctrines in the form in which they
were elaborated at Heliopolis, at Hermupolis, and in
other religious centres, naturally enough never be-
came the common property of the people. On the
contrary, they were wrapped in the robe of se-
crecy and guarded as special mysteries, into which
^ Cf. Maspero, Hist. anc. de V Orient, i., p. 149.
Its Development 51
only the elect might penetrate. The Egyptian
peasant knew nothing of the one original sun-god of
whom the other sun-gods were particular " names" ;
he did not trouble himself about greater and lesser
enneads and the mystic beings composing them ; he
repeated his simple morning and evening prayer to
the sun, and presented, as of old, his modest offer-
ing to the divine protector of his native place.
Among the priests, on the other hand, the doctrine
of the sun-god won greater and greater approval.
In the historical period it would appear to have re-
ceived a special impetus from the kings of Dynasty
V. These kings were descended, if we may trust
the statement of an ancient story-book, from a
priest of the sun-god who lived at Sekhebu, a city of
Lower Egypt in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis.
The legend relates that the sun-god himself was the
father of the first three sovereigns belonging to this
royal house ; that the gods gave assistance at their
birth and presented them with kingly crowns. The
new rulers devoted themselves with particular zeal
to the service of Re, and in his honour they built
in the necropolis of Memphis special temples, ar-
ranged after the pattern of the temple of the sun
at Heliopolis.
This preferential worship of the sun-god stimu-
lated the tendency to identify other gods with him.
52 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Even deities who had originally had nothing what-
ever to do with the sun, for example, Sobek, the
old god of water, or Amon, the god of the harvest,
were conceived as sun-gods, and portrayed with the
addition of Re's insignia — the solar disc encircled
by the poisonous uraeus-serpent. Similarly, the fe-
male deities were conceived as goddesses of heaven,
identified with each other, and represented with the
sun above their heads.
The Egyptian religion entered upon a new phase
of its development in the " Middle Kingdom," when
the political centre of gravity of the realm was gen-
erally shifted southward. During the internal con-
fusion which had brought the " Old Kingdom " to
its end, the Upper Egyptian city Thebes had ac-
quired power and reputation. It was by Theban
princes that the reorganisation of the state was suc-
cessfully carried out ; and though the kings of
Dynasty XII. transferred their residence to the lake
district of the Fayoum, the city from which they
had sprung remained the object of their fostering
care. The Theban local divinity, Amon, identified
with the sun-god and transformed into Amon-Re,
was set above other gods, and honoured by new
temples and costly gifts. Later on, Thebes was the
headquarters of the struggle against the Hyksos,
and after its termination the chief city of the
Its Development 53
**New Kingdom." Amon-Re now took the leading
position in the Egyptian Pantheon. Under his pro-
tection the Pharaohs led their victorious armies to
north and south, to the Euphrates and far into the
Soudan ; and the chief part of the booty which was
brought back to the Nile from the conquered lands
fell to the lot of the Metropolitan patron-deity,
Amon-Re. It was he that had given to the Pharaoh,
"his own begotten son, his earthly likeness," the
sovereignty over the world, and therefore he, too,
— and his priests — must receive the due reward.
Thus in the " New Kingdom," Amon became the
national god of Egypt ; besides him no other god
played any considerable part in the state religion
except only Re-Horus of Heliopolis, and Ptah, the
local divinity of Memphis, the capital of the Old
Kingdom. To Amon in the first place, and after
him to Re-Horus and Ptah, shrines were set up in
the conquered lands, and the foreign subjects paid
homage to these gods as the guardians of the Egyp-
tian state. At the same time the priestly rehgion,
that is, the theology with syncretistic tendencies,
made further progress. Wherever local divinities
were separated by only small differences of character
or aspect, it became the custom to blend them
together and explain them as different forms of
one deity. Thus, in particular, the mighty Amon-Re
54 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
was identified with other gods, with Min of Koptos
and Khnum of Elephantine. Bastet, the protectress
of Bubastis, became one with the goddesses Sekh-
met and Pekhet, all of whom manifested themselves
as lionesses or as cats, and these again were identi-
fied with Mut the mother of the gods, the consort
of Amon, who was worshipped at Thebes.
That by this means the already existing uncer-
tainty and confusion in the Egyptian Pantheon
could not but be increased, is sufficiently obvious.
Certainly it would have been no great task for an
ingenious mind to have brought order into this re-
markable medley of religious and mythological be-
liefs, belonging to different times and different places.
It was only necessary to reflect upon the efforts which
were being made to fuse together the different local
divinities and represent them as gods of the sun or
of the heavens — a tendency which easily led to the
inference that the worship of the primeval guardian
gods was now obsolete, and that no justification
remained for anything but the worship of a small
number of gods or even of a single one.
But where was the man courageous enough to put
such a theory into practice, to thrust on one side the
ancient cults, and introduce a new one in their place ?
Would not the priestly colleges of the whole country
have fought against such an undertaking and de-
Its Development 55
fendea the peculiar privileges and attributes of their
gods ? In particular, what would the priests of the
Theban Amon have said to such a dethronement of
their god, they who celebrated with such pride the
power and glory of their patron ? "Would they not
have opposed with all their force the introduction of
another god, a greater god than Amon? And what
of the great mass of the people, who clung with deep
reverence to the ancient gods of their homes, and
troubled themselves little about theological systems?
How should they have allowed themselves to be con-
vinced that the rule of their guardians was a thing
of the past, that a new god had taken their place and
must be worshipped with prayer and sacrifice by
order of the government ? And yet the day was
not so far distant when the bold venture was to
be made, an attempt to overthrow the gods of the
earliest ages and inaugurate the reign of a single god
in heaven and on earth.
Within the circle of the ancient and reverend
priesthood of Heliopolis it had been matter of en-
vious and jealous observation that the Theban pa-
tron, Amon, had been elevated to the national god
of the Egyptian empire, and that great power had
been acquired by his priests through the prodigal
generosity of the kings. According to the claims
of the Heliopolitan priesthood, the sun-god, Re-
\
56 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Horus, was the ruler of the whole world, A^hereas
Amon was no more than Ptah of Memphis, or
Sobek, the lord of the Fayoum, that is, no more
than a local god, a prince as compared with a king.
But Amon had shown his favour to the Pharaohs
with such power that the latter could not be guided
by the jealous wishes of the old clerical party and
concede to Re-Horus the first position in the re-
ligion of the state. Chance came to the aid of the
priests of Heliopolis.
I King Amenophis III. died in the year 1392, and
was succeeded by his son Amenophis IV. The lat-
ter had possibly been educated among the priests of
Heliopolis ; in any case, he was possessed by the
belief, cherished in that city, that the sun-god was
the greatest of all the gods, and had therefore the
best right to universal worship and the richest en-
dowment with earthly goods. The priests succeeded
in winning over the prince to their side and found
in him a powerful supporter of their claims. More
than this, in the theological school of Heliopolis
a special secret doctrine had been developed in
which it was taught that the purest form of the
sun-god was not to be found in the " Re," but in
one single manifestation of him, the solar disc. To
this a special name was given : " Re-Horus, who
shouts for joy on the horizon, who rejoices in his
Its Development 57
name * Brightness that is in the globe of the sun.' "
What this pecuHar title means we do not know,
and just as little do we know what the devotees of
this god taught about him. But it would seem that
Amenophis received this doctrine of the pure solar
essence with enthusiasm ; he joined the circle of
worshippers and even became " First Prophet " of
the god.
Hardly had Amenophis IV. been crowned upon
the throne when he made his attempt to advance
the honour of the new god throughout the land.
He openly professed himself, and that even in his
royal style and title, as the " first prophet " of this
remarkable god, and commanded that a great and
magnificent shrine should be built to the latter at
Thebes, in the immediate neighbourhood of Amon's
temple. In the reliefs which adorned its walls
the new god was represented exactly like the old
Re-Horus, in the form of a man with the head
of a hawk, wearing for a crown the sun encircled
with the urseus-serpent. In Memphis, too, and in
other cities temples were built to the many-named
Re-Horus or the " solar disc," as he was shortly
named — in Egyptian Atojz.
In Middle Egypt, in the region now named el-
Amarna, after a tribe of Bedouins, he even received
a special sacred district, a kind of State of the
58 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Church, which was known as the Ekhut-Aton, that
is, " horizon of the solar disc."
The entourage of the king, the courtiers, and
officials, followed the example of their master and
professed the new faith, even when they had not ac-
cepted it in their hearts. With all the zeal which
Amenophis displayed for his god he at first allowed
the worship of Amon and the other local gods to
continue, he even did not scruple to appear in por-
traits and inscriptions as a worshipper of Amon, of
Thout, of Set, and other divinities. That, in spite
of this the religious endeavours of the ruler met
with powerful resistance from the priestly colleges
of the land, especially from the priests of the The-
ban Amon, is not to be wondered at. But this oppo-
sition did not discourage the king from introducing
the cult of his god ; it rather fanned the flame of
his fanaticism to greater fierceness and drove him at
length to the last decisive step.
In the sixth year of his reign the worship of Aton
was made the religion of the state. The Egyptians,
as well as the Nubians and Asiatics who had been
subjected to the empire, were officially required
henceforth to serve only this one god. In Egypt
the temples of the other divinities were everywhere
closed ; their property was sequestrated. The stat-
ues of the ancient gods were ordered to be de-
Its Development 59
stroyed, their portraits erased from the temple walls,
their names blotted out. More particularly an ac-
tive persecution was set on foot against Amon and
his family, the mother-goddess Mut, and the moon-
god Khons. The name *'Amon" was altogether
proscribed and nowhere tolerated. He who bore a
name compounded of Amon renamed himself; and
of those who did so the king himself was one of
the first. He renounced his name " Amen-hotep,"
Amenophis, which means *'Amon is content," and
was henceforth known as *' Ekh-en-Aton," that is,
"Spirit of the solar luminary."
The king had thrown himself into the new religion
with unparalled fervour and devotion. But the capi-
tal, Thebes, was not an appropriate place in which to
serve his god with perfect zeal. Here, everything
had been for ages far too closely connected with the
cult of Amon ; and here, in spite of all his efforts, the
new doctrine made but slow headway. The Pharaoh,
therefore, resolved to leave Thebes with his whole
court, and found a new residence in the sacred dis-
trict of el-Amarna, which had been dedicated to
Aton. In the sixth year of his reign he made
his brilliant entry into the *' Horizon of the solar
luminary."
But what, you will probably ask me, was the
subject of the new Egyptian state-religion, the
6o The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
"doctrine," to which the king had devoted himself
with such fervour, and which he sought to spread
over the land by all the means in his power ? The
answer to this question is given by the great hymn,
perhaps composed by the king himself, in which
^' Atoit'' is extolled as the only God, the creator of
all life, the orderer and upholder of the world ^ :
" Beautiful is thy brightness," it runs, " on the hori-
zon of the heavens, thou living sun that didst live before
all else. When thou risest on the eastern horizon, thou
fillest the whole land with thy beauty. Thou art fair,
and great, and bright, and lifted up above the earth. Thy
rays encompass the world and all that thou hast made."
The hymn goes on to describe how in the night,
when the sun has vanished and " descended beneath
the horizon of the West," men are seized with deep
slumber, and only the wild beasts that are man's
enemies, lions and serpents, come forth from their
lairs.
But what a difference,
" when the land is bright, when thou risest upon the
horizon, when thou sendest abroad thy rays ; then the
world is glad, men awake and stand up, for thou hast
raised them. They wash their limbs and put on their
garments, and their arms are lifted up in prayer, when
thou risest. Then all beasts are at rest in their pastures,
^ Cf. F. Henry Breasted, De hyninis in Solem sub rege Amenophide
IV. coticeptis (Berlin, 1894).
Its Development 6i
trees and herbs are green, the birds flutter from their
nests, and their wings praise thee. The lambs leap
in the meadows, all insects and all things that fly are
alive when thou shinest upon them."
So, too, the sun wakes life in the waters : " the
ships sail to and fro, to North and South ; the fishes
swim before thee in the river, and thy beams pierce
to the midst of the sea." All men and animals were
created by the sun : " he quickens the child in his
mother's womb," and ''when the child comes forth into
the world on the day of his birth, then thou openest
his mouth so that he speaketh." It is Aton again, that
" giveth the breath of life to the chick piping in his
broken egg-shell. . . . How manifold are the
things which thou hast made ! According to thine own
wish hast thou created the earth, with man and all cattle
and all small creatures, with all things that go upon
feet or fly in the air, the land of Syria and the land of
Ethiopia, besides the land of Egypt. Thou settest each
thing in his place, thou satisfiest his needs. The tongues
of men are divers in speech, and their outward favour
differeth in colour. So didst thou divide all peoples."
As Aton created men, so, too, does he nourish
them ; foreigners by the rain, the Egyptians by the
Nile, the "heavenly Nile." The god is praised,
lastly, because he " created the seasons," the winter
cold and the summer heat :
" Thou madest the distant heaven, to shine therein,
62 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
and to behold all thou hast created. Thou art the only
one ; thou shinest in thine own likeness as the living ball
of the sun, thou risest and sendest forth thy beams ;
cities and villages, the tribes of the Bedouins, and the
rivers, all eyes look upon thee when thou, the sun, art
above the earth by day."
This hymn is one of the most beautiful of those
preserved to us from Egyptian literature ; but it
contains no particularly original thoughts. Most of
it might have stood very well in an old orthodox
hymn to the sun, composed before the Reformation.
'The important dogma in the new faith is that which
maintains Aton to be the creator, orderer, and
governor of the whole world and not of Egypt alone.
He was the King of the All ; and this attribute was
expressed in a naive fashion by enclosing his name,
like that of an earthly Pharaoh, in an oval ring, and
by the addition of a number of epithets, such as
*' the living globe of the sun, the lord of all which
the globe of the sun compasses, who illuminates
Egypt, the lord of the sun's rays.'
I
polytheistic ideas, and sought to establish in their
stead practically a pure, if somewhat crudely ma-
terial monotheism. But what was expelled by one
door was readmitted by another; the king himself
was raised to the rank of a god, his cult was set up
' Above all, the " doctrine " made a clean sweep of
Its Development 63
in different places, and priests appointed for his
worship. Moreover, the new faith, even after its
recognition as the religion of the state, was not ex-
empt from doctrinal change. This appeared in the
fact that the name of Aton was varied ; he received
a still stranger title than before, which ran as follows :
" Re [the sun] lives, the prince of the two horizons,
he who exults on the horizon, in his name ' Flame
that comes from the sun.' "
Another point at which the new doctrine broke
with tradition was the external form in which the
god was conceived. At the beginning of the Re-
formation, during the early years of the reign of
Amenophis IV., Aton, as I have already mentioned,
was still represented in the same manner as the
old Re-Horus ; but in the monotheistic state-re-
ligion every personal representation of the deity
was rejected, every image or likeness of a god re-
moved. Worship was paid solely to the visible,
light-giving sun. This is portrayed as a round disc,
from which proceeded long rays, ending in hands
which hold out the symbols of life to the king and
his family as the representatives of humanity.^
No energetic resistance seems to have been
' C/. Lepsius, Denkmdler^ iii., pp. gi-iio; Maspero, Hist, anc,
ii., p. 328 ; Steindorff, Bliitczeit des Fharaonenreichs, pp. 146,
156, 157.
64 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
opposed to the introduction of the new state-reHgion
in any part of the country. At any rate we do
not hear of any insurrectionary movement directed
against the king. The majority of the local ofificials
bowed to the Pharaoh's commands ; those who did
not were reHeved of their posts, possibly even
executed.
But hardly had Amenophis passed to his rest,
after a reign of about eighteen years, when the
storm burst on what had been his reHgious life-
work. The adherents of the old faith, the Theban
priests of Amon at their head, put forth their whole
strength in the effort to restore the banished gods,
to open the old temples once more to the people,
and regain possession of their sequestrated property.
Amenophis's son-in-law and successor — the heretic
king had left no son behind him — sought to resist
the Counter-reformation, but was quickly hurled
from the throne. His successor and brother-in-law,
Tut-enkh-aton, had the shrewdness to see that the
Aton-doctrine could not be maintained as the religion
of the State, and that the only means of retaining
his throne was to make peace with the adherents of
the old faith. He restored the liberty of worshipping
the ancient gods, and publicly professed his devo-
tion to Amon, the god but recently so persecuted.
As Amenophis had once changed his name,
Its Development 65
because it contained the prohibited word " Amon,"
so the new king altered his own name, which was
compounded with " Aton." Henceforth he was
known as *' Tut-enkh-Amon," '' the Hving image of
Amon." Yielding to the pressure of circumstances,
the new Pharaoh abandoned his residence at el-
Amarna, and retransferred his court to the old
capital Thebes. But it was reserved for King
Haremhab, the second successor of Tut-enkh-Amon,
to abolish entirely the state-religion of Amenophis
IV. The temple of Aton, which remained standing
under the immediate successors of the heretic king,
was razed and the ground made smooth where it
had been. Throughout the country an onslaught
was made on the memory of the sun-worshipper, of
his family, and of his god ; their names and por- «'
traits were destroyed wherever they could be laid
hold of.'
Orthodoxy thus gained a complete victory ; but j
the religious life which had put forth its fairest flower
in the new *' doctrine " of Amenophis IV. was thereby
destroyed, and all further development of the faith
checked. Amon-Re was once more the uncontested
lord of the Egyptian gods ; and his zealous priests,
^ As to the history of the heretic kings cf. principally Ed. Meyer,
Geschichte des alien Aegyptens, p. 2t>o ffj Maspero, Hist, anc, ii.,
p. 2>^t ff; Steindorff, Bliltczeit, p. 140^.
5
66 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
continuing the syncretism of the older theology,
were at pains to represent him as the " one and only
god, whose like nowhere exists." The tendency of
the priestly speculations of the reactionary epoch is
exhibited to us by a hymn dedicated to Amon.' I
should like to give you a sample or two, taken from
the abundance of its somewhat inflated verse :
" Praise be to thee " — so it begins — " Amon-Re, thou
bull that art in Heliopolis; lord of Karnak, . . . .
thou Ancient One of the heavens, and most ancient upon
earth, lord of law, father of the gods .... who
hast made the higher and the lower (meaning perhaps the
celestial bodies and mankind), and who givest light to
the world, who makest a prosperous voyage through the
heavens, thou blessed King Re, supreme over the world,
thou that art rich in power, full of strength. . . .
Praise be to thee, thou creator of the gods, thou that didst
lift up the heavens and tread down the earth. .
Thou lord of eternity, that didst create the eternal
. . . . thou comely king that art crowned with a
white crown, thou lord of splendour that createst light,
to whom the (very) gods vouchsafe praise. Praise be to
thee. Re, lord of right, whose holiness is hidden, thou
lord of the gods ; thou art Kheperi in thy vessel; at thy
command the gods arose; thou art Atum that didst create
mankind. Thou only art he that created whatsoever is; men
came forth from thine eye, and the gods from out of thy
' Papyrus in Cairo (Bulak), No. 17, published by Mariette ;
Papyrus de Boulag, ii., pi. 11 ff.; cf. Grebaut, Hynine a Amtnon-Ra
(Paris, 1874) ; Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians,
pp. 111-T15.
Its Development 67
mouth. Thou art he that did create green herbs for the
cattle and fruit-bearing trees for men; who giveth a liveli-
hood to the fishes in the river and the birds under the heav-
ens, who lendeth breath to the creature that is still within
the egg, and nourisheth the son of the worm; that giveth
life to the flies as to the worms and the fleas; he pro-
videth that which the mice have need-of in their holes.
. . . Praised be thou that didst create all this. Thou
king, supreme among gods, we worship thee because thou
didst make us, we extol thee because thou hast fashioned
us; we bless thee because thou dwellest among us."
In all the phrases, as you doubtless perceive, there
is manifest a distinct strain of monotheistic sentiment.
But it is only sentiment ; for in practice the worship
of the ancient gods was clung to more firmly than
ever, while, by the side of Amon, Re-Horus of
Heliopolis and Ptah of Memphis retained their high
place in the Egyptian Pantheon and were extolled
in hymns similar to this.
It is true that in addition to those already named,
only one other ancient Egyptian deity. Set, re-
ceived special honour within a short period, under
the rule of the Ramessidae. Originally the local
god of Ombos in Upper Egypt, he had become,
as far back as the primitive age, the patron of the
southern kingdom. He had been received into
the '' Great Ennead " of Heliopolis, and played an
important part in the Osiris-myth. His worship,
68 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
moreover, had become domiciled in the eastern
Delta, especially in the cities of Tanis and Auaris.
He had thus become patron of Eastern Egypt,
and, crossing the border, had taken under his pro-
tection the Syrian dominions of the Pharaoh. At
Auaris, where the Hyksos-kings had set up their
court after their conquest of Egypt, he had also be-
come the patron of the barbarians, and again the op-
ponent of Re-Horus, who stretched a protecting
hand over the Egyptians and led them to battle
against the national foe. Set became, in fact, identi-
fied with Baal, the protector of the Syrian tribes and
cities. But still he was and remained an Egyptian
divinity, and continued to receive worship in his
ancient cities. The kings of Dynasty XIX., on
grounds we are now unable to determine with any
certainty, even regarded him as their ancestor, and
numerous members of their family derived their
names from him — e. g., Sethos, "■ he who belongs to
Set," and Setnakht, " Set is strong." But when
Ramses II. fixed his residence temporarily on the
eastern frontier of Egypt, at Tanis (the biblical Zoan),
the renown of Set, who was worshipped in that
city, was even further increased ; he became one of
the chief gods, by the side of Amon, Re-Horus
and Ptah, while in the place of his old shrine a
new and magnificent temple was built for him,
Its Development 69
the mighty ruins of which still attest its former
splendour.
In the period of the New Kingdom, when Egypt
was in closer relation with the neighbouring lands of
Western Asia, many foreign deities found an en-
trance and a hospitable reception not only from
barbarians settled in Egypt but also from the
strictly orthodox Egyptians themselves. This was
especially the case with the Baalim, who were iden-
tified with Set and worshipped in the form of the
same monstrous beasts as he was ; further, there was
Astarte, who, like the Babylonian deity, was repre-
sented as a naked woman standing upon her sacred
animal, the lion, or else with a lioness's head, accord-
ing to the Egyptian fashion. We find the warlike
Reshep, adorned with helmet and lance, as also the
urban goddess, Kadesh, who is addressed, like the
Egyptian Hathor, as " Lady of the heavens,"
'' Ruler of all gods," as the '' Eye of the Sun-god," as
the "Daughter of Re and beloved of the Sun-god."
Anat, the Syrian goddess of war, also won for her-
self a place in the Egyptian temples, and acquired
such popularity that Ramses II. named after her
his favourite daughter, Bint-Anat, " daughter of
Anat."
But in the first millenium before Christ, when the
friendly relations of Egypt to Syria and Palestine
70 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
were gradually falling off, Set, too, declined in repu-
tation, as being the patron of the Asiatics, and the
Egyptians began to regard him solely as the pro-
tector of their enemies. Not only so, but the priests
gave practical effect to the position which Set occu-
pied in the Osiris-legend, and inclined to regard him
more and more as the incarnation of all evil. He
had slain Osiris and sustained a severe contest with
the avenger Horus. He thus became the adversary
of the sun-god and the representative of darkness,
the lord of the drought and the desert which destroy
all life ; he became the enemy of all good, the Satan
among the gods of Egypt. The end of the process
was that Set was expelled from the Pantheon, his
cult abolished, his name and his portraits extermi-
nated wherever found. When the Greeks learned
of him they compared him to Typhon, the mythical
adversary of Zeus, who was overwhelmed by a thun-
derbolt after a fierce struggle and hurled down to
Tartarus.
The ejection of Set was the last sign of strong life
given by the dying Egyptian religion. With the de-
cay of the chief city, Thebes, which was accomplished
slowly but continuously after the expulsion of the
Ethiopian kings, the reputation of Amon-Re de-
clined more and more. The residence of the Pha-
raohs, and with it the centre of gravity of the realm.
Its Development 71
was shifted northwards, with the result that the local
gods worshipped in the Delta, Neit of Sais, Bubas-
tis, Anubis, more especially Osiris and his fam-
ily, and Harpokrates, gained greater and greater
acceptance.
The advance of Greek culture introduced the wor-
ship of heroes. Ancient sages to whose graves pil-
grimages had been made since the earliest days, and
who had been revered as the Arabs of to-day revere
their pious sheikhs, were received among the number
of the national deities. Thus Amenothes the son of
Hapu, the famous architect of the third Amenophis,
became a demi-god and was worshipped in several
temples of the western Thebes ; so, too, was deified
the holy Imhotep. This man, a contemporary of the
ancient king Zoser, had also been celebrated as an
architect ; it was believed that he had been the pos-
sessor of great knowledge and had especially distin-
guished himself in the art of healing. His tomb,
which was in the neighbourhood of the sepulchral
pyramid of his king, close to the step-pyramid of
Sakkara, had been already the goal of pilgrims who
there sought healing for their diseases. A temple
was now built there, and divine rites instituted in
honour of the saint. Imhotep was no mere de-
ceased mortal who received sacrifices as did also
other dead men ; he had become a god. The priests
72 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
pronounced him a son of Ptah, and the Greeks iden-
tified him, in accordance with his attributes, with
their god of healing, Asklepios. His worship spread
from Memphis over the whole land ; and even in the
distant island of Philae, situated on the Nubian fron-
tier, a chapel was erected to Imhotep by Ptolemy
Philadelphus/
But all Egyptian gods were thrown into the shade
by the new god, Serapis (better called Sarapis), whom
the first Ptolemy imported into the Nile valley with
mystic solemnity. A vision in a dream, so it was re-
ported, had caused Ptolemy Soter to have the great
god Zeus-Hades carried away from Sinope on the
Black Sea. In the presence of Greek and Egyptian
theologians, among whom was also Manetho, the his-
torian of Egyptian antiquity, the foreign god was es-
corted into Alexandria and acknowledged as Serapis.
Who he really was no one has been able to discover.
At any rate the king's wish was fulfilled, that the new
god should be an object of worship to the Graeco-
Egyptian world, before whom all his subjects might
bow with equal reverence. The Greeks saw in him
the greatest god of the universe, uniting in his own
person Zeus, the god of heaven, Helios, the sun-
god, and Hades, the lord of the under world. The
^ Cf. Sethe, Imhotep der Asklepios cier Aegypten ein vergotterter
Mensch aus der Zcit des Koenigs Doser (Leipzig, 1902).
Its Development 'J2>
Egyptians, on the other hand, were led by a simi-
larity of names to connect him with a god of the
dead worshipped in the necropolis of Memphis, the
Apis-bull deified after death, the Osiris-Apis orOsor-
apis ; and they believed that the new Serapis was
none other than their old Osorapis.^
The cult of Serapis found acceptance in Egypt
with remarkable celerity. It was as if the dwellers
in the Nile valley, both Greeks and Egyptians, had
despaired of the old gods and now yearned for a
new heavenly power. Serapis became the national
god of Graeco-Roman Egypt. But he, too, failed
to infuse new religious life into the people. The
harvest was ripe for the sickle. When in the reign
of Theodosius the Great, the first Christian Emperor,
the Serapis temple at Alexandria sank into ruin,
when the image of the great god — smitten by a
soldier's battle-axe — fell with a crash to the ground,
then, too, Egyptian paganism received its death blow.
The Egyptian religion fell to pieces with Serapis, j
^ Cf. Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des alien Aegyptens, p. 401 f.; Ma- •
haffy, A History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty, p. ^b ff.;
Wilcken in the Archiv fur Fapyrusforschung, iii., pp. 249-251.
T
LECTURE III.
Temples and Ceremonies.
HE Egyptians are exceedingly god-fearing,
more than all other peoples." Such is the
judgment passed by Herodotus in the fifth century
before Christ on the religious character of the inhab-
itants of the Nile valley/ And that which was true
in this late age was equally true in the earlier periods
of Egyptian history. In all ages the Egyptian was
animated by a lively sense of religion. It was al-
ways his zealous endeavour to fulfill the will of his
god, to pay him due reverence, and to commit no
sacrilege in his sanctuary.
One room of an Egyptian house would contain a
small chapel with an image or likeness of the god,
where the family would offer prayer and sacrifice.
Outside in the streets there would stand little
shrines ; in the fields there would be altars on
which the husbandman would deposit his offerings.
Ancient Egypt probably presented an aspect like
that of a Catholic country in modern Europe, in
' Herodotus, ii., 37.
74
Temples and Ceremonies 75
which images of saints and chapels meet us at every
step. The minor centres of worship, it is true, have
left very few relics that have been preserved down
to the present time ; only the great temples are
represented by ruins of any considerable extent.
The oldest form of the Egyptian temple, as it was
in the prehistoric age, is to be ascertained only from
small hieroglyphic pictures. According to these, it
consisted in a little hut, built of wood or lattice-
work. Two large poles were erected before the
entrance, and over the door two staves were placed
obliquely for ornament. The holy place was sur-
rounded by a palisade which prevented unauthorised
persons from entering.*
By the time of the Old Kingdom the temple had
already advanced beyond this primitive form. The
fabric was of bricks or of still more solid material,
limestone or even granite ; the interior was adorned
with colonnades and the walls sculptured in relief.
It must be admitted that we are acquainted with
only one kind of temple belonging to this period,
and that differing considerably in its arrangement
from the usual type.^ I mean the remarkable tem-
ples of the Sun which were erected by the kings of
^ Cp. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 279, 280.
^ I omit here the Pyramid-temples, which were devoted to the
cult of the dead Pharaohs in the Old Empire; on these compare
Lecture IV.
76 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
the Fifth Dynasty in the necropolis of Abusir, about
ten miles to the south of the great Pyramids of
Ghizeh/ One of them, that built by King Newoser-
re, was excavated in the years 1 898-1901, and all its
spaces exposed to view. A gently rising causeway
led from the metropolis in the valley up to the low
eminence on which the sanctuary stood. A magnifi-
cent gatewa/ afforded entrance to a large open court,
in which a huge obelisk stood on a supporting struct-
ure disguised by handsome blocks of red granite. In
front of it was a gigantic altar, composed of great
blocks of alabaster. To the right of the entrance
a covered passage led to the treasure-chambers of
the temple, in which the utensils employed in wor-
ship and other valuables were preserved. To the
left, a corresponding passage followed the southern
wall, then, bending northwards, led to the sub-
structure of the obelisk, and there, winding like a
spiral staircase, ascended to a platform in the open.
At the foot of the obelisk was a small chapel, adorned
with graceful sculptures in relief. All of these re-
presented the various ceremonies performed on the
occasion of the king's Jubilee, and among them the
laying of the foundation-stone of the Sun-temple
* Cp. Zeitschrift fiir aegypt. Sprache und Alter turn skunde , vol.
xxxvii. (i8gg), p. iff.; vol. xxxviii. (1900), p. 94 ^.y vol. xxxix.
(1901), p. 9ijf.
Temples and Ceremonies '^^
played a great part. The chapel itself, as has
been conjectured with great probability, was the
vestry used by the Pharaoh at his Jubilee, in
which he was adorned with the different festive-
garments.
Of the great sanctuaries of the Middle Kingdom,
built in the first half of the second millennium be-
fore Christ in the various chief cities of the land,
Thebes, Koptos, Medinet-el-Fayoum, Bubastis, and
Tanis, none has been preserved entire ; they were
mostly destroyed in the troubled times of the Hyksos
rule, and wh^t^mained of them was used over again
in building new temples. So much, however, isjcUaf,^
namely, that in their construction the plan followed
by the later sanctuaries had already been adopted.
Let us now endeavour to realise to ourselves what
this type was/
A paved road bordered by Sphinxes or other
recumbent animal figures led through the ancient
city to the holy precinct, the Temenos, which was
enclosed by a wall of bricks. Entrance was afforded
by a stone gateway with a fluted projection bearing
the symbol of the winged sun. Passing through, we
have before us a great pylon, a huge gate flanked by
' Cp. the plan of the small temple of Ramses III. or the temple of
Khons, built by the same king in Karnak; Baedeker's Egypt, 5th
edition, p. 247 and p. 243^.
78 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
two towers, placed before the narrow frontage of the
temple. Within, we see first a wide, open court,
with colonnades on several of its sides. In the midst
of it is the great altar, round which the faithful gather
on days of festival. They were not allowed to
penetrate further into the temple. Adjoining this
columned court, in the direction of the long axis
of the building, is the temple proper, standing on
an artificial platform. It must have contained at
least three main spaces. First was an ante-chamber
or 7tp6vao<^y with a roof supported by columns ;
beyond that the hypostyle or hall of columns. Gen-
erally this took the form of a triple basilica, with
a lofty central nave supported by columns and two
lower naves on each side. From it access was
gained to the Holy of Holies, the true dwelling
place of the godhead. This consisted, as a rule, of
three chapels placed side by side. The middle one
housed the image of the chief god — at Thebes, for
example, that of Amon. In the other two the ac-
cessory deities — at Thebes Mut and the moon-god
Khons — found a resting-place.
The whole design of the temples resembled
that of an ancient Egyptian house occupied by a
private citizen.^ This, too, was divided into three
parts lying one behind another: a reception-space
^ Herodotus, ii., 153.
Temples and Ceremonies 79
analogous to the npovao^y a banqueting hall, and
the private apartment of the householder. In view of
this similiarity the Egyptians were fully entitled to
designate the temple as the " House of the God." But
just as an Egyptian of rank would hardly have been
content with three rooms, so the god, as a rule, was
allowed more chambers in his temple than those I
have described. Thus the hall of columns was com-
monly separated from the Holy of Holies by addi-
tional halls ; while smaller rooms, often to the number
of dozens, were built against its sides. More particu-
larly, the later temples contained a special sanctuary
placed before the Holy of Holies. In it was pre-
served the sacred boat, within which was a special
image of the god.
Besides these temples of simple design there were
others of greater size and complexity. I need only
mention those of Luxor and Karnak, which cannot
be made to conform to the type which I have de-
scribed. The singularity of their plan may be ex-
plained by the fact that they were not constructed
from a single design, but owed their form to the
projects of several different architects. Each of
these wished to build himself a specially magnificent
monument in the form of an addition to the temple,
and, in doing so, to surpass the work of his predeces-
sors. In this manner the temple at Karnak acquired
8o The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
no fewer than five gateways, one behind another,
while the temple at Luxor was provided with as
many as three great courts.
The sacred animal, in which the deity had his
earthly residence, was also, as a rule, lodged in a
special house near the temple. Thus Apis, the sacred
bull of Memphis, had his abode near the temple of
Ptah, of whom he was the incarnation. In a later age
this abode was rebuilt for him by King Psammetichus,
and consisted of an open court surrounded by a hall.
Its roof was supported by pillars against which stood
statues of kings and gods ; while the walls, just as
in the case of a temple, were adorned with paintings
and reliefs. Similarly, in the city of Arsinoe, in the
district of the P'ayoum, there was a lake close by the
temple of the god Sobek in which the sacred animal,
the crocodile, was kept.
" It was fed," so we are told by the Roman traveller
Strabo, who visited Egypt in the reign of Augustus, *' on
bread, meat, and wine, brought by the strangers who
came to see it. Our host accompanied us to the lake,
taking with him a small cake from his meal, with some
roast meat and a flask of wine. We found the animal
lying on the bank ; the priests came forward, and while
one of them held his mouth open another pushed in the
cake, then the meat, and poured the wine after them.
The crocodile then jumped into the lake and swam to
the opposite bank. Another stranger now appeared bear-
Temples and Ceremonies 8i
ing a similar gift. The priests took it from his hands, ran
round the lake and fed the animal as before." *
Outside the house of the god proper, but within
the large walled-in temple-precinct, there would also
be found several chapels, the priests' lodgings, ex-
tensive farm-buildings, granaries, stalls, gardens, and
ponds, so that the whole may well have presented
the aspect of a small city.
All the smooth surfaces in an Egyptian temple,
the masonry of the pylon, the walls of the courts,
the halls and the other enclosures devoted to worship,
were from the earliest days covered with pictorial
representations and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The
outer walls, those of the pylon and the courts, those
parts of the sanctuary, that is to say, which were ex-
posed to the profane gaze of the multitude, Vv^ere
employed for the glorification of things secular : the
great deeds of the King in battle against his enemies,
great festivals, or other important events of his reign.
Thus in the temple of Deir-el-Bahri, at Thebes, we
find immortalised on the wall of one of the courts that
trading expedition which in the time of Queen Hat-
shepsowet travelled to Punt, the distant, legend-en-
circled land of frankincense, and returned to the
chief city of the empire laden with all manner of
marvellous things. Here everything was designed
^ Strabo, xvii., i, 38.
82 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
to give the beholder a conception of the might and
majesty of the Pharaoh.
On the other hand, the inner walls of the temple
proper were devoted to the representation of the
sacred ceremonies which were performed in the
edifice. We there see the king in festive-garb,
standing before the god, to whom he offers in-
cense, pours out water, or brings gifts of wine,
milk, cakes, and garlands of flowers. In return the
god presents him with life, the most precious of all
gifts, which is symbolised by a hieroglyphic signify-
ing " life." Other representations show us Pharaoh
being crowned by the guardian gods of the South
and the North, or the chief god of the temple is in-
scribing his name on the leaves of a sacred sycamore,
in order to insure the perpetual continuance of his
government. Many of these delineations have a
purely decorative purpose ; others, however, relate
to the rites proper to the particular portion of the
temple in which they are found. In the reception-
hall, for example, we frequently see the king bein^
sprinkled with holy water by the gods Horus an4
Thout, after which he is conducted into the divine
presence, purified from the dust of every-day life.
Or we see him in the Holy of Holies, performing all
manner of ceremonies before the sacred boat of the
divinity.
Temples and Ceremonies 83
It must be confessed that there is little variety in
these delineations, especially in the temples of the
later period, and the accompanying inscriptions are
no less tedious in their monotony. These reproduce
the various speeches addressed by the king to the god
and by the god to the king. The Pharaoh informs
the god a hundred times that he has brought him
incense or loaves or wine ; and the god replies with
similar iteration that he will bestow on the Pharaoh
" all life, all security, all continuance, all health, and
all gladness of heart," or that he will " prolong his
years everlastingly and give him sovereignty over a
rejoicing world."
Of the sacred utensils used in divine worship, the
golden pitchers and goblets, the receptacles for the
prayer and service books, the vessels for holding in-
cense, and so on, but little has been preserved to us.
Vast as was the number of these articles kept in the
great sanctuaries of the country, mostly as the gift
of the Pharaohs, they have all fallen a welcome prey to
invaders and temple-robbers during the great revo-
lutions which have convulsed the land. The same
fate has visited the most valuable possession of the
temples, the sacred bark with the divine image. For
where this image was not a simple primitive fetish,
it was wrought out of gold, silver, or gilded bronze ;
while the sacred boat, in which the god was borne in
84 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
solemn processions, was fabricated of costly mate-
rials and adorned with gold, silver, or precious stones.
The architectural and sculptural adornments of
the temples are represented by more ample remains ;
in many places the slender obelisks, raised, it would
appear, by the kings on the jubilee of their reign,
still stand before the entrance gateway ; there, too,
as also in the courts and halls, the stone statues of
the gods and Pharaohs are still erect and imposing.'
Any one who reads the inscriptions on these monu-
ments, or even regards the pictures and reliefs on
the temple walls, may easily derive the impression
that the sanctuary was built solely for the greater
glory of the Pharaoh, and that he was the only man
to whom any familiar intercourse with the gods was
granted. In theory it probably was so ; the king
alone had the right to serve the god without inter-
mediary, to behold him and speak with him. But in
practice it was generally otherwise. It is only on
rare occasions that we hear of such exclusive rights
being reserved for himself by a ruler. When the
Ethiopian king, Piankhi, marched from the south
with his victorious army into the heart of Egypt
about the middle of the eighth century, he came to
Heliopolis, among other places, and paid his formal
visit to the celebrated sanctuary of the sun-god.
^ E. g., in the temple of Luxor; cf. Baedeker, p. 239.
Temples and Ceremonies 85
" He ascended the steps to behold the Sun-god in the
Holy of Holies. The King stood there alone ; he un-
sealed the bolt, opened the folding doors, and beheld his
father Re [the Sun-god] in the glorious Holy of Holies ;
he beheld, also, the morning bark of Re and the evening
bark of Atum. Then he closed the folding doors again,
laid clay thereon, and sealed it with his royal seal.
Thereupon he gave command to the priests : ' I have
[laid hereon] my seal, and of all the men that shall be
no-one of the other kings shall enter.'
f >> 1
As a rule the priests also held converse with the
god, being, as it were, the king's representatives.
It was their task to care for the god's needs, to
clothe him, to rouge him, to place his adornments
upon him, to cleanse his private apartment, the Holy
of Holies, and perfume it with incense. And if at
the royal court all intercourse with the earthly
sovereign was regulated by the strictest ceremonial,
how much stricter must have been the rules observed
in the divine presence ! A fixed ritual governed the
ceremonies and formulae of greeting with which it
was necessary to approach and serve the deity.
There were no fewer than sixty rites which the
priests of the Theban Amon were required to per-
form ; the hierophants of Osiris at Abydos had
easier duties, for here the number of separate rites
did not exceed thirty-six. During the performance
^Inscription of Piankhi, 1., 103^.
86 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
of each ceremony a particular formula was required
to be recited, the exact knowledge of which was in-
dispensable ; not infrequently it was inscribed on
the temple wall itself, and the priest with his know-
ledge of hieroglyphics might read it thence.
When, for example, the priest entered the hall of
columns, censer in hand, at Abydos, it was his duty
to repeat the follow^ing words :
" I come out before thee, thou great one, having first
cleansed myself ;
"When I passed by the goddess Tefnut she cleansed
me. . . .
" I am a prophet, and the son of a prophet of this
temple ; . . .
" I am a prophet, and come to do that which ought to be
done, but I come not to do that which ought not
to be done."
After that, when the priest arrives at the chapel
itself where the god has his seat, he must first of all
break the clay-seal with which the bolt is secured,
and, as he does so, recite a sentence:
" The clay is broken and the seal destroyed that this
door may be opened, and all the evil that is upon me I
thus throw to the ground."
To the accompaniment of similar speeches the
door is opened, the priest greets the urseus-serpent
which guards the god, and now sets foot in the Holy
Temples and Ceremonies 87
of Holies. He approaches the divine image and
commences its toilet, which will have differed little
from that of a mortal man. First, the god is dis-
robed ; every act accompanied, of course, by the ap-
pointed sentence. The old rouge is removed and
the garments taken off. The priest then clothes
the god in clean raiment, lays on fresh rouge, and
adds all manner of adornments. When the god is
once more in perfect trim, the priest leaves the
apartment and reseals the door. And this divine
toilet was gone through every morning with the
same circumstantiality ! It was much the same with
the daily cleansing and fumigation of the chapel.'
But clothing and lodging were not the only needs
of the god for which provision had to be made ;
above everything he must be kept supplied with
food and drink. This alimentary problem occupied
at all times a great (perhaps the greatest) space in
the service of the god. Originally it was no doubt
solved by the pious gifts of private persons, who
brought to the god the first fruits of their fields and
gardens, together with what was best in the products
of their houses. But, later, these private gifts were
thrown into the shade by the rich offerings which
came from the state, that is, from the king,
'Cp. Mariette, Abydos, i., 34^/ Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt,
273/".
88 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
to the temples throughout the land. Vast quanti-
ties of incense, of flowers for the adornment of the
altars, of honey, loaves, cakes, cattle, poultry (more
especially geese), beer, and wine were employed in
this manner. Of all this the smallest portion, it is true,
was employed for the benefit of the god himself, in the
different incense and drink offerings. The slaugh-
tered animals were no doubt laid upon the altar in
the temple court, but they were not then consumed
by fire as burnt-offerings, in the manner common
among other peoples. The greater part of the food
and drink that came to the temples was used rather
for the sustenance of the priests and the lower temple
officials. Besides, out of the mass of offerings which
were received on the great festivals of the year, a large
part was employed in the entertainment of visitors
to the temple. The divinity, whose house the sanctu-
ary was, extended to his guests the same friendly
hospitality as a mortal householder in his own home.
" Of feasts there were many, in every year, in every
temple."' Herodotus, in a later age, can still report
that the Egyptians assemble together to keep festi-
val, not once, but frequently, in the course of a year.^
On these occasions festival plays were generally en-
acted. As in the mediaeval mysteries or the passion
plays of to-day, the priests gave representations of
^ Herodotus, ii., 59.
Temples and Ceremonies 89
episodes in the history of the god in whose honour
the feast was held. Thus at Abydos the fortunes
of Osiris were brought on the stage ; the god was
escorted from his temple in the city to his grave out
in the desert, and there the great battle in which the
god had smitten his enemies was set forth by priests
and people in a living reproduction.'
There were processions, also, in which one god
solemnly visited another in his temple, and there, as
a matter of course, was entertained, along with his
escort, with meat and cakes. Among these festivals
there are some of which we learn something from
the delineations on the temple walls ; for example,
the great sacrificial feast in honour of the old har-
vest-god, Min, was celebrated at the same time as the
king's coronation with great pomp.^
Concerning a few feasts we have more exact in-
formation, and we know how they were kept in a
later age in the cities of Lower Egypt, Bubastis,
Busiris, Sais, Buto, and other places, in honour of the
respective local divinities.^ One of the most popular
of them was that held in honour of Bastet at Bubas-
tis in the Delta. Thither, as Herodotus* tells us, the
' Cp. Heinrich Schaefer, Die Mysterien des Osiris in Abydos unter
Konig Sesostris III. (Leipzig, 1904), p. 20^.
2 Lepsius, Denkm., iii., 162-164, 212, 213; Wilkinson, Costumes
and Alanners, iii., pi. xl. Cp. Erman, Life, p. 65^.
2 Herodotus, ii., 59-64. ^Herodotus, ii., 60.
QO The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
participants, men and women, came in boats, even
from great distances. It was an exceedingly jovial
feast, and the pilgrims began having a good time
while still on the way. The sounds of song and
music floated over the waters. The women had
rattles, the men played flutes, others sang or kept
time by clapping their hands. The party would
land at villages which they passed and play all man-
ner of pranks. When at length the goal, Bubastis,
was reached, great sacrifices would be offered, and
" at this feast more wine went than throughout the
rest of the year." No fewer than 700,000 persons
are said to have taken part in one of these feasts,
and, though this number may be exaggerated,
Bubastis certainly harboured within its walls on such
festal days as many visitors as, say, the modern
Egyptian town of Tanta does at the present time
on the occasion of the yearly market coupled with
the birthday feast of its saint.
There were numerous hymns and spiritual songs
in which the gods were extolled by priests and peo-
ple. Many of them breathe sincere religious feel-
ing, and exhibit a poetic fervour which awakes a
response even in the modern reader ; in most, how-
ever, the deeper meaning is overborne by a quite
intolerable flood of continually recurring phrases.
In my second lecture I have already quoted to you.
Temples and Ceremonies 91
samples from this branch of literature ; perhaps you
will be disposed to listen to a few more and form an
idea for yourselves of the form and contents of these
poems.
To begin with, I will translate to you some lines
from a hymn to the god Thout, the Greek Hermes,
in which he is praised first as the god of the moon,
then as the god of scholars and as a judge ^ :
" I come to thee, thou bull among the stars,
Thout, thou moon that art in heaven :
Thou art in heaven, yet thy splendour rests upon the
earth,
Thy ray lighteth Egypt.
Praised be thou, thou lord of the hieroglyphs,
Thou judge in heaven and upon earth ;
Thou who givest words and writing,
Who bestowest goods and fillest houses.
Who teachest the knowledge of the gods, what is due
to them."
Again there is beauty of expression and truth of
feeling in a prayer which is addressed to Amon-Re,
the king of the gods, and which extols him as the
great pantheistic deity ^ :
"O my God, Lord of the gods, Amon-Re of Thebes,
Stretch out thy hand to me, save me ;
Rise up for me [as the sun, that is], revive me.
^Cp. Zeitschrift fiir dgypt. Sprache, 1895, p. 21.
^Inscription on a wooden statue in the Berhn Museum; cp. Aus-
fuhrliches Verzischuis der aegypiischen Altertunner^ 2d ed., p. 142,
143 (No. 6gio).
92 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Thou art the one god that hath no equal,
The sun that riseth in the heavens,
[The god] Atum, who created man.
Thou hearest the prayer of him that calleth upon
thee,
Thou deliverest man from the hand of the mighty , . .
Thou givest breath to that which is still in the egg,
to men and to birds ;
Thou makest that whereof the mice have need in
their holes, and the worms and the fleas."
Many of these phrases are specially applicable to the
sun-god, and resemble those in the great hymn
of the heretic king of which you heard in my last
lecture.
In the earliest times the functions of religion were
not yet the exclusive concern of a special priest-
hood, but were the common property of the whole
people. It is true that each temple had its staff of
officials who offered sacrifices and permanently at-
tended to the service of the god ; at the same time
every person of rank, in addition to his secular call-
ing, was invested with some religious office. These
sacerdotal functions were often connected with the
civil office of the man who performed them ; judges,
for example, were frequently also priests of Maat, the
goddess of justice, and the local princes were often
at the same time the high priests of the guardian
gods who protected their respective districts.
Temples and Ceremonies 93
The statement of Herodotus ^ that no woman could
hold the priestly office in the service of either a god
or a goddess is certainly not true of the earliest
period of Egyptian history. Women were then
often employed in the temples, and we find frequent
mention of priestesses, more especially in connection
with the worship of goddesses, such as Hathor and
Neit.
Under the Middle Kingdom the number of pro-
fessed priests was still small relatively to the lay ele-
ment. Often there were only two of them, and at
most they hardly exceeded five. In addition to these
there were naturally various minor ecclesiastics, door-
keepers, watchmen, and workmen of all kinds. In
certain temples the official priesthood included the
" high priest," or, as he is called in Egyptian, " the
prefect of the prophets." But as a rule this office
was filled by a layman, who, by an old custom, was
the governor of the district. The latter thus pos-
sessed not only the highest legal and administrative
power in his nome, but was also ecclesiastically su-
preme ; it was his duty to attend to the interests of
religion within his jurisdiction, and this addition to
his functions no doubt brought him not only honour
but considerable pecuniary advantages as well. A
functionary who was everywhere a member of the
' Herodotus, ii., 35.
94 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
professional priesthood was the " first priestly lector"
of the temple. He was the trained theologian of
the college, the one who possessed a knowledge of
the sacred books, who could write, and, above all,
read. His function was to read aloud from the
sacred books ; he knew the legends of the early ages
and was well versed in the magic texts. What won-
der if he, too, came to be looked upon as a great
wizard, and if the earliest priest-lectors of the primi-
tive age figured in popular tales as having wrought
by their wisdom all manner of wonderful and mys-
terious things ! ^
Besides the professional priesthood there also ex-
isted a numerous army of lay priests, or " hour-
priests," as the Egyptians called them. These men
were organised in a permanent corporation, afifiliated
to the temple. They were divided into four groups,
the so-called pJiylcB^ each one of which was on
duty in the temple for a month at a time, so that
every /^j//^ had three turns in the course of a year.
Each///jj//^ had a special president, and further num-
bered in its ranks a scribe of the temple and a priest-
reader, men, that is to say, who were " scientifically "
educated, and who in civil life were doubtless reck-
oned among the '' scribes " or ofificials.
While, however, the permanent priests enjoyed
' Cp. Erman, Die Mdrchen des Papyrus Westcar., i., p. 2i.
Temples and Ceremonies 95
comfortable salaries, drawn from the manifold reve-
nues of the temple, the lay priests received but
slender remuneration. In fact they derived the
major part of their income from their civil calling,
and could therefore perform their religious functions
in return for only a little pay. Thus we learn from
account-books of the Middle Kingdom that out of
certain revenues belonging to the temple, which were
posted every month, only three portions went to the
prefect of the lay-assistants, while the chief priest-
lector, an ofificial lower in rank but belonging to the
professional priesthood, received double the amount,
or six portions. Moreover, the latter received his
share twelve times a year, while the lay brother,
owing to the monthly rotation of the phylcBj was
only paid three times in the same interval.^
We have now to mention a noteworthy fact In the
history of civilisation, namely, that in the New King-
dom, which followed the expulsion of the Hyksos
from Egypt, a period in which religion was winning
for itself a greater and greater space in public life, the
lay element was practically eliminated from the
priestly office, and divine worship placed entirely in
the charge of the professional priests. It is clear
that the number of the latter must have been very
considerably increased. Many tasks which had
' Cp. Zeitschrift fur dg. Spr., 1 902 (40), p. 113 #•
96 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
formerly been entrusted to the laity now devolved
upon the regulars, and, concurrently with the un-
ceasing accumulation of wealth by the sanctuaries,
administrative functions required the employment
of a great number of workers.
The variety and extent of the functions performed
by individual priests may be clearly seen from the
titles which they bore in addition to their principal
designation.^ Thus the " First Prophet," or the high
priest of Amon, was at the same time the " Great
Superintendent of Works," and in this capacity was
required to take under his charge the extensive build-
ing operations connected with the temple, and " to
provide splendour in his sanctuary." As '' General
of the Troops of the God " he commanded the mili-
tary forces of the temple, like a mediaeval archbishop,
and as " Prefect of the Treasury " had under his con-
trol the by no means simple administration of the
finances. Nor did his authority extend only over
the Amon temple and its priesthood. He was also
" Prefect of the Prophets of the Gods of Thebes "
and ** Prefect of the Prophets of all Gods of the South
and the North." This can mean nothing else than
that all the priests of the country were subordinate
to him and that he was the supreme spiritual author-
ity of the realm. Of this power he knew how to
' Cp. Erman, Zi/c in Ancient Egypt, p. 293^.
Temples and Ceremonies 97
make good use ; and it not infrequently happened
that the offices of high priest in other temples, for
example, that of the sun-god of Heliopolis, together
with his special subordinate, members of the college
of Amon, were filled in accordance with his choice.
In this manner not only was great political power
concentrated in the hands of the Theban priesthood,
but great material advantages accrued to it as well,
since the rich revenues of the old temple-lands flowed
into the chest of a single body of priests. The danger
thus occasioned to the State as a whole will become
apparent to us later on.
By a happy accident we have fairly exact in-
formation on the steps by which the highest posts
in the Egyptian hierarchy were attained.^ Beken-
khons, who was high priest of the Theban Amon in
the reign of Ramses II., that is, in the thirteenth
century before Christ, tells us in his autobiography
that as a boy he received a military education in
one of the king's stables from his fifth to his fif-
teenth year. At the age of sixteen he entered the
service of the most celebrated of all Egyptian tem-
ples, and here became, in the first place, a simple
priest. ' At twenty he had worked through this lowest
sacerdotal stage, and now rose to the next highest
^ Cp. The inscription on the statue of Bekenkhons in the Glypto-
thek of Munich ; Erman, /. <-., p. 294/",
7
98 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
position, that of a " father of the god." For twelve
years he performed the duties of this office ; then,
at the age of thirty-two, he was promoted to the
ranks of the " prophets " ; he was third prophet
for fifteen years and second prophet for twelve.
Finally, in the fifty-ninth year of his life, he was
chosen by the royal favour to be high priest, to be
" the first prophet of Amon and the prefect of the
prophets of all gods." In this capacity he then
showed himself " a good father to his subordinates ;
he educated their youth ; he stretched out his hand
to those who would have fallen, and succoured those
who were in need."
Not every one, of course, followed so brilliant a
career as our Bekenkhons. Just as has always
happened in other parts of the world, most of those
who devoted themselves to the priesthood, unless
they possessed eminent gifts or enjoyed influential
protection, must have spent their lives in the lower
ecclesiastical positions, and been content to lead, in
the shelter of the temple walls, a peaceful and com-
fortable existence free from everyday cares.
In the earlier period, when the professional priests
were still few in number, they differed but little
from the rest of mankind in their outward aspect.
It was only the high priests of the great national
sanctuaries that wore definite insignia as tokens of
Temples and Ceremonies 99
their dignity. Thus the high priest of the god Ptah
of Memphis wore a peculiar neck-ornament. This
was adorned with curiously barbaric figures of
animals, and its archaic style was enough to show
that its origin was not in the historical period but
in the distant primitive past. Among the priests there
were some individuals who wore a panther skin hang-
ing over their shoulders as part of their official dress.
When, in the time of the Middle Kingdom, the
clergy came to be held in higher regard and the
sacerdotal order increased in numbers and power, it
became more and more their endeavour to clothe
themselves in a manner indicating that they were a
class apart from the great mass of mankind. At the
same time they avoided what was fashionable in
dress and remained faithful, like our modern clergy,
to the simple costume of early days. For the sake
of cleanliness the priests abstained from wearing
wigs, and went about with shorn heads.
In a later age, when manners in general were re-
garded as of the utmost importance, and when it was
sought to save the dying nationality by insistence on
ancestral traditions, these externalities were observed
by the priests with greater strictness than before.
" The priests " — so Herodotus bluntly tells us' — "shave
the whole of their bodies once in three days in order
^ Herodotus, ii., 37.
lOO The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
that no vermin or other unseemly creature may be found
upon those who serve the gods ; the priests also wear
only a linen garment and shoes of byblos ; other clothes
or other shoes they are forbidden to put on. Twice a day
they bathe in cold water and twice at night. And there
are yet a thousand other customs to which they must
conform."
Herodotus adds here that on the death of a high priest
his son succeeded him in his office ; but while such
hereditary transmission of office may have been fairly
frequent, it was not the rule. At no period of Egyptian
history was there a permanent sacerdotal caste in the
sense that the son was obliged to be a priest like his
father and could adopt no other profession. But the
possibility was by no means excluded — and where in
the world is the same state of things not to be
observed ? — that a father in the enjoyment of a
lucrative sacerdotal office would see that his son or
sons followed the same vocation ; and in this way
it may v/ell have happened that particular preferments
remained for generations in the possession of a single
family.
The satisfaction of the manifold needs of a god
in the form of offerings, gigantic building operations,
the maintenance of a numerous sacerdotal staff — all
this was naturally impossible without resources of
considerable magnitude. And in fact, the Pharaohs
Temples and Ceremonies loi
made a practice from the earliest times of endowing
the sanctuaries of their land with rich gifts, with
estates and property of all kinds. Special occasion
often arose for making donations of unusual mag-
nitude ; a vow had to be fulfilled, or the deity had
extended some extraordinary favour to the king.
The oldest endowment of the kind about which we
know anything is one dedicated by the primitive
King Zoser to the patron of the cataract-district of
Assuan, the god Khnum. We have a long docu-
ment which relates the occasion of this endowment.'
According to this, in the time of this Pharaoh's reign
the Nile failed to rise for a period of seven years.
In consequence, the severest distress prevailed
in the land, and the king and his court were in the
greatest anxiety. In these straits he turned to the
wise Imhotep, the same who was afterwards deified
as the god of healing, and questioned him upon the
''birthplace of the Nile " and the god who bore rule
there. The sage could not answer the king's ques-
tions on the spot ; he requested leave of absence
in order that he might consult the sacred books
on the subject. He took his departure, but soon re-
turned to the king; and revealed to him " the hidden
'fc>
' The inscription on the " Seven Years' Famine " on the Island of
Sehel ; cp. Sethe, Dodekaschoinos {Untcrs. z. Gesch. und Alter turns k.
Aegyptens, ii.), p. i<)ff.
I02 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
wonders, the way to which had been shown to no
king for unimaginable ages." He related that the
Nile came to light in a city-district in the midst of the
waters ; the name of it was Elephantine, and it was
on the frontier of lower Nubia. The water was
named " The Two Holes," and this was the cradle of
the Nile. Khnum reigned there as god ; his temple
opened towards the south-east. Worship was there
paid also to the goddesses Satis and Anukis, the com-
panions of Khnum, further to the Nile-god and the
deities Show, Geb, Nut, Osiris, and Horus, as also to
Isis and Nephthys. In the neighbourhood of that
island, on the eastern bank, were massive mountains
with all manner of exceedingly hard and precious
minerals, which were in request for all building of
temples in Upper and Lower Egypt, for the tombs of
the kings, and for all kinds of statues — the allusion
is naturally to the fine granite which has from the
earliest times been quarried in the neighbourhood of
Syene, on the east bank of the Nile. In addition,
both on the western and on the eastern bank, as also
on the islands in the river, there were to be found
all kinds of precious stones and minerals, gold, silver,
copper, iron, lapis lazuli, malachite, and so on.
When the king had heard this report of the wise
Imhotep, his heart was glad and he caused a sacri-
fice to be offered '' to the gods and the goddesses
Temples and Ceremonies 103
of Elephantine, whose names have been named
above."
In the night which followed these events the king
had a dream : He saw the god Khnum standing be-
fore him. After he had done him reverence, the god
revealed himself to him, and said :
" I am Khnum, thy creator and protector. I give to
thee the mines and the minerals which throughout all
ages have [never been discovered], and which have
never been worked, for the building of temples and the
repair of what has fallen into decay. For I am the crea-
tor who has created himself, the great primordial ocean
that first arose, the Nile who rises at his pleasure, who
directs every man in his work. ... I have in my
possession the two openings from which the Nile flows.
I know the Nile. ... I will cause the Nile to rise
for thee; in no year shall it fail. The plantations shall
bow beneath the fruit, and men shall rejoice more than
in past times."
Upon these words the king awoke. Rejoicing in
his heart over the promises of the god, he made a
decree in which, out of gratitude to his father Khnum
for that which he had promised to do, he gave to
him the whole region on the eastern and western
banks in the cataract-district.
Such donations of land were probably made to
the temples in all periods ; but in the New King-
dom their possessions were chiefly increased by the
I04 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
dedication to the gods of the greater part of the
booty which was brought to the Nile from distant
lands after the successful campaigns of the kings of
dynasties XVIII. and XIX. It was regarded as the
tribute due to the god by whose aid the victory had
been won. Inscriptions are preserved of Thutmosis
III. and Sethos I. in which the royal gifts of these
Pharaohs to the priests are enumerated.
There is more especially a document of the end
of the reign of Ramses III., that is, dating from
about 1 1 50 B.C., which gives us an excellent idea of
the great riches possessed by the Egyptian temples
at that time.' Their property included no fewer
than 103,175 men, 490,386 head of cattle, 513 gardens,
1,074,418 acres of land, 88 ships, 5i|- dockyards, and
169 townships, situated both in the Nile valley and
abroad. The men who belonged to the sanctuaries
were probably in part slaves captured in war, but in
part, too, they were peasant serfs and artisans. They
were required to work in the fields, to watch the herds,
and, last but not least, — just as we read in the history
of the children of Israel — they rendered obligatory
service in the construction of great temples ; not a
few of them were further compelled to pay tribute in
^ The "Great Harris Papyrus" in the British Museum. Cp.
Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 1(^C) ff; Erman, " Zur Erklarung
At.s.VdL^^XM^WdiXxWi^Sitzungsber.derKgl. Preuss. Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1903, xxi.).
Temples and Ceremonies 105
: ■'•^
gold, silver, and various natural products. If, now, we
take into account the multitude of fields which were
the property of the gods, we are entitled to say that
a relatively large proportion of the land was in pos-
session of the dead hand. By a comparison with
modern statistics it has been calculated that Amon
of Thebes owned, roughly speaking, one-tenth of the
Egyptian soil, and no less than the one-hundredth
part of the population. Next to him the sun-god
Re of Heliopolis and Ptah of Memphis were the
wealthiest gods of the land. The clergy thus ac-
quired an economic preponderance in the state,
which procured them at the same time immense po-
litical power. To what consequences this necessarily
led, we learn from modern examples — I need only
mention Spain. In the end the high priests of
Amon became the most influential persons in the
realm ; and it was thus but a short step to take when,
after the death of the last Ramses, one of them
thrust the heir aside and placed the crown on his
own head. Although the monarchy of the high
priests was not of long duration, this event was the
culminating point in the history of clerical power;
the Church had prevailed over the State, but in so
doing had sealed the death warrant of the national
glory for all time.
LECTURE IV.
Magic Art. — The Life after Death.
THE Egyptians would have been no true
Orientals if they had not, like their Moham-
medan and Christian posterity, been crammed full of
superstition. We find, accordingly, that witchcraft
played a very great part in the whole of ancient
Egyptian life. Charms were the remedies employed
against all manner of evils, the means by which
diseases might be expelled or the favour of a loved
one gained. To smuggle magic figures into an
enemy's house was to procure his illness or disable-
ment. The charms to which recourse was had on
these occasions were by preference connected with
particular episodes in the mythological history of
the gods. It was thought that the same means
which had been employed by divine beings with
happy results would, in similar cases, work equally
well on earth in the hands or the mouths of men.
Here again a prominent position is taken by the
legends of Osiris and Isis and the sun-god Re.
After the tragic death of her husband, the goddess
io6
Magic Art 107
Isis gave birth to a son, Horus, in the swamps of the
Delta. One evening, on returning home from the
fields, she found the boy apparently lifeless. " He
had moistened the earth with the water from his eyes
and the foam from his lips ; his body was stiff, his
heart stood still, no muscle twitched in all his limbs."
A scorpion had stung him. In her anguish of heart
the despairing mother could only beseech the Sun-
god for help. The latter stayed his bark in the
heavens, and sent down Thout, the god of wisdom,
to succour his child. Thout recalled him to life by
magic charms ; and these same charms, it was
thought, which had once saved the young Horus,
would heal in like manner any mortal who had been
stung by a scorpion.^
The greatest magical power, however, was re-
served for those who knew the mystic name of the
almighty pantheistic deity, the sun-god Re. For
long ages this god had with great prudence pre-
served the secret of his name from all save himself,
until Isis, the " great magftian " among the gods,
wrested it from him by a stratagem, and thereby
acquired immense power. An old legend tells us
how she did so.' Once more we are introduced
* Cp. Zeitschr^ f. dgypt. Sprache, 1879 (vol. xvii.), p. iff.
^ Cp. Lefebure in the Zeitschr., 1883 (vol. xxi.), p. 2"] ff.; Erman,
Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 265 ff.
io8 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
to the aged Re, king of gods and men, but now
weakening with years and held in diminished re-
gard. Isis, in particular, no longer admitted his
sovereign rights, and would fain have exercised
equal authority with him in heaven and on earth.
To this end there was but one means : she must
learn the god's numerous names, known only to him-
self, which gave him power over the universe. In
order to possess herself of this secret, she devised a
stratagem. She took saliva, which his divine and
aged majesty had let fall upon the ground, kneaded
it with earth, and so made a serpent. Having made
it, the goddess cast it upon the path by which the
god loved to wander through his kingdom.
One day, when Re had gone out with his train of
attendant gods, this serpent bit him. He cried aloud
with pain, and his cry reached to heaven. His
divine attendants asked anxiously : '* What aileth
thee, what aileth thee?" but he could answer them
nothing. His jaws rattled, the poison seized upon
his flesh. . . . When •the great god had calmed
himself, he called to his escort : '' Come to me,
ye that are sprung from my flesh, ye gods that
went forth from me ! some painful thing hath done
me injury ; my heart feeleth it, but my eye seeth
it not. My hand hath not made it ; likewise I know
not whereby it hath been made. Never before
Magic Art 109
have I felt the like pain ; no sickness is worse than
this. I am a prince, and the son of a prince. . . .
I am he that hath many names, that hath many-
forms. My form is seen in every god. My name
was spoken by my father and my mother. After
that, it was hidden in my bosom by him that begat
me, that no witchcraft might have power over me.
Behold now, when I went forth to look upon that
which I have created, when I walked through the
kingdom which I have made, a thing stung me
which I know not. Is it fire, is it water? My
heart is full of burning, my body trembleth, all my
limbs shudder. Let there be brought hither to me
the children of the gods, they that speak wisdom,
whose mouth is full of understanding, whose power
reacheth to the heavens."
Then the gods came, full of mourning. Isis came,
too, who had wrought all the mischief, she whose
mouth is filled with the breath of life, whose magic
spells destroy pain, whose words awake the dead.
She said : '' What aileth thee, what aileth thee, divine
father ? A serpent hath brought this sickness upon
thee ; a creature which thou hast made hath lifted
up his head against thee. Yet shall it fall by the
might of magic spells ; I will bring it low before the
sight of thy splendour."
The god then tells her the nature of his sufferings.
no The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Isis answers : " Name to me thy name, divine father ;
for he shall live whosoever is called upon by his
name."
To this Re made reply : " I am he that made the
heavens and the earth, that created the mountains
and the living things that are upon them. I made
the waters and the great ocean that was in the be-
ginning. ... I am he that made the heaven
and the secret of its horizon, that gave to the gods
their souls within them. When he openeth his eyes,
all is light ; when he closeth them, there is dark-
ness. The waters of the Nile rise when he com-
mandeth. But the gods know not his name. I
make the hours and the days ; I send the year and
I appoint the time of overflowing ; I make the living
fire. I am the god Kheperi in the morning. Re at
-^ noonday, and Atum in the evening."
Yet the poison did not abate, but took a stronger
hold, and the great god was still sick. Then Isis
said to Re : " That is not thy name which thou hast
spoken. But name it to me, and the poison will
abate. For he shall live whose name is spoken."
The poison burnt more deeply still, and was fiercer
than flame and fire. Then said the Majesty of Re :
" My will is that Isis examine me, and that my name
pass from my bosom to her bosom."
Then the god hid himself from the gods, and the
Magic Art 1 1 1
bark of infinity [that is, the ship of the sun] was
made empty. By a remarkable process the name
of the god was now taken from him ; Isis learned
it and repeated an incantation, with the result that
the poison abated and Re became whole again.
Thus Isis, the great one, the mistress of the gods,
knows the mysterious, magical name of the sun-god ;
and with the same words with which she once drove
the poison out of his body, any one else may now
work marvellous cures of poisonous snake-bites.
The name of Re which the goddess then learned is
unknown to us. But, to judge by what we know of
these magic formulae from Egyptian texts, it is not
probable that any very great wisdom was concealed
in it. As a rule the magicians utter quite meaning-
less abracadabras, arbitrary combinations of sounds,
only intended to have a sufficiently foreign. ring
about them, Phoenician or otherwise.
All these magic arts date back from the earli-
est period of Egyptian history. In the primitive
religious writings which we commonly term the
** Pyramid-texts," we find that snake-charms, for
example, already occupy a very considerable space.
In a later age, toward the end of the New Kingdom,
when religion was degenerating more and more into
the mere rehearsal of a stock of formulae, magic
gained the upper hand altogether and began to play J
112 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
I the principal part in religious life. The faster the
green tree of faith withered, the greater was the
luxuriance with which the unwholesome by-growths
of superstition blossomed forth.
In this category may fairly be placed the observa-
tion of days, the tendency to count particular days of
the year as specially lucky or unlucky. At the present
time, as we all know, Friday, the day on which
Christ was nailed to the cross, is held by many to be
a day of evil omen, on which it is not wise to start
on a long journey or begin an important under-
taking. In a somewhat similar manner, those were
specially marked days for the Egyptians on which
the noteworthy events of their mythology were
supposed to have taken place.
On the first day of the month Mechir the heavens
had been raised aloft, that is, the true creation of
the world had then been accomplished ; it was,
therefore, very naturally regarded as a lucky day,
and so was the 27th of the month Hathor, on which,
according to the legend, Plorus and Set had made
peace with one another and divided the earth be-
tween them. But the 14th of Tybi was an unlucky
day ; on it the sisters Isis and Nephthys had once
chanted the funeral dirge of their murdered brother
Osiris ; on this day, therefore, all music and song
were to be avoided.
Magic Art 113
Particular black days even exercised an influence
over the future. The unlucky child who first saw
the light on the 23d of Paope was destined to be
the prey of a crocodile ; he who was born on the 3d
of Choiak was sure to be deaf, while if his nativity
fell on the 20th of the same month blindness was his
lot. But well for him whose birthday was the 9th of
Paope : it was appointed for him to die full of days.*
All this is confirmed for us by Herodotus when he
writes: "The Egyptians have found out to which
god each month and each day belongs, and how the
destinies of every individual are shaped according to
his birthday, both how he is to die, and what manner
of man he is to be.'"
Soothsaying and divination proper do not seem to
have enjoyed any great vogue in Egypt. It is only
by casual references that we learn of oracles being
received from divine images, and, characteristically
enough, these reports date from the era of religious
decadence. Thus at Thebes the image of Amon,
the great king of the gods, was in the later period
the means of deciding even important questions of
state. When the god had been carried in his bark
^ Cp. the calendar of the Papyrus Sallier 4 in the British
Museum ; Chabas, Le Calendrier des jours fastes et nefastes ;
Maspero, Contes populaires de V Egypte ancienne^ p. lvii,_^.y Erman,
Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 351 f.
^ Herodotus, ii., 82.
8
114 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
by the priests out of his dwelling-place, the Holy
of Holies, the questions to which answers were de-
sired were put to him by the high priest, or else by
the king, and the god made known his opinion by
movements of some kind, perhaps, too, by particular
sounds or words. The priests, no doubt, knew how
to assist the god in giving his reply by means of
invisible threads, or even by a speaking-machine
concealed in the bark.
Responses were delivered in a similar manner at
the celebrated Oracle of Zeus Amon, situated in the
Oasis of Amon in the Libyan desert, the modern
Sive. As every one knows, Alexander the Great
visited this holy place ; and out of the host that
accompanied him there are some who have reported,
as eye-witnesses, the mode in which the divine image
was consulted. It was carried about by the priests
in a golden bark, just as in the Egyptian mother-
country : '' the priests, however, walk without any
will of their own in whatever direction the god leads
them by a sign ; a multitude of women and maidens
follow the procession ; they sing songs of praise,
and extol the god in verses handed down from past
ages." ^ The response, it would appear, was read
from the steps of the priests, which were supposed
to be guided by the deity.
' Diodor, 17, 50.
Life after Death 115
While magic was thus of considerable importance
for the earthly life of an ancient Egyptian, it played
an altogether decisive part in the world of the dead.
All happiness hereafter, even the continued existence
of a human being after death, depended for the greater
part, according to Egyptian ideas, on the knowledge
and application of a host of magical formulae. I
The failure of the Egyptians to think out religious
problems to a clear issue, the confusion of their en-
tire mythology, are features which recur in their
notions of the life after death. To the unsophisti-
cated man there is always something incomprehen-
sible in the sudden cessation of life. He cannot and
will not understand the view that a dear relation, his
father or his mother, his beloved wife, or his friend,
has in this one moment of death been parted from
him for ever. A strong and healthy sense of life
resists with all its force a theory which annihilates
its own individuality, which abolishes its personal
existence beyond recall. The only way in which
man can rejoice in life though his fellows die round
him daily, his only means of reconciliation with
death, is the belief in a personal survival. It is thus
that the Egyptians sought, as other ancient peoples
sought and the moderns seek to-day, to come to
terms with the dark and hidden mystery of death.
It must be admitted that on the how and where
ii6 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
of this survival the Egyptians held different opinions
at different times and places. Their ideas on these
subjects crossed and recrossed each other like the
threads of a tangled skein. In a single text, in a
single prayer or formula, it is not rare to find the
most opposite notions in the closest proximity to
each other.
This state of things, however, is not one at which
we ought to be so very greatly surprised. Take a
funeral-sermon preached by a modern clergyman,
and endeavour to gain from it a clear conception of
the Christian position as regards the last things.
What a wealth of ideas, partly, no doubt, expressed
only in metaphor, you will have to work upon !
The most popular, the most widespread, and at
the same time certainly the oldest of the Egyptian
notions respecting the hereafter was that according to
which after death a human being leads a second life
under the same conditions as those which governed
his first. There is no change of form ; the man, the
woman, the greybeard, the child, live on as such.
The cemetery is their dwelling-place, their home the
tomb. There the husband rules over his wife and
children, and is served by man-servants and maid-
servants. The same joys which made his earthly
life happy are still vouchsafed to him ; above all, it
is as necessary for him as ever that he should both
Life after Death ' 117
eat and drink. His new existence is as dependent
as the old upon the support of food and drink,
without which he must suffer the tortures of hunger
and thirst, and, if he is not to perish miserably, must
seek nourishment in the most disgusting filth — a fate
equivalent to a second death.
Just as a deity needs to be supported by offerings
of food and drink, so is it also with the dead. The
first duty of the relatives is, therefore, to see that
the deceased lacks nothing ; a man who has the
means endows a religious foundation for his own
benefit, and appoints funerary priests to perform the
necessary sacrifices. That which cannot be pro-
vided from the supplies of nature is procured by
magical incantations and prayers. Four deities, the
so-called "Children of Horus," have under their care
the inward parts of man ; on them, too, devolves the
special task of scaring away hunger and thirst from
the dead. Whoever passed by a grave was bound,
if he had any religious feeling, to give a thought to
the welfare of him who rested there ; every sepul-
chral inscription called upon him to recite the estab-
lished formula of invocation which ensured a supply
of provisions for the dead, and which ran thus : *' A
thousand jugs of beer, a thousand loaves of bread, a
thousand head of cattle, a thousand ducks, for the
soul of M or N."
ii8 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
In their own dwelling-place amid the sands of
the desert, situated, in the case of most cities, to
the west, on the left bank of the river, the dead
formed a community to themselves. As such, they
were governed by a special god of the dead ; and as
a rule the guardian of the locality was at the same
time the lord of the departed, the ruler " over them
that are in the west." Just as the destinies of the
hving are entrusted to him, so also the dead are
under his care, and he allows his subjects to partici-
pate in the offerings which are laid upon his table.
At the same time there were many cities in which
the dead were under separate divinities. Thus at
Memphis, for example, we find a god of the dead
named Sokaris. Another guardian of the cemetery
was Anubis, who manifested himself in the form of
a jackal. Just as this animal prowls, spectre-like,
round the graves in the desert during the watches
of the night, seeming to keep watch, as it were, over
the resting-places of the dead, so also did the god, it
was supposed, and in the same form. But at quite
an early period all these local gods of the dead had
already passed into the background, to make way
for a single god who was henceforth for the whole of
Egypt the chief " lord of the Western folk " —
Osiris. But of this more hereafter.
The dead man is not kept a close prisoner in his
Life after Death 119
dark tomb. By day he is free to leave his narrow
house, his grave, his coffin, and to roam at will over
the earth. There, also, it is true, he must guard
against the attack of malicious enemies ; poisonous
snakes, crocodiles, scorpions, lie in wait for him, and
he must be exactly acquainted with the magic form-
ulae which will protect him against these adversaries.
On occasion, too, the dead man will interfere with
those still in the pride of life ; he grudges the living
their happiness, and seeks to draw them over the
border to himself, that he may have new compan-
ions in the West. It is where sickness reigns that
he promises himself the speediest success, and his
appearance there rouses fear and terror. The anx-
ious mother, sitting by the bedside of her sick child,
sees him creep into the house with averted face, and
speaks to him boldly. She says :
" Comest thou to kiss this child ? — I suffer thee not to
kiss him ;
Comest thou to quiet him ? — I suffer thee not to quiet
him;
Comest thou to harm him? — I suffer thee not to harm
him.
Comest thou to take him away ? — I suffer thee not to
take him away."
The mother is also acquainted with a preservative
medicine which she administers to the child : herbs,
I20 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
honey, and fish-bones are among its ingredients.
All these things are horrible to the dead man, and he
flees away.^
Sometimes it is the desire of revenge that brings
the dead back among the living, bent on afflicting
them with all manner of calamities, but more espe-
cially illness. An officer had lost his wife ; shortly
afterwards, when he himself fell ill, he was told by a
magician that this illness was probably the work of
the dear departed. He then wrote her a letter and
deposited it at her grave. It is a pathetic and at the
same time a naive message that he addresses to his
dead wife :
" What evil have I ever done thee that I am now in
such misery ? What have I done to thee that now thou
layest hands upon me ? . . . From the time that
I became thy husband, up to this day, have I ever done
aught that I would have hidden from thee ? Thou be-
camest my wife when I was still young, and I was by thy
side. Then I was appointed to all manner of offices ;
I was still by thy side, I left thee not and brought no
grief into thy heart. . . . And behold, when I gave
instruction to the officers of Pharaoh's foot-soldiers and
to them that fight in his chariots, I caused them to come
nigh, that they might overthrow each other before thy
eyes, and they brought all manner of good things to lay
them down before thee. . . . When thou didst
^ Cp. Erman, Zaubersprische fiir Mutter und Kind, namely,
p. 12/.
Life after Death 121
sicken with the sickness which thou hast suffered, I went
to the chief physician : he prepared medicines for thee
and did all which thou didst desire of him. After that,
when it was required of me that I should journey with
Pharaoh to the South, my thoughts were with thee, and
I lived for the eight months [of separation] having no
desire to eat or to drink. When I returned to Memphis
[the woman having died in the meantime], I besought
Pharaoh and came hither to thee and mourned then
greatly with my people before my house." '
It is hardly necessary, I think, to add another
touch to this charming and characteristic picture, or
to emphasise the features of Egyptian thought and
feeling which it exhibits in so clear a light.
Like many other peoples — I will only mention the
Greeks — the ancient Egyptians believed that a con-
crete entity, impalpable during life, has its residence
in the human body. This soul — so we translate the
Egyptian bai — is during life inseparably connected
with the body, but leaves the corpse at the moment
of death. The favourite mode of representing it
was to give it the form of a heron ; in later times
it appears also as a bird with a human head, in
which the lineaments of the deceased are reproduced.
These human-headed soul-birds were borrowed from \^'
the Egyptians by the Greeks, and the type occurs
' According to a papyrus in Leyden ; cp. Maspero, Etudes e'gypt.
p. 145 ^.y Erman, Life in Ancietit Egypt, ^. 151/.
122 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
frequently in Greek art, for example, in the represen-
tation of the Harpies. Now, the "living soul " of a
man must not be kept at a distance from his body
after death, it must be at hberty, especially by night,
when evil spirits haunt the cemeteries, to return to
the sepulchral chamber and rest upon the body.
For this purpose it is necessary that the soul should
be able to distinguish its own corpse from the others
entombed in the same place, and it was doubtless
to facilitate this task that so much labour was ex-
pended in Egypt on the preservation of dead bodies.
But, besides the soul, there were, according to
Egyptian notions, yet other spiritual entities con-
nected with man. What exactly was their relation
to the soul, we are unable to determine. The
most important of them, one, too, of which frequent
mention is made in the texts, is the so-called Ka.
In my opinion it is not, as is commonly supposed, a
kind of ethereal facsimile or double of the man, but
a guardian spirit or genius. Born with the man, it
accompanies him invisibly through life, and even
after death its protecting care does not cease.
We have seen that the dead man is able to leave
his house by day. But he can do more ; he can
assume different shapes at pleasure, transform him-
self into this or that kind of creature. Not that such
a change is effected by his mere wish ; he must know
Life after Death 123
the particular magic formula appropriate to his
choice. By reciting this, he may become a swallow,
a sparrow-hawk, or a heron ; a ram, a crocodile, or
even a flower.
These ideas no doubt became known in later times
to the Greek scholars who made pilgrimages, in
search of wisdom, to the priestly schools of Egypt ;
and I think it not improbable that the doctrine of
the transmigration of souls held by various philos-
ophers, Pythagoras and Plato, for example, owed
something to their influence. Fundamentally, how-
ever, the two theories are entirely different. Accord-
ing to the Egyptian belief, the soul or the deceased
man himself assumes different forms quite at his own
will, much as in our fairy-tales the great wizard can
transform himself into a lion or a mouse. But the
Greek doctrine — like the Indian — teaches that these
migrations through good and evilsbeasts, which the
soul is compelled to perform after death, are a means
of purification, that it thereby expiates sins com-
mitted on earth and is gradually cleansed.
In all this confusion of ideas there is one constant
feature, namely, that the dead man and his soul are
conceived of as residing on the earth. But another
belief, which also dates back from primitive times,
transfers this residence to heaven. Carried away by
a poetic fancy, men imagined that in the countless
124 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
stars which nightly gleam in the wondrous heavens
they beheld the spirits of the dead. But a Pharaoh
who has passed away " takes his seat in the bark of
the sun-god ; he journeys among the stars of the
heavens and leads the same pleasant life as the Lord
of the Horizon [the sun-god] himself." Later, this
privilege of the king was universalised, and every
man after death might accompany the god of heaven
on his travels through the firmament.
It is, again, quite a different conception according
to which the dead are received in heaven among the
company of the gods and lead a life of bhss in their
society. To begin with there was the by no means
easy task of the ascent by which heaven was reached.
The dead were accordingly conceived of as soaring
through the ether as birds, or even as grasshoppers ;
sometimes, too, — the thought is still more grossly
material — they were represented as climbing up
the rungs of a gigantic ladder. This was supposed
to stand somewhere in the West, reaching perpen-
dicularly from earth to heaven. Gods and god-
desses kept watch over it, day and night, and no one
might set foot upon it who did not know the ap-
pointed magic formula. Not till this had been
pronounced might the dead man begin to mount ;
but even then he was not out of danger, and a false
step might precipitate him into the depths, unless
Life after Death 125
helping gods, likewise summoned by magical words,
stretched out compassionate hands and drew him
upwards.
At the summit, the mighty gates of heaven opened
before him, and he entered into the kingdom above
the earth. Heaven itself he found not unlike the
world he had left. Before him there stretched
out a long valley, traversed by a broad river, and
broken up by numerous lakes and canals. Even
now a long journey remained to be performed before
the dead man could arrive at the place where he
must dwell. There were many lakes in which he had
to purify himself, many canals and river-branches to
be crossed. Since he possessed no boat of his own,
it was necessary for him to summon a ferryman at
each crossing, naturally by means of a magic for-
mula, in which the mystic name of the ferryman was
contained.
There were two principal places in heaven where
the dead abode — the *' field of sacrifices" and the
" field of rushes." Here they dwelt as ** the trans-
figured," as '' spirits of light," and though they had
not become real gods, they were looked upon by
men as higher beings, as a kind of demi-gods.
Among them, the deceased king retained a position ;
of special eminence. He was once more a king, and
even the gods bowed down before him. He was set
I
126 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
\>^
upon a throne of state, and received the mace and
the sceptre as the emblems of his dignity.
On the " field of rushes " the dead occupied them-
I selves with the favourite industry of Egypt, agricul-
ture. But this pursuit rewarded the exertions of
the beatified husbandman in a degree very different
from that common on earth. The corn stood seven
ells high, of which the ear alone measured three.
They prepared the soil, scattered the seed, reaped
and garnered the harvest ; then at evening when their
work was done amused themselves with draughts
beneath the sycamores.
Besides these two conceptions, which place the
dead on earth and in heaven respectively, there is
yet a third which contradicts them both and finds a
home for the departed in the lower world. Beneath
the flat earth Hes a second earth named Tivet, a land
which hke Egypt is traversed by a river. On both
banks are long passages and deep caverns ; these are
the dwelHng-places of the dead. By day this is a
region of dreariness, desolation, and mourning. But
by night, when the sun has descended in the west be-
hind the mythical mountain, Manu, his light shines
upon the dead, who then behold the splendour of
Re. " The departed, who are in their halls, in their
caverns, praise the sun; their eyes are opened, their
heart is full of felicity when they behold the
Life after Death 127
sun ; they shout for joy when his body is over
them.'*
In a later age, more especially, this nightly journey
of the sun through the underworld was described in
full and picturesque detail, with all manner of ad-
ditional touches derived from local beliefs on the
place reserved for the dead. Through the midst
of the underworld flows the subterranean Nile, on
which the ram-headed sun-god sails, surrounded by
a numerous train of divine attendants. The banks
to right and left are peopled by spirits, dcBinons^ and
all manner of monstrous beings, who greet the sun-
god and keep his enemies at a distance. Correspond-
ing to the twelve hours of the night there are
twelve regions into which the underworld is divided
in the direction of its length. These are separated
from each other by twelve massive gates. These are
guarded by gigantic serpents, while the approach to
each entrance is further defended by two fire-breath-
ing serpents and two gods. The sun-god is required
to know the names of the various serpents and
dcemons ; it is not until he has pronounced them that
the monsters retire, the gates open, and the bark
passes on into the new region.
The common order of mankind dwell as phantoms
in the lower world, where they salute the sun-god,
and on occasion tow his boat over the shallows of
128 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
the river, just as happens in the navigation of the
Egyptian Nile. The deceased king, however, sits
with the sun-god in his bark ; indeed, he even be-
comes one with him. In this manner he is permitted
to share in the marvellous night-journey, provided,
of course, that he too knows the mystic names of the
dcemons and serpents. And in order to provide him
with this knowledge, it was customary, during the
New Kingdom, to inscribe the walls of his grotto-
tomb with an illustrated account of everything that
is in the underworld. Here, too, what had originally
been the peculiar privilege of the Pharaoh was after-
^ wards imitated by the people at large; and the belief
arose that every dead man as such might share the
nightly journey of the sun-god, or perform it as sun-
god himself, if he knew the series of magic formulae,
and if an exact description of the underworld ac-
companied him to the grave.
This tangled medley of simple and complicated,
of naive and artificially elaborated ideas was early
influenced and involved in still greater confusion by
^ the development of the doctrine touching the god
Osiris. You will remember that Osiris was murdered
by his wicked brother Set ; his son, Horus, however,
avenged his death by defeating Set, and succeeded
in restoring him to life. In the desperate fight of
the two kindred gods Set had torn out an eye of
Life after Death 129
Horus ; this the latter presented to his father, and
the remarkable gift was what contributed most to his
resuscitation. But, in addition, Horus was obliged
to use a quantity of magic formulae and ceremo-
nies in order to complete his work. At last Osiris
is once more alive ; he is again in possession of all
his bodily powers ; he can speak, eat, and drink. As
king, he is set once more on the throne, but not now
to rule over men only ; he is henceforth the "King
of the Western folk," the prince of the blessed dead.
" O Osiris — " so runs a song of great antiquity, —
" Horus comes, he embraces thee ; he causes Thout [the
moon-god] to drive back the companions of Set before
thee; he brings them all [captive] together. He causes
the heart of Set to quake before thee; for thou art greater
than he! . . . [The earth god] Geb beholds thy
excellence ; he sets thee in thy place, he [being also the
father of Osiris] brings thy two sisters, Isis and Nephthys,
to thy side. Horus makes the gods to join with thee and
keep thee company and not remain far from thee. He
makes the gods to set thee free. Geb sets his foot upon
the head of thine enemy, who is in terror of thee. Thy son
Horus smites Set, he takes back from him his own eye
[that had been torn out] and gives it to thee that through
it thou mayest be mighty before the spirits [that is, the
dead]. Horus makes thee to overthrow thine enemies. ,
. . . Horus throws Set down, he casts him beneath
thee so that he carries thee and quakes, as the earth
quakes." *
' Pyramid- Texts ^ chap. 145.
130 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Now the mythical history of Osiris is continually
repeated on earth in the case of each Pharaoh. He,
too, has ruled over men and made his people happy ;
he, too, has been attacked by death, as Osiris was
by Set. For him, too, there arises in his son and
successor, the new king, an avenger, who, like Horus,
has the duty of recalling his father to life, and who
can do it if he employs the old formulae and rites
once used by Horus. Thus the dead king prevails
over all his enemies, he himself becomes Osiris, and
the gods raise him upon the throne in the world of
the dead.
As to where the realm of Osiris is situated, the
Egyptians themselves had no exact knowledge.
Originally it was assigned to a definite locality, we
do not know with certainty where. Later, it was
placed more generally in the West, or it was thought
that its place was above in the heavens, in the fields
of the blessed, or in the Twet^ the underworld be-
neath the earth.
Even in the earliest times the Osiris myth enjoyed
great popularity, and the belief gradually gained
ground that not the king only but every other man
might be awaked to new life like Osiris, might be-
come one with Osiris. The rites which at first were
performed only for the benefit of the god and his
earthly successor, the Pharaoh, were soon applied
Life after Death 131
to every corpse, and every deceased person was by
the agency of the Osiris formulae made into an Osiris
— that is, conducted to a life of eternal blessedness.
But it would be putting an undeserved slight
upon the ethical ideas of the ancient Egyptians if
we were to suppose that the destinies of man after
death were regarded by them as solely dependent
upon the knowledge and the recitation of the various
magic formulae. Even in the texts of the earliest
times higher requirements are made of the dead ^ :
he must have led a virtuous life on earth ; he must,
after his death, be found *' just," if he is to attain
happiness like Osiris. Here, too, there is an imita-
tion of the precedents contained in the legends of
the gods.
At Heliopolis the strife between Osiris and Set
had once been decided by a law-suit ; from this Osiris
emerged as victor, he was declared "just." And
like the god so also every man, before he enters
the regions of the West, must submit himself to a
divine tribunal. The sessions of this are held in the
" Hall of Justice." Osiris himself is the judge ; by
his side are forty-two terrible dcemons. Their aspect
is fear-inspiring: a human body is surmounted by
the head of a hawk, a vulture, a lion, a ram, or some
other animal; each one holds a knife in his hand.
' Cp. Zeiischr. fiir iigypt, Sprache, 31 (1893), p. 75/.
132 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Equally formidable are their names : one is called
" Devourer of Blood," another ''Eye of Flame,"
others again are " Bone-Breaker," *' Fire-Leg,"
" Head-Turner," " Shadow-Eater," and so on.
Before each of these weird judges the dead man
must confess that he has not committed a quite
definite crime. " I have not done what the gods
abominate," he confesses to one of them ; " I have
not allowed any one to be hungry," " I have not
suborned assassination," '' I have not stolen the of-
ferings of the gods," " I have done no murder."
Only when he can with a good conscience deny all
these mortal sins is he conducted by the jackal-
headed god Anubis into the hall before Osiris. His
heart is now weighed on a great balance against the
symbol of justice ; and the god Thout registers his
freedom from sin. But close by there sits a huge
hippopotamus, ready to devour the heart found
wanting. It is not until this ordeal is safely past
that the dead man is led before Osiris by Horus,
just as a subject is conducted by a palace official
into the presence of a king ; and now he is allowed
to enter into the realm of the blessed among the
attendants of the great god.'
At a very early age the maxims relating to the
life after death had already been collected. The old-
^ Book of the Dead, chap. 125.
Life after Death 133
est of these works, which in part dates from the
prehistoric period, is contained in the Pyramid- Texts,
so called because they became known to us in their
earliest form in the pyramids of the kings belonging
to the end of the fifth and to the sixth dynasties/
A somewhat later work, but one which became very
popular in the Middle Kingdom, is the Book of the
Dead? The description of the " Journey of the sun
in the twelve hours of the night " is known to us
from the Book of that zuhich is in the Lower World,
from the Book of the Gates, and from yet other
writings/ But this is only a small portion of the
' Edited and translated by G. Maspero : " Les inscriptions des
pyramides de Seggareh " (in the Rectceil des iravaux relatifs a la
philol. et a Varche'ol. egypt. et assyr.^ iSSi-iSSg, and in a separate
volume, Paris, 1894).
^ Lepsius, Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuches {^ex\m, 1867); Naville,
Das dgyptische Totenbuch dcr 18-20 Dyn. (Berlin, 1886) ; Lepsius,
Das Totenbuch der Aegypter (Berlin, 1S42). Cp. Maspero, " Le
Livre des Morts " {Revue de V Histoire des Religions^ vol. xv. ,pp.
266-316, and Etudes de mythologie et d'archMogie, vol. i,, pp. 325-
38 y.). The best translation of the Book of the Dead is that pub-
lished by Le Page Renouf aud Naville in the Proceedings of the
Society of Bibl. Archeology (also separately under the title :
Le Page Renouf, The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Complete
Translation, Commentary, and Notes); cp. also Budge, Book of the
Dead ; the chapters of " Coming Forth by the Day." The Egyptian
text according to the Theban recension in hieroglyphic. Edited
from papyri, with translation, vocabulary, etc. 3 vols.
^ Cp. Lanzone, Le dojuicile des Esprits ; Fequier, Le livre de ce
qtiil y a dans V LLades ; Maspero, *' Les hypogees royaux de Thebes "
{Revue de V LListoire des Religious , vols. xvii. and xviii., and Etudes
de mythologie et d'arch^ologie /gypfiettnes, ii., p. iff.)-
134 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
extensive literature of the dead possessed by the
Egyptians. To deal with all the works of the kind,
to explain all the different theories represented by
them, is more than I propose to attempt ; it would
take us too far, and I am afraid that in the strange
and intricate maze your interest, too, would soon
flag.
Everywhere we meet traces of the endeavour to
preserve human existence after death, and to pro-
vide the most favourable possible conditions for the
life of the soul. We are not to infer from this,
as has been done, that the Egyptians depreciated
earthly existence, and during the whole time of their
life did nothing else except prepare themselves for
the hereafter. Quite the contrary is the case. It is
only quite exceptionally that we come across feel-
ings and thoughts in which the yearning for death
predominates. Thus it is an exception when, in a
particular instance, one tired of life greets death as
a friend in the following words :
" Death stands to-day before me, as when a sick man
becomes whole, as when a man goes forth after a
sickness;
Death stands to-day before me like the smell of myrrh,
as when a man sits on a windy day beneath sails;
Death stands to-day before me like a rill of water, as
when a man returns home from a ship of war;
Life after Death 135
Death stands to-day before me, as when a man desires
to see his house again after he has spent many
years in captivity." *
Further on the same man congratulates him who
has finished with life and attained happiness in
death :
" He who is dead will become a living god and punish
the sins of him who commits them;
He who is dead will stand in the bark of the sun and
receive that which is most choice in the temples." '
But — this is a point which may well be empha-
sised once more — these are isolated instances of such
emotional pessimism. For the generality of men,
in Egypt as in other places, there is '' mourning
when they think of burial, something which brings
tears and troubles the heart of man." They are
pained that *' death tears a man away from his house
and throws him upon the hills. Never will he re-
turn again to behold the sun." And even though a
man has built himself ever so costly a tomb of gran-
ite and limestone, and furnished it with everything
that is necessary, " his sacrificial stones will yet be
thrice as empty '' as those of the homeless person,
*' as those of the wearied ones who die upon the em-
bankment and leave none behind them." ^
^ Cp. Erman, Gesprdcheines Lebensmuden mit seiner Seele, p. d"] ff.
2 Ibid., p. 71 /. ^ L. c, p. 41 ff.
1^6 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
There is, therefore, but one thing to do: " Enjoy
hfe, follow pleasure and forget care." No mourning,
no sacrifices, no ceremonies can after all bring back
the dead into the pride of life. This is the burden
of another old and highly popular song which was
sung at the funeral feast ^ :
" The gods [that is the kings] who were in past times
rest in their pyramids;
The noble also and the wise are buried in their pyra-
mids;
They that built houses, their place is no longer,
Thou seest what is become of them; . . .
No one comes thence to tell us what is become of them,
To tell us how it fares with them, to comfort our heart.
Until ye approach the place whither they are gone,
Forget not to glorify thyself with joyful heart,
And follow thy heart as long as thou livest.
Lay myrrh upon thy head, clothe thyself in fine linen,
Anointing thyself with the truly marvellous things of
god.
Adorn thyself, make thyself as fair as thou canst,
And let thy heart sink not.
Follow thy heart and thy joy.
As long as thou livest upon earth;
Trouble not thy heart until the day of mourning come
upon thee.
Surely whose heart stands still hears not your mourning,
' The " Song of the house of the blessed king Entef, that is
written before the Harper"; cp. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt,
p. 386 ; W. Max Miiller, Die Liebespoesie der alien Aegypter, p. 29 ff.
Life after Death 137
And he who lies in the grave perceives not your lamen-
tation.
Therefore
With joyous countenance keep a day of festival and rest
not in it;
For no one takes his goods with him,
Yea, no one returns that is gone hence."
You see that, in spite of all the magic, all the
witchcraft, all the imagination which was expended
in the interests of the life after death, the naive, in-
tense joy in life was not stifled even among the
Egyptians. With whatever care they may have I
elaborated their preparations for a future existence,
they yet never lost the wholesome feeling that of
all good things life is the best.
LECTURE V.
Graves and Burials. — The Egyptian Religion
Outside Egypt.
IN my last lecture I briefly sketched to you the
ideas entertained by the Egyptians on the
Last Things, their conceptions of the life after death.
These conceptions, we have now to observe, exercised
a most far-reaching influence on the whole body
of Egyptian funeral customs. Among their conse-
quences we may reckon those solidly constructed
tombs which are still admired to-day, the practice
of carefully embalming corpses, and the host of gifts
by which the dead were accompanied to their last
home. Here, again, we have to deal with a wide
circle of usages, within which, from century to cent-
ury and from district to district, considerable devia-
tion was bound to occur. In the Old Kingdom
funerals were conducted otherwise than in the time
of Alexander the Great ; they were not the same in
the Delta as in the cataract region of Assuan (Syene),
far to the south. I propose, now, to draw your atten-
tion to a few points in this most interesting depart-
138
Graves and Burials 139
ment of Egyptology, in order to illustrate the manner
in which religious notions concerning the hereafter
of man have found practical expression.
The first object aimed at was the safe custody of
the corpse in its grave, the provision of a true rest-
ing-place for the dead. Next to thieves and robbers,
whose favourite and most profitable hunting-ground
was at all times the cemetery, the water of the inun-
dations was the deadliest enemy of the graves. The
consequence was that it became a matter of primary
importance that the dead should be interred, not in
moist land, but in higher ground, situated above the
range of the highest Nile, in the sandy or rocky soil
of the desert. An opinion frequently expressed is
that the Egyptians buried their dead on the western
bank of the Nile because that was the region of the
setting sun. This, however, is an error. It is true
that at Memphis, at Abydos, at Thebes, at Syene, the
great necropolis was situated in the " Amentet," or
region of the West ; at other cities, however, — I will
mention Tell-el-Amarna and Akhmim, the ancient
Khemmis — it was to be found on the eastern bank, to
the east of the city of the living. It is obvious that
it depended entirely on local conditions, where the
most convenient and the safest resting-place was to
be found for the departed. And if in Egyptian texts
the " West " is often synonymous with necropolis.
140 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
and the dead are spoken of shortly as the " Western
folk," these expressions must have been originally
coined in some city, probably Abydos, at which the
community of the dead happened to be situated in
that particular quarter.
The most ancient graves of which we have any
knowledge were simple rectangular trenches. The
corpse was placed inside, the cavity filled up with
sand, and overall, as in the Arabian graves of to-day,
a small mound of sand and stones piled up. For the
king, as may well be imagined, so simple and homely
a tomb was inadequate. As during his lifetime he
had towered above the mass of his subjects like a
giant among dwarfs, so his grave was expected to be
larger and loftier than those tenanted by his people.
He therefore began, while still among the living, to
prepare for himself a tomb of imposing appearance.'
A large rectangular building was constructed of
bricks ; in its interior were several chambers, inac-
cessible from outside, one of which was destined to
receive the Pharaoh's corpse, while the others were
reserved for various offerings burled with him. On
the outside the building was adorned with niches
In the form of doors, through which, it was supposed,
' E.g., the tomb of the first historical king Menes, which is
situated near the modern town of Nakada ; cp. Zeitschrift fur
dgypt. Sprache, 36 (189S), p. ^1 ff.
Graves and Burials 141
the dead monarch would be able to leave his tomb
at pleasure and return to it again. In addition,
these niches afforded a convenient receptacle to
which, within a court enclosed by a wall, the neces-
sary offerings to the dead might be brought. Fur-
ther, there was placed in the tomb a large but simple
memorial stone, on which, inscribed in majestic hier-
oglyphics, was the name of the dead king, without
any addition. The tomb further contained several
small gravestones of women, dwarfs, and even of
dogs. These had been buried at the same time as
the monarch ; and it is not too much to assume that
they had been his favourites during life and were
slaughtered at his funeral that they might not be
parted from him by death, but might continue to
delight his heart in the hereafter. Later, when man-
ners grew milder, these human sacrifices were omit-
ted from the funeral ceremony ; instead of devoting
to the dead king the veritable companions of his
life, the mere images or pictures of them were placed
in his tomb.
Out of the simple tomb of bricks, such as I have
just described, there was gradually developed the
pyramidal form of tomb — a form which remained
characteristic of royal sepulchres in Egypt for a thou-
sand years, and which even to-day (you need merely
look at an Egyptian postage-stamp) may still be
V
142 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
considered the sign and token of the Nile valley.
Even where, as in the case of the Pyramid of
Cheops, it attains a height of 480 odd feet, and ap-
proaches in altitude the loftiest products of human
labour, it is nothing but an enormously magnified
and architecturally elaborated funeral mound, raised
over the king's tomb. The latter commonly con-
sists of one or more subterranean chambers ; less
frequently it is situated in the heart of the pyramid
itself, and access to it is only possible by means of
a narrow passage, something like a gallery in a mine,
which was carefully blocked up after the funeral.
The inner rooms of the pyramid, one of which con-
tained the coffin, were originally quite unadorned.
It was not till the end of the Fifth Dynasty, that is
about 2540 B.C., that the practice was begun of in-
scribing them with texts relating to the future life and
forming a kind of vade-meciun for the dead monarch.
These are the so-called Pyramid- Texts, of which I
have already spoken in my last lecture, and which are
the most important sources for our knowledge of the
earliest Egyptian religion. The pyramid, however,
lacked one thing which the most ancient royal tombs
had possessed, namely, a place where offerings might
be brought to the Manes of the dead. For this pur-
pose, accordingly, a special temple was erected before
the eastern side of the pyramid, a sanctuary dedicated
Graves and Burials 143
to the deceased king. It was adorned, like the
temples of the gods, with reliefs and inscriptions;
and the statues of the Pharaoh seem to have been
set up in rooms specially prepared for them.
At the time when the Pharaohs began to build
great pyramids for themselves, the great men of
the realm also ceased to be content with their
simple tombs, and caused more solid resting places
to be constructed for their remains. They, too, took
for their model the simple, primitive tomb sur-
rounded by its cairn. Beneath the surface of the
earth a chamber is hollowed out in the rock for the
coffin ; the approach is by a perpendicular shaft, riot
infrequently reaching to a depth of close on fifty feet.
Above this a rectangular building with scarped walls
is constructed of stone or of sun-dried bricks. These
peculiar tombs have been designated by the Arabic
word — Mastaba which means *' bench," because their
form recalls that of the stone benches placed in
front of Arabian houses.
On the eastern side of the Mastaba a shallow niche
is to be observed, the false door through which the
dead man is supposed to go out and in. Here again
was the place where offerings to the departed were
laid upon a low table of limestone, and where prayers
for his welfare were recited. Not infrequently this
niche was deepened into a small chamber, in the
144 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
back wall of which the false door was placed, or, at
a later period, a whole series of such chambers was
constructed in the interior of the Mastaba.
The walls of these chambers were, whenever pos-
sible, covered with pictures and inscriptions. As a
rule they relate to the tomb, and the offerings to the
dead ; sometimes, however, they included repre-
sentations of all that the dead man had loved and
cherished on earth, the occupations in which he had
taken particular pleasure while yet among the living.
It was imagined, no doubt, that the things thus re-
produced pictorially, as by a charm, really continued
to exist, and that the dead man was able to enjoy
and make use of everything that was portrayed on
the walls of his chamber. We see there how he sits
at table, often accompanied by his family ; food
and drink are heaped up before him, so that he
need but stretch out his hand to them. There
are, further, long lists of all necessary means of
life which it is desired that he should have at
command : loaves and cakes, wine and beer, roast
meat and vegetables, fruits, and everything else
which the appetite of an ancient Egyptian could
demand. In other pictures peasants and peasant
women are represented as bringing all kinds of food
to the dead man's grave ; or he is depicted watch-
ing the chase in the desert, or inspecting the flocks
Graves and Burials 145
which must be supplied by particular villages for
sacrifice to the dead. In many pictures we witness
the sacrifices themselves ; we see how the cattle are
felled and slaughtered, how the butchers cut up the
animals, uttering cries which are written down on
the wall, and how the attendants carry the best parts,
the legs, to the grave. A piece of ancient Egyptian
life is thus enacted before our eyes in these vivid
delineations, so that even after all these thousands
of years any one who can sympathise with the actors
and enter into the spirit of the scene derives the
keenest pleasure from it.
In addition to these chambers, which the family
of the deceased were permitted to enter, most of
the Mastabas built in the grander style contained
also a small, inaccessible room, which again is now
generally known by its Arabic name Serddb, that
is, cellar. In it was set up the statue of the
deceased, often accompanied by his wife or child-
ren ; it was the private apartment set aside for the
use of the dead man in his " eternal house." The
Serdab was separated from the chamber only by a
wall ; often, indeed, the two were even connected by
a small hole, so that the deceased might partake of
the offerings deposited before the false door, hear
the prayers recited there, and inhale the sweet
perfume of the incense.
10
146 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
Besides the pyramids and Mastabas, which in a
later age, by a process which we have already noted
more than once, were imitated by extensive classes
in the population, there arose, towards the end of the
Old Kingdom, somewhere about 2200 B.C., another
form of tomb, the Hypogceum^ or rock-tomb. No
doubt at a still earlier period, during the Old King-
dom, tombs had been constructed in the mountain
sides ; now, however, a special form was given them,
for which, just as for the sanctuaries of the gods, the
ordinary human dwelling house served as a model.
An open court stood beneath the sky, having behind
it a vestibule carved out of the rock, the roof of which
was supported by columns or pillars. Next came a
large hall, also hollowed out of the mountain side, and
also having its roof supported by columns. Behind
this, finally, was a small apartment, containing the
statue of the deceased. Those of you who remember
the plan of the typical Egyptian temple will be at once
struck with the exact agreement in design between
the ''house of the god " and the 'Miouse of the
dead." The coffin containing the mummy of the
deceased was placed in a chamber at a low level,
reached from the Hall of Columns by a shaft.
At the beginning of the New Kingdom, about
1500 B.C., a great innovation was introduced in the
form of the royal tomb. Hitherto, the primitive
Graves and Burials 147
custom had been retained, by which a detached mau-
soleum in pyramidal form was erected to the Pharaoh
in the midst of the necropolis. Now, however, a
lodging was provided for the royal mummy by con-
structing in the mountainside a set of chambers
approached by a long corridor. The rock itself here
served as a colossal funeral mound, towering above
the Pharaoh's resting place. The sovereign was no
longer interred, as formerly, in the midst of the
graves of his subjects, but at a distance, in a lonely
valley of the Libyan mountain-chain, enclosed by the
naked rocks. This valley was so narrow that there
was no space in front of the tomb for a temple to the
dead ; this, therefore, was separated from the grave
proper and a special sanctuary built in the plain in
its stead. These rock-tombs of the Pharaohs and
the temples connected with them, which were some-
times of great magnificence, have been preserved
up to the present day on the western bank of the
Nile near Thebes, the ancient capital of the Empire.'
The memorial temples of the kings were probably
equipped very much like the contemporary sanctu-
aries of the gods. On the other hand, the sacri-
ficial chambers of private tombs were probably not
supplied with any very great variety of equipment :
1 In the so-called Valley of the Kings (Arabic Bibdn el-MuMk) ;
cp. Baedeker's Egypt (5th edition), p. 2.(i2 ff.
148 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
one or two stone tables on which the food des-
tined for the dead was laid, a few troughs or high
stands with bowls of granite to receive the drink-
offerings, occasionally a few small obelisks of stone,
which were erected in front of the false door much
as the great obelisks stood before the gates of the
temples — that was nearly all the movable furniture
to be found in these chapels. The grave proper, the
subterranean chamber in which the dead slept, was
much more richly furnished. The mummy was here
laid amidst a crowd of objects intended to alleviate
the lot of the deceased and to provide him with a
happy life in the hereafter.
In the earliest period the corpse was interred in a
kind of crouching attitude, the legs drawn up, the hands
laid in front of the face. As a rule the head was
turned to the north, the face towards the east to see
the rising sun. The body was sometimes wrapped
in a linen cloth or laid in a simple wooden chest;
usually, however, it was placed in the grave entirely
without covering. The offerings by which it was
accompanied were chiefly destined for its nourish-
ment ; they consisted of beer-jugs and other vessels
which to-day contain ashes, probably the remains of
food that was burnt. Besides this there were ves-
sels of stone containing all kinds of ointments, thin
plates in curious shapes on which the dead man was
Graves and Burials 149
to rub the rouge required for his toilet after death
as in Hfe. Arms, too, of all kinds were provided for
his defence against his enemies, as well as amulets
for his protection against evil spirits.
In the Old Kingdom, in the age of the pyramids,
a new mode of burial came into fashion. The dead
man no longer crouched in the tomb, but was placed
in the grave lying upon one side as if asleep. A pil-
low was even placed under his head. The corpse
itself was carefully embalmed, converted by a great
variety of processes into a mummy, and thus pro-
tected from decomposition. The internal organs of
the body were removed and buried in special jars.
These visceral vases, which are commonly spoken
of as *' canopic," were under the protection of four
genii, children of the god Horus, whose part was to
guard them, and therefore also the man, from hunger
and thirst. Accordingly they generally had for lids
the heads of these divinities : the head of a man, of
an ape, of a jackal, and of a hawk.
The body itself was laid in salt water and treated
with bitumen ; it was then rolled in bandages and
cloths, while the abdominal cavity was also plugged
up with linen rolls and cushions. The mode of em-
balming, moreover, differed at different times. Her-
odotus* tells us that in his day there were no fewer
* Herodotus, ii., 86-88.
150 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
than three processes, more or less comphcated ac-
cording to their costHness. In the most expensive of
these the corpse was placed in the hands of specially
trained embalmers, who first of all drew out the brain
by an iron hook passed through the nostrils, destroy-
ing by caustic drugs what could not be removed in
this manner. An incision was next made with a sharp
flint knife in the soft parts, and the viscera taken
out. These were cleaned, palm wine was poured,
and all manner of spices were strewn over them.
The abdomen was filled with myrrh and other aro-
matic substances and then sewed up again. The
body was now left to lie for seventy days in a
solution of natrum, that is, actually pickled. After
the lapse of this time the corpse was once more
washed, rolled in linen, and smeared over with gum.
In this manner a first-class mummy was produced.
You will now, I imagine, have heard enough of the
methods of this branch of industry, and will be
ready to excuse me from describing to you, again
in the words of Herodotus, the two cheaper modes
of embalming.
The mummy was generally laid in a rectangular
chest of wood or stone. The surface of this was
polished ; frequently, however, it was decorated on
the outside, like a royal tomb of the oldest period,
with a number of doors intended to afford exit and
Graves and Burials 151
entrance to the dead man. At the head-end, where
the face lay, it was not uncommon to insert a pair of
eyes ; by the aid of these the deceased was expected
to look forth from the coffin and behold the rising
sun. The inner surfaces were at a later time in-
scribed with texts relating to the life after death, —
chapters from the Pyramid- Texts and from the
Book of the Dead ; in addition there were pic-
torial representations of all possible things which
the dead man could need in the hereafter. Under
this category there naturally came food and drink in
great quantities, but at the same time ornaments,
weapons, articles of clothing, objects relating to the
toilet, sandals, and so on, were not forgotten.^ At a
later time the coffins often received the form of
mummies with uncovered face; they were decorated
by imitation bandages, in the spaces between which
were inscriptions and pictures of the gods, all de-
stined to procure the welfare of the deceased.
From the time of the Old Kingdom the number
of funeral offerings continually increased. How numer-
ous they were is best shown by a discovery belonging
to the time of 2100 B.C., which was made two years
ago in a priest's grave in the Memphian necropolis.'
' Cp. Steindorff, Grabfunde des Mittleren Reichs in den Konig-
lichen Museen zu Berlin.
^ Near the pyramid of the king Ne-woser-re at Abusir,
152 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
The objects are now preserved in the museum of
Leipzig University. In order to provide for the
nourishment of the dead man there had been placed
in his grave first of all a little wooden granary,
which looks like part of a marionette show, but
which follows the pattern of an actual granary down
to the smallest details. In a walled-in yard entered
by a gate there stand the silo-like grain chambers ;
the corn is being measured in the court, servants
carry the grain in sacks up to the roof and discharge
it through little windows into the store chambers,
while a scribe squats close by and registers the
number of the sacks delivered. It is thus that the
deceased is provided with the raw material for his
maintenance ; for the preparation of his food there
is a model of a kitchen yard, in which animals may
be slaughtered and roasted, bread baked, and beer
brewed. Four small ships, two propelled by oars
and two by sails, manned by miniature sailors, are
at his disposal to convey him over the waters of the
heavens and bring him to the Fields of the Blessed.
There are other departments, too, in which imita-
tions supply the place of the sometimes costly real
articles: little copper tools, a wooden quiver with
arrows, a wooden pillow, and a pair of wooden
sandals. The handsomely painted wooden figures
of a man and a woman carrying food to the dead
Graves and Burials 153
man, — a goose among other things, — are intended to
wait on him as his servants. Weapons and sticks,
earthen dishes and jugs, again as a matter of course
filled with eatables and drinkables, complete this in-
teresting tomb equipment,^
But the objects I have described by no means ex-
haust the imaginative providence of the Egyptians.
Often little hippopotami were placed in the grave
with the dead in order that he might follow his
favourite occupation in the hereafter by hunting
these pachydermata.' Instruments of music and
sets for the game of draughts were provided for
his entertainment ; highly ornamented fans were
to afford him coolness. Figures of women, too,
were added that he might have the pleasure of
their company, but, remarkably enough, these have
no feet, doubtless in order to guard against the pos-
sibility of their running away from the grave. In-
deed, the dead man was sometimes provided with a
duplicate head, in case his own, as was to be feared,
should be taken from him in the hereafter by evil
spirits.
From the beginning of the New Kingdom amulets
and magic figures play a special part in insuring the
* Cp. also Steindorff, Grabfunde des Mittleren Reichs in den
Kdnigliche7t Museen zu Berlin.
^ Cp. G. Maspero, Guide to the Cairo Museian (Cairo, 1903). p. 373.
154 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
welfare of the deceased. Since agricultural labour in
the '' Fields of the Rushes" often seemed too hard for
the dead man, it was sought to help him by placing
little figures in the grave with him. These were in-
tended to assist him in the field, and for this
purpose they carried the necessary Implements.
The name of the dead man was written upon them,
or else a whole magic formula which at the right
moment was expected to call them to life and set
them doing their work.
You will remember that according to a later
doctrine the heart of the dead man was required
to be weighed before Osiris. Since, however, the
actual heart had been removed from the body in
the process of embalming, it was replaced by a
heart of stone, generally in the form of a scarab,
which was laid beneath the mummy bandages,
and which was conjured by a magic formula to
speak for the dead man in the lower world. **0
heart," — so it ran, — ''heart that I have from my
mother, O heart that dost belong to my being,
appear not as a witness against me [in the judgment
hall before Osiris] ; be not my adversary before the
judges, contradict me not before the officer of the
balance. Thou art my spirit that is within my
body, suffer not our name to stink . . , tell
no lie against me before the god."
Graves and Burials 155
Another amulet, made in the form of the sacred
stake worshipped as a fetish in the Delta-city
Busiris, was destined to prevent the dead man being
turned back at the gate of the West ; " let bread be
given to him, with beer and cakes and much meat,
upon the table of Osiris ; for he is justified against
his enemies in the realm of the dead, excellently
well and over and over again."
Lastly, we should mention an amulet of frequent
occurrence which had the form of a knot and was
made, by preference, of red jasper. It was regarded
as the emblem of the goddess Isis, and the supposed
consequence of its being worn on the neck was that
" Isis protects the wearer, and Horus rejoices when he
sees it." According to another account, it also ful-
filled a second purpose, similar to that served by
the stake which I have just mentioned ; through its
agency, " the dead man follows Osiris in the realm
of the dead, the gates of the underworld are open to
him, barley and spelt are given to him on the ' Field
of Rushes * [in heaven] and he is like the gods who
abide there."
But enough of amulets, with which the mummy
was sometimes covered in the later period to the
number of hundreds, as if with a suit of defensive
armour.
It need hardly be said that a people which
156 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
expended so much labour on the construction and
furnishing of a tomb as the Egyptians did must have
solemnised the day of burial, on which the departed
entered into his last *' eternal dwelHng-place," with
quite special ceremonies, even if we had not pictures
from all periods of Egyptian history by which these
elaborate funeral rites are brought visibly before our
eyes.
In cities, such as Thebes, where the necropoh's
was not on the same bank of the river as the city
of the living, the mummy was carried across on a
richly adorned bark ; a priest of the dead recited
the prescribed prayers before it and offered incense.
Friends and kinsmen, men as well as women,
accompanied It with loud cries and lamentations.
When the boats had reached the opposite bank, the
cofifin was set upon a sledge drawn by cattle and
conveyed to the city of the dead. When the long
procession of mourners had arrived at the entrance
of the tomb, the mummy was once more taken from
the cofifin and placed upright before the gravestone
by a priest wearing the mask of the jackal-headed
Anubis, the god of the dead. While the relatives
were taking their last farewell of the departed, the
priests repeated their prayers and prepared him for
his last journey. At this point a special ceremony
was performed, the opening of the mouth. To the
Graves and Burials 157
accompaniment of magic formulae the mouth of the
dead was opened by a hook, and the faculty thus
restored to him of making use of his mouth whether
for speaking, eating, or drinking.' After this the
coffin with the mummy was carried to the opening
of the grave-shaft and lowered by a long cord
into the depths, where the grave-diggers received
it.
If such were the labour and care bestowed upon
the interment of a human being, how much more
elaborate a funeral must have been required when a
'' living god," that is a sacred animal, had been
snatched away by death ! Even in the most ancient
times special burial-places seem to have existed in
which took place the interment of the animals kept
in the temples, such as the Apis-bulls of Memphis,
the Mnevis-bulls of Heliopolis, the sacred rams
of Mendes. In the case of Apis we know that
he was embalmed just like a man and buried
with great pomp. In the earlier period, the Apis-
bulls were laid to rest in special graves; Ramses II.
caused a common burying-place to be laid out
for them, which afterwards became a much fre-
quented centre of pilgrimages. This was the so-
called ''Serapeum," situated near Sakkara in the
desert, of which the huge subterranean passages
> Cp. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, pp. 320, 321.
158 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
with their colossal stone sarcophagi are still admired
to-day.^
In the later period, in the last few centuries be-
fore Christ, when the worship of animals was con-
tinually gaining ground, and the quality of sacredness
attached not merely to the individual animals which
in particular localities were the vehicle of divine
manifestations, but to the whole species, it came to
be regarded as a particularly meritorious act to give
sepulture to all dead animals of that species. Large
common graves were employed for this purpose,
which sometimes contained hundreds of animal
mummies. Thus at Bubastis, for example, there
is a large cemetery of the cats worshipped there ;
at Memphis, numerous burial-places of the sacred
ibises ; at Ombos, in Upper Egypt, large graves of
crocodiles, in which animals both old and young,
from six to ten feet long, together with quite little
ones, had been interred. At the same time, on par-
ticular occasions, a sacred animal was buried in a
grave of its own, as is the case sometimes with one
of our favourite dogs, and received not only a cofifin
but also a gravestone with an inscription. A par-
ticularly interesting monument of this kind is pos-
sessed by the museum at Berlin, interesting chiefly
^ Cp. Mariette, Le Serap^um de Memphis ; Baedeker's Egypt (5th
edition), p. 135.
Graves and Burials 159
for this reason, that it was set up by a Greek domi-
ciled in Egypt/ It stood above the grave of a snake
which had been killed by an unknown person, and
contained the following distich, written, it must be
confessed, in somewhat defective Greek :
" Thou stranger, halt at the crossways, before the
great stone, and thou wilt find it bursting with
writing.
Bewail me with loud lamentation, me the sacred,
long-living snake that was sent to the lower
world by wicked hands.
What profit hast thou, thou worst of men, that thou
didst rob me of this life ?
For my brood shall be fatal to thee and thy children ;
for in me thou hast killed a being that is not
alone upon earth.
But as numerous as is the sand upon the seashore is
the race of animals upon earth, and verily they
will send thee to Hades not first but last, after
thou hast seen with thine own eyes the death of
thy children."
* -x- *
We have now come to the end. I have endeav-
oured to describe to you in broad outline the rise
and fall of the Egyptian religion, the beliefs held by
the Egyptians on the Last Things, their worship of
the gods and the dead.
And now, at the close of our survey, we raise a
^ No. 7974 of the Berlin Museum ; cp. Ausfuhrliches Verzeichfiis
der Aegypt. Altertuiner und Gipsabgiisse (Berlin, 1899), P- 339-
i6o The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
question, which has no doubt aheady occurred to
you : did the Egyptian religion ever strike root out-
side the narrow bounds of the Nile-land, did it exert
any perceptible influence upon the religions of other
peoples ; above all, for this touches us most nearly,
did it influence Judaism and Christianity ? Is it, in
a word, a religion of great significance in the history
of the world ?
In the second millennium before Christ, when the
Egyptian armies invaded the Soudan and penetrated
Asia as far as the banks of the Euphrates, when
Egyptian administration was introduced into the
subjugated countries or Egyptian garrisons stationed
there — then Egyptian worship was also carried into
regions beyond the border. Far from the home-
land sanctuaries were erected to the gods of Egypt
and sacrifices offered. But nowhere — except, per-
haps, during the short period of the heretic King
Amenophis IV. — was the conquered population,
whether of negroes or Asiatics, compelled to ab-
jure their own native gods and transfer its homage
to those of the Egyptians. Everywhere, on the
contrary, the national religions were left without
interference.
Among the divinities worshipped in foreign lands
the first place was naturally occupied by the Theban
king of the gods, Amon-Re, the national god of
Outside Egypt i6i
the new Empire. But in addition, the protecting
deities of the other two chief cities of Egypt,
Heliopolis and Memphis, received special reverence ;
the gods Re-Horus and Ptah. In these divinities
the Egyptian state was incarnate ; the worship paid
to them was a tribute to the authority of Egypt
over the conquered countries. It was therefore but
a step in advance when, in addition to these gods of
the Empire, the King himself, the living representa-
tive of the Egyptian power, received divine honours.
It is true that the Egyptians had from a very early
period regarded the Pharaoh as an incarnation of the
god Horus, or as a " son of the Sun-god," and in-
deed had designated him simply as the *' good god " ;
but on Egyptian soil the King had never been the
object of a cult during his lifetime. There was no
temple in which his image had been set up by the
side of that of the " urban god." This step was first
ventured upon in foreign parts, in Nubia, to speak
more exactly, for as far as Asia is concerned we
have no evidences of king-worship. Chapels were
here erected to the King and sacrifices instituted in
the Holy of Holies. In a Nubian temple we see
the Pharaoh enthroned as god by the side of Amon,
Ptah, or Re-Horus, and receiving divine honour.*
* Cp. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 503 ; A. Moret, Du
caractlre religieux de la Royaute Pharaonique.
ZI
1 62 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
The negro inhabitants of Nubia, who at the time
of the Egyptian conquest still lay sunk in barbarism,
were of all peoples outside Egypt the most receptive
of Egyptian civilisation in general. By a gradual
process they were educated and Egypticised ; at the
same time, without any external compulsion, the
native gods were displaced by Egyptian divinities,
or, at any rate, worshipped side by side with them
under an Egyptian form. In Nubia the power of
the priests over the people was developed to a still
greater extent than in Egypt itself. After a sepa-
rate empire, independent of the motherland, had
been formed on the Upper Nile about the year
looo B.C., the kings at the head of it came entirely
under the control of the clergy. No enterprise, so
we are told, could be begun unless the consent of
the gods, that is to say, of the priests, was first ob-
tained. "The kings marched into the field when
Zeus-Amon commanded them through his oracle,
and they went wherever he sent them." '
All the ritual precepts, and especially the dietary
laws, were observed by the ancient Nubians more
strictly than by the Egyptians themselves; and in
regard to the Nubian King Piankhi, for example,
who, about the eighth century B.C. undertook an ex-
pedition into the lower Nile valley, we learn that
* Herodotus, ii., 29.
Outside Egypt 163
he did not permit the native princes to enter the
palace, ** because they were unclean and ate fish,
which is an abomination to the palace."
Accordingly, in the period when religion in Egypt
was on the decline and the power of the clergy
visibly diminishing, Nubia was more Egyptian than
the Egyptians themselves ; and it is quite intelligible
that Ethiopia was regarded by the Egyptian priests
as the classic land of the orthodox Egyptian religion.
These facts explain how the Greek authors came to
adopt the fundamentally false view that Ethiopia
was the cradle of the whole Egyptian civilisation.
With this civilisation the Egyptian religion subse-
quently decayed in Nubia; and probably not much
that was Egyptian still remained there when in the
fourth century after Christ the cross was planted
south of the cataracts of Assuan.
Under the reign of the sovereigns of the New
Kingdom the worship of the Egyptian national god
Amon-Re had been carried by Egyptian colonists
into the oases of the Libyan desert, situated to the
west of the Nile valley, and was maintained there
long after Amon had ceased to stand at the head of
the Egyptian Pantheon. In the oases Kharge and
Bahriye, the oases Magna and Parva of the Romans,
there stood sanctuaries of Amon ; but they were
both far surpassed in celebrity by the holy place
164 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
which the god possessed in the most western of the
oases — Sive, the special oasis of Zeus-Amon. Here,
too, was to be found an oracle of the god, possibly
modelled on the Theban pattern, the fame of which
soon reached the neighbouring Libyans, and was
carried to Cyrene, and even as far as Greece. By the
time of Cyrus, in the sixth century B.C., it was counted
among the most highly regarded oracles of the ancient
world. The splendour of its reputation, however,
was at its highest in the year 331, when Alexander
the Great undertook his romantic expedition to it
through the desert, and was greeted by the priests
of the ram-headed Amon as a son of the god.'
In Syria and Palestine, where Egyptian authority
enjoyed undisputed supremacy for hundreds of
years in the second millennium before Christ, Egyp-
tian civilisation had also exerted its influence.
Egyptian elements invaded the art of the Syrian
lands, and entered into a peculiar combination
with the more ancient Babylonian elements which
had hitherto played the chief part. Egyptian cults,
too, found reception in the cities occupied by the
Pharaoh's troops ; in many places sanctuaries were
built to the Egyptian gods ; thus, to take only one
example, King Ramses III. erected a temple in
Canaan to Amon, the god of the Empire. But the
* Cp. Steindorfif, Durch die Libysche Wilste zur A?nonsoase.
Outside Egypt 165
worship of the indigenous Baalim and Ashtaroth
suffered no injury through this foreign invasion ; on
the contrary, they received additional homage from
the Egyptians who had entered Syria. Thus, accord-
ing to all appearances, the Egyptian religion gained
no firm footing in Asia, and at the moment when the
last garrison was withdrawn, it is probable that the
sacrifices to Egyptian deities came to a sudden end.
Such was the course of events in foreign civilised
countries, but it was probably in a very different
manner that the Egyptian religion influenced such
aliens as had settled in the Nile valley, where both
in the city and in the country they would come into
contact with the Egyptian priests, Egyptian gods,
and modes of worship governed by fixed rules dating
from the remotest antiquity. Your thoughts, like
mine, will, no doubt, at once turn to the Israelites,
who, according to the biblical narrative, dwelt for a
long period as strangers in the Egyptian land of
Goshen ; whose great law-giver, Moses, is said to
have received his education at the Pharaohs' court,
and to have learned the wisdom of the Egyptians.
In touching here on the residence of the children of
Israel in Egypt, and discussing the question of the
influence exercised by the Egyptian rehgion and
civilisation upon the Hebrews, I shall be obliged to
confine myself to the most necessary facts. It is
1 66 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
not my Intention, In view of the controversy on
Babel and the Bible which has agitated so many
people in Germany, and perhaps also in your own
country, to start another one on McmpJiis and Moses,
Let me remark, in the first place, that the residence
of Joseph in Egypt is not mentioned in any passage
in Egyptian literature, and that even the name of
Moses nowhere occurs in the inscriptions. On these
grounds the historical character of the events nar-
rated with so much detail in the Bible has been
called in question by various modern scholars and
relegated by them to the realm of legend. In my
opinion that is very much too sceptical a view. It
is true that those narratives in the books of Moses
are embellished by an abundance of accessory fiction,
by legendary features which are not found here
alone — I will only refer to the story of Joseph
and Potiphar's wife, and to Joseph's dreams, — but on
the other hand the sections of the Pentateuch relat-
ing to Israel in Egypt reveal so excellent a knowledge
of the conditions in ancient Egypt, they occupy,
further, so wide a space in the ancient Israelitish
tradition that we ought not without further parley
to eliminate them as unhlstorlcal.' It is certainly
no easy task to eliminate authentic history from the
^ Cp. Spiegelberg, Der Aiifenthalt Israels in Aegypten im Lichse
der aegypiischen Motmmente (Strassburg, 1904).
Outside Egypt 167
legendary accounts of Genesis and Exodus, no easier
than it would be to tabulate historical events of the
Nibelungenlied without previous knowledge of the
migration of the Nations. To the best of my be-
lief we ought hardly to assume as historic facts more
than the existence of Hebrew tribes in Egypt and the
personality of Moses. It is impossible to assign dates
for the sojourn and Exodus of the Israelites ; it must
suffice us to place these in the second half of the
second millennium before the Christian Era.
We may be sure that the Hebrews carried away
with them from Egypt many manners and cus-
toms derived from the civilisation of that country.
Among the *' gods that brought Israel out of Egypt "
was there not the sacred bull worshipped so uni-
versally on the banks of the Nile — ''the golden
calf"? Moses himself, the founder of the Jewish
religion, tells us at once by his name that he
had been in the closest contact with Egyptian
civilisation. For the name Moses is Egyptian, and
contains the same element, Mose, " child," which
we find in numerous names of persons of the
time of the New Kingdom, compounded with
names of the gods: Amcn-mosc^ "Amon's child,"
Thut-mose, " child of the god Thout," or AJi-mose,
which we have in the Greek forms Amosis and
Amasis, the *' child of the moon."
1 68 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
That the reHgion founded by Moses was influenced
by Egyptian behefs, that the law and the worship
of the Israelites contained numerous Egyptian ele-
ments, is therefore very probable. Thus the new
holy receptacle introduced by Moses, the ark of
Yahvveh, was certainly not independent of Egyptian
models, the portable barks already described, in the
chapel of which stood the image of the god. In
place of the barks, w^hich stood in a special relation
to the Nile, we have the ark used for worship in
the desert.^
What proportion of these ancient Egyptian ideas
survived in the monotheistic religion of Israel as
purified by the prophets is no doubt a question
which we should find hard to answer in detail. In
particular I should like to warn you against a view
once widely held, namely, that the monotheism of
Israel was a theological legacy from the priests of
Heliopolis; that the crude monotheism of Ameno-
phis IV. exercised an influence over the Israelites.
This is an idle conjecture, with nothing in the his-
tory of religion to support it. It is very possible,
on the other hand, that in the poetical portions of
the Bible many an Egyptian phrase may have been
preserved, that whole departments of biblical litera-
ture — I am thinking more particularly of proverbial
' Cp. Guthe, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (2d edition), p. 39.
Outside Egypt 169
poetry — may bear traces of Egyptian influence in
their form. But, on the other hand, it must not be
forgotten that there are points of close agreement
between the Babylonian and the Hebrew hymns. It
is thus by no means easy to adjust the respective
claims of Babel and Memphis ; what is best in the
poetry of the Bible belongs without any doubt to
Israel itself.
It was again in all probability no slight influence
that was exerted by the Egyptian religion upon
later Judaism, in the period of Greek rule, when
numerous Jewish communities were established in
Alexandria and other Egyptian cities. In this in-
stance, it would appear that eschatological notions
were the chief contribution of Egypt to late Juda-
ism, and so, indirectly, to certain Christian circles.
When, for example, we find in the early Christian
Elias-Apocalypse a mention of a bronze gate to the
lower world, we think involuntarily of the fiery gate
of the Egyptian Hades. ^ Further, the late Jewish
and Christian faith in a resurrection seems to have
arisen out of peculiar mystical conceptions, by which
we are strongly reminded of the Egyptian ideas
concerning Osiris and his resuscitation. There, too,
the king, and after him every individual human be-
ing, are presented to us as having become one with
' Cp. Maspero, Journal des Savants^ Fauvier, i8gg, p. 39 /I
170 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
the deity, as having passed through the same vicis-
situdes as the god himself. But here, again, it is
certain that Egyptian ideas were not solely respon-
sible for the development of eschatological beliefs,
and at the present time it is Impossible to isolate
the purely Egyptian elements.
It is with much greater clearness that we are able
to trace the progress of the Egyptian gods through
the Graeco-Roman world. As early as the third cent-
ury B.C. Egyptian cults were imported into Greece,
particularly the new divinity Serapis and the circle
of gods connected with Osiris : Isis, her son Harpo-
crates, "the child Horus," as well as Anubis. From
Greece they soon found their way to Italy and Rome,
where they were hospitably received. The foreign
mysterious observances pleased the mass of the peo-
ple, and they only became the more popular when
recognition was refused them on the part of the
state and they could only be practised in secret.
Finally, in the reign of Caracalla, at the beginning
of the third century A.D., the foreign cults were,
after manifold vicissitudes, tolerated within the
city of Rome. The Emperor himself built a mag-
nificent temple to Serapis on the Quirinal ; and the
Egyptian gods began to play a leading part in re-
ligious life, the importance of which may perhaps
be best understood from the bitterness with which
Outside Egypt 171
these particular forms of pagan worship were subse-
quently attacked by the Christians.'
The religion of Egypt, like that of Hellas, was
finally overcome by Christianity. But the victori-
ous faith retained traces, both internal and external,
of both these precursors. It is for this reason that
in the religious history of the world the Egyptian
religion is entitled to the prominent position which
it occupies.
Theodor Mommsen says somewhere "^ that by the
side of the Avorks of Hellenic art the Egyptian idol
gives us much the same impression as, say, the
shoes produced at a wedding which have been worn
by the bride in her infancy. And what is true of
the idol holds equally of the religion, when we
compare it with Greek philosophy or Christianity.
According to what we can gather from Egyp-
tian texts, the Egyptian religion contained no
deep mysteries ; the last word of wisdom was not
there spoken, as the Greek thinkers once fondly
imagined. Never will the figures of the Egyptian
pantheon, with their animal heads and their quaint
symbolisms, become as familiar to us as the gods of
Olympus, the companions of our youth. But that
1 Cp. Wissowa, Religion und Kulttis der Romcr, p. 292 ff.
' Sitzun^sberichte der Berliner Akadefuie der Wissenschafien,
1895, p. 745.
172 The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
even in the channels of Egyptian faith and observ-
ance there flowed a current of true religion, power-
ful enough to carry away minds of no mean calibre
— so much, I confidently hope, has been brought
home to you by what you have heard from me.
And I conclude with Goethe's immortal words :
" God's is the Orient,
God's is the Occident."
INDEX.
Abusir, 76.
Abydos, 11, 31, 89, 139.
Achmim, 139.
Actium (battle of), 15.
Ages, 5.
Alexander the Great, 15, 114.
Alexandria, 73.
Altar, 78.
Amenemes, 12.
Amen-hotep, 59.
Amenophis, 13,
Amenophis III., 56.
Amenophis IV., 57-59. 63,
64, 66, 160, 168.
Amenothes, son of Hapu, 71.
Amentet, 139.
Amon, Amon-Re, 13, 19, 29,
49. 52 ff-, 78, 85; national
god of Egypt, 52; high
priests of, 96, 105 ; property
of, 105 ; oracle, 114; cult in
foreign lands, 160 //.
Amulets, 155.
Anat, 69.
Animal mummies, 157 ff.
Anubis, 118, 156, 170.
Anukis, 29.
Aphrodite, 23.
Apis (sacred bull), 25, 73, So,
157-
Apollo, 23.
Arabian intruders, 8.
Ark of Yahweh, 168.
Arsinoe, 80.
Artemis, 23.
Asenath, 40.
Ashera, 23.
Ashtaroth, 165.
Asklepios, 72.
Assuan, 9, 10 1, 138.
Assyria, 14.
Assyrians, 14.
Astarte, 69.
Athena, 23.
Athribis, 48.
Aton, 57, 58.
Atum, 41, 47, 49, 66.
Auaris, 68.
Augustus, 15.
B.
Baal, Baalim, 68, 69, 164.
Babel and the Bible, 166.
Babylon, 13.
Bahriye, 163.
Bastet, 54, 89.
Behdet, 9, 30.
Bekenkhons (high priest), 98.
Bes, 21.
Bint- Anat (princess), 69.
Book of that which is in the
Lower World, 133.
Book of the Dead, 4, 133, 151.
Book of the Gates, 133.
Bubastis, 54, 71, 77, 89, 90,
158; feast of, 89.
Burial, 156; modes of , i2,Sff.;
places, 139; -place of Apis,
157; -place of ibises, 158.
Busiris, 21, 89, 155.
Buto, 10, 23, 34, 89.
Byblos, S3-
173
174
Index
c.
Cambyses, 15.
Canaan, 164.
Canopic jars, 149.
Charms, 107 /f.
Cheops, II, 142.
Chephren, 11.
Children of Horus, 48, 117,
149.
Children of the god Khenti-
Kheti, 48.
Christianity, 16.
Chronology, 6.
Coffins, 151.
Cosmogony, 36.
Counter-reformation, 64.
Creation-legends, 35 //.
Cyrene, 164.
D.
Dcsntons, 21, 127.
Damanhur, 9.
Days, lucky and unlucky,
112.
Decoration of Mastabas, 144.
Deir-el-bahri (temple), 81.
Delta, 7.
Dendera, 18, 20, 49.
Difficulties of interpretation,
4-
Diodorus, I. •
Dionysos, 32.
Divination, 114.
"Doctrine" of Amenophis
IV., 60 ff.
Dynasties, 5.
E.
Edfu, 17.
Egyptian history, 5.
Egyptian influence upon Bib-
lical literature, 168.
Egyptian religion, in Nubia,
161 ff.; in Syria and
Palestine, 164; influence
upon the Hebrews, 165 ff.;
influence upon later Juda-
ism and Christianity, 169;
in the Graeco- Roman world,
171.
Egyptian Renaissance, 15.
Eileithyiaspolis, 10.
Ekh-en-Aton (King), 59.
Ekhut-Aton (town), 58.
El-Amarna, 57, 59, 65.
Elephantine, 29, 36, 45, 54,
102.
Elias- Apocalypse, 169.
Elkab, 17, 22, 31.
Enneads (great Ennead of
On, etc.), 47, 48, 67.
Ethiopia, 14, 163.
Ethiopians, 14.
Et^^mology, 18.
Eudoxus, 46.
Euphrates, 13, 53.
Exodus, 167.
F.
Fayoum, 18, 22, 27, 52, 56,
77-
Feasts, 88.
Fetishism, 23, 24.
Field of rushes, 125.
Field of sacrifices, 125.
Foreign deities, 69.
Funeral customs and rites,
138 ff-
Funeral furniture, 141, 143,
151-
Funerary statuettes, 154.
G.
Geb, 31, 36, 47, 102, 129.
Gebelen, 27.
Gods, in human form, 24;
migrations of, 27; toilet of
the, 87.
Goshen, 165.
Index
175
Grave, 138 ff.; graves of
Osiris, 34; of crocodiles,
158.
Greece, 14.
H.
Hall of columns, 78.
Hall of Justice, 131.
Haremhab, 65.
Harpies, 122.
Harpokrates, 71, 170.
Harsiesis, 47.
Hathor, 18, 20, 43 jf., 49. 69.
Hatshepsowet, 81.
Hebrews, 165.
Hecataeus, 6.
Hehu, 50.
Hehut, 50.
Heket, 25.
Heliopolis, 9, 25, 36, 40 jf.,
66, 67, 84, 131, 161; cos-
mogonic system of, 47 /f.
Helios, 72.
Hera, 23.
Hermes, 20, 34.
Hermonthis, 22.
Hermupolis, 20; cosmogonic
system of, 49.
Herodotus, i, 6, 46, 74, 88,
93. 99. 113. 149. ISO-
Heroes, cult of, 71.
High priests, 13 ; insignia, 98 ;
of Amon, 105.
Hippopotami, 153.
Holy of Holies, 82, 85.
Horapollo, 2.
Horus, 18, 20, 26 ff., 45 ff.,
70, 82, 102, 107 ff., 128 ff.
Horus of Edfu, 48. See also
Re-Horus.
Human sacrifices, 141.
Hyksos, 12, 52, 68.
Hymns, 90; to Aton, 60 f/.;
to the sun, 62; to Amon,
66, 91; to Thout, 91.
Hypogcpum, 146.
Hypostyle, 78.
I.
Images (divine), 83.
Imhotep, 71, loi, 102.
Inscriptions of temples, 81;
inscription of the Seven
Years' Famine, 10 1.
Isis, 32, 47, 71, 102, III, 129,
170; legends of , 106.
Israel in Egypt, 165.
J.
Joseph in Egypt, 166.
Judges of the dead, 132.
K.
Ka, 122.
Kadesh, 69.
Karnak, 79.
Kek, 50.
Keket, 50.
Kharge, 163.
Khartoum, 6.
Khemmis, 139.
Khenu, 27.
Kheperi, 42, 67.
Khmunu, 49.
Khnum, 18, 22, 29, 36, 54,
lOI ff.
Khons, 22, 29, 59, 78.
King, as god, 62 ; as mediator
for the people in the tem-
ple, 84; worship of, 161.
Kingdoms, 5.
Koptos, 18 ff., 54, 77-
Kronos, 32.
L.
Labyrinth, 12.
Lagidas, 15.
Lay priests, 94.
Libyans, 14.
Life after death, 11$ ff-
176
Index
Lotus-flower, 38.
Lower world, 126.
Luxor, 9, 79, 80.
M.
Maat, priests of, 92.
Magic figures, 153, 154.
Manetho, 5, 19, 72.
Masseba, 23.
Mastaha, 143 ff.
Medinet-el-Fayoum, 77.
Memorial stone, 141.
Memorial tombs of the kings,
146^.
Memphis, 11, 18, 20, 22, 25,
26, 29, 36, 49, 51, 53, 56,
57. 67, 73, 80, 139, 157,
158, 161.
Mendes, 22, 157.
Menes, 5, 10, 11.
Menezet (bark of the Sun-
god), 42.
Menu, 42.
Mesektet (bark of the Sun-
god), 42.
Middle Kingdom, 12, 52.
Min, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 54;
feast of, 89.
Mnevis-bull, 25, 157.
Moeris, 18.
Mommsen, 171.
Monotheistic. sentiment, 67.
Monotheistic state - religion,
S9ff.
Montu, 22.
Moses, 165, 166; name of,
167.
Mummies, 149, 150.
Mut, 22, 29, 54, 59, 78.
Mycenaean civilisation, 13.
Mycerinus, 11.
N.
Nakada, 18.
Nefertem, 29.
Negroes, 6.
Neit, 18, 36, 49, 71.
Nekhbet, 22.
Nekheb, 10.
Nephthys, 32, 47, 102, 112,
129.
New Kingdom, 13, 53.
Newoserre, 76.
Nile, 6, 35, 37 ; cradle of, 102;
Nile-god, 10 1.
North Land, 9.
Nu, 50.
Nubia, 12, 14; Egyptian
deities in, 161.
Nun, 36, 44.
Nunu, 50.
Nut, 32, 36, 47, 50, 102.
O.
Oases in the Libyan desert,
163.
Oasis of Amon, 114, 164.
Obelisk, 41, 84.
Offerings to the gods, 87, 88.
Ogdoas (of Hermupolis), 49.
Old Kingdom, 11.
Old Testament, 2.
Ombos, 9, 18, 27, 31, 67, 158.
On, 9, 40, 46.
Orion, 37.
Osiris, 2>i ff., 46, 47. 7°, 89,
102, 112, 118, 130 ff., 170;
legends, 31, 46, 67, 89, 106,
128 ff.; ritual of, 85; realm
of, 130.
Osiris- Apis, 73.
Osorapis, 73.
P.
Palestine, 164,
Patrons of the state, 30; of
the dead, 118.
Pekhet, 22, 54.
Pentateuch, 166.
Pessimism, 135.
Index
177
Pharaoh, 30; see also King.
Philae, 72.
Philosophy, 3.
Piankhi, 84, 162.
Plato, 46, 123.
Plutarch, 2, 19, 32, 45.
Political development, 8.
Potipherah, 40.
Prehistoric Semitic conquest,
8.
Priestesses, 93.
Priesthood, of Heliopolis, 46,
168; in the earliest times,
92 ; under the Middle King-
dom, 93; organisation, 93,
94; under the New King-
dom, 95; of Thebes, 96;
costume of the, 98, 99;
hereditary, 100.
Priests, 85; see also Priest-
hood.
Primitive religion of Egypt,
16, 17.
Upovaoiy 78.
Proverbial poetry, 168, 169.
Psammetichus, 14, 80.
Ptah, 18, 24, 26, 29, 36, 49,
53.56,67,72,99; property
of, 105; worship of, in for-
eign lands, 161.
Ptolemies, 15.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 72.
Ptolemy Soter, son of Lagus,
15. 72-
Punt, 21, 81.
Pylon, 77, 81.
Pyramids, 141 ff.; of Ghizeh,
II, 76.
P3'-ramid-texts, iii, 133, 142,
151-
Pythagoras, 123.
R.
Ramessidae, 13.
Ramses II., 97, 157.
Ramses III., 104, 164.
12
Re, 36 ff., 67; property of,
105.; legends of, 106 ff.
Re-Horus, 53, 56, 57, 63, 67,
68; worship of, in foreign
lands, 161.
Religious literature, 3.
Reshep, 69.
Resurrection, 169.
Rhea, 32.
Ritual, 85.
Rock-tombs, 146; of the
kings, 143.
Roman emperors, 15.
Royal tombs, in the earliest
periods, 140; in the old
empire, 141 ff.; in the new
empire, 146 ff.
s.
Sacred animals, 21 ^.
Sacred boat, 79.
Sacred rams, 157.
Sacred stake, 155.
Sacred stones, 21, 23.
Sacred trees, 21, 23.
Sacrifices for the dead, 117.
Sais, 14, 18, 36, 49, 71, 89.
Sakkara, 71, 157.
Sanctuaries. See Temple.
Satis, 29.
Scarabaeus, 38.
Sekhebu, 51.
Sekhmet, 18, 20, 22, 25, 29,
54-
Semites, 8.
Semitic immigrants, 16.
Serapeum, 157.
Serapis, 73, 170; temple in
Rome, 170.
Serddb, 145.
Sesostris, 12.
Set, 18, 30, 46, 47, 58, 67, 68,
70, 112, 128/7.; special
worship of, 67, 70.
Setekh, 18; see also Set.
Sethos (I), 13, 68, 104.
178
Index
Setnakht, 68.
Shmun, 20.
Show, 35, 44, 47, 102.
Silsile, 27.
Sinope, 72.
Sinus, 37.
Siut, 22, 48.
Sive, 114, 164.
Snake-charms, iii.
Sobek, 18, 22, 24, 27, 52, 56,
80.
Sobek, sacred lake of, 80.
Sokaris, 118.
Soothsaying, 113,
Sopdet, 37.
So this, 37.
Soudan, 53.
Soul, 121.
Soul-birds, 121.
South, 9.
Speos Artemidos, 22.
Sphinxes, 77.
Stars, 35.
Statues of the gods and
Pharaohs, 74 jf.; of the
deceased, 145.
Sun, 36.
Sun-god, 20, 127, 128; prefer-
ential worship of, 51.
Sun-god of Heliopolis, 41 ff.
Sun-myths, 43.
Sun- temple of Abusir, 76.
Syene, 102, 139.
Syria, 13, 164.
T.
Tanis, 68, 77.
Tefnut, 44, 47.
Tell-el-Amarna, 139.
Temenos, 77.
Temple, oldest form, 75; of
the Old Kingdom, 75; of
the Middle Kingdom, 77;
type of, 77; -reliefs, 81;
-decoration, 84; -endow-
ments, 10 1.
Temple of the Pyramids, 142 .
Temple of the Sun in Abusir,
75. 76.
Tetu, 21.
Thebes, 12, 19, 22, 29, 49, 52,
54, 59» 70. 77. 78, 139. 147.
156.
Theodosius the Great, 21.
Thinis, 11.
Thout, 20, 25, 34, 45, 48, 50,
58, 82, 107, 129.
Thutmosis, 13.
Thutmosis III., 104.
Tombs, equipment of, 147.
Transmigration, 123.
Triads, 29.
Tut-enkh-Amon, 65.
Tut-enkh-aton, 64.
Twet, 35, 126, 130.
Typhon, 32, 70.
U.
Urban deities, 17 ff.
Utensils of the temples, 83.
W.
Wep-wet, 22, 48.
World, 35.
Worship of animals, 158.
Z.
Zeus, 24, 70.
Zeus-Anion, 162; oracle, 114.
Zeus-Hades, 72.
Zoan, 68.
Zoser, 71, loi.
Date Due
V i^o
<
•^ i y
p4.
M AR g
4-1^
'<^^
M^^ ^ ^ '^^AY . - ff"
.:^i7'6 r
' 9 '51
^
*\»-
2-^
lejJJad-
APtv
'65
^W-C^
itn
W
MAY 21 X9
UAR I
it4
— ?n —
197-
i— u
L. B. Cat. No. 1137
•-0
M3!St3
3 5002 00361 4745
Steindorff, Georg
The religjon of the ancient Egyptians,
CLAPP
BL 2421 . S7
1905
Steindorff^
Georg,
1861-
1951.
The religion of the
ancient
Egyptians
A
i
