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This assumption is confirmed by the fact that the oldest monuments of Egypt – and they are also the oldest in the world – exhibit the Egyptians in possession of the art of writing. All writing proceeds from pictures. The writing of the Egyptians and Babylonians, like that of the Chinese, Mexicans, and the tribes of North America, was in the first instance no more than speaking pictures. The Egyptians engraved on the stone of their rocks pictures of the objects and events of which they wished to preserve the remembrance. As this use of pictures to assist the memory became more common and more regular, from external no less than internal reasons, it quickly acquired certain abbreviations and combinations. The frequent repetition of a picture led to its abbreviation. The picture of a house dwindled into a square; water is not so much sketched as indicated by waved lines; instead of a forest we have the outline of a tree – in Egypt we find the sycamore, the most common tree in the country. Thus from actual imitative pictures we arrive at indicatory pictures. But how could the various kinds of fluid, for instance, be represented in these indicatory pictures? The three waved lines indicating water were retained, but beside them was sketched a wine-jar or water-pot, and thus the desired end was attained. By adding the picture of a god to the square, a temple was distinguished from a house. By such means the objects of the visible world could be reproduced in pictures more or less abbreviated. Even the actions and conditions of men which do not come immediately under the eye could be represented in this abbreviated metaphorical manner. Giving could be represented by an outstretched arm with a loaf; opening, by a door; going, by a road planted with trees; travelling, by a walking bird; battle, by an arm equipped with shield and lance; binding and fastening, by a coiled rope; destruction, by a prostrate man. It was more difficult to represent conditions which do not show themselves to the eye, as, for instance, hunger and thirst. To express thirst the Egyptians chose the symbol of water and a calf running to it; hunger they represented by a hand conveyed to the mouth, and this was also the symbol of eating. But the most difficult task for this picture-writing was the description of objects transcending sense, and abstract ideas. For the gods, it is true, popular notions and the fancy of the priests had supplied fixed forms which only required to be abbreviated for the picture-writing. The picture of the sky-goddess served as a symbol for the sky. The Egyptians regarded the sky as arched over the earth; the feet of the goddess rested on one extremity, and her hands on the other. Instead of the complete figure of the goddess in this arched attitude, they drew a line of a similar kind, and this was the abbreviated picture of the sky. If the sun or a star was combined with this line, the picture represented the day and the night. But the abstract ideas of law and justice, truth, protection, good, evil, life, &c., could only be represented in this picture-writing by sensuous images. In Egypt power was represented by a brandished whip, or poleaxe; justice, by the cubit, or symbol of equal measurement; good, by the symbol of sound, in order perhaps to indicate harmony; evil, by the picture of an unclean fish; truth, by an ostrich feather – the feathers of this bird are said to remain unchanged; protection, by a soaring vulture, &c., &c.
Though the possession of such indicatory or symbolic pictures enabled men to describe a series of objects and conditions, and even certain classes of conceptions – this picture-writing was nevertheless far removed from the expression of a definite and intelligible speech. It was a great step in the Egyptian writing when to their simple metaphorical and symbolical pictures phonetic pictures were added. From the actual picture by means of abbreviation, by indicatory signs and symbols, they had arrived at picture-signs, and had succeeded in expressing a certain feeling by means of figures; but now the indication of the sound was added to the representation of the sense. The picture-writing could only go to these picture-signs in order to borrow the symbols for sound. Hence the sound A was denoted by a symbol which signified an object of which the name began with A; for this in Egypt the symbol of an eagle (achem), or of a reed (ak), might be, and was selected. Thus in order to express words which could not be made plain by picture-signs and images of sense, the plan was adopted of adding to the picture-signs already in use for such words, one or more phonetic symbols, a complete or incomplete phonetic supplement. Hence arose a class of mixed pictures, made up of the picture of the object, with the addition of the sounds of the words of which the picture was intended to express the meaning. To make the meaning yet more clear, it was found necessary to add key-signs, indicating the class and nature of the word in question. Thus with the pictorial and phonetic signs for day and hour was combined the sign of the sun, and to the names of countries and rivers the sign for land and water. Moreover these key-signs showed whether the word symbolised by a sound or a picture denoted an animal, a plant, a kind of stone, or belonged to a particular class of conditions and actions. Yet in this combination of real and phonetic pictures, it always remained uncertain whether a picture or symbol was to be taken for its real meaning, or was to be regarded as a phonetic symbol.
This, then, is the difficult writing of the Egyptians; these are the hieroglyphics as presented even on those great monuments. Even here we find this method of writing applied in the same forms, and with the same mixture of pictorial and phonetic signs, which it retained in Egypt, with slight modifications (see below). Without doubt, the development of this complicated system was the work of centuries. In the infancy of history, special insight and capability is obtained and handed down only within the limits of certain circles. There could be no regular application and development of this system of writing before the formation of a priestly order. And again, the separation of such an order from the rest of the people could only take place gradually; it must go through a number of stages to raise it above the primitive conditions of life. When this point of culture was reached, a considerable space of time was still needed in order to bring the picture-writing, even within the priestly class, to the form in which we see it on the pyramids. In those nations whose progress we can follow with greater accuracy, centuries must pass before the indefinite and floating notions entertained of the gods are fixed in rigid forms. Yet in Egypt this change had already taken place before the date of the oldest hieroglyphics: for even in these we find typical forms in use for the gods, with sharply drawn and abbreviated outlines. In the picture-writing itself there is a wide interval between the delineation of an incident, or object, and the representation of a definite feeling; and a yet wider interval before the expression of ideas, of definite speech, is attained. An advanced stage of reflection and abstraction is required in order to step from the picture of an occurrence to picture-signs and images of sense, and again from these to phonetic symbols. The symbols for an incident, and for an idea and a sound, are separated by a wide gulf. Independently of these internal requirements for the advance of picture-writing, the external form in which the oldest hieroglyphics are represented, their even, harmonious, clearly-cut and unalterable forms, are evidence not only of an industrious and careful application of these signs, but also of a tolerably long use. The oldest hieroglyphics of the date of the great pyramids are for the most part embossed; but even the engraved work of a date very little more recent is not surpassed by later times in artistic excellence, in sharpness and neatness of execution.
The study of the calendar of Egypt, no less than the use of writing upon the great monuments, carries us back to an early date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization. We saw that the priests, by adding five days to the old year of 360 days, had come tolerably near to the natural year, and had fixed the beginning of their year by the rising of Sirius. Monuments of the age of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen show that even then the rising of Sirius had been observed and noted. Nevertheless, the beginning of their short civic year tended to anticipate the natural year; and thus the Egyptian year was always in advance of the solar. But if it was observed and noted down by the Egyptians, that in the year of their reckoning, corresponding to the Julian year 1322 B.C., the beginning of the year had again fallen on the right day, that is, on the rising of Sirius, so that the first day of Thoth in the movable year coincided with the first day of Thoth in the solar year, which was the 20th of July, it follows that the fixing of the beginning of the year on July 20, and of the length of the year at 365 days, had taken place 1,460 years (p. 30) before the date 1322 B.C., i. e. in the year 2782 B.C. This conclusion is supported by another consideration. Our astronomers have calculated that it was only in the two or three centuries preceding and following the year 3285 B.C. that the rising of Sirius so exactly coincided with the summer solstice and the rise of the Nile; and therefore in this epoch only could the observation have been made that Sirius brought the inundation. Hence in this period only could the beginning of the year have been fixed at the rising of Sirius. But if the Egyptians could set aside an old calendar and introduce a new arrangement requiring attention and long-continued observations, somewhere about the year 2800 B.C., it is clear that the beginnings of higher culture in Egypt cannot be later than 3000 B.C.33
Valuable as this result is, we are nevertheless carried back to hypotheses and combinations in order to fix the various epochs, and more especially before the reign of the Hyksos. And as an arrangement of history is impossible without chronology, divisions must be assumed here and there where it is impossible to establish them satisfactorily. The arrangement of Egyptian chronology proposed by Lepsius has for the first time introduced a well-considered system into the whole. Hence, in spite of the objections already brought forward against the basis of this arrangement, and the proved uncertainties and contradictions of tradition and the monuments, which the progress of inquiry into the older periods may indeed lessen but cannot remove, I follow the data given by Lepsius for the epochs of Egyptian history, and the duration of the reigns which come under our notice.
CHAPTER III.
THE RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS
Next to its language the oldest possession of a nation is its religion. Living in a country of very distinct outlines and characteristic forms, where the regularity of external life is brought more prominently before the view than in other countries, the Egyptians at an early period arrived at a fixed expression of their religious feelings and of the forms of their gods. Their original conceptions are unknown to us. The oldest monuments, our earliest sources of information, present us with a numerous assemblage of gods, and the conclusions drawn from these carry us back to views far removed from primitive forms of worship. They indicate a system already developed in the circle of the priests. We can only attempt from the fragments of that system preserved in inscriptions and manuscripts, and the very late accounts of the Greeks, to deduce conclusions concerning the religious notions which originally predominated.
The distinction in the nature of the upper and lower valley, already referred to, cannot have been without influence upon the direction of civic life among the Egyptians, and the formation of their religious ideas. So far as we can tell, these developed independently at the same time in the upper and lower country. In both districts peculiar forms were retained at the most prominent centres of religious worship, until after the union of the country they became amalgamated in all essential points.
Memphis worshipped the god Ptah. The great sanctuary of the god at that city was held to be as ancient as the city itself. So far back as our knowledge extends, the Pharaohs were occupied with the extension and adornment of this temple. Among the Greeks the god of Memphis was known as Hephæstus: they tell us he was represented in the temple by a dwarf-like image; and that similar images of the children of Ptah stood in a part of the temple only entered by the priests.34 The name Hephæstus, and the further statement of the Greeks, that this god was the father of the Sun-god, prove that in Ptah the Egyptians worshipped not only fire, but the spirit of warmth and light generally; and that they must have regarded him as the origin and source of light.
Manetho puts Ptah at the head of the dynasties of the gods. He ruled for 9,000 years before the other gods. Inscriptions name Ptah "the lord of truth," the "father of truth," the "ruler of the sky," "the king of both worlds." As the god of the light which shows everything in its true form, he is the spirit of truth; as the spirit of the light in the sky, he is the lord of heaven. The inscriptions also say that Ptah "moves the egg of the sun and the moon;" he is called "the weaver of the beginnings," the "god who rolls his egg in the sky." Consequently, to the Egyptians Ptah was the mover of the luminaries, a formative, creative spirit, and as he is called in the inscriptions "the father of the father of the gods," he must have been to them the first and oldest god, the beginning of the gods and of all things.
The Egyptians believed that a kind of beetle peculiar to their country (scarabæus sacer) was propagated without the female sex; they saw the mode of its reproduction in the balls of dung which the beetles occasionally pushed before them. Hence they consecrated this insect to their god of beginning and creation, and on monuments and records we find the god Ptah with a beetle on his shoulders, in the place of a human head. As the god of the beginning he appears on monuments in the shape of a child or dwarf; and again, as the unchangeable god, he is wrapped in the casings of a mummy, with the symbols of dominion, the whip and sceptre, or the so-called Nile-gauge, a ring with parallel cross bars, in his hand, in order to denote him as the god who gives to all things measure, order, and law. He is also coloured green, to signify, as it would seem, that lie is a god favourable to vegetation, and possessed of a fertilising power.
Thus Ptah was one of the forms under which the Egyptians invoked the creator, the highest god. On a pillar of Memphis, now in the Berlin Museum, belonging to the time of the nineteenth dynasty, he is called "the only unbegotten begetter in the heaven and on the earth," "the god who made himself to be god, who exists by himself, the double being, the begetter of the first beginning." Other inscriptions and records denote him as "the creator in heaven and on earth, who has made all things, the lord of all that is, and is not."35
Below Memphis lay On, the city of the sun (Heliopolis). Here the spirit of the sun, Ra, was the pre-eminent god. In Manetho's list Ra succeeds Ptah in the kingdom. "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "regard the sun as the body of the beneficent power, the visible form of a being only comprehensible to thought. The morning sun they represented as a new-born child seated on a lotus leaf, and thrice each day – at sunrise, noon, and sunset – they offered incense to Helius."36 We also find that the Egyptians represented the sun of the winter months as a little child, the sun of the vernal equinox as a youth, that of the summer solstice as a bearded man, and again, the sun of the autumnal equinox as an old man.37 Hence they looked at the yearly course of the sun under the allegory of human life. Plutarch's remark about the morning sun shows that they regarded the daily course of the sun from the same point of view, and when he tells us that according to Egyptian story, Apopis made war against the god of the sky,38 his statements are confirmed by the monuments. According to the inscriptions Ra is "revealed in the abyss of the sky," he is throned "in the orb of the sun," "he moves his egg." "A Supplication to Ra" – such are the words of a prayer – "who each day by himself brings himself to a new birth. Ra has created all that is in the abysses of the sky."39 In the tombs of the Ramesids, at Thebes, the course of the sun is represented by the hour of the day and night. On the form of the blue outstretched goddess of the sky appears the boat of the sun, for the Egyptians conceived the sun as navigating the air in a skiff, as they navigated the Nile; and in the boat is Ra, a child with finger in mouth at the first hour of the morning. As the day goes on the child increases in size, and at every hour the spirits who lead the boat are changed. In the hours of the afternoon the evil serpent, Apep, the darkness, the Apopis of Plutarch, attempts to swallow the sun, but twelve spirits draw the serpent by ropes to the side. In the hours of the night the sun-god is inclosed in his shrine on the boat, which is carried along by spirits changing every hour over the waters of the under world to the east – just as the boats on the Nile are drawn against the stream – so that he may again shine out in the east on the next morning. The hieroglyphics accompanying the navigation of the night hours contain seventy-four invocations of Ra in Amenti, i. e. in his concealment. In a similar way the monuments of Edfu exhibit the growth of the sun-god through the twelve hours of the day from a child to a youth and a man, and an old man bowed with age, leaning upon a staff. This last is called in the inscriptions, "The old man who becomes again a child."40
The monuments exhibit Ra in red, with the sun's orb on his head, a sceptre in one hand, and the symbol of life in the other. The cat, the tawny bull, and the hawk are the chosen creatures of Ra; often he is found on the monuments with the head of a hawk in the place of the human head, or as a hawk carrying the sun's orb. All the entrances of the temple and the pylons display the symbolical form of the deity, the sun's orb, supported by two wings. From the sun-god the kings of Egypt derived their might and power. They generally call themselves "the sons of Ra," and they rule over Egypt as Ra rules over the world.
Hence we can assume that to the minds of the priests Ptah was essentially the deity of beginning, the first originator of creation. Ra again was the propagating and sustaining power of the divinity embodied in the sun.
At Hermopolis (Ashmunein), besides Thoth, whom the Greeks compared to their Hermes, and the inscriptions name the "Lord of divine truth," the "scribe of truth," to whom the white Ibis with black neck and beak is sacred, the "children of Ptah" were worshipped. These were eight gods in four pairs. Owing to this worship Hermopolis was known to the Egyptians as Pe-sesennu, i. e. "the city of reverence." These children of Ptah seem to have been spirits of the elements. In an inscription at Edfu we find, "The eight gods, the very great, who are from the beginning, created before the gods, the children of Ptah, arising through him, begotten of him, to take possession of the south and the north, to create in the Thebaid, and fashion in the land of Memphis. When they arose the stream flowed out from the young waters, the child of the lotus flower rose up in the boat, the beautiful one, making this earth bright by his beams."41
At Sais, at Buto, on the Sebennytic mouth, and at Bubastis (Tel Basta), on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, female goddesses were worshipped. To the feast of the goddess of Sais, whom the Greeks called Athene, the Egyptians came from the whole country, as Herodotus tells us, to Sais, and lighted lamps on the appointed night, and even those who did not come to Sais lit lamps, so that lamps were burning throughout all Egypt.42 Jamblichus and Proclus tell us that the goddess of Sais, the Neith of the Egyptians, was the mother of the sun-god; the inscriptions call Neith "the cow which bore the sun," "ancient mother of the sun," "mother of the gods." Hence we may assume that Neith was associated with Ptah, whose green colour she shares on the monuments; and that the creative power of nature was personified in her under a female form. The feast of lamps may have symbolised the birth of light, and its rise from the darkness.43 The goddess of Buto, who was also worshipped at Letopolis, near Memphis, was compared by the Greeks with their goddess Leto, whose child was Apollo, the spirit of light, because at Buto the victorious god of light of the Egyptians, of whom we shall speak below, was said to have grown up.44
The sanctuary of the goddess at Bubastis was, according to Herodotus' account, the most delightful, though not the largest or most costly, in the whole of Egypt. It was situated in the middle of the city, and could be seen from every side. "Beyond the market-place a paved road, about forty feet in width, leads to the shrine, which is overshadowed by trees on both sides. The precincts, a place of about a stadium square, is surrounded with a trench one hundred feet broad; this is connected with the Nile, and also planted with trees. The portico is ten fathoms high, and adorned with statues six cubits in height, and well worth description. On the external walls pictures are everywhere engraved, and the temple in which the statue of the goddess stands is also surrounded by very lofty trees. At the festival of the goddess the Egyptians from all the land go down in boats to Bubastis: in every boat is a number of men and women; some of the men blow the flute; some of the women have castanets, and strike them; the rest sing and clap their hands. The boat touches at every city on the river bank; and here also the women sing and strike their castanets, while others follow the women of the city with shouts and raillery; others, again, dance; others expose themselves. On arriving at Bubastis, they bring large offerings to the goddess, and drink more wine at this festival than in all the rest of the year. According to the accounts of the Egyptians, about 700,000 men and women are collected at this festival, without counting children.45
Herodotus calls the goddess of Bubastis Artemis: her Egyptian name was Bast and Pacht; and the city was called after her Pa-Bast, i. e. "abode of Bast." On monuments this goddess has the sun's disk upon her head, or, in the place of a human head, the head of a cat, which animal was sacred to her. At Heliopolis there was a picture of Ra in the form of a he-cat;46 and in the inscription Pacht is called the daughter of Ra. Ra was invoked to come to the help of his daughter, the holy she-cat, who was panic-stricken by the snake which approached heaven in order to tread upon the path of the sun-god, and to defile the limbs of the holy she-cat.47 In the sketches in the "Book of the Dead" we find a she-cat, with the right forefoot upon the head of a serpent, and in the left a broad knife, with which she is cutting off the head of the serpent.48 The account given by Herodotus of the customs observed at the festival are confirmed from other sources. The monuments exhibit musicians, whose music is accompanied by the audience with clapping of the hands; and Plutarch describes the castanets of the Egyptians adorned with the figure of a human-headed she-cat, the sound of which was intended to scare away the evil spirit.49
In the upper country other deities were worshipped. At Thebes, Amun, known to the Greeks as Ammon, took the place occupied by Ptah at Memphis. Hecatæus of Abdera relates that the Egyptians identified their supreme god with the universe, but the god was invisible and concealed.50 Amun, as a fact, signifies "the concealed" or "veiled." The monuments of Thebes exhibit him as a creative god with the Phallus, as a ruling deity either standing or sitting on a throne; on his royal head-dress are two upright feathers, which to the Egyptians were the symbol of dominion over the upper and under world, and in his hand are the sceptre and the symbol of life. His colour is blue. By his side stands the goddess Mut; the "mother," the "lady of darkness," as the inscriptions51 style her. She wears on her head the vulture, or the crown of Upper Egypt. She is also found on inscriptions with the head of a vulture, the bird sacred to her, instead of a human head; and in pictures of battles the vulture of Mut hovers over the Pharaoh as the symbol of protection. The son of Ammon and Mut is Shu (Sosis, Sos), the spirit of the atmosphere, "the bearer of heaven," as the inscriptions name him.52 This (Thinis) and Abydus were the chief seats of his worship. In Manetho's list the reign of Shu follows on those of Ptah and Ra.
In the place of Ammon we often find another divinity, Tum (Atmu.) This was the sun-god in a special form. In Upper Egypt the spirit of the sun was invoked under the names Tum and Mentu. Of these names the first signified the declining sun, the sun of the west, the sun of concealment, the sun in the under world; the second the rising sun, the sun of the east, the sun of the day, the bright sun-god. Tum also wears the double crown, and the two feathers of Ammon, or in the place of them the two royal serpents round his head-dress; he also is lord of both kingdoms. Like Ptah, he is "the father of beginnings, who begot himself," "the father of the gods;" like him also he is formed with the beetle in the place of the human head; as the creative god he is the creator of his name, i. e. of his properties; he is the primæval night, the darkness of the beginning, before light existed. To him also belonged the primæval water. According to Plutarch, the Egyptians believed that the sun arose out of moisture, that it sprang up out of water, and was nourished by it, and therefore water was the beginning and origin of things. This account is confirmed by the monuments. As light in the process of production, Tum is called "Ra in his egg;" and as the spirit of light arising out of darkness and water, the horologe and the sun-dial are his insignia.53
At Coptus, in Upper Egypt, a phallic god was worshipped under the name Chem, whom the Greeks compared to their god Pan, and at the falls of Syene a ram-headed god, Chnum (Chnemu, Chnuphis, Kneph), who in inscriptions is named the lord of the "inundations," of the "outpouring of the waters."54 As a giver of fruits, the colour of his pictures on the monuments is generally green. In the eyes of the inhabitants of Upper Egypt Chnum was, according to the account of Plutarch, an uncreated eternal spirit.55 We must therefore regard him as a peculiar form of the life-giving god. Chnum was often united with Ammon, inasmuch as the latter assumes the attributes of Chnum, the ram's horns or even head.56 As the worship of Ammon passed beyond Egypt up the Nile as far as Meroe, so the worship of Ammon-Chnum spread westward in the Libyan desert as far as the oasis of Siwa, where the inhabitants were called by the Greeks Ammonians. Here, even now, in the vicinity of a clear pool surrounded by lofty palms, the remains of a considerable temple are to be seen, with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the picture of the ram-headed deity.57
The worship of the goddess Hathor was widely diffused both in Upper and Lower Egypt. The most renowned seats of the cultus were Aphroditopolis, near Memphis; Edfu and Dendera, in Upper Egypt. She is called in the inscriptions "the lady of the dance and revel," and is represented on the monuments with fetters and a tambourine in her hands. From this and from her Grecian name we may conclude that she was the Egyptian goddess of love, of the enchaining passion; but though we find in her form hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. She is represented with the horns of a cow – her sacred animal – on her head, and between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. In the rock-temple at Abusimbel, which the wife of Ramses II. dedicated to Hathor, she is represented as a cow in a boat, over which water-plants meet in arches. To this cow the king and queen offer flowers and fruits.58 In the temple at Edfu, a structure of the Ptolemies, 360 local forms of Hathor are said to have been enumerated and among these seven were especially prominent.
It was the beneficent, creative, and life-giving powers of nature which the Egyptians worshipped in these divinities – water, light, the clear heaven, the sun, the powers of reproduction and birth. But the phenomena and the powers presented by nature were not in every case beneficent. Night swallowed up day, and death swallowed up life. Beside the waters and the black fruitful soil of Egypt lay the boundless yellow desert, from which storms blew the sand into the green valley. In the hot months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. Thus in the life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always gained the upper hand. Out of night arose a new day; out of the death of nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life. Through this conception of a strife raging between the healing and destructive powers of nature, by regarding nature as moving in a circular course from life to death, and death to life, the Egyptians succeeded in making a great advance in their religious ideas. They personified this strife in certain divine forms. The beneficent power, the divinity of life was allowed to succumb, and then to rise from apparent death into a new life. Only for a moment could the evil powers vanquish the good; the eternal victory remained with the gods of beneficence.
