of gates to be passed and demons to be encountered in the
nether world, formulae such as are inscribed on sepulchral figures
and amulets, and even hymns to the sun-god. These texts are
for the most part excessively corrupt, and despite the translations
of Pierret, Renouf and Budge, much labour must yet
be expended upon them before they can rank as a first-rate
source.
(c) The texts of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes (XVIIIth–XXth
Dyn.) consist of a series of theological books compiled
at an uncertain date; they have been edited by Naville and
Lefébure. The chief of these, extant in a longer and a shorter
version, is called The book of that which is in the Nether World
(familiarly known as the Am Duat) and deals with the journey
of the sun during the twelve hours of the night. The Book ofGates treats of the same topic from a more theological standpoint.
The Litanies of the Sun contain the acclamations with
which the sun-god Re was greeted, when at eventide his bark
reached the entrance of the nether world. Another treatise
relates the destruction of mankind, and the circumstances that
led to the creation of the heavens in the form of a cow.
(d) Among the later religious books one or two deserve a
special mention, such as The Overthrowing of Apophis, the serpent
enemy of the sun-god; The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys
over their murdered brother Osiris; The Book of Breathings, a
favourite book among the later Theban priests. Several of these
books were used in the ritual of feast days, but all have received
a secondary funerary employment, and are therefore found buried
with the dead in their tombs.
(e) The Ritual texts have survived only in copies not earlier
than the New Kingdom. The temple ritual employed in the
daily cult is illustrated by the scenes depicted on the inner walls
of the great temples: the formulae recited during the performance
of the ceremonies are recorded at length in the temple of
Seti I. (XIXth Dyn.) at Abydos, as well as in some later papyri
in Berlin. The whole material has been collected and studied
by Moret. The funerary ritual is known from texts in the Theban
tombs (XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.) and papyri and sarcophagi of
later date; older versions are contained in the Pyramid texts
and The Book of the Dead. Schiaparelli has done much towards
gathering together this scattered material. The ritual observed
during the process of embalmment is preserved in late papyri in
Paris and Cairo published by Maspero.
(f) The magical documents have been comparatively little
studied, in spite of their great interest. They deal for the most
part with the hearing of diseases, the bites of snakes and scorpions,
&c., but incidentally cast many sidelights on the mythology and
superstitious beliefs. The best-known of these books is the
Papyrus Harris published by F. J. Chabas, but other papyri of
as great or greater importance are to be found in the Leiden,
Turin and other collections. A curious book published by
A. Erman contains spells to be used by mothers for the protection
of their children. A papyrus in London contains a calendar of
lucky and unlucky days. A late class of stelae, of which the best
specimen has been published by Golenischeff, consists of spells of
various kinds originally intended for the use of the living, but
later employed for funerary purposes.
(g) Under the heading Miscellaneous we must mention a
number of sources of great value: the grave-stones, or stelae,
especially those from Abydos, which throw much light on funerary
beliefs; the great Papyrus Harris, the longest of all papyri,
which enumerates the gifts of Rameses III. (XXth Dyn.) to
the various temples of Egypt; the hymns to the gods preserved
in Cairo and Leiden papyri; and the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic
temples (Dendera, Edfu, &c.), which teem with good religious
material. Nor can any attempt here be made to summarize
the remaining native Egyptian sources, literary and archaeological,
that deserve notice.
(h) Among the classical writers, Plutarch in his treatise
Concerning Isis and Osiris is the most important. Diodorus also
is useful. Herodotus, owing to his religious awe and dread of
divulging sacred mysteries, is only a second-rate source.
3. The Gods.—The end of the pre-dynastic period, in which
we dimly descry a number of independent tribes in constant
warfare with one another, was marked by the rise of a united
Egyptian state with a single Pharaonic ruler at its head. The
era of peace thus inaugurated brought with it a rapid progress
in all branches of civilization; and there soon emerged not only
a national art and a condition of material prosperity shared by
the entire land in common, but also a state religion, which
gathered up the ancient tribal cults and floating cosmical
conceptions, and combining them as best it could, imposed
them on the people as a whole. By the time that the Pyramid
texts were put into writing, doubtless long before the Vth
Dynasty, this religion had assumed a stereotyped appearance
that clung to it for ever afterwards. But the multitude of the
deities and the variety of the myths that it strove to incorporate
prevented the development of a uniform theological system,
and the heterogeneous origin of the religion remained irretrievably
stamped upon its face. Written records were few at the time
when the pantheon was built up, so that the process of construction
cannot be followed historically from stage to stage; but
it is possible by arguing backwards from the later facts to discern
the main tendencies at work, and the principal elementary cults
that served as the materials.
The gods of the pre-dynastic period may be divided into two
chief groups, the tribal or local divinities and the cosmic or
explanatory deities. At the beginning each tribe had
its own particular god, who in essence was nothing
but the articulate expression of the inner cohesion and
Classification of pre-dynastic gods.
of the outward independence of the tribe itself, but
who outwardly manifested himself in the form of some
animal or took up his abode in some fetish of wood or stone.
In times of peace this visible emblem of the god’s presence
was housed in a rude shrine, but in war-time it was taken thence
and carried into the battlefield on a standard. We find such
divine standards
often depicted on the earliest monuments,
and among the symbols placed upon them may be detected the
images of many deities destined to play an important part in the
later national pantheon, such as
the falcon Horus
, the wolf Wepwawet (Ophois)
,
the goddess Neith
, symbolized by a shield transfixed with arrows, and the god Min
,
the
nature of whose fetish is obscure. In course of time the tribes
became localized in particular districts, under the influence of a
growing central authority, and their gods then passed from tribal
into local deities. Hence it came about that the provincial
districts or nomes, as they were called, often derived their names
from the gods of tribes that settled in them, these names being
hieroglyphically written with the sign for “district” surmounted
by standards of the type above described, e.g.
, “the nome of the dog Anubis,”
the 17th or Cynopolite nome of Upper
Egypt. In this way a large number of deities came to enjoy
special reverence in restricted territories, e.g.
the ram
Khnum in Elephantine,
the jerboa or okapi (?)
Seth in Ombos,
the ibis
Thoth in Hermopolis Magna,
and of the
gods named above, Horus in Hieraconpolis, Wepwawet in Assiut,
Neith in Sais, and Min in Coptos. As towns and villages gradually
sprang up, they too adopted as their patron some one or
other of the original tribal gods, so that these came to have
different seats of worship all over Egypt. For this reason it is
often hard to tell where the primitive cult-centre of a particular
deity is to be sought; thus Horus seems equally at home both
at Buto in the Delta and at Hieraconpolis in Upper Egypt,
and the earliest worship of Seth appears to have been claimed
no less by Tanis in the north than by Ombos in the south. The
effect of the localization of gods in many different places was to
give them a double aspect; so, for instance, Khnum the god of
Elephantine could in one minute be regarded as identical with
