Khnum the god of Esna, while in the next minute and without any conscious sense of contradiction the two might be looked upon as entirely separate beings. In order that there might be no ambiguity as to what divinity was meant, it became usual, in speaking of any local deity, to specify the place of which he was “lord.” The tendency to create new forms of a god by instituting his worship in new local centres persisted throughout the whole course of Egyptian history, unhindered by the opposite tendency which made national out of local gods. Some of the cosmic gods, like the sun-god Re of Heliopolis and of Hermonthis, early acquired a local in addition to their cosmic aspect.
In the innermost principle of their existence, as patrons and protectors of restricted communities, the primitive tribal gods did not differ from one another. But externally they were distinguishable by the various shapes that their worshippers ascribed to them; and there can be little doubt that even in the beginning each had his own special attributes and particular mythical traits. These, however, may have borne little resemblance to the later conceptions of the same gods with which we are made familiar by the Pyramid texts. Thus we have no means of ascertaining what the earliest people of Sais thought about their goddess Neith, though her fetish would seem to point to her warlike nature. Nor are we much wiser in respect of those primitive tribal gods that are represented on the oldest monuments in animal form. For though we may be sure that the shape of an animal was that in which these gods were literally visible to their worshippers, yet it is impossible to tell whether some one living animal was chosen to be the earthly tenement of the deity, or whether he revealed himself in every individual of a species, or whether merely the cult-image was roughly hewn into the shape of an animal. Not too much weight must be attached to later evidence on this point; for the New Kingdom and still more the Graeco-Roman period witnessed a strange recrudescence of supposed primitive cults, to which they gave a form that may or may not have been historically exact. In some places whole classes of animals came to be deemed sacred. Thus at Bubastis, where the cat-headed Bast (Ubasti) was worshipped, vast cemeteries of mummified cats have been found; and elsewhere similar funerary cults were accorded to crocodiles, lizards, ibises and many other animals. In Elephantine Khnum was supposed to become incarnate in a ram, at whose death the divinity left him and took up his abode in another. So too the bull of Apis (a black animal with white spots) was during its lifetime regarded as a reincarnation of Ptah, the local god of Memphis, and similarly the Mnevis and Bacis bulls were accounted to be “the living souls” of Etom of Heliopolis and of Re of Hermonthis respectively; these latter cults are certainly secondary, for Ptah himself was never, either early or late, depicted otherwise than in human form, as a mummy or as a dwarf; and Etom and Re are but different names of the sun-god. The form of a snake, attributed to many local goddesses, especially in later times (e.g. Meresger of the Theban necropolis), was borrowed from the very ancient deity Outo (Buto); the semblance of a snake became so characteristic of female divinities that even the word “goddess” was written with the hieroglyph of a snake. Other animal shapes particularly affected by goddesses were those of a lioness (Sakhmi, Pakhe) or a cow (Hathor, Isis). The primitive animal gods are not to be confused with the animal forms ascribed to many cosmic deities; thus when the sun-god Re was pictured as a scarabaeus, or dung-beetle, rolling its ball of dung behind it, this was certainly mere poetical imagery. Or else a cosmic god might assume an animal shape through assimilation with some tribal god, as when Re was identified with Horus and therefore depicted as a falcon.
With the advance of civilization and the transformation of the tribal gods into national divinities, the beliefs held about them must have become less crude. At a very early date the anthropomorphizing tendency caused the animal deities to be represented with human bodies, though as a rule they retained their animal heads; so in the case of Seth as early as the IInd Dynasty. The other gods carry their primitive fetishes in their hands (like Neith, who is depicted holding arrows) or on their heads (so Nefertem [Iphthimis] with his lotus-flower). At the same time the gods began to acquire human personalities. In a few instances this may have come about by the emphasizing of a really primitive trait; as when the wolf Ophois, in consonance with the predatory nature of that animal, developed into a god of war. In other cases the transitional steps are shrouded in mystery; we do not know, for example, why the ibis Thoth subsequently became the patron of the fine arts, the inventor of writing, and the scribe of the gods. But the main factor in this evolutionary process was undoubtedly the formation of myths, which brought gods of independent origin into relation with one another, and thus imbued them with human passions and virtues. Here dim historic recollections often determined the features of the story, and in one famous legend that knits together a group of gods all seemingly local in origin we can still faintly trace how the tale arose, was added to, and finally crystallized in a coherent form.
Osiris was a wise and beneficent king, who reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws and taught them handicrafts. The prosperous reign of Osiris was brought to a premature close by the machinations of his wicked brother Seth, who with seventy-two fellow-conspirators invited him to a banquet, induced him to enter a cunningly-wrought coffin made exactly to his measure, then shut down the lid and cast the chest into the Nile. Isis, the faithful wife of Osiris, set forth in search of her dead husband’s body, and after long and adventure-fraught wanderings, succeeded in recovering it and bringing it back to Egypt. Then while she was absent visiting her son Horus in the city of Buto, Seth once more gained possession of the corpse, cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them all over Egypt. But Isis collected the fragments, and wherever one was found, buried it with due honour; or, according to a different account, she joined the limbs together by virtue of her magical powers, and the slain Osiris, thus resurrected, henceforth reigned as king of the dead in the nether world. When Horus grew up he set out to avenge his father’s murder, and after terrible struggles finally conquered and dispossessed his wicked uncle; or, as another version relates, the combatants were separated by Thoth, and Egypt divided between them, the northern part falling to Horus and the southern to Seth. Such is the story as told by Plutarch, with certain additions and modifications from older native sources. There existed, however, a very ancient tradition according to which Horus and Seth were hostile brothers, not nephew and uncle; and many considerations may be urged in support of the thesis which regards their struggles as reminiscences of wars between two prominent tribes or confederations of tribes, one of which worshipped the falcon Horus while the other had the okapi (?) Seth as its patron and champion. The Horus-tribes were the victors, and it was from them that the dynastic line sprang; hence the Pharaoh always bore the name of Horus, and represented in his own hallowed person the ancient tribal deity. Of Osiris we can only state that he was originally the local god of Busiris, whatever further characteristics he primitively possessed being quite obscure. Isis was perhaps the local goddess of Buto, a town not far distant from Busiris; this geographical proximity would suffice to explain her connexion with Osiris in the tale. A legend now arose, we know not how or why, which made Seth the brother and murderer of Osiris; and this led to a fusion of the Horus-Seth and the Seth-Isis-Osiris motifs. The relationships had now to be readjusted, and the most popular view recognized Horus as the son and avenger of Osiris. The more ancient account survived, however, in the myth that Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys (a goddess who plays but a minor part in the Osiris cycle) were all children of the earth-god Keb and the sky-goddess Nut, born on the five consecutive days added on at the end of the year (the so-called epagomenal days). Later generations reconciled these contradictions by assuming the existence of two Horuses, one, the brother of Osiris, Seth and Isis, being named Haroeris, i.e. Horus the elder, while the other, the child of Isis and Osiris, was called Harpocrates, i.e. Horus the child.
