Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/50

which the majority of Egyptian cults are traceable, thus confirming the general absence of homage to cosmic powers. It is even doubtful whether the worship of the sun-god was originally important; while the scanty attention paid to the moon in historical times and the confusion of three planets under one name again make it certain that no cult of them had been transmitted from the days of the ancestors.

Fig. 3. The Sun-God Watching the Appearance of his Disk in the Eastern Gate of Heaven

On the other hand, the first attempts at philosophical thought which accompanied the development of Egyptian civilization evidently led to a closer contemplation of nature and to a better appreciation of it. Yet, although we find traces of various attempts to create a system of cosmic gods, no such system was ever carried through satisfactorily, so that a large part of the pantheon either never became cosmic or, as has been said above, was at best only unsuccessfully made cosmic.

The first of all cosmic powers to find general worship was the sun, whose rays dominate Egypt so strongly. The earliest efforts to personify it identified it with an old hawk-god, and thus sought to describe it as a hawk which flew daily across the sky. Therefore, the two most popular forms of the solar deity, Rê‘ and Horus, & have the form of a hawk or of a hawk-headed man (later sometimes also of a lion with a hawk’s head).

Fig. 4. Pictures of Khepri in Human Form

Both divinities had so many temples in historical times that we cannot determine their original seats of worship. At the beginning of the dynastic period Horus seems to have been the sun-god who was most generally worshipped in Egypt.¹ Though Rê‘ does not appear to find offi-