Egyptian mythology

“ With such a deep and mystic literature, encompassing the gods, nature, and man, in life and death, it is no wonder that a mystic and symbolic art should have succeeded in Egypt.
Their mythology was not less profound than that of the Trans-Himâlâyans; there was more of symmetry, at least architectural symmetry, in their conceptions and representations than in those of the Brahmans, though Egyptian priests and Brahmans have apparently taken their conceptions from one and the same source. ”

“ It has been observed of the Egyptians that they were wont to ridicule the Greeks for regarding their gods as actual beings, while in reality "they were only the representations of the attributes and principles of Nature." Unlike the religions which succeeded it, Egyptian mythology, as understood by the learned, was essentially philosophical, and dealt with abstractions and principles rather than with personalities. ”

“ Max Müller, have, I trust, made us fully understand how, among the Indo-European races, the names of the Sun, of Sunrise and Sunset, and of other such phenomena, come to be talked of and considered as personages, of whom wondrous legends have been told. Egyptian mythology not merely admits, but imperatively demands, the same explanation. And this becomes the more evident when we consider the question how these mythical personages came to be invested with the attributes of divinity by men who, like the Egyptians, had so lively a sense of the divine. ”

“ XI. It may be said of the Greeks, that there never was a people who so completely nationalized all that they borrowed from a foreign source. And whatever, whether in a remoter or more recent age, it might have appropriated from the creed of Isis and Osiris, one cause alone would have sufficed to efface from the Grecian the peculiar character of the Egyptian mythology.
The religion of Egypt, as a science, was symbolical—it denoted elementary principles of philosophy; its gods were enigmas. ”

“ I had almost aban{319}doned the hope that our expedition would achieve any actual advance for this science, when upon the return journey I discovered in the Theban temples a series of monuments which threw so much unexpected light upon its essential nature and historical phases, that I have come to the conclusion that upon this basis Egyptian mythology may for the first time be presented according to its true import and in its historical development.
The history of art has never been worked out from the present standpoint of Egyptology. ”

“ I have no doubt whatever that some of the chapters of the Book of the Dead were as obscure to Egyptians living under the eleventh dynasty as they are to ourselves. The Book of the Dead is mythological throughout, and the true sense of a mythology dies away with the stage of culture which has produced it. A critical collation of a sufficient number of copies of each chapter will in time restore the text to as accurate a standard as could be attained in the most flourishing days of the Egyptian empire. ”

“ At this time—the end of the eleventh century after the building of the city—the emperor himself did not refuse to mark on his Roman coins the happy renewal of the years by the old Egyptian astrological fable of the return of the phoenix.
From the treatise of Julius Fermicus against the pagan superstitions, it would seem that the sacred animals of the Egyptians were no longer kept in the several cities in which they used to be worshipped, and that many of the old gods had been gradually dropped from the mythology, which was then chiefly confined to the worship of Isis and Osiris. ”

“ The difficulty in deducing both male and female divinities from a male or sexless Supreme being has led to some strange mythology. The Egyptians cut the knot in an effective if coarse way. “Thus from one god I became three gods,” says the Egyptian deity “the Lord of the Universe,” in his account of the Creation. See Budge, “Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu,” and Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, pp. xiii, xiv and 14, 15. Was the author of the Apophasis acquainted with this story? The Clementines make Simon’s associates Egyptians or rather Alexandrians. ”

“ The notion of Destiny, which plays so important a part in Greek mythology, does not appear to have been foreign to Egyptian thought. In two of the romantic tales which have reached us, the Hathors appear in the character of the Fates of classical mythology, or the Fairies of our own folk-lore. ”

“ The book gives conclusive proof of the teaching of the Egyptians of a life beyond this. Their belief in the journey of the soul after death to the Underworld, before it is admitted to the Hall of Osiris, or the abode of light, is akin to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory and Heaven. The Egyptian literature is painted or engraved on monuments, written on papyrus, and buried in tombs, or under the ruins of temples, hence, as has been said elsewhere, much of it remained hidden until nineteenth century research brought it to light. ”

“ There are evidently two distinct and different main strata in the fabric of Egyptian religion. On the one hand we find a mass of myth and religious belief of very primitive, almost savage, cast, combining a worship of the actual dead in their tombs—which were supposed to communicate and thus form a veritable “underworld,” or, rather, “under-Egypt”—with veneration of magic animals, such as jackals, cats, hawks, and crocodiles. ”

“ These animal forms, in which a later myth saw the shapes assumed by the affrighted gods during the great war between Horus and Typhon, take us back to a remote prehistoric age, when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism. They are survivals from a long-forgotten past, and prove that Egyptian civilisation was of slow and independent growth, the latest stage only of which is revealed to us by the monuments. Apis of Memphis, Mnevis of Heliopolis, and Pachis of Hermonthis are all links that bind together the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Egypt of the stone age. ”

“ The modern science of comparative religion is extending year by year, and its light is slowly but certainly becoming diffused among the dark places of the ancient faiths. By the gleam of this magic lamp, then—more wonderful than any dreamt of by the makers of Eastern fable—let us walk in the gloom of the pyramids, in the cool shadows of ruined temples, aye, through the tortuous labyrinth of the Egyptian mind itself, trusting that by virtue of the light we carry we shall succeed in unravelling to some extent the age-long enigma of this mystic land. ”

“ It is to be observed also that the religion of ancient Egypt seems to be of native growth. No trace is to be found, either in record or tradition, of any importation from a foreign source, such as may be seen in the Chaldæan legend of Oannes and other religions of antiquity. On the contrary, all the Egyptian myths and traditions ascribe the invention of religion, arts, and literature, to Thoth, Osiris, Horus, and other native Egyptian gods. ”

“ It is impossible here to do more than indicate the kind of modification which Egyptian religion underwent. Throughout it remained constant in certain features, namely, the local character of its gods, their usefulness to the dead (their Chthonian aspect) , their tendency to be merged into the sun, Ra, the great type and symbol and source of life, and, finally, their inability to shake off the fur and feathers of the beasts, the earliest form of their own development. Thus life, death, sky, sun, bird, beast and man are all blended in the religious conceptions of Egypt. ”

“ But the second deity is Atum, the great god of Heliopolis, and he is followed by his cycle of deities—Shu, "the son of Ra"; Tefnut, "the Lady of the sky"; Keb, "the Father of the Gods"; Nut, "the Mother of the Gods"; Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Set, Horus, and Hathor. We are here in the presence of cosmic deities, as befits a projected act of creation. The subsequent scenes exhibit the Egyptian's literal interpretation of the myth, which necessitates the god's bodily presence and personal participation. ”

“ This is, of course, not religion, such as we have seen in the writings of Valentinus, nor even the transcendental mysticism of the Pistis Sophia, but magic, and magic of a peculiarly Egyptian form. The ancient Egyptian had always an intense fear of the world after death, and from the first conceived a most gloomy view of it. ”

“ The red sun sank low, bringing the relentless chill of Egyptian dusk; and as it stood poised on the world's rim like that ancient god of Heliopolis—Re-Harakhte, the Horizon-Sun—we saw silhouetted against its vermeil holocaust the black outlines of the Pyramids of Gizeh—the palaeogean tombs there were hoary with a thousand years when Tut-Ankh-Amen mounted his golden throne in distant Thebes. Then we knew that we were done with Saracen Cairo, and that we must taste the deeper mysteries of primal Egypt—the black Kem of Re and Amen, Isis and Osiris. ”

“ In Egypt attempts like that of Isis to appropriate the power of a high god by possessing herself of his name were not mere legends told of the mythical beings of a remote past; every Egyptian magician aspired to wield like powers by similar means. For it was believed that he who possessed the true name possessed the very being of god or man, and could force even a deity to obey him as a slave obeys his master. Thus the art of the magician consisted in obtaining from the gods a revelation of their sacred names, and he left no stone unturned to accomplish his end. ”

“ And to this day men sacrifice the pig when the Moon is at the full, because Set, the enemy of Horus, and the murderer of Osiris, took its form in order to injure the blue-eyed God. And for this reason also swineherds are unclean throughout the land of Egypt; never may they enter the temples and sacrifice to the Gods, and their sons and daughters may not marry with the worshippers of the Gods. ”

“ Once more, though the Egyptian gods are buried here and are immortal in heaven, they have also, like the heroes of Eskimos and Australians and Indians of the Amazon, been transformed into stars, and the priests could tell which star was Osiris, which was Isis, and which was Typhon.* Such are the wild inconsistencies which Egyptian religion shares with the fables of the lowest races. ”

“ Even to the ancients Egypt was antiquity, and the Greeks sought in the dateless mysteries of the Egyptian religion for the fountain of all that was most mysterious in their own. Curiosity about the obscure beginnings of human creeds and the first knowledge of the gods was naturally aroused by that spectacle of the Pantheon of Egypt. ”

“ Demons in ancient and modern Egypt. In the opinion of the ancient Egyptians “there were good spirits as well as bad, but the Book of the Dead practically ignores the former, and its magical formulae were directed entirely against the operations of evil spirits. Though naturally of a gay and light-hearted disposition, the Egyptian must have lived in a perpetual state of fear of spirits of all kinds, spirits of calamity, disease, and sickness, spirits of angry gods and ancestors, and above all the spirit of Death. ”

“ All nations, unless they be colonies, have a prehistoric time—a dark period of mist and gloom, before the keen light of history dawns upon them. This period is the favourite playground of the myth-spirits, where they disport themselves freely, or lounge heavily and listlessly, according to their different natures. The Egyptian spirits were of the heavier and duller kind—not light and frolicsome, like the Greek and the Indo-Iranian. It has been said that Egypt never produced more than one myth, the Osirid legend ”

“ The general meaning of the legend in both versions is quite clear, and it throws considerable light on the Egyptian religion. The Egyptians believed in the existence of God, the Creator and Maintainer of all things, but they thought that the concerns of this world were committed by Him to the superintendence of a series of subordinate spirits or beings called "gods," over whom they believed magical spells and ceremonies to have the greatest influence. ”

“ Eyes that recalled legends of the "star-eyed Egyptian"—dusky hazel orbs, grand and pure in tone, with a world of deep lights and sorrowful shadows in them—divinely innocent now, and now far-reaching, full of haunting mystery and meaning—eyes that in their more serious moments looked immortal, and seemed to have lived in ages past, to have seen all, to know all, and to be striving passionately to break the mute spell that now overpowered them. ”

“ That a myth has even men originate from tears will appear below.
The most common and simple mode in which the texts describe the origin of gods is the natural one of being begotten by a father and borne by a mother. To make this possible it was necessary to presuppose the existence of two deities, a male and a female, which actually occurs in many Egyptian myths. Occasionally, however, the number of pre-existent beings has been reduced still further, leaving but one primary god who performed the act of creation alone. ”

“ The gods we have introduced from Egypt are regarded by the priests of that learned land as emblems of certain divine truths brought down from ancient times. They are like the Hermae at our doors, which outwardly appear to rest on inexpressive blocks of stone; but when opened, they are found to contain beautiful statues of the gods within them. It is not so with the new fables which the Greeks are continually mixing with their mythology. Pygmalion, as we all know, first departed from the rigid outline of ancient sculpture, and impressed life and motion upon marble. ”