Amnion

“ Now the blessed Ammon was living by himself in the country of Nitria, and they brought unto him a certain young man who had been seized with madness and he was bound with chains; a mad dog had bitten him, and the madness of the animal had entered into him, and his body was torn by the severe pain which was in it. And when the blessed man saw that the relatives of the young man were making supplication unto him, he said unto them, “What are ye bringing to me, O men? Ye are seeking from me what is greater than my power, and besides it lieth in your own hands to help and to heal the young man. ”

“ But I find that Ammon's grace
Is better far to me
Than a million fighting men and ten thousand chariots be.
Yea, better than ten thousand, be they brother, be they son,
When with hearts that beat like one,
Together for to help me they are gathered in one place.
The might of men is nothing, it is Ammon who is lord,
What has happened here to me is according to your word,
And I will not now trangress your command;
But alone, as here I stand,
To you my cry I send,
Unto earth's extremest end,
Saying, 'Help me, father Ammon, against the Hittite horde."' ”

“ Now Ammon said unto him, I can assuredly tell thee, O king, of a man that can translate the records; for he has wherewith he can look and translate all records that are of ancient date; and it is a gift from God. And the things are called interpreters and no man can look in them, except he be commanded, lest he should look for that he ought not, and he should perish. And whosoever is commanded to look in them, the same is called seer. And behold, the king of the people who is in the land of Zarahemla, is the man who is commanded to do these things, and who has the high gift from God. ”

“ Seizing heavy clubs, a number of the Lamanites rushed at Ammon to kill him; but he was too smart for them. He grasped his sword and melded it with such skill that he slew their leader and also cut an arm off every man who raised his club against him. The rest fled in terror. Then Ammon returned, and, with his companions, attended to the watering of their master's flocks.
When King Lamoni heard what Ammon had done he was greatly astonished and exclaimed, "This is the Great Spirit, and he has come down at this time to preserve your lives, that I might not slay you as I did your brethren." ”

“ Ammon went and asked the Lord, who said to him,
"Get this people out of this land, so they will not be killed, for Satan has a great hold upon the hearts of the Amalekites. They have stirred up the Lamanites to be angry enough to kill their brethren, so take them out of this land. This generation of people are blessed, for I will preserve them." Then Ammon told King Anti-Nephi-Lehi everything that the Lord had told him. ”

“ Ammon, or Amen: "the hidden," a deity of the Egyptian Thebes; generally associated in attributes with some other god. As Amen-Ra he is the king of Theban gods, the divinity of the sun. He is of human form; rarely with a goat's head, as represented by the Greeks. He corresponds to the Greek Zeus. As Amen-Khem he is the god of productivity, and is represented with a flail in his hand. ”

“ He lived as a strict hermit till a great age, gained a world-wide fame, had many visitors seeking spiritual guidance, and won many converts to monasticism. Soon the wildest tales were told about his divine powers. Before he died Egypt was full of hermits, and some were found in Palestine. Athanasius wrote his biography, which was read over all Christendom and scattered seeds of anchoretism everywhere—a book which influenced the thought of the age. Ammon had a settlement of possibly 5000 hermits at Mount Nitria in Lower Egypt and was almost as renowned as Anthony, his great contemporary. ”

“ What desirest thou of me? But the king answered him not.
18:16 And it came to pass that Ammon, being filled with the Spirit of God, therefore he perceived the thoughts of the king. And he said unto him: Is it because thou hast heard that I defended thy servants and thy flocks, and slew seven of their brethren with the sling and with the sword, and smote off the arms of others, in order to defend thy flocks and thy servants; behold, is it this that causeth thy marvelings?
18:17 I say unto you, what is it, that thy marvelings are so great? Behold, I am a man, and am thy servant ”

“ Ammon and his comrades lost no time in making their way to the city. But just as they were about to enter it they were seized by several men—guards of the king—and taken off to prison. The men who arrested Ammon and his brethren did not know who they were: they thought they were spies sent out by the Lamanites.
The next day Ammon and his three companions were brought before King Limhi. The king asked them who they were, and when Ammon told him they were his brethren, and that they had come from Zarahemla in search of him and his people, Limhi rejoiced and praised the Lord. ”

“ There is no trace of any compunction on the part of Amnon at the moral murder he has committed, at the life he has ruined; no pity for the once blithe and happy maiden whom he has doomed to humiliation and woe. She has served his purpose, king's daughter though she is; let her crawl into the [Pg 198] earth like a poor worm to live or to die, in want or in misery; it is nothing to him. The only thing about her that he cares for is, that she may never again trouble him with her existence, or disturb the easy flow of his life. ”

“ The light-toed villain gained upon me every yard, the clink of gold grew nearer, louder, every moment, until there could not have been twenty yards between us, and I could even hear his hissing breath. At any moment now the poisonous prick might come. The thought was unendurable. Better turn round and face sure death than wait for it to strike me from behind, I knew not when.
With this thought in my head, I leapt aside, and such was Ammon's speed that he had gone flying past a good ten yards ere he could stop himself; then, as he turned, I drew my sword out and rushed at him. ”

“ It is true that with the displacement of the capital town certain local deities attained a degree of power that, superficially regarded, seems to alter the entire perspective of the religion. Thus Ammon, originally the obscure local god of Thebes, was raised by the Theban monarchs of the XIIth and of the XVIIIth to XXIst Dynasties to a predominant position never equalled by any other divinity; and, by similar means, Suchos of the Fayum, Ubasti of Bubastis, and Neith of Sais, each enjoyed for a short space of time a consideration that no other cause would have secured to them. ”

“ On the monuments, it is true, Ammon appears in semi-human form with the body of a man and the head of a ram. But this only shows that he was in the usual chrysalis state through which beast-gods regularly pass before they emerge as full-blown anthropomorphic gods. The ram, therefore, was killed, not as a sacrifice to Ammon, but as the god himself, whose identity with the beast is plainly shown by the custom of clothing his image in the skin of the slain ram. ”

“ Thy Lord must have been full of human love and pity to make provision not only for his friends, but for those good and just men, also, who have ignorantly been his enemies."
"Yea, verily," answered Ammonius. "He loveth all men; his mercy endureth forever; his loving-kindness is stronger than height, or depth, or life, or death, or any other creature, as thou mayest assuredly know for thyself if thou wilt believe on him."
Then Am-nem-hat said: "There is much in this religion that taketh fast hold upon both the heart and the mind ”

“ And God made manifest many miracles from his body. And his disciple took a small piece of his grave clothes, and it became a means of healing for every sick person who came to him in faith. Salutation to Basendius.
And on this day became a martyr Saint Ammon, who was from the city of Tuh, on the borders of Buna in the north of Egypt. The angel of God Saint Michael appeared to this saint and made known to him everything that would happen to him, that is to say, that he must go to the city of Antinoe, where they would torture him for the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. ”

“ Ammon says to the king: "My heart is glad, that I have seen thy victories. I have granted that the nations of the South shall be defeated and come to thee, and the nations of the North shall be subject to the greatness of thy name. Their kings throw themselves on the belly, for they are stricken to the ground in their vallies. I have known the splendour of thy thoughts; thou hast carried out the work of my temple at Thebes, the brilliant place, which my heart loves ”

“ MINYŒ, MINYANS or MINŒANS=race who traced descent from Minos=the measurer (Men=measurer) ; great agricultural and building race in India, Arabia and Egypt. Measured time by circumpolar constellations; became confederates of Sabæans; conquered Phrygia, built Mycenæ (Hewitt) .
AMUN=national god of Ammonites. Amun means the builder or architect and is, like the name of Egyptian god, formed of amān, to sustain. He was the god of the meridian and of the central house-pole, sustaining roof who, in Egypt, became Amen-ra (Sayce and Gesenius, quoted by Hewitt, op. cit.) ”

“ What can the Order do with such an incapable man as you are? Go away, for I cannot bear to look at you!" Then, without any anger or discomposure, he turned away from the monk who had reproached him, and after a little while came back with his usual serenity of countenance, to the great edification of his fellow religious. In the Lives of the Fathers, we read that St. Amonius had arrived at such great perfection that he was as insensible to insults as a stone; and no matter how many were inflicted upon him, he never considered that any injury had been done him. ”

“ Under the Ptolemaic dynasty, the identification of Amon with Amen-Ra receives support from the magnificent monumental votive ram, preserved at the Berlin Museum, which was dedicated by king Amenophis III, which bears on his head, the disk with the uræus serpent, the familiar sign of the “hidden god.”114
[pg 418] While the diadem of Amen-Ra sufficiently identifies the hawk on the lotus as a form of the “hidden god,” the following extracts from Mr. Goodyear's work will be found to confirm this and throw further light on the subject. “The hawk represented Ra, Horus and all solar gods....” ”

“ While the voice resounds in Hermonthis, Amon arises at my behest, he stretches out his hand to me, and I cry out with joy when he hails me from behind: ‘Face to face with thee, face to face with thee, Ramses Miamun, I am with thee! It is I, thy father! My hand is with thee, and I am worth more to thee than hundreds of thousands. I am the strong one who loves valour; I have beheld in thee a courageous heart, and my heart is satisfied; my will is about to be accomplished!’ I am like Montû; from the right I shoot with the dart, from the left I seize the enemy. ”

“ He was in this region the chief god, corresponding to Ammon in Upper Egypt. Manetho says that Pthah reigned nine thousand years before the other gods,—which must mean that this was by far the oldest worship in Egypt. As Ammon is the head of a cosmogony which proceeds according to emanation from spirit down to matter, so Pthah is at the beginning of a cosmogony which ascends by a process of evolution from matter working up to spirit. For from Pthah (heat) comes light, from light proceeds life, from life arise gods, men, plants, animals, and all organic existence. ”

“ The fusion of Râ and Amon, and the predominance of the solar idea which arose from it, forced the theologians to examine more closely these inconsistent notions, and to eliminate from them anything which might be out of harmony with the new views. The devout servant of Amon, desirous of keeping in constant touch with his god both here and in the other would, could not imagine a happier future for his soul than in its going forth in the fulness of light by day, and taking refuge by night on the very bark which carried the object of his worship through the thick darkness of, Hades. ”

“ And for these reasons we should prefer to endure all manner of suffering rather than acknowledge Jupiter to be God. For we do not consider Jupiter and Sabaoth to be the same, nor Jupiter to be at all divine, but that some demon, unfriendly to men and to the true God, rejoices under this title. [990] And although the Egyptians were to hold Ammon before us under threat of death, we would rather die than address him as God, it being a name used in all probability in certain Egyptian incantations in which this demon is invoked. ”

“ Here Tubal Ammon laughed (or barked, were a truer name for it) and said:
"'Tis well; now we are quits, methinks, for each hath what he sorely wanted. As for your poverty, most worthy chaplain, I would right gladly barter it for mine. Yea, friend, I always thought you rich, yet was not sure of it; and now that it is clearly proven--now I learn that thou art poor! Enough; we never know the truth. Docendo discimus. Pardon such faulty Latin. But, what say you, shall we now let go a psalm upon the night? Truly, our voices are a trifle cracked, but yet methinks 'twould make a fine duetto. Hark you! ”

“ Little used to controversy, much less to direct opposition, the king was not softened by Ammon's interference. Savagely he turned upon him, but youth, strength, dexterity, and above all the protecting care of the Lord, were with Ammon, and he struck the king's sword arm so heavy a blow that it fell useless at his side. Realizing he was now in the power of the man he had so foully abused, he made abundant promises, even to half his kingdom, if his life were spared. This boon Ammon immediately granted, asking only favors for Lamoni and his own imprisoned brethren. ”