gods, not to symbolism (Zeus was a cuckoo), but to survivals from
that quality of early thought which draws no line between man and
god and beast and bird and fish. If spiders may be great gods, why
not the more attractive humming-birds? Like many other gods,
Huitzilopochtli slew his foes at his birth, and hence received names
analogous to Δειμός and Φόβος: Tylor (Primitive Culture, ii.
307) calls Huitzilopochtli an “inextricable compound parthenogenetic
god.” His sacrament, when paste idols of him were eaten
by the communicants, was at the winter solstice, whence it may,
perhaps, be inferred that Huitzilopochtli was not only a war-god
but a nature-god—in both respects anthropomorphic, and in both
bearing traces of the time when he was but a humming-bird, as Yehl
was a raven (Müller, op. cit. p. 595). As a humming-bird, Huitzilopochtli
led the Aztecs to a new home, as a wolf led the Hirpini, and
as a woodpecker led the Sabines. Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec deity,
is as much a sparrow (or similar small bird) as Huitzilopochtli is a
humming-bird. Acosta says he retained the sparrow’s head in his
statue. For the composite character of Quetzalcoatl as a “culture-hero”
(a more polished version of Qat), as a “nature-god,” and
as a theriomorphic god see Müller (op. cit. pp. 583–584). Müller
frankly recognizes that not only are animals symbols of deity and
its attributes, not only are they companions and messengers of deity
(as in the period of anthropomorphic religion), but they have been
divine beings in and for themselves during the earlier stages of
thought. The Mexican “departmental” gods answer to those of
other polytheisms; there is an Aztec Ceres, an Aztec Lucina, an
Aztec Vulcan, an Aztec Flora, an Aztec Venus. The creative myths
and sun myths are crude and very early in character.
Egyptian Myths.—On a much larger and more magnificent scale, and on a much more permanent basis, the society of ancient Egypt somewhat resembled that of ancient Mexico. The divine myths of the two nations had points in common, but there are few topics more obscure than Egyptian mythology. Writers are apt to speak of Egyptian religion as if it were a single phenomenon of which all the aspects could be observed at a given time. In point of fact Egyptian religion (conservative though it was) lasted through perhaps five thousand years, was subject to innumerable influences, historical, ethnological, philosophical, and was variously represented by various schools of priests. We cannot take the Platonic speculations of Iamblichus about the nature and manifestations of Egyptian godhead as evidence for the belief of the peoples who first worshipped the Egyptian gods an innumerable series of ages before Iamblichus and Plutarch. Nor can the esoteric and pantheistic theories of priests (according to which the various beast-gods were symbolic manifestations of the divine essence) be received as an historical account of the origin of the local animal-worships. It has already been shown that the lowest and least intellectual races indulge in local animal-worship, each stock having its parent bird, beast, fish, or even plant, or inanimate object. It has also been shown that these backward peoples recognize a non-natural race of men or animals, or both, as the first fathers, heroes, and, in a sense, gods. Such ideas are consonant with, and may be traced to the confused and nebulous condition of, savage thought. Precisely the same ideas are found at various periods among the ancient Egyptians. If we are to regard the Egyptian myths about the gods in animal shape, and about the non-natural superhuman heroes, and their wars and loves, as esoteric allegories devised by civilized priests, perhaps we should also explain Pund-jel, Qat, Quawteaht, the Mantis god, the Spider creator, the Coyote and Raven gods as priestly inventions, put forth in a civilized age, and retained by Australians, Bushmen, Hottentots, Ahts, Thlinkeets, Papuans, who preserve no other vestiges of high civilization. Or we may take the opposite view, and regard the story of Osiris and his war with Seth (who shut him up in a box and mutilated him) as a dualistic myth, originally on the level of the battle between Gaunab and Tsui-Goab, or between Tagar and Suqe. We may regard the local beast- and plant-gods of Egypt as survivals of totems and totem-gods like those of Australia, India, America, Africa, Siberia and other countries. In this article the latter view is adopted. The beast-gods and dualistic and creative myths of savages are looked on as the natural product of the savage reason and fancy. The same beast-gods and myths in civilized Egypt are looked on as survivals from the rude and early condition of thought to which such conceptions are natural.
In the most ancient Egyptian records the gods are not pictorially represented, and we have not obtained from these records any descriptions of adoration and sacrifice. There is a prayer to the Sky on the coffin of the king of Dynasty IV., known as Mycerinus to the Greeks. The king describes himself as the child of Sky and Earth. He also somewhat obscurely identifies himself with Osiris.
We thus find Osiris very near the beginning of what is known about Egyptian religion. This being is rather a culture-hero, a member of a non-natural race of men like Qat or Manabozho, than a god. His myth, to be afterwards narrated, is found pictorially represented in a tomb and in the late temple of Philae, is frequently alluded to in the litanies of the dead about 1400 B.C., is indicated with reverent awe by Herodotus, and after the Christian era is described at full length by Plutarch. Whether the same myth was current in the far more distant days of Mycerinus, it is, of course, impossible to say with dogmatic certainty. The religious history of Egypt, from perhaps Dynasty X. to Dynasty XX., is interrupted by an invasion of Semitic conquerors and Semitic ideas. Prior to that invasion the gods, when mentioned in monuments, are always represented by animals, and these animals are the object of strictly local worship. The name of each god is spelled in hieroglyphs beside the beast or bird. The jackal stands for Anup, the hawk for Har, the frog for Hekt, the baboon for Tahuti, and Ptah, Asiri, Hesi, Nebhat, Hat-hor, Neit, Khnum and Amun-hor are all written out phonetically, but never represented in pictures. Different cities had their different beast-gods. Pasht, the cat, was the god of Bubastis; Apis, the bull, of Memphis; Hapi, the wolf, of Sioot; Ba, the goat, of Mendes. The evidence of Herodotus, Plutarch and the other writers shows that the Egyptians of each district refused to eat the flesh of the animal they held sacred. So far the identity of custom with savage totemism is absolute. Of all the explanations, then, of Egyptian animal-worship, that which regards the practice as a survival of totemism and of savagery seems the most satisfactory. So far Egyptian religion only represented her gods in theriomorphic shape. Beasts also appeared in the royal genealogies, as if the early Egyptians had filled up the measure of totemism by regarding themselves as actually descended from animals.
With one or two exceptions, “the first (semi-anthropomorphic) figures of gods known in the civilized parts of Egypt are on the granite Obelisk of Bezig in the Fayyúm, erected by Usertesen I. of Dynasty XII., and here we find the forms all full-blown at once. The first group of deities belongs to a period and a district in which Semitic influences had undoubtedly begun to work” (Petrie). From this period the mixed and monstrous figures, semi-theriomorphic, semi-anthropomorphic, hawk-headed and ram-headed and jackal-headed gods become common. This may be attributed to Semitic influence, or we may suppose that the process of anthropomorphizing theriomorphic gods was naturally developing itself; for Mexico has shown us and Greece can show us abundant examples of these mixed figures, in which the anthropomorphic god retains traces of his theriomorphic past. The heretical worship of the solar disk interrupted the course of Egyptian religion under some reforming kings, but the great and glorious Ramesside Dynasty (XIX.) restored “Orus and Isis and the dog Anubis” with the rest of the semi-theriomorphic deities. These survived even their defeat by the splendid human gods of Rome, and only “fled from the folding star of Bethlehem.”
Though Egypt was rich in gods, her literature is not fertile in myths. The religious compositions which have survived are, as a rule, hymns and litanies, the funereal service, the “Book of the Dead.” In these works the myths are taken for granted, are alluded to in the course of addresses to the divine beings, but, naturally, are not told in full. As in the case of the Vedas, hymns are poor sources for the study of mythology, just as the hymns of the Church would throw little light on the incidents of the gospel story or of the Old Testament. The “sacred legends” which the priests or temple servants freely communicated to Herodotus are lost through the pious reserve of the traveller. Herodotus constantly alludes to the most famous Egyptian myth, that of Osiris, and he recognizes the analogies between the Osirian myth and mysteries and those of Dionysus. But we have to turn to the very late authority of Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) for an account, confessedly incomplete and expurgated, of what mythology had to tell about the great Egyptian “culture-hero,” “daemon,” and god. Osiris, Horus, Typhon (Seth), Isis and Nephthys were the children of Seb (whom the Greeks identified with Cronus); the myths of their birth were peculiarly savage and obscene. Osiris introduced civilization into Egypt, and then wandered over the world, making men acquainted with agriculture and the arts, as Pund-jel in his humbler way did in Australia. On his return Typhon laid a plot for him. He had a beautiful carved chest made which exactly fitted Osiris, and at an entertainment offered to give it to any one who could lie down in it. As soon as Osiris tried, Typhon had the box nailed up, and threw it into the Tanaite branch of the Nile. Isis wandered, mourning, in search of the body, as Demeter sought Persephone, and perhaps in Plutarch’s late version some incidents may be borrowed from the Eleusinian legend. At length she found the chest, which in her absence was again discovered by Typhon. He mangled the body of Osiris (as so many gods of all races were mangled), and tossed the fragments about. Wherever Isis found a portion of Osiris she buried it; hence Egypt was as rich in graves of Osiris as Namaqualand in graves of Heitsi Eibib. The phallus alone she did not find, but she consecrated a model thereof; hence (says the myth) came the phallus-worship of Egypt. Afterwards Osiris returned from the shades, and (in the form of a wolf) urged his son Horus to revenge him on Typhon. The gods fought in animal shape (Birch, in Wilkinson, iii. 144). Plutarch purposely omits as “too blasphemous” the legend of the mangling of Horus. Though the graves of these non-natural beings are shown, the priests (De Is. et Os. xxi.) also show the stars into which they were metamorphosed, as the Eskimo and Australians and Aryans of India and Greeks have recognized in the constellations their ancient heroes. Plutarch remarked the fact that the Greek myths of Cronus, of Dionysus, of Apollo and the Python, and of Demeter, “all the things that are shrouded in mystic ceremonies and are presented in rites,” “do not fall short in absurdity of the legends about Osiris and Typhon.” Plutarch naturally presumed that the myths which seem absurd shrouded
