Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/741

UEUG1ON.] E G Y P T TIT (Amenti), the divine world below (Ker-neter), to be protected by him in their conflict with Setli and his genii, and to have their final state determined by him as their judge. It was to Osiris that the prayers and offerings for the dead were made, and all sepulchral inscrip tions, except those of the oldest period, are directly addressed to him. As Isis is a form of the female principle, Osiris, the sun and the Nile, was considered in one phase to be the male principle. The Osiris of Mendes was the name of this form, which was more especially known by the name of Meudes. The three most famous of those more sacred animals which were worshipped as individuals, not as a class, were the bulls Apis and Mnevis and the Mendesiau goat. Of these Apis and the Mendesian goat were connected with the worship of Osiris. Manetho says that all these animals were first reckoned among the gods under a very early Egyptian Pharaoh, Kaiechos, in Egyptian Ka-kau, second king of Dyn. II. 1 It is very characteristic of the Egyptian religion that the reverence for Osiris should have taken this grossly- material form. The bull Apis, who bears in Egyptian the same name as the Nile, Hlpi, was worshipped at Memphis. Here M. Mariette discovered a series of the tombs of these bulls, with tablets recording the reigns in which they were buried, and in several cases further exact par ticulars of date, thus affording important chronological evidence. Apis was considered to be the living emblem of Osiris, and was thus connected with the sun and the Nile, and the chronological aspect of both explains his being also connected with the moon. On the death of an Apis, a successor was sought for and recognized by certain marks. He was then inaugurated and worshipped during his lifetime. (See Ai-is.) Sarapis, or Serapis, in Egyptian Hesiri-Hapi, is the defunct Apis, who has become Osiris. The great extension of the worship of Sarapis, after the importation of his statue by Ptolemy I., was merely a development of long existing Egyptian ideas. Hence the rapid spread and great popularity of this worship. (See SEKAPT.S.) The Mendesian goat had no special name. He is called the Ham. He was considered an emblem of Ra and Shu as well as of Seb and Osiris, but probably he was chiefly sacred to Osiris, and in his solar aspect, which would thus introduce the relation to the more markedly solar gods. The seat of his worship was Mendes in the eastern part of the Delta, where Dr Brugsch has discovered a very interesting stele of the reign of Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, giving the history of the finding and inauguration of a sacred ram, and of the honour paid to him and to his temple. His worship was similar to that of Apis, but of a grosser form, inasmuch as the goat or ram was a symbol of the productive force of nature. 2 Isis, or Hes, represented as a woman bearing on her head her emblem the throne, or the solar disk and cow s horns, is the female form of Osiris. Unlike Ra, the Osiris family have consorts ; but no one is so distinctly as Isis a counterpart and of equal importance. Though the place of Isis is not as significant as that of Osiris in the myth to which they belong, she is necessary to it, and this is pro bably the reason why she attained an importance beyond the othei Egyptian goddesses except only Hathor, who is but another Isis. Seth, the Egyptian Set, usually called by the Greeks Typhon, is represented with the head of a fabulous animal, having a pointed snout and high square ears. He was the brother or son 3 and oppo nent of Osiris, the divinity of the enemies of Egypt, and the chief of the powers which fought with the human soul in the after life. He certainly represents physical evil. It would be easy to account for his worship in Egypt were it not for his appearing as the enemy of gods as well as of men. There is indeed something illogical in his holding a place in the Pantheon, which gains consistency by his expulsion, though the consequent confusion of moral and physical evil was detrimental to ethical ideas. It is remarkable as showing the Egyptian notion of Seth while he was still worshipped, that in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, those whose names are composed with his, Setee I. and II., and Set-nekht, use instead the name of Osiris. This seems to have been sometimes done afterwards by a change in the inscriptions, but still at the time when the tombs were first completed, and thus while the reverence of Seth, as is shown 1 M. de Rougu lias noticed that the name of this king, " the male of males" or "the bull of bulls," may be connected with the cultus of the sacred bulls, while that of Binothris, his sxiccessor, contains a symbol, the ram, interchangeable with the goat, which makes it look like a second commemorative medal (Six Prem. Dyn., 243, 244). If this be so the names of these early Pharaohs must have been taken on thrur accession or on some remarkable event, like the throne-names after the introduction of that second name. A change of name during a king s reign for a religious reason is seen in the case of the sun- worshipping Amenoph IV., who took the name of Khu-en-aten. 2 Records of the Past, viii. 91 seqq., where the stele of Mendes is translated. 3 It has been usual to call Seth the brother of Osiris ; Dr Brugsch prefers to style him his son (Hist., 2 ed. p. 20, 22). This double relationship is the key to the similar position of Horns, and the identity of Hathor and Isis. rjy these royal names, was in full bloom (Lepsius, Erst. Ae.g. Ootterkreis). The subsequent change of opinion as to Seth, his identification with moral evil, and his consequent expulsion from the Pantheon have been already noticed. In consequence his figure and name are usually effaced on the monuments, and other gods take his place in the cycles in which lie had a position. In later times Seth is the enemy of all good, feared and hated, but no longer reverenced. The date of the change is as yet undetermined. It has been usually assigned to the Bubastite kings who composed Dyn. XXII. M. Mariette has discovered the curious fact that one of those kings, a hitherto unknown Osorkon, altered the figure of Seth in the legends of Ramses II. at Tanis to that of a Set-Ra (Muste Boulak, p. 273). Was this the beginning of the change ? Nephthys, or Nebti, the sister of Osiris and Isis, and conscit of Seth, does not, as far as the Egyptian documents tell us, share his character. It is rather as the sister of Isis that she there appears, aiding her in her labours to recover and revive Osiris. Thus like Isis she is a protector of the dead, and her figure and worship escaped the fate of those of Seth. Horus, or Har, is in the cycles the son of Osiris and Isis. There is also a Horus the elder, Haroeris, Har-oer, brother of Osiris, and ,1 Horus the child, Harpocrates, Har-pe-khruti, son of Osiris and Isis, and two other forms, Har-Hut, the Horus of Hut or Apolhno- polis Magna, and Har-em-akhu, "Horus in the horizon." Horus is generally hawk-headed, and thus a solar god connected with Ra. This connection is perhaps strongest in the form Har-em-akhu, worshipped at Heliopolis sometimes even as Ra-Har-em-akhu. The most interesting form is that of Horus as the son and avenger of Osiris. Osiris being identified with the sun of the night, Horus is naturally the sun of the day. From this identification arose the idea of an infant Horus as the rising sun. As Horus took the place of Osiris in the contest with Seth, he became the elder Horus, to be on an equality with his opponent, who seems oftener the brother than the son of Osiris. Specially Horus is the ruler of Upper Egypt, and the typical king of Egypt as much as Ra. It is indeed so hard to distinguish Horus from Ra that it seems im possible to hold any opinion but that they had their origin in. separate religious systems. Hathor, Athor, or Hat-har, whose name means " the abode of Horus," is hard to distinguish from Isis. 4 She was worshipped with Isis at Dendarah (Diimichen, Bauurkundt dei Tempclanlagen von Dendera, 3, 4) and Dr Brugsch even supposes the local goddess to have been Isis-Hathor (Geogr. Inschr., i. 202, 203), but this he has not proved, for the representations and titles are different for the twc goddesses (cf. Diimichen, I.e.). The cow was sacred tc both Hathoi and Isis, and both wear the disk and cow s horns. Hathor in the form of a cow plays an important part in Arnenti (cf. Diimichen, ibid. 21; Mariette, Musee Soulaq, 118, 119). Curiously she is more widely reverenced than even Isis. She is really the female counter part of Osiris. She was, like him, worshipped throughout Egypt, and the great temple of Adfoo contains a list of over three hundred names of the goddess in her local forms (Diimichen, ibid. 20). Still more remarkably, in late times, the cow, here the symbol oi Hathor, not seldom takes the place of the name ot Osiris as applied to women deceased : instead of taking the form of Osiris, they take that of Hathor (Ibid. 21). It is characteristic of the Egyptian religion that this irregularity should occur, and we may well hesitate to attempt to define the place of Hathor in the Pantheon (Mariette, Musee Soulaq, 118), though M. Diimichen has made this endeavour in a very interesting passage, that could be accepted had he given sufficient authority from the monuments, and not shown traces of the influence of Greek interpretation, besides too great a tendency to reason on the negative evidence of the simple statements of the earlier monuments (Ibid. 20, scqq.). Phtha, or Ptah, the Egyptian Hephaestus, is the first to be noticed of the divinities introduced into the chief cycles after their formation. His name is one of the Egyptian words which can be recognized letter for letter in Hebrew (HHS "he opened, began," and (Piel) "carved"); and the sense is similar. Ptah is thus the divine architect (cf. Brugsch, Histoire, 2d ed., 21). He was the chief god of Memphis, worshipped under a human form, sometimes as a pigmy, supposed to be an embryo. He was the creative force, but seemingly not as the sun. Though when connected with the local form of Osiris worshipped at Memphis under the name Sekeri-Hcsiri, and then called Ptah-Sekeri-Hcsiri, he is sometimes hawk-headed, this is rather with a reference to Horus than to Ra. Perhaps Professor Lepsius s view that he is put before Ra in the Memphite form of the cycle as an abstract idea of intellectual power is the true one. If so, it seems probable that the worship of Ptah was of foreign origin. Ammon, the Egyptian Amen, "the hidden," probably owed his importance to the greatness of Thebes, the chief Egyptian seat of his worship. He seems to derive his characteristics from his association with other gods. As Amen-ra he takes the qualities of 4 Diimichen considers Hathor as the female principle to be identic-U

with Isis (Eamirkunde von Dendera, 20).