feel, that no name can express all that God is. Nevertheless, they tried to realize God by taking some natural object which should in itself convey to their minds some feature in God's nature, so that from the well-known they might grope after if happily they might find the unknown. This became a necessity for the priests in the religious teaching of the people. Therefore in the sun they saw God manifested as the light of the world, in the river Nile they saw the likeness of him whom no temple can contain, whose form cannot be graven in marble, whose abode is unknown. The more fully they felt the infinite nature of God, the more would they seek in nature for symbols, and in flights of inspiration for names, to express the yearnings of their souls after God. Hence they called God Pthah when he speaks, and when by his word he becomes creator; they called him Thoth when he writes the sacred books, and "manifests truth and goodness;" they called him Osiris when he manifests all that is best and noblest in man's nature, and taking upon him the nature of man becomes the god-man. All the deities were regarded as manifestations of the great Creator, the Uncreated, the Father of the universe.[1] This is expressed in the hymn: "Hail to thee! Lord of the lapse of time, king of gods! Thou ofmany names, of holy transformations, of mysterious forms."[2] This idea of one God expressed in many names is given by Aristotle: "God, though he be one, has many names, because he is called according to states into which he is continually entering anew."[3] The same idea is found in several passages of the Rig-Veda: "That which is one the wise call it in divers manners; they call it Agni, Yama, Indra, Varuna."[4] "Wise poets make the beautiful-winged, though he be one, manifold by words."[5]
Nevertheless, as in Greece and in In dia, so also in ancient Egypt, the symbols became in the popular mind actual gods, and the people degenerated into gross idolatry. It is an instance of the descent from the worship of the invisible attributes of God. They "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible men, and to birds, and four- footed beasts, and creeping things … and they changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator."[6] This is unfortunately the aspect in which the Egyptian Pantheon has presented itself to mankind for many centuries.
After these appeared
A crew, who under names of old renown,
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
Rather than human.[7]
We possess the account of a brilliant effort made by Amenophis the Fourth (1500 b.c.) to abolish all worship except that of the sun. He assumed the name of "Glory of the solar disk," and changed the capital city so that the architecture might not suggest the popular polytheism. Lepsius explored the ruins of the new city, and found the walls decorated with peculiar floral designs, and with hymns to the sun. This reformation, however, lasted only for one generation, and then passed away.[8] We find the influence of this religious revolution on the stele of a hymn to Osiris (eighteenth dynasty), for wherever the one name of the deity Amen occurs, it has been chiselled out; but it is restored under his successors.
A striking picture is given of King Pianchi Mer-Amon entering the temple of Ra, the sun. "He purified himself in the heart of the cool lake, washing his face in the stream of the heavenly waters in which Ra laves his face. Then he proceeded to the sandy height in Heliopolis, making a great sacrifice before the face of Ra at his rising, with cows, milk, gum, frankincense, and all precious woods delightful for scent. He went in procession to the temple of Ra … then the chief priest offered supplications to ward off calamity for the king, girded with the sacred vestments. He then purified him with incense and sprinkling, and brought to him garlands from the Temple of Obelisks.[9] The king ascended the flight of steps to the great shrine to behold Ra in the Temple of Obelisks. The king stood by himself, the great one alone, he drew the bolt, he opened the folding doors, he saw his father Ra in the Temple of Obelisks. Then he closed the doors, and set sealing clay with the king's own signet, and enjoined the priests, say-
- ↑ Hymne au Soleil dans le xv. chap. du Rituel, par Lefébre.
- ↑ Chabas, Rev. Arch., O.S. xiv. 80.
- ↑ De Mundo, c. vii. init.
- ↑ R. V. i. 164. 46.
- ↑ R. V. x. 114. 5.
- ↑ Rom. i. 23-25. See also Plutarch in De Is. et Osir., c. lxxi.
- ↑ Paradise Lost, i. 476-482.
- ↑ Brugsch, Histoire d'Egypte, p. 118.
- ↑ One of the obelisks which then stood before the porch still exists.
