known name, thou who hast many names in many provinces; if Ra rises in the heavens, it is by the will of Osiris; if he sets, it is at the sight of his glory."[1]
In another hymn[2] Osiris is thus addressed: "King of eternity, great god, risen from the waters that were in the beginning, strong hawk, king of gods, master of souls, king of terrors, lord of crowns, thou that art great in Hnes, that dost appear at Mendes in the likeness of a ram, monarch of the circle of gods, king of Amenti (Hades), revered of gods and men. Who so knoweth humility and reckoneth deeds of righteousness, thereby knows he Osiris."[3]
Here the noblest moral sentiments are blended with Oriental salutations in the worship of a god who, for the moment, is recognised as lord of lords, but who is also a ram at Mendes. This apparent confusion of ideas, and this assertion of supremacy for a god who, in the next hymn, is subjected to another god, mark civilised polytheism; but the confusion was increased by the extreme age of the Egyptian faith,
- ↑ From Abydos, nineteenth dynasty. Maspero, Musée de Boulaq, pp. 49, 50.
- ↑ Twentieth dynasty. Op. cit., p. 48.
- ↑ "This phase of religious thought," says Mr. Page Renouf, speaking of what he calls monotheism, "is chiefly presented to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with the earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty. It is certainly much more ancient, but . . . none of the hymns of that time have come down to us." See a very remarkable pantheistic hymn to Osiris, "lord of holy transformations," in a passage cited, Hib. Lect., p. 218, and the hymns to Ammon Ra, "closely approaching the language of monotheism," pp. 225–226. Excellent examples of pantheistic litanies of Ra are translated from originals of the nineteenth dynasty, in Records of the Past, viii. 105–128. The royal Osiris is identified with Ra. Here, too, it is told how Ra smote Apap, the serpent of evil, the Egyptian Ahi.
