VOLUME IX SLICE I Edwardes to Ehrenbreitstein (continued 5)

Egypt was poor in metals. Gold was obtained chiefly from Nubia: iron was found in small quantities in the country and at one time was worked in the neighbourhood of Assuān. Some copper was obtained in Sinai. Of stones that were accounted precious Sinai produced turquoise and the Egyptian deserts garnet, carnelian and jasper.

The native supply of wood for industrial purposes was exceedingly bad: there was no native wood long enough and straight enough to be used in joiners’ work or sculpture without fitting and patching: palm trees were abundant, and if the trees could be spared, their split stems could be used for roofing. For boatbuilding papyrus stems and acacia wood were employed, and for the best work cedar-wood was imported from Lebanon.

Egypt was isolated by the deserts and the sea. The Nile valley afforded a passage by ship or on foot into Nubia, where, however, little wealth was to be sought, though gold and rarities from the Sudan, such as ivory and ebony, came that way and an armed raid could yield a good spoil in slaves and cattle. The poverty-stricken and barbarous Nubians were strong and courageous, and gladly served in Egypt as mercenary soldiers and police. Through the oases also ran paths to the Sudan by which the raw merchandise of the southern countries could be brought to Egypt. Eastward, roads led through the Arabian mountains to the Red Sea, whence ships made voyages to the incense-bearing land of Puoni (Punt) on the Somali coast of Africa, rich also in gold and ivory. The mines of Sinai could be reached either by sea or by land along the route of the Exodus. The roads to Syria skirted the east border of the Delta and then followed the coast from near Pelusium through El Arīsh and Gaza. A secondary road branched off through the Wadi Tumilāt, whence the ways ran northwards to Syria and southwards to Sinai. On the Libyan side the oasis of Sīwa could be reached from the Lake of Moeris or from Terrana (Terenuthis), or by the coast route which also led to the Cyrenaica. The Egyptians had some traffic on the Mediterranean from very remote times, especially with Byblus in Phoenicia, the port for cedar-wood.

Of the populations surrounding Egypt the negroes (Nehsi) in the south (Cush) were the lowest in the scale of civilization: the people of Puoni and of Libya (the Tehen, &c.) were pale in colour and superior to the negroes, but still show no sign of a high culture. The Syrians and the Keftiu, the latter now identified with the Cretans and other representatives of the Aegean civilization, are the only peoples who by their elaborate clothing and artistic products reveal themselves upon the ancient Egyptian monuments as the equals in culture of the Egyptian nation.

The Egyptians seem to have applied no distinctive name to themselves in early times: they called themselves proudly rōmi (RMTW), i.e. simply “men,” “people,” while the despised races around them, collectively Ḫ’SWT, “desert-peoples,” were distinguished by special appellations. The races of mankind, including the Egyptians, were often called the Nine Archers. Ultimately the Egyptians, when their insularity disappeared under the successive dominations of Ethiopia, Assyria and Persia, described themselves as rem-n-Kēmi, “men of Egypt.” Whence the population of Egypt as we trace it in prehistoric and historic times came, is not certain. The early civilization of Egypt shows remarkable coincidences with that of Babylonia, the language is of a Semitic type, the religion may well be a compound of a lower African and a higher Asiatic order of ideas. According to the evidence of the mummies, the Egyptians were of slender build, with dark hair and of Caucasian type. Dr Elliott Smith, who has examined thousands of skeletons and mummies of all periods, finds that the prehistoric population of Upper Egypt, a branch of the North African-Mediterranean-Arabian race, changed with the advent of the dynasties to a stronger type, better developed than before in skull and muscle. This was apparently due to admixture with the Lower Egyptians, who themselves had been affected by Syrian immigration. Thereafter little further change is observable, although the rich lands of Egypt must have attracted foreigners from all parts. The Egyptian artists of the New Empire assigned distinctive types of feature as well as of dress to the different races with which they came into contact, Hittites, Syrians, Libyans, Bedouins, negroes, &c.

The people of Egypt were not naturally fierce or cruel. Intellectually, too, they were somewhat sluggish, careless and unbusinesslike. In the mass they were a body of patient labourers, tilling a rich soil, and hating all foreign lands and ways. The wealth of their country gave scope for ability within the population and also attracted it from outside: it enabled the kings to organize great monumental enterprises as well as to arm irresistible raids upon the inferior tribes around. Urged on by necessity and opportunity, the Egyptians possessed sufficient enterprise and originating power to keep ahead of their neighbours in most departments of civilization, until the more warlike empires of Assyria and Persia overwhelmed them and the keener intellects of the Greeks outshone them in almost every department. The debt of civilization to Egypt as a pioneer must be considerable, above all perhaps in religious thought. The moral ideals of its nameless teachers were high from an early date: their conception of an after-life was exceedingly vivid: the piety of the Egyptians in the later days was a matter of wonder and scoffing to their contemporaries; it is generally agreed that certain features in the development of Christianity are to be traced to Egypt as their birthplace and nidus.

For researches into the ethnography of Egypt and the neighbouring countries, see W. Max Müller, Asien und Europa nach den altäg. Inschriften (Leipzig, 1893), Egyptological Researches (Washington, 1906); for measurements of Egyptian skulls, Miss Fawcett in Biometrika (1902); A. Thomson and D. Randall-MacIver, The Ancient Races of the Thebaid (Oxford, 1905) (cf. criticisms in Man, 1905; and for comparisons with modern measurements, C. S. Myers, Journ. Anthropological Institute, 1905, 80). W. Flinders Petrie has collected and discussed a series of facial types shown in prehistoric and early Egyptian sculpture, Journal Anthropological Institute, 1901, 248. For Elliott Smith’s results see The Cairo Scientific Journal, No. 30, vol. iii., March 1909.

Divisions.—In ancient times Egypt was divided into two regions, representing the kingdoms that existed before Menes. Lower Egypt, comprising the Delta and its borders, formed the “North Land,” To-meh, and reached up the valley to include Memphis and its province or “nome,” while the remainder of the Egyptian Nile valley was “the South,” Shema (ŠM‘W ). The south, if only as the abode of the sun, always had the precedence over the north in Egypt, and the west over the east. Later the two regions were known respectively as P-to-rēs (Pathros), “the south land,” and P-to-meh, “the north land.” In practical administration this historic distinction was sometimes observed, at others ignored, but in religious tradition it had a firm hold. In Roman times a different system marked off a third region, namely Middle Egypt, from the point of the Delta southward. Theoretically, as its name Heptanomis implies, this division contained seven nomes, actually from the Hermopolite on the south to the Memphite on the north (excluding the Arsinoite according to the papyri). Some tendency to this existed earlier. Egypt to the south of the Heptanomis was the Thebais, called P-tesh-en-Ne, “the province of Thebes,” as early as the XXVIth Dynasty. The Thebais was much under the influence of the Ethiopian kingdom, and was separated politically in the troubled times of the XXIIIrd Dynasty, though the old division into Upper and Lower Egypt was resumed in the XXVIth Dynasty.

If Upper and Lower Egypt represented ancient kingdoms, the nomes have been thought to carry on the traditions of tribal settlements. They are found in inscriptions as early as the end of the IIIrd Dynasty, and the very name of Thoth, and that of another very ancient god, are derived from those of two contiguous nomes in Lower Egypt. The names are written by special emblems placed on standards, such as an ibis, , a jackal , a hare , a feathered crown , a sistrum , a blade , &c., suggesting tribal badges. Some nomes having a common badge but distinguished as “nearer” or “further,” i.e. “northern” or “southern,” have simply been split, as they are contiguous: in one case, however, corresponding “eastern” and “western” Harpoon nomes are widely separated on opposite sides of the Delta. In a few cases, such as “the West,” “the Beginning of the East,” it is obvious that the names are derived solely from their geographical situation. It is quite possible that the divisions are geographical in the main, but it seems likely that there were also religious, tribal and other historical reasons for them. How their boundaries were determined is not certain: in Upper Egypt in many cases a single nome embraced both sides of the river. The number and nomenclature of the nomes were never absolutely fixed. In temples of Ptolemaic and Roman age the full series is figured presenting their tribute to the god, and this series approximately agrees with the scattered data of early monuments. The normal number of the nomes in the sacred lists appears to be 42, of which 22 belonged to Upper Egypt and 20 to Lower Egypt. In reality again these nome-divisions were treated with considerable freedom, being split or reunited and their boundaries readjusted. Each nome had its metropolis, normally the seat of a governor or nomarch and the centre of its religious observances. During the New Empire, except at the beginning, the nomes seem to have been almost entirely ignored: under the Deltaic dynasties (except of course in the traditions of the sacred writing) they were named after the metropolis, as “the province (tosh) of Busiris,” “the province of Sais,” &c.: hence the Greek names Βουσιρίτης νομός, &c. The Arsinoite nome was added by the Ptolemies after the draining of the Lake of Moeris (q.v.), and in the later Ptolemaic and the Roman times many changes and additions to the list must have been made. In Christian texts the “provinces” appear to have been very numerous.

See H. Brugsch, Geographische Inschriften altägyptischer Denkmäler (3 vols., Leipzig, 1857-1860), and for the nomes on monuments of the Old Kingdom, N. de G. Davies, Mastaba of Ptahhetep and Akhethetep (London, 1901), p. 24 et sqq.

King and Government.—The government of Egypt was monarchical. The king (for titles see Pharaoh) was the head of the hierarchy: he was himself divine and is often styled “the good god,” and was the proper mediator between gods and men. He was also the dispenser of office, confirmer of hereditary titles and estates and the fountain of justice. Oaths were generally sworn by the “life” of the king. The king wore special headdresses and costumes, including the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt (often united ), and the cobra upon his forehead. Females were admitted to the succession, but very few instances occur before the Cleopatras. The most notable Pharaonic queen in her own right was Hatshepsut in the XVIIIth Dynasty, but her reign was ignored by the later rulers even of her own family. A certain Nitōcris of about the VIIIth Dynasty and Scēmiophris of the XIIth Dynasty are in the lists, but are quite obscure. Yet inheritance through the female line was fully recognized, and marriage with the heiress princess was sought by usurpers to legitimate the claims of their offspring. Often, especially in the XIIth Dynasty, the king associated his heir on the throne with him to ensure the succession.

From time to time feudal conditions prevailed: the great landowners and local princes had establishments of their own on the model of the royal court, and were with difficulty kept in order by the monarch. In rare cases during the Middle Kingdom (inscriptions in the tomb of Ameni at Beni Hasan, graffiti in the quarries of Hanub) documents were dated in the years of reign of these feudatory nobles. Under the Empire all power was again centralized in the hands of the Pharaoh. The apportionment of duties amongst the swarm of officials varied from age to age, as did their titles. Members of the royal family generally held high office. Under the Empire Egypt was administered by a vast bureaucracy, at the head of which, responsible to the king, was the vizier, or sometimes two viziers, one for Upper Egypt, the other for Lower Egypt (in which case the former, stationed at Thebes, had the precedence). The duties of the vizier and the procedure in his court are detailed in a long inscription which is repeated in three tombs of the XVIIIth Dynasty at Thebes (Breasted, Records, ii. § 663 et seqq.). The strictest impartiality was enjoined upon him, and he was advised to hold aloof from the people in order to preserve his authority. The office of vizier was by no means a sinecure. All the business of the country was overlooked by him—treasury, taxation, army, law-courts, expeditions of every kind. Egypt was the vast estate of Pharaoh, and the vizier was the steward of it.

Army.—The youth of Egypt was liable to be called upon for service in the field under the local chiefs. Their training consisted of gymnastic and warlike exercises which developed strength and discipline that would be as useful in executing public works and in dragging large monuments as in strictly military service. They were armed in separate companies with bows and arrows, spears, daggers and shields, and the officers carried battle-axes and maces. The army, commanded in chief by Una under the VIth Dynasty for raids in Sinai or Palestine, comprised levies from every part of Egypt and from Nubia, each under its own leader. Under the New Empire, when Egypt was almost a military state, the army was a more specialized institution, the art of war in siege and strategy had developed, divisions were formed with special standards, there were regiments armed with battle-axes and scimitars, and chariots formed an essential part of the host. Egyptian cavalry are not represented upon the monuments, and we hear little of such at any time. Herodotus divides the army into two classes, the Calasiries and the Hermotybies; these names, although he was not aware of it, mean respectively horse- and foot-soldiers, but it is possible that the former name was only traditional and had characterized those who fought from chariots, a mode of warfare that was obsolete in Herodotus’s own day: as a matter of fact both classes are said to have served on the warships of Xerxes’ fleet.

Arms and Armour.—From the contents of graves and other remains, and the sculptured and painted scenes, an approximate idea can be obtained of the weapons of the Egyptians at all periods from the prehistoric age onwards. Only a few points are here noted. Stone mace-heads are found in the earliest cemeteries, together with flint implements that may be the heads of lances, &c., and thin leaf-shaped daggers of bronze. Stone arrow-heads are common on the surface of the desert. Thin bronze arrow-heads appear at an early date; under the Empire they are stouter and furnished with a tang, and later still, towards the Greek period, they are socketed (often three-sided), or, if of iron, still tanged. The wooden club, a somewhat primitive weapon, seems to have been considered characteristic of foreigners from very early times, and, in scenes dating from the Middle Kingdom, belong principally to the levies from the surrounding barbarians. The dagger grew longer and stouter, but the sword made its appearance late, probably first in the hands of the Sherdana (Sardinian?), mercenaries of the time of Rameses II. A peculiar scimitar, khopsh , is characteristic of the Empire. Slings are first heard of in Egyptian warfare in the 8th century b.c. The chariot was doubtless introduced with the horse in the Hyksos period; several examples have been discovered in the tombs of the New Kingdom. Shields were covered with ox-hide and furnished with round sighting-holes above the middle. Cuirasses of bronze scales were worn by the kings and other leaders. The linen corslets of the Egyptian soldiery at a later time were famous, and were adopted by the Persian army. According to the paintings of the Middle Kingdom in the tombs of Beni Hasan, the battlements of brick fortresses were attacked and wrenched away with long and massive spears. No siege engines are depicted, even in the time of the Empire, and the absence of original representations after the XXth Dynasty renders it difficult to judge the advances made in the art of war during the first half of the last millennium b.c. The inscription of Pankhi, however, proves that in the 8th century approaches and towers were raised against the walls of besieged cities.

Priesthood.—The priesthood was in a great degree hereditary, though perhaps not essentially so. In each temple the priests were divided into four orders (until Ptolemy Euergetes added a fifth), each of which served in turn for a lunar month under the chief priest or prophet. They received shares of the annual revenues of the temple in kind, consisting of linen, oil, flesh, bread, vegetables, wine, beer, &c. The “divine servants” or “prophets” had residences assigned them in the temple area. In late times the priests were always shaven, and paid the greatest attention to cleanliness and ceremonial purity already implied in their ancient name. Fish and beans then were abhorred by them. Among the priests were the most learned men of Egypt, but probably many were illiterate. For the Hellenistic period see W. Otto, Priester und Tempel im hellenistichen Ägypten (Leipzig, 1905 foll.).

For ancient Egyptian life and civilization in all departments, the principal work is Ad. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, translated by H. M. Tirard (London, 1894), (the original Ägypten und ägyptisches Leben im Altertum, 2 vols., was published in 1885 at Tübingen); G. Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, translated by A. P. Morton (London, 1892), (Lectures historiques, Paris, 1890); also J. G. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, new ed. by S. Birch (3 vols., London, 1878). The annual Archaeological Reports of the Egypt Exploration Fund contain summaries of the work done each year in the several departments of research.

Of the innumerable publications of Egyptian monuments, scenes and inscriptions, C. R. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien (Berlin, 1849-1859), and Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of the Egypt Exploration Fund, may be specified. For antiquities in museums there is the sumptuous Catalogue général des antiquités égyptiennes du musée de Caire; for excavations the Memoirs of the Egypt Exploration Fund, of the Research Account, of the British School of Archaeology, of the Liverpool School of Archaeology, of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, of the Hearst Egyptian Expedition, of the Theodore M. Davis excavations (Tombs of the Kings).

Trade and Money.—There is little evidence to show how buying and selling were carried on in ancient Egypt. A unique scene in a tomb of the IVth Dynasty, however, shows men and women exchanging commodities against each other—fish, fish-hooks, fans, necklaces, &c. Probably this was a market in the open air such as is held weekly at the present time in every considerable village. Rings of metal, gold, silver and bronze played some part in exchange, and from the Hyksos period onwards formed the usual standards by which articles of all kinds might be valued. In the XVIIIth Dynasty the value of meat, &c., was reckoned in gold; somewhat later copper seems the commonest standard, and under the Deltaic dynasties silver. But barter must have prevailed much longer. The precious metals were kept in the temples under the tutelage of the deities. During the XXVth and XXVIth Dynasties silver of the treasury of Harshafe (at Heracleopolis Magna) was commonly prescribed in contracts, and in the reign of Darius we hear of silver of the treasury of Ptah (at Memphis). Aryandes, satrap of Egypt, is said by Herodotus to have been punished by Darius for coining money of equal fineness with that of the king in Persia: thus coinage had then begun in Egypt. But the early coins that have been found there are mainly Greek, and especially Athenian, and it was not until the introduction of a regular currency in the three metals under the Ptolemies that much use was made of coined money.

Corn was the staple produce of Egypt and may have been exported regularly, and especially when there was famine in other countries. In the Tell el-Amarna letters the friendly kings ask Pharaoh for “much gold.” Papyrus rolls and fine linen were good merchandise in Phoenicia in the 10th century b.c. From the earliest times Egypt was dependent on foreign countries to supply its wants in some degree. Vessels were fashioned in foreign stone as early as the Ist Dynasty. All silver must have been imported, and all copper except a little that the Pharaohs obtained from the mines of Sinai. Cedar wood was brought from the forests of Lebanon, ivory, leopard skins and gold from the south, all kinds of spices and ingredients of incense from Somaliland and Arabia, fine linen and beautifully worked vessels from Syria and the islands. Such supplies might be obtained by forcible raiding or as tribute of conquered countries, or perhaps as the free offerings of simple savages awed by the arrival of ships and civilized well-armed crews, or again by royal missions in which rich gifts on both sides were exchanged, or lastly by private trading. For deciding how large a share was due to trade, there is almost no evidence. But there are records of expeditions sent out by the king to obtain the rarities of different countries, and the hero of the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor was upon this quest. Egyptian objects of the age of the XVIIIth Dynasty are found in the Greek islands and on the mainland among remains of the Mycenaean epoch, and on the other hand the products of the workshops of Crete and other centres of that culture are found in Egypt and are figured as “tribute of the Keftiu” in the tomb-paintings, though we have no information of any war with or conquest of that people. It must be a case of trade rather than tribute here and in like instances. According to the papyrus of Unamun at the end of the weak XXth Dynasty payment for cedar was insisted on by the king of Byblus from the Egyptian commissioner, and proofs were shown to him of payment having been made even in the more glorious times of Egypt. Trade both internal and external must have been largely in the hands of foreigners. It is impossible to say at what period Phoenician traffic by sea with Egypt began, but it existed as early as the IIIrd Dynasty. In the time of Herodotus much wine was imported from Syria and Greece. Amasis II. (c. 570 b.c.) established Naucratis as the centre of Greek trade in Egypt. Financial transactions by Jews settled at the southern extremity of Egypt, at Assuan, are found as early as the reign of Artaxerxes.

Hunting, Fishing, &c.—In the desert hunting was carried on by hunters with bows and arrows, dogs and nets to check the game. Here in ancient times were found the oryx, addax, ibex, gazelle, bubale, ostrich, hyena and porcupine, more rarely the wild ox and wild sheep (O. tragelaphus). All of these were considered fit for the table. The lion, leopard and jackal were not eaten. Pigeons and other birds were caught in traps, and quails were netted in the fields and on the sea-shore. In the papyrus marshes the hippopotamus was slain with harpoons, the wild boar, too, was probably hunted, and the sportsman brought down wild-fowl with the boomerang, or speared or angled for fish. Enormous quantities of wild-fowl of many sorts were taken in clap-nets, to be preserved in jars with salt. Fish were taken sometimes in hand-nets, but the professional fishermen with their draw-nets caught them in shoals. The fishing industry was of great importance: the annual catch in the Lake of Moeris and its canal formed an important part of the Egyptian revenue. The fish of the Nile, which were of many kinds (including mullets, &c., which came up from the sea), were split and dried in the sun: others were salted and so preserved. A supply of sea fish would be obtained off the coast of the Delta and at the mouth of the Lake Serbonis.

Farming, Horticulture, &c.—The wealth of Egypt lay in its agriculture. The regular inundations, the ease of irrigating the rich alluvial flats, and the great heat of the sun in a cloudless sky, while limiting the natural flora, gave immense opportunities to the industrious farmer. The normal rise of the Nile was sixteen cubits at the island of Roda, and two cubits more or less caused a failure of the harvest. In the paintings we see gardens irrigated by handbuckets and shadufs; the latter (buckets hung on a lever-pole) were probably the usual means of raising water for the fields in ancient times, and still are common in Egypt and Nubia, although water-wheels have been known since the Ptolemaic age, if not earlier. Probably a certain amount of cultivation was possible all the year round, and there was perhaps a succession of harvests; but there was a pause after the main harvests were gathered in by the end of April, and from then till June was the period in which taxes were collected and loans were repaid. Under the Ptolemaic régime the records show a great variety of crops, wheat and barley being probably the largest (see B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, i. 560; J. P. Mahaffy and J. G. Smyly, Petrie Papyri, iii. p. 205). Earlier the bōti, in Greek ὀλύρα (spelt? or durra?) was the main crop, and earlier again inferior varieties of wheat and barley took the lead, with bōti apparently in the second place. The bread was mainly made of bōti, the beer of barley. There were green crops such as clover, and lentils, peas, beans, radishes, onions, lettuces (as a vegetable and for oil), castor oil and flax were grown. The principal fruit trees were the date palm, useful also for its wood and fibre, the pomegranate, fig and fig-sycamore. The vine was much cultivated in early times, and the vintage is a subject frequently depicted. Later the wine of the Mareotic region near Alexandria was celebrated even amongst Roman epicures. Papyrus, which grew wild in the marshes, was also cultivated, at least in the later ages: its stems were used for boat-building, and according to the classical authors for rope-making, as well as for the famous writing material. About the 8th century a.d. paper drove the latter out of use, and the papyrus plant quickly became extinct. The Indian lotus described by Herodotus is found in deposits of the Roman age. Native lotuses, blue and white, were much used for decoration in garlands, &c., also the chrysanthemum and the corn-flower.

See chapters on plant remains by Newberry in W. M. F. Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe (London, 1889); Kahun, Gurob and Hawara (1890); V. Loret, La Flore pharaonique (2nd ed., Paris, 1892), and the authorities there cited.

Domestic Animals and Birds.—The farmer kept up a large stock of animals: in the houses there were pets and in the temples sacred creatures of many kinds. Goats browsed on the trees and herbage at the edge of the desert. Sheep of a peculiar breed with horizontal twisted horns and hairy coat are figured on the earliest monuments: a more valuable variety, woolly with curved horns, made its appearance in the Middle Kingdom and pushed out the older form: sheep were driven into the ploughed fields to break the clods and trample in the seed. The oxen were long-horned, short-horned and polled. They drew the plough, trampled the corn sheaves round the circular threshing floor, and were sometimes employed to drag heavy weights. The pig is rarely figured and was less and less tolerated as the Egyptians grew in ceremonial purity. A variety of wild animals caught in the chase were kept alive and fed for slaughter. Geese and ducks of different sorts were bred in countless numbers by the farmers, also pigeons and quails, and in the early ages cranes. The domestic fowl was unknown in Egypt before the Deltaic dynasties, but Diodorus in the first century b.c. describes how its eggs were hatched artificially, as they are at the present day. Bee-keeping, too, must have been a considerable industry, though dates furnished a supply of sweetening material.

The farm lands were generally held at a rent from an overlord, who might according to times and circumstances be the king, a feudal prince, or a temple-corporation. The stock also might be similarly held, or might belong to the farmers. The ordinary beast of burden, even in the desert, was the ass. The horse seems to have been introduced with the chariot during the Hyksos period. It is thought that the camel is shown in rude figures of the earliest age, but it is scarcely traceable again before the XXVIth Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic period it was used for desert transport and gradually became common. Strange to say, it is only very rarely that men are depicted riding on animals, and never before the New Kingdom.

The dog was of many varieties as early as the XIIth Dynasty, when the greyhound and turnspit and other well-marked forms are seen. The cat was sometimes trained by the sportsman to catch birds. Monkeys were commonly kept as pets. The sacred beasts in the various temples, tame as far as possible, were of almost every conceivable variety, from the vulture to the swallow or the goose, from the lion to the shrew-mouse, from the hippopotamus to the sheep and the monkey, from the crocodile to the tortoise and the cobra, from the carp to the eel; the scorpion and the scarab beetle were perhaps the strangest in this strange company of deities.

For agriculture see J. J. Tylor and F. Ll. Griffith, The Tomb of Paheri at El Kab, in the XIth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Together with hunting and fishing it is illustrated in many of the Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of the same society. See also Lortet and M. C. Gaillard, La Faune momifiée de l’ancienne Égypte (Lyons, 1905).

Law.—No code of Egyptian laws has come down to us. Diodorus names a series of Egyptian kings who were law-givers, ending with Amasis (Ahmosi II.) and Darius. Frequent reference is made in inscriptions to customs and laws which were traditional, and perhaps had been codified in the sacred books. From time to time regulations on special points were issued by royal decree: a fragment of such a decree, directed by Horemheb of the XVIIIth Dynasty against oppression of the peasantry by officials and prescribing penalties, is preserved on a stela in the temple of Karnak, and enactments of Ptolemy Philadelphus and Euergetes II. are known from papyri. In the Ptolemaic age matters arising out of native contracts were decided according to native law by λαοκριταί, while travelling courts of χρηματισταί representing the king settled litigation on Greek contracts and most other disputes. Affairs were decided in accordance with the code of the country, τῆς χώρας νόμοι, the Greek code, πολιτικοὶ νόμοι, modelled, it would seem, on Athenian law or royal decrees, προστάγματα. “Native” law was still quoted in Roman times, but the significance of the expression remains to be ascertained. In ancient Egypt petitions were sent to the king or the great feudal landowners in whose territory the petitioner or his adversary dwelt or the injury was committed: courts were composed of royal or feudal officials, or in the New Kingdom of officials or responsible citizens. The right of appeal to the king probably existed at all times. The statement of the case and the evidence were frequently ordered to be put in writing. The evidence was supported by oath: in criminal cases, such as the harem conspiracy against Rameses III., torture of the accused was resorted to to extract evidence, the bastinado being applied on the hands and the feet. Penalties in the New Kingdom were death (by starvation or self-inflicted), fines, beating with a certain number of blows so as to open a specified number of wounds on as many different parts of the body (e.g. five wounds, i.e. on hands, feet and back?), also cutting off the nose with banishment to Nubia or the Syrian frontier. In the times of the Old Kingdom decapitation was in use, and a decree exists of the Middle Kingdom degrading a nomarch of Coptos and his family for ever from his office and from the priesthood on account of services to a rival pretender.

As to legal instruments: contracts agreed to in public or before witnesses and written on papyrus are found as early as the Middle Kingdom and perhaps belong to all historic times, but are very scarce until the XXVth Dynasty. Two wills exist on papyrus of the XIIth Dynasty, but they are isolated, and such are not again found among native documents, though they occur in Greek in the Ptolemaic age. The virtual will of a high priest of Ammon under the XXIInd Dynasty is put in the form of a decree of the god himself.

From the time of the XXVth Dynasty there is a great increase in written documents of a legal character, sales, loans, &c., apparently due to a change in law and custom; but after the reign of Darius I. there is again almost a complete cessation until the reign of Alexander, probably only because of the disturbed condition of the country. Under Ptolemy Philadelphus Greek documents begin to be numerous: under Euergetes II. (Physcon) demotic contracts are particularly abundant, but they cease entirely after the first century of Roman rule.

Marriage contracts are not found earlier than the XXVIth Dynasty. Women had full powers of inheritance (though not of dealing with their property), and succession through the mother was of importance. In the royal line there are almost certain instances of the marriage of a brother with an heiress-sister in Pharaonic times: this was perhaps helped by the analogy of Osiris and Isis: in the Ptolemaic dynasty it was an established custom, and one of the stories of Khamois, written in the Ptolemaic age, assumes its frequency at a very remote date. It would be no surprise to find examples of the practice in other ranks also at an early period, as it certainly was prevalent in the Hellenistic age, but as yet it is very difficult to prove its occurrence. The native contracts with the wife gave to her child all the husband’s property, and divorce or separation was provided for, entailing forfeiture of the dowry. The “native law” of Roman times allowed a man to take his daughter away from her husband if the last quarrelled with him.

Slavery is traceable from an early date. Private ownership of slaves, captured in war and given by the king to their captor or otherwise, is certainly seen at the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty. Sales of slaves occur in the XXVth Dynasty, and contracts of servitude are found in the XXVIth Dynasty and in the reign of Darius, appearing as if the consent of the slave was then required. Presumably at this late period there were eunuchs in Egypt, though adequate evidence of their existence there is not yet forthcoming. They must have originated among a more cruel people. That circumcision (though perhaps not till puberty) was regularly practised is proved by the mummies (agreeing with the testimony of Herodotus and the indications of the early tomb sculptures) until an edict of Hadrian forbade it: after that, only priests were circumcised.

See A. H. Gardiner, The Inscription of Mes (from Sethe’s Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ägyptens, iv.); J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records, Egypt, passim, esp. i. § 190, 535 et seqq., 773, ii. 54, 671, iii. 45, 367, iv. 416, 499, 795; F. Ll. Griffith, Catalogue of the John Rylands Demotic Papyri; B. P. Grenfell and J. P. Mahaffy, Revenue Laws of Philadelphus (Oxford, 1896); B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Tebtunis Papyri, part i. (London, 1902); Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, tome iv. (Paris, 1907).

Science.—The Egyptians sought little after knowledge for its own sake: they might indulge in religious speculation, but their science was no more than the knowledge of practical methods. Undoubtedly the Egyptians acquired great skill in the application of simple means to the fulfilment of the most difficult tasks. But the books that have come down to us prove how greatly their written theoretical knowledge fell short of their practical accomplishment. The explanation of the fact may partly be that the mechanical and other discoveries of the most ingenious minds among them, when not in constant requisition by later generations, were misunderstood or forgotten, and even in other cases were preserved only as rules of thumb by the craftsmen and experts, who would jealously hide them as secrets of trade. Men of genius were not wanting in the long history of Egypt; two doctors, Imhōtp (Imuthes), the architect of Zoser, in the IIIrd Dynasty, and Amenōphis (Amenhotp), son of Hap, the wise scribe under Amenōphis III. in the XVIIIth, eventually received the honours of deification; and Hardadf under Cheops of the IVth Dynasty was little behind these two in the estimation of posterity. Such men, who, capable in every field, designed the Great Pyramids and bestowed the highest monumental fame on their masters, must surely have had an insight into scientific principles that would hardly be credited to the Egyptians from the written documents alone.

Mathematics.—The Egyptian notation for whole numbers was decimal, each power of 10 up to 100,000 being represented by a different figure, on much the same principle as the Roman numerals. Fractions except 2⁄3 were all primary, i.e. with the numerator unity: in order to express such an idea as 9⁄13 the Egyptians were obliged to reduce it to a series of primary fractions through double fractions 2⁄13 + 2⁄13 + 2⁄13 + 2⁄13 + 1⁄13 = 4(1⁄8 + 1⁄52 + 1⁄104) + 1⁄13 = ½ + 2⁄13 + 1⁄26 = ½ + 1⁄8 + 1⁄26 + 1⁄52 + 1⁄104; this operation was performed in the head, only the result being written down, and to facilitate it tables were drawn up of the division of 2 by odd numbers. With integers, besides adding and subtracting, it was easy to double and to multiply by 10: multiplying and dividing by 5 and finding the 1½ value were also among the fundamental instruments of calculation, and all multiplication proceeded by repetitions of these processes with addition, e.g. 9 × 7 = (9 × 2 × 2) + (9 × 2) + 9. Division was accomplished by multiplying the divisor until the dividend was reached; the answer being the number of times the divisor was so multiplied. Weights and measures proceeded generally on either a decimal or a doubling system or a combination of the two. Apart from a few calculations and accounts, practically all the materials for our knowledge of Egyptian mathematics before the Hellenistic period date from the Middle Kingdom.

The principal text is the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus in the British Museum, written under a Hyksos king c. 1600 b.c.; unfortunately it is full of gross errors. Its contents fall roughly into the following scheme, but the main headings are not shown in the original:—

I. Arithmetic.—A. Tables and rule to facilitate the employment of fractions.

(a) Table of the divisions of 2 by odd numbers from 3 to 99 (e.g. 2 ÷ 11 = 1⁄6 + 1⁄66), see above.

(b) Conversions of compound fractions (e.g. 2⁄3 × 1⁄3 = 1⁄6 + 1⁄18), with rule for finding 2⁄3 of a fraction.

B. The “bread” calculation—a division by 10 of the units 1 to 9.

C. “Completing” calculations.

(a) Adding multiples of a fraction to produce a more convenient fraction (perhaps connected with the use of palms and cubits in decoration in a proportion based on the number 8).

(b) Finding the difference between a given fraction and a given whole number.

D. Ahe9 or “mass”-problems (of the form x + x/n = a, to find the ahe x).

E. Tooun-problems (tooun, “rising,” seems to be the difference between the shares of two sets of persons dividing an amount between them on a lower and a higher scale).

II. Geometry.—A. Measurement of volume (amounts of grain in cylindrical and rectangular spaces of different dimensions and vice versa).

B. Measurement of area (areas of square, circular, triangular, &c., fields).

C. Proportions of pyramids and other monuments with sloping sides.

III. Miscellaneous problems (and tables) such as are met with in bread-making, beer-making, food of live-stock, &c. &c.

The method of estimating the area of irregular fields and the cubic contents of granaries, &c., is very faulty. It would be interesting to find material of later date, such as Pythagoras is reported to have studied.

See A. Eisenlohr, Ein mathematisches Handbuch der alten Ägypter (Leipzig, 1877); F. Ll. Griffith, “The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus” in Proceedings of the Soc. of Biblical Archaeology, Nov. 1891, March, May and June 1894.

Astronomy.—The brilliant skies of day and night in Egypt favoured the development of astronomy. A papyrus of the Roman period in the British Museum attributes the invention of horoscopes to the Egyptians, but no early instance is known. Professor Petrie has indeed suggested, chiefly on chronological grounds, that a table of stars on the ceiling of the Ramesseum temple and another in the tomb of Rameses VI. (repeated in that of Rameses IX. without alteration) were horoscopes of Rameses II. and VI.; but Mahler’s interpretation of the tables on which this would rest appears to be false. Astronomy played a considerable part in religious matters for fixing the dates of festivals and determining the hours of the night. The titles of several temple books are preserved recording the movements and phases of the sun, moon and stars. The rising of Sothis (Sirius) at the beginning of the inundation was a particularly important point to fix in the yearly calendar (see below, § “Chronology”). The primitive clock10 of the temple time-keeper (horoscopus), consisting of a ὡρολόγιον καἱ φοίνικα (Clemens Alex. Strom., vi. 4. 35), has been identified with two inscribed objects in the Berlin Museum; these are a palm branch with a sight-slit in the broader end, and a short handle from which a plummet line was hung. The former was held close to the eye, the latter in the other hand, perhaps at arm’s length. From the above-mentioned tables of culmination in the tombs of Rameses VI. and IX. it seems that for fixing the hours of the night a man seated on the ground faced the horoscopus in such a position that the line of observation of the Pole-star passed over the middle of his head. On the different days of the year each hour was determined by a fixed star culminating or nearly culminating in it, and the position of these stars at the time is given in the tables as “in the centre,” “on the left eye,” “on the right shoulder,” &c. According to the texts, in founding or rebuilding temples the north axis was determined by the same apparatus, and we may conclude that it was the usual one for astronomical observations. It is conceivable that in ingenious and careful hands it might give results of a high degree of accuracy.

See L. Borchardt, “Ein altägyptisches astronomisches Instrument” in Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, xxxvii. (1899), p. 10; Ed. Meyer, Ägyptische Chronologie, p. 36. Besides the sun and moon, five planets, thirty-six dekans, and constellations to which animal and other forms are given, appear in the early astronomical texts and paintings. The zodiacal signs were not introduced till the Ptolemaic period. See H. Brugsch, Die Ägyptologie (Leipzig, 1891), pp. 315 et seqq., for a full account of all these.

Medicine.—Except, that splints are sometimes found on the limbs of bodies of all periods, at present nothing is known, from texts or otherwise, of the existence of Egyptian surgery or dentistry. For historical pathology the examination of mummies and skeletons is yielding good results. There is little sign of the existence of gout or of syphilitic diseases until late times (see Mummy). A number of papyri have been discovered containing medical prescriptions. The earliest are of the XIIth Dynasty from Kahūn, one being veterinary, the other gynaecological. The finest non-religious papyrus known, the Ebers Papyrus, is a vast collection of receipts. One section, giving us some of “the mysteries of the physician,” shows how lamentably crude were his notions of the constitution of the body. It teaches little more than that the pulse is felt in every part of the body, that there are vessels leading from the heart to the eyes, ears, nose and all the other members, and that “the breath entering the nose goes to the heart and the lungs.” The prescriptions are for a great variety of ailments and afflictions—diseases of the eye and the stomach, sores and broken bones, to make the hair grow, to keep away snakes, fleas, &c. Purgatives and diuretics are particularly numerous, and the medicines take the form of pillules, draughts, liniments, fumigations, &c. The prescriptions are often fanciful and may thus bear some absurd relation to the disease to be cured, but generally they would be to some extent effective. Their action was assisted by spells, for general use in the preparation or application, or for special diseases. In most cases several ingredients are prescribed together: when the amounts are indicated it is by measure not by weight, and evidently no very potent drugs were employed, for the smallest measure specified is equal to about half of a cubic inch. Little has yet been accomplished in identifying the diseases and the substances named in the medical papyri.

See G. A. Reisner, The Hearst Medical Papyrus (Leipzig, 1905), (XVIIIth Dynasty), and for a great magical text of the Roman period (3rd century a.d.) with some prescriptions, F. Ll. Griffith and H. Thompson, The Demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden (London, 1904).

Literature.—The vast mass of writing which has come down to us from the ancient Egyptians comprises documents of almost every conceivable kind, business documents and correspondence, legal documents, memorial inscriptions, historical, scientific, didactic, magical and religious literature; also tales and lyrics and other compositions in poetical language. Most of these classes are dealt with in this article under special headings. In addition there should be mentioned the abundant explanatory inscriptions attached to wall-scenes as a secondary element in those compositions. As early as the Middle Kingdom, papyri are found containing classified lists of words, titles, names of cities, &c., and of nomes with their capitals, festivals, deities and sacred things, calendars, &c.

To a great extent the standard works in all classes date from an early age, not later than the Middle Kingdom, and subsequent works of religion and learning like the later additions were largely written in the same style. Several books of proverbs or “instructions” were put in circulation during the Middle Kingdom. Kagemni and Ptahhotp of the Old Kingdom were nominally or really the instructors in manners: King Amenemhē I. laid down the principles of conduct in government for his son Senwosri I., preaching on the text of beneficence rewarded by treachery; Kheti points out in detail to his schoolboy son Pepi the advantages enjoyed by scribes and the miseries of all other careers. Some of these books are known only in copies of the New Kingdom. The instructions of Ani to his son Khenshotp are of later date. In demotic the most notable of such works is a papyrus of the first century a.d. at Leiden.

A number of Egyptian tales are known, dating from the Middle Kingdom and later. Some are so sober and realistic as to make it doubtful whether they are not true biographies and narratives of actual events. Such are the story of Sinūhi, a fugitive to Syria in the reign of Sesostris [Senwosri] I., and perhaps the narrative of Unamun of his expedition in quest of cedar wood for the bark of the Theban Ammon in the XXIst Dynasty. Others are highly imaginative or with miraculous incidents, like the story of the Predestined Prince and the story of the Two Brothers, which begins with a pleasing picture of the industrious farmer, and, in demotic of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, two stories of the learned Sethon Khamois, son of Rameses II. and high priest of Ptah, with his rather tragical experiences at the hands of magicians. The stories of the Middle Kingdom were in choice diction, large portions of them being rhetorical or poetical compositions attributed to the principal characters. The story of Sinūhi is of this description and was much read during the New Kingdom. Another, of the Eloquent Peasant whose ass had been stolen, was only a framework to the rhetoric of endless petitions. The tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor in the Red Sea was a piece of simpler writing, not unpicturesque, of the marvellous type of a Sindbad story. If all these are deficient in literary merit, they are deeply interesting as revelations of primitive mind and manners. Of New Kingdom tales, the story of the Two Brothers is frankly in the simplest speech of everyday life, while others are more stilted. The demotic stories of Khamois are simple, but the “Rape of Inarōs’ Cuirass” (at Vienna) is told in a stiff and high-flown style.

In general it may be said of Egyptian literary compositions that apart from their interest as anthropological documents they possess no merit which would entitle them to survive. They are more or less touched by artificiality, but so far as we are able to appreciate them at present they very seldom attain to any degree of literary beauty. Most of the compositions in the literary language, whether old or archaistic, are in a stilted style and often with parallelisms of phrase like those of Hebrew poetry. Simple prose narrative is here quite exceptional. Some few hymns contain stanzas of ten lines, each line with a break in the middle. There is no sign of rhyming in Egyptian poetry, and the rhythm is not yet recognizable owing to our ignorance of the ancient vocalization. In old Egyptian tales the narrative portions are frequently in prose; New Egyptian and demotic contain as a rule little else. Hymns exist in both of these later forms of the language, and a few love songs in Late Egyptian.

See W. M. F. Petrie, Egyptian Tales (2 vols., London, 1895); G. Maspero, Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne (3rd edition, Paris, 1906); W. Max Müller, Die Liebespoesie der alten Ägypter (Leipzig, 1899).

(F. Ll. G.)

C. Religion.—1. Introductory.—Copious as are the sources of information from which our knowledge of the Egyptian religion is drawn, there is nevertheless no aspect of the ancient civilization of Egypt that we really so little understand. While the youth of Egyptological research is in part responsible for this, the reason lies still more in the nature of the religion itself and the character of the testimony bearing upon it. For a true appreciation of the chaotic polytheism that reveals itself even in the earliest texts it would be necessary to be able to trace its development, stage by stage, out of a number of naive primitive cults; but the period of growth lies behind recorded history, and we are here reduced to hypotheses and a posteriori reconstructions. The same criticism applies, no doubt, to other religions, like those of Greece and Rome. In Egypt, however, the difficulty is much aggravated by the poor quality of the evidence. The religious books are textually very corrupt, one-sided in their subject-matter, and distributed over a period of more than two thousand years. The greatest defect of all is their relative silence with regard to the myths. For the story of Isis and Osiris we have indeed the late treatise ascribed to Plutarch, and a few fragments of other myths may be culled from earlier native sources. But in general the tales that passed current about the gods are referred to only in mysterious and recondite allusions; as Herodotus for his own times explicitly testifies, a reticence in such matters seems to have been encouraged by the priests. Thus with regard to Egyptian theology we are very imperfectly informed, and the account that is here given of it must be looked upon as merely provisional. The actual practices of the cult, both funerary and divine, are better known, and we are tolerably familiar with the doctrines as to the future state of the dead. There is good material, too, for the study of Egyptian magic, though this branch has been somewhat neglected hitherto.

2. Main Sources.—(a) The Pyramid texts, a vast collection of incantations inscribed on the inner walls of five royal tombs of the Vth and VIth Dynasties at Sakkāra, discovered and first published by Maspero. Much of these texts is of extreme antiquity; one incantation at least has been proved to belong to an age anterior to the unification of the Northern and Southern kingdoms. Later copies also exist, but possess little independent critical value. The subject-matter is funerary, i.e. it deals with the fate of the dead king in the next life. Some chapters describe the manner in which he passes from earth to heaven and becomes a star in the firmament, others deal with the food and drink necessary for his continued existence after death, and others again with the royal prerogatives which he hopes still to enjoy; many are directed against the bites of snakes and stings of scorpions. It is possible that these incantations were recited as part of the funerary ritual, but there is no doubt that their mere presence in the tombs was supposed to be magically effective for the welfare of the dead. Originally these texts had an application to the king alone, but before the beginning of the XIIth Dynasty private individuals had begun to employ them on their own behalf. They seem to be relatively free from textual corruption, but the vocabulary still occasions much difficulty to the translator.

(b) The Book of the Dead is the somewhat inappropriate name applied to a large similar collection of texts of various dates, certain chapters of which show a tendency to become welded together into a book of fixed content and uniform order. A number of chapters contained in the later recensions are already found on the sarcophagi of the Middle Kingdom, together with a host of funereal texts not usually reckoned as belonging to the Book of the Dead; these have been published by Lepsius and Lacau. The above-mentioned nucleus, combined with other chapters of more recent origin, is found in the papyri of the XVIIIth-XXth Dynasties, and forms the so-called Theban recension, which has been edited by Naville in an important work. Here already more or less rigid groups of chapters may be noted, but individual manuscripts differ greatly in what they include and exclude. In the Saite period a sort of standard edition was drawn up, consisting of 165 chapters in a fixed order and with a common title “the book of going forth in the day”; this recension was published by Lepsius in 1842 from a Turin papyrus. Like the Pyramid texts, the Book of the Dead served a funerary purpose, but its contents are far more heterogeneous; besides chapters enabling the dead man to assume what shape he will, or to issue triumphant from the last judgment, there are lists of gates to be passed and demons to be encountered in the nether world, formulae such as are inscribed on sepulchral figures and amulets, and even hymns to the sun-god. These texts are for the most part excessively corrupt, and despite the translations of Pierret, Renouf and Budge, much labour must yet be expended upon them before they can rank as a first-rate source.

(c) The texts of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes (XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.) consist of a series of theological books compiled at an uncertain date; they have been edited by Naville and Lefébure. The chief of these, extant in a longer and a shorter version, is called The book of that which is in the Nether World (familiarly known as the Am Duat) and deals with the journey of the sun during the twelve hours of the night. The Book of Gates treats of the same topic from a more theological standpoint. The Litanies of the Sun contain the acclamations with which the sun-god Re was greeted, when at eventide his bark reached the entrance of the nether world. Another treatise relates the destruction of mankind, and the circumstances that led to the creation of the heavens in the form of a cow.

(d) Among the later religious books one or two deserve a special mention, such as The Overthrowing of Apophis, the serpent enemy of the sun-god; The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys over their murdered brother Osiris; The Book of Breathings, a favourite book among the later Theban priests. Several of these books were used in the ritual of feast days, but all have received a secondary funerary employment, and are therefore found buried with the dead in their tombs.

(e) The Ritual texts have survived only in copies not earlier than the New Kingdom. The temple ritual employed in the daily cult is illustrated by the scenes depicted on the inner walls of the great temples: the formulae recited during the performance of the ceremonies are recorded at length in the temple of Seti I. (XIXth Dyn.) at Abydos, as well as in some later papyri in Berlin. The whole material has been collected and studied by Moret. The funerary ritual is known from texts in the Theban tombs (XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.) and papyri and sarcophagi of later date; older versions are contained in the Pyramid texts and The Book of the Dead. Schiaparelli has done much towards gathering together this scattered material. The ritual observed during the process of embalmment is preserved in late papyri in Paris and Cairo published by Maspero.

(f) The magical documents have been comparatively little studied, in spite of their great interest. They deal for the most part with the hearing of diseases, the bites of snakes and scorpions, &c., but incidentally cast many sidelights on the mythology and superstitious beliefs. The best-known of these books is the Papyrus Harris published by F. J. Chabas, but other papyri of as great or greater importance are to be found in the Leiden, Turin and other collections. A curious book published by A. Erman contains spells to be used by mothers for the protection of their children. A papyrus in London contains a calendar of lucky and unlucky days. A late class of stelae, of which the best specimen has been published by Golenischeff, consists of spells of various kinds originally intended for the use of the living, but later employed for funerary purposes.

(g) Under the heading Miscellaneous we must mention a number of sources of great value: the grave-stones, or stelae, especially those from Abydos, which throw much light on funerary beliefs; the great Papyrus Harris, the longest of all papyri, which enumerates the gifts of Rameses III. (XXth Dyn.) to the various temples of Egypt; the hymns to the gods preserved in Cairo and Leiden papyri; and the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic temples (Dendera, Edfu, &c.), which teem with good religious material. Nor can any attempt here be made to summarize the remaining native Egyptian sources, literary and archaeological, that deserve notice.

(h) Among the classical writers, Plutarch in his treatise Concerning Isis and Osiris is the most important. Diodorus also is useful. Herodotus, owing to his religious awe and dread of divulging sacred mysteries, is only a second-rate source.

3. The Gods.—The end of the pre-dynastic period, in which we dimly descry a number of independent tribes in constant warfare with one another, was marked by the rise of a united Egyptian state with a single Pharaonic ruler at its head. The era of peace thus inaugurated brought with it a rapid progress in all branches of civilization; and there soon emerged not only a national art and a condition of material prosperity shared by the entire land in common, but also a state religion, which gathered up the ancient tribal cults and floating cosmical conceptions, and combining them as best it could, imposed them on the people as a whole. By the time that the Pyramid texts were put into writing, doubtless long before the Vth Dynasty, this religion had assumed a stereotyped appearance that clung to it for ever afterwards. But the multitude of the deities and the variety of the myths that it strove to incorporate prevented the development of a uniform theological system, and the heterogeneous origin of the religion remained irretrievably stamped upon its face. Written records were few at the time when the pantheon was built up, so that the process of construction cannot be followed historically from stage to stage; but it is possible by arguing backwards from the later facts to discern the main tendencies at work, and the principal elementary cults that served as the materials.

The gods of the pre-dynastic period may be divided into two chief groups, the tribal or local divinities and the cosmic or explanatory deities. At the beginning each tribe had its own particular god, who in essence was nothing Classification of pre-dynastic gods. but the articulate expression of the inner cohesion and of the outward independence of the tribe itself, but who outwardly manifested himself in the form of some animal or took up his abode in some fetish of wood or stone. In times of peace this visible emblem of the god’s presence was housed in a rude shrine, but in war-time it was taken thence and carried into the battlefield on a standard. We find such divine standards often depicted on the earliest monuments, and among the symbols placed upon them may be detected the images of many deities destined to play an important part in the later national pantheon, such as the falcon Horus , the wolf Wepwawet (Ophois) , the goddess Neith , symbolized by a shield transfixed with arrows, and the god Min , the nature of whose fetish is obscure. In course of time the tribes became localized in particular districts, under the influence of a growing central authority, and their gods then passed from tribal into local deities. Hence it came about that the provincial districts or nomes, as they were called, often derived their names from the gods of tribes that settled in them, these names being hieroglyphically written with the sign for “district” surmounted by standards of the type above described, e.g. , “the nome of the dog Anubis,” the 17th or Cynopolite nome of Upper Egypt. In this way a large number of deities came to enjoy special reverence in restricted territories, e.g. the ram Khnum in Elephantine, the jerboa or okapi (?) Seth in Ombos, the ibis Thoth in Hermopolis Magna, and of the gods named above, Horus in Hieraconpolis, Wepwawet in Assiut, Neith in Sais, and Min in Coptos. As towns and villages gradually sprang up, they too adopted as their patron some one or other of the original tribal gods, so that these came to have different seats of worship all over Egypt. For this reason it is often hard to tell where the primitive cult-centre of a particular deity is to be sought; thus Horus seems equally at home both at Buto in the Delta and at Hieraconpolis in Upper Egypt, and the earliest worship of Seth appears to have been claimed no less by Tanis in the north than by Ombos in the south. The effect of the localization of gods in many different places was to give them a double aspect; so, for instance, Khnum the god of Elephantine could in one minute be regarded as identical with Khnum the god of Esna, while in the next minute and without any conscious sense of contradiction the two might be looked upon as entirely separate beings. In order that there might be no ambiguity as to what divinity was meant, it became usual, in speaking of any local deity, to specify the place of which he was “lord.” The tendency to create new forms of a god by instituting his worship in new local centres persisted throughout the whole course of Egyptian history, unhindered by the opposite tendency which made national out of local gods. Some of the cosmic gods, like the sun-god Re of Heliopolis and of Hermonthis, early acquired a local in addition to their cosmic aspect.

In the innermost principle of their existence, as patrons and protectors of restricted communities, the primitive tribal gods did not differ from one another. But externally they were distinguishable by the various shapes that their worshippers ascribed to them; and there can be little doubt that even in the beginning each had his own special attributes and particular mythical traits. These, however, may have borne little resemblance to the later conceptions of the same gods with which we are made familiar by the Pyramid texts. Thus we have no means of ascertaining what the earliest people of Sais thought about their goddess Neith, though her fetish would seem to point to her warlike nature. Nor are we much wiser in respect of those primitive tribal gods that are represented on the oldest monuments in animal form. For though we may be sure that the shape of an animal was that in which these gods were literally visible to their worshippers, yet it is impossible to tell whether some one living animal was chosen to be the earthly tenement of the deity, or whether he revealed himself in every individual of a species, or whether merely the cult-image was roughly hewn into the shape of an animal. Not too much weight must be attached to later evidence on this point; for the New Kingdom and still more the Graeco-Roman period witnessed a strange recrudescence of supposed primitive cults, to which they gave a form that may or may not have been historically exact. In some places whole classes of animals came to be deemed sacred. Thus at Bubastis, where the cat-headed Bast (Ubasti) was worshipped, vast cemeteries of mummified cats have been found; and elsewhere similar funerary cults were accorded to crocodiles, lizards, ibises and many other animals. In Elephantine Khnum was supposed to become incarnate in a ram, at whose death the divinity left him and took up his abode in another. So too the bull of Apis (a black animal with white spots) was during its lifetime regarded as a reincarnation of Ptah, the local god of Memphis, and similarly the Mnevis and Bacis bulls were accounted to be “the living souls” of Etom of Heliopolis and of Re of Hermonthis respectively; these latter cults are certainly secondary, for Ptah himself was never, either early or late, depicted otherwise than in human form, as a mummy or as a dwarf; and Etom and Re are but different names of the sun-god. The form of a snake, attributed to many local goddesses, especially in later times (e.g. Meresger of the Theban necropolis), was borrowed from the very ancient deity Outo (Buto); the semblance of a snake became so characteristic of female divinities that even the word “goddess” was written with the hieroglyph of a snake. Other animal shapes particularly affected by goddesses were those of a lioness (Sakhmi, Pakhe) or a cow (Hathor, Isis). The primitive animal gods are not to be confused with the animal forms ascribed to many cosmic deities; thus when the sun-god Re was pictured as a scarabaeus, or dung-beetle, rolling its ball of dung behind it, this was certainly mere poetical imagery. Or else a cosmic god might assume an animal shape through assimilation with some tribal god, as when Re was identified with Horus and therefore depicted as a falcon.

With the advance of civilization and the transformation of the tribal gods into national divinities, the beliefs held about them must have become less crude. At a very early date the anthropomorphizing tendency caused the animal deities to be represented with human bodies, though as a rule they retained their animal heads; so in the case of Seth as early as the IInd Dynasty. The other gods carry their primitive fetishes in their hands (like Neith, who is depicted holding arrows) or on their heads (so Nefertem [Iphthimis] with his lotus-flower). At the same time the gods began to acquire human personalities. In a few instances this may have come about by the emphasizing of a really primitive trait; as when the wolf Ophois, in consonance with the predatory nature of that animal, developed into a god of war. In other cases the transitional steps are shrouded in mystery; we do not know, for example, why the ibis Thoth subsequently became the patron of the fine arts, the inventor of writing, and the scribe of the gods. But the main factor in this evolutionary process was undoubtedly the formation of myths, which brought gods of independent origin into relation with one another, and thus imbued them with human passions and virtues. Here dim historic recollections often determined the features of the story, and in one famous legend that knits together a group of gods all seemingly local in origin we can still faintly trace how the tale arose, was added to, and finally crystallized in a coherent form.

Osiris was a wise and beneficent king, who reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws and taught them handicrafts. The prosperous reign of Osiris was brought to a premature close by the machinations of his wicked brother Seth, who with seventy-two fellow-conspirators invited him to a banquet, induced him to enter a cunningly-wrought coffin made exactly to his measure, then shut down the lid and cast the chest into the Nile. Isis, the faithful wife of Osiris, set forth in search of her dead husband’s body, and after long and adventure-fraught wanderings, succeeded in recovering it and bringing it back to Egypt. Then while she was absent visiting her son Horus in the city of Buto, Seth once more gained possession of the corpse, cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them all over Egypt. But Isis collected the fragments, and wherever one was found, buried it with due honour; or, according to a different account, she joined the limbs together by virtue of her magical powers, and the slain Osiris, thus resurrected, henceforth reigned as king of the dead in the nether world. When Horus grew up he set out to avenge his father’s murder, and after terrible struggles finally conquered and dispossessed his wicked uncle; or, as another version relates, the combatants were separated by Thoth, and Egypt divided between them, the northern part falling to Horus and the southern to Seth. Such is the story as told by Plutarch, with certain additions and modifications from older native sources. There existed, however, a very ancient tradition according to which Horus and Seth were hostile brothers, not nephew and uncle; and many considerations may be urged in support of the thesis which regards their struggles as reminiscences of wars between two prominent tribes or confederations of tribes, one of which worshipped the falcon Horus while the other had the okapi (?) Seth as its patron and champion. The Horus-tribes were the victors, and it was from them that the dynastic line sprang; hence the Pharaoh always bore the name of Horus, and represented in his own hallowed person the ancient tribal deity. Of Osiris we can only state that he was originally the local god of Busiris, whatever further characteristics he primitively possessed being quite obscure. Isis was perhaps the local goddess of Buto, a town not far distant from Busiris; this geographical proximity would suffice to explain her connexion with Osiris in the tale. A legend now arose, we know not how or why, which made Seth the brother and murderer of Osiris; and this led to a fusion of the Horus-Seth and the Seth-Isis-Osiris motifs. The relationships had now to be readjusted, and the most popular view recognized Horus as the son and avenger of Osiris. The more ancient account survived, however, in the myth that Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys (a goddess who plays but a minor part in the Osiris cycle) were all children of the earth-god Keb and the sky-goddess Nut, born on the five consecutive days added on at the end of the year (the so-called epagomenal days). Later generations reconciled these contradictions by assuming the existence of two Horuses, one, the brother of Osiris, Seth and Isis, being named Haroeris, i.e. Horus the elder, while the other, the child of Isis and Osiris, was called Harpocrates, i.e. Horus the child.

The second main class of divinities that entered into the composition of the Egyptian pantheon was due to that innate and universal speculative bent which seeks, and never fails to find, an explanation of the facts of the external Cosmic deities. world. Behind the great natural phenomena that they perceived all around them, the Egyptians, like other primitive folk, postulated the existence of divine wills not dissimilar in kind to their own, though vastly superior in power. Chief among these cosmic deities was the sun-god Re, whose supremacy seemed predestined under the cloudless sky of Egypt. The oldest conceptions represented Re as sailing across the heavens in a ship called “Manzet,” “the bark of the dawn”; at sunset he stepped aboard another vessel named “Mesenktet,” “the bark of the dusk,” which bore him back from west to east during the night. Later theories symbolized Re in many different ways. For some he was identical with Horus, and then he was falcon-headed and was called Hor-akhti, the Horus of the horizons. Others pictured him to themselves as a tiny infant in the early dawn, as full-grown at noon, and as an infirm old man in the evening. When the sky was imagined as a cow, he was a calf born anew every morning. The moon was a male deity, who likewise fared across the heavens in a boat; hence he was often named Chons, “the sailor.” The ibis-god Thoth was early identified with the moon. The stars and planets were likewise gods. Among them the bright star Sirius was held in special esteem; it was a goddess Sothis (Sopde), often identified by the Egyptians with Isis. The constellations that seemed unceasingly to speed across the sky were named “the never-resting ones,” and the circumpolar stars, which never sink beneath the horizon, were known as “the imperishables.” Concerning earth and sky there were many different opinions. Some thought that the sky was a goddess Nut, whom the god Show held aloof from her husband Keb the earth, on whose back the plants and trees grew. Others believed in a celestial ocean, personified under the name of Nun, over which the heavenly bodies sailed in boats. At a later date the sky was held to be a cow (Hathor) whose four feet stood firm upon the soil; or else a vast face, in which the right eye was the sun and the left eye the moon. Alongside these fanciful conceptions there existed a more sober view, according to which the earth was a long oval plain, and the sky an iron roof supported by the tops of mountains or by four pillars at the cardinal points. Beneath the ground lay a dark and mysterious region, now conceived as an inverse heaven (Nenet), now as a vast series of caverns whose gates were guarded by demons. This nether world was known as the Duat (Dat, Têi), and through it passed the sun on his journey during the hours of night; here too, as many thought, dwelt the dead and their king Osiris. That great natural feature of Egypt, the Nile, was of course one of the gods; his name was Hapi, and as a sign of his fecundity he had long pendulous breasts like a woman. In contradistinction to the tribal gods, it rarely happened that the cosmic deities enjoyed a cult. But there are a few important exceptions: Re in Heliopolis (here identified with a local god Etom) and in Hermonthis; Hathor at Dendera and elsewhere. Certain of the tribal gods early became identified with cosmic divinities, and the latter thus became the objects of a cult; so, for instance, the Horus of Edfu was a sun-god, and Thoth in Hermopolis Magna was held to be the moon.

An extension of the principle that created the cosmic gods gave rise to a large number of minor deities and demons. Day and night, the year, the seasons, eternity, and many similar conceptions were each represented by a god Minor deities and demons. or goddess of their own, who nevertheless possessed but a shadowy and doubtful existence. Human attributes like Taste, Knowledge, Joy and so forth were likewise personified, no less than abstract ideas such as Fate, Destiny and others; rather more clearly defined than the rest was Maat, the goddess of Truth and Right, who was fabled to be the daughter of Re and may even have had a cult. Certain gods were purely functional, that is to say, they appeared at special times to perform some appointed task, at the completion of which they vanished. Such were Nepri, the god of the corn-harvest; Meskhonit, the goddess who attended every child-bed; Tait, the goddess of weaving. Numberless semi-divine beings had no other purpose than to fill out the myths, as, for instance, the chattering apes that greeted the sun-god Re as he rose above the eastern horizon, and the demons who opened the gates of the nether world at the approach of the setting sun.

We take this opportunity of mentioning sundry other divinities who were later introduced to swell the already overcrowded ranks of the pantheon. Contact with foreign lands brought with it several new deities, Baal, Anat and Foreign deities. Resheph from Syria, and the misshapen dwarf Bes from the south; earlier than these, the Astarte of Byblus, whom the Egyptians identified with Hathor. In Thebes Amenophis I. and his spouse Nefertari were worshipped as patron gods of the necropolis many centuries after their death. Two men of exceptional wisdom received divine honours, and had temples of their own in the Ptolemaic period; these were Imouthes, who had lived under Zoser of the IIIrd Dynasty, and Amenophis son of Hapu, a contemporary of the third king of the same name (XVIIIth Dyn.). The hill of Sheikh Abd-el-gurna at Thebes was looked upon as a particularly holy place, and was revered as a goddess. Almost anything that was regarded with awe, any object used in the divine ritual could at a given moment be envisaged as a deity. Thus the boat of Osiris (Neshemet) and those of the sun-god were goddesses; and various wands and sceptres belonging to certain gods were imagined as harbouring the divine being. Truly it might have been said in ancient Egypt: of the making of gods there is no end!

For such order as can be discerned in the mythological conceptions of the Egyptians the priesthood was largely responsible. At a very early date the theological school of Heliopolis undertook the task of systematizing the gods and the Theological combinations. myths, and it is mainly to them that is due the Egyptian religion as we find it in the Pyramid texts. Their influence is particularly conspicuous in the prominent place accorded to the sun-god Re, and in the creation-legend that made him the father of gods and men. First of all living things was Re; legend told how he arose as a naked babe from a lotus-flower that floated on the primeval ocean Nun. Others held the view that he crept from an egg that lay on a hill in the midst of a lake called Desdes; and a third, more barbarous, tale related his obscene act of self-procreation. Re became the father of the pair of gods Show and Tefnut (Tphenis), who emanated from his spittle. They again gave birth to Keb and Nut, from whom in their turn sprang Osiris and Seth, Isis and Nephthys. These nine gods were together known as the great Ennead or cycle of nine. A second series of nine deities, with Horus as its first member, was invented at the same time or not long afterwards, and was called the Lesser Ennead. In later times the theory of the Ennead became very popular and was adopted by most of the local priesthoods, who substituted their own favourite god for Re, sometimes retaining and sometimes changing the names of the other eight deities. Thus locally many different gods came to be viewed as the creators of the world. Only in two instances, however, did a local god ever obtain wide acceptance in the capacity of demiurge: Ptah of Memphis, who was famed as an artist and master-builder, and Khnum of Elephantine, who was said to have moulded mankind on the potter’s wheel.

Already in the Pyramid texts the importance of Osiris almost rivals that of Re. His worship does not seem to have been due to Heliopolitan influence, and may possibly have been propagated by active missionary effort. It is apparently through the funeral cult that Osiris so early took a firm hold on the imagination of the people; for at a very ancient date he was identified with every dead king, and it needed but a slight extension of this idea to make him into a king of the dead. In later times the moral aspect of his tale was doubtless the main cause of its continued popularity; Osiris was named Onnophris, “the good Being” par excellence, and Seth was contrasted with him as the author and the root of all evil. Still the Egyptians themselves seem to have been somewhat at a loss to account for the great veneration that they paid to Osiris. Successive theories interpreted him as the god of the earth, as the god of the Nile, as a god of vegetation, as a moon-god and as a sun-god; and nearly every one of these theories has been claimed to be the primitive truth by some scholar or another.

Nowhere is the conservatism of the Egyptians more clearly displayed than in the tenacity with which they clung to the old forms of the theology, such as we have essayed to describe. Neither the influx of new deities nor the diligence of the priestly authors and commentators availed to break down the cast-iron traditions with which the compilers of the Pyramid texts were already familiar. 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. But precisely the example of Ammon proves the hopelessness of any attempt to change the time-honoured religious creed; his priests identified him with the sun-god Re, whose cult-centre was thus merely transferred a few hundred miles to the South. Nor could even the violent religious revolution of Akhenaton (Amenophis IV.), of which we shall later have occasion to speak, sweep away for ever beliefs that had persisted for so many generations.

But if the facts of the religion, broadly viewed, never underwent a change, the interpretation of those facts did so in no small degree. The religious books were for the most part written in archaic language, which was only imperfectly understood by the priests of later times; and hence great scope was given to them to exercise their ingenuity as commentators. By the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty some early chapters of the Book of the Dead had been provided with a triple commentary. Unfortunately the methods pursued were as little reasonable as those adopted by the medieval Jewish Rabbis; instead of the context being studied as a whole, with a view to the recovery of its literal sense, each single verse was considered separately, and explained as an allusion to some obscure myth or as embodying some mystical meaning. Thus so far from simplifying or really elucidating the religion, these priestly labours tended rather to confuse one legend with another and to efface the personality of individual gods. The ease with which one god could be identified with another is perhaps the most striking characteristic of later Egyptian theology. There are but few of the greater deities who were not at some time or another identified with the solar god Re. His fusion with Horus and Etom has already been noted; further we find an Ammon-Re, a Sobk-Re, a Khnum-Re; and Month, Onouris, Show and Osiris are all described as possessing the attributes of the sun. Ptah was early assimilated to the sepulchral gods Sokaris and Osiris. Pairs of deities whose personalities are often blended or interchanged are Hathor and Nut, Sakhmi and Pakhe, Seth and Apophis. So too in Abydos, his later home, Osiris was identified with Khante-Amentiu (Khentamenti, Khentamenthes), “the chief of those who are in the West,” a name that was given to a vaguely-conceived but widely-venerated divinity ruler of the dead. Many factors helped in the process of assimilation. The unity of the state was largely influential in bringing about the suppression of local differences of belief. The less important priesthoods were glad to enhance the reputation of the deity they served by identifying him with some more important god. And the mystical bent of the Egyptians found satisfaction in the multiplicity of forms that their gods could assume; among the favourite epithets which the hymns apply to divinities are such as “mysterious of shapes,” “multiple of faces.”

The goal towards which these tendencies verged was monotheism; and though this goal was only once, and then quite ephemerally, reached, still the monotheistic idea was at most periods, so to speak, in the air. Sometimes the qualities common to all the gods were abstracted, and the resultant notion Monotheistic tendency. spoken of as “the god.” At other times, and especially in the hymns addressed to some divinity, all other gods were momentarily forgotten, and he was eulogized as “the only one,” “the supreme,” and so forth. Or else several of the chief deities were consciously combined and regarded as different emanations or aspects of a Sole Being; thus a Ramesside hymn begins with the words “Three are all the gods, Ammon, Re and Ptah,” and then it is shown how these three gods, each in his own particular way, gave expression and effect to a single divine purpose.

For a brief period at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty a real monotheism, as exclusive as that of Judaism or of Islam, was adopted as the state religion of Egypt. The young Pharaoh Amenophis IV. seems to have been fired by Akhenaton. genuine fanatical enthusiasm, though political motives, as well as doctrinal considerations, may have prompted him in the planning of his religious revolution (see also § History). The Theban god Ammon-Re was then supreme, and the ever-growing power of his priesthood may well have inflamed the jealousy of their Heliopolitan rivals. Amenophis began his reign in Thebes as an adherent of the traditional faith, but after a few years he abandoned that town and built a new capital for his god Aton 200 m. farther north, at a place now called El Amarna. The new deity was a personification of the sun’s disk. The name Re was suppressed, as too intimately associated with that of Ammon; and Ammon, together with all the other gods, was put to the ban. Amenophis even changed his own name, of which the name of Ammon formed an element, to Akhenaton, “the brilliancy of the Aton,” and the capital was called Khitaton, “The Horizon of the Aton.” The new dogmas were known as “the Teaching,” and their tenets, as revealed in the poems composed in honour of the Aton, breathe the purest and most exalted monotheistic spirit. The movement had, no doubt, met with serious opposition from the very start, and the reaction soon set in. The immediate successors of Akhenaton strove to follow in his footsteps, but the conservative nature of Egypt quickly asserted itself. Not sixty years after the accession of Akhenaton, his city was abandoned, its rulers branded as heretics, and the old religion restored in Thebes as completely as if the Aton had never existed.

Having thus failed to become rational, Egyptian theology took refuge in learning. The need for a more spiritual and intellectual interpretation of the pantheon still remained, and gave rise to a number of theological sciences. The names of the gods and the places of their worship were catalogued and classified, and manuals were devoted to the topography of mythological regions. Much ingenuity was expended on the development of a history of the gods, the groundwork of which had been laid in much earlier times. Re was not only the creator of the world, but he was also the first king of Egypt. He was followed on the throne by the other eight members of his Ennead, then by the lesser Ennead and by other gods, and finally by the so-called “worshippers of Horus.” The latter were not wholly mythical personages, though they were regarded as demigods (Manetho calls them “the dead,” νέκυες); they have been shown to be none other than the dim rulers of the predynastic age. The Pharaohs of the historic period were thus divine, not only by virtue of their connexion with Horus (see above), but also as descendants of Re; and the king of Egypt was called “the good god” during his lifetime, and “the great god” after his death. The later religious literature is much taken up with the mythical and semi-mythical dynasties of kings, and the priests compiled, with many newly-invented details, the chronicles of the wars they were supposed to have waged.

In a similar manner, the ethical and allegorical methods of interpretation came into much greater prominence towards the end of the New Kingdom. The Osirian legend, as we have already seen, was early accepted as symbolizing the conflict between good and evil. So too the victories of Re over the serpent named Apophis were more or less clearly understood as a simile of the antithetical nature of light and darkness. In one text at least as ancient as the XVIIIth Dynasty (the copy that we have dates Later developments. only from the Ethiopian period) an ingenious attempt is made to represent Ptah as the source of all life: from him, it is said, emanated Horus as “heart” or “mind” and Thoth as “tongue,” and through the conjoint action of these two, the mind conceiving the design and the tongue uttering the creative command, all gods and men and beasts obtained their being. Of this kind of speculation much more must have existed than has reached us. It is doubtless such explanations as these that the Greeks had in view when they praised the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians; and in the classical period similar semi-philosophical interpretations altogether supplanted, among the learned at least, the naive literal beliefs of earlier times. Plutarch in his treatise on Isis and Osiris well exemplifies this standpoint: for him every god and every rite is symbolic of some natural or moral truth.

The final stages of the Egyptian religion are marked by a renewed popularity of all its more barbarous elements. Despairing, as it would seem, of discovering the higher wisdom that the more philosophic of the priests supposed that religion to conceal, the simpler-minded sought to work out their own salvation by restoring the worship of the gods to its most primitive forms. Hence came the fanatical revival of animal-worship which led to feud and bloodshed between neighbouring towns—a feature of Egyptian religion that at once amused and scandalized contemporary Greek and Latin authors (Plut. De Iside, 72; Juv. xv. 33). Nevertheless Egyptian cults, and particularly those of Serapis and Isis, found welcome acceptance on European soil; and the shrines of Egyptian deities were established in all the great cities of the Roman Empire. Serapis was a god imported by the first Ptolemy from Sinope on the Black Sea, who soon lost his own identity by assimilation with Osiris-Apis, the bull revered in Memphis. Far down into the Roman age the worship of Serapis persisted and flourished, and it was only when the Serapeum of Alexandria was razed to the ground by order of Theodosius the Great (a.d. 391) that the death-blow of the old Egyptian religion was struck.

Notes are here added on some divinities who have received inadequate or no attention in the preceding pages. For information as to Ammon, Anubis, Apis, Bes, Bubastis, Buto, Isis and Thoth, reference must be made to the special articles on these gods.

Arsaphes, in Egyptian Harshafe, “he who is upon his lake,” the ram-headed god of Heracleopolis Magna, gained an ephemeral importance during the IXth Dynasty, which arose from his town. Outwardly, he resembles Khnum. Little is known about him, and he is seldom mentioned. The burial-place of his priests in later times was in 1904 discovered at Abusir el Meleq.

Chons, “he who travels by boat,” perhaps originally a mere epithet of the moon-god Ioh or Thoth, is chiefly familiar as the third member of the Theban triad. As such he is represented as a youthful god, wearing a skull-cap surmounted by the moon. His cult was revived and became popular in Ptolemaic times. A curious story about the sending of his statue to Mesopotamia to heal a daughter of the king of Bakhtan is related upon a stele that purports to date from the Ramesside period: it has been proved to be a pious fraud invented by the priests not earlier than the Greek period.

Hathor, whose name means “house of Horus,” was at all times a very important deity. She is depicted as a cow, or with a broad human countenance, the cow’s ears just showing from under a massive wig. Probably at first a goddess of the sky, she is early mentioned in connexion with Re. Later she was often identified with Isis, and her name was used to designate foreign goddesses like those of Puoni and Byblus. Unlike most cosmic deities, she was worshipped in many localities, chief among which was Dendera, where her magnificent temple, of Ptolemaic date, still stands. “The seven Hathors” is a name given to certain fairies, who appeared shortly after the birth of an infant, and predicted his future.

Khnum or Khnoum, a ram-headed god, whose principal place of worship was the island of Elephantine (there associated with Satis and Anukis), but also revered elsewhere, e.g. together with Nebtu in Esna. He enjoyed great repute as a creator, and was supposed to use the potter’s wheel for the purpose. In this capacity he is sometimes accompanied by the frog-headed goddess Heket.