recorded in the canonical rolls of Hermes' quickly attained in this transcendental lore all that human curiosity can ever discover. Thebes especially is said to have acknowledged a Being without beginning or end, called Amon' or Amon-Kneph, the all-pervading spirit or breath of nature, or perhaps even some still more lofty object of reverential reflection whom it was forbidden even to name". Such a being would in theory stand at the head of the three orders of gods mentioned by Herodotus 10, these being regarded as arbitrary classifications of similar or equal beings arranged in successive emanations according to an estimate of their comparative dignity. The eight, or primary class, were probably manifestations of the emanated God in the several parts and powers of the universe", including with Pan Mendes or Khem, the "Generator," fire and moisture, heaven and earth, day and night. They seem to have been genii of the elements, like the Vedic Devatas, like them, too, not absolutely confined to single physical departments, but each potentially comprising the whole Godhead. The Kneph-Ammon of Thebes was probably no greater nor less than the Mendesian Pan or Ptah of Memphis; nor was Ptah the mere fire-spirit, but the spirit of life and generation, Lord of all elements and all gods 12. Nothing, however, can be more arbitrary and inconclusive than the modern attempts to fill up the lists of gods, each author confidently assuming his own theory to be

5 Said by Manetho and Clemens to have been forty-two in number, distributed under the guardianship of the Sacred Scribes, Prophets, Singers, Stolista, Astrologers, and Pastophori.

6 66 Ayeventov naι aQbagrov." Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, ch. xxi. Iambl. Myst. viii. 2. Plat. Phædr. 356.

7 Meaning, according to the more probable interpretation by Manetho, the "hidden." Plut. ib. ch. ix.; the "ayvoros" of Damascius (Kopp. 385).

8 Diod. S. i. 12. Plut. de Iside, ch. xxxvi.

• Iambl. Myst. viii. 2, 3. Cic. N. D. iii. 22.

10 ii. 43. 46. 145.

Theon of Smyrna, quoted in Lobeck. Aglaoph. 742. Diod. i. 12. Euseb. Pr. Ev. iii. 9, p. 113. Heinich.

12 Eckerman, Lehrbuch Mythol. i. p. 73.

14

right, and undervaluing the Greek accounts, without which he cannot advance a step. Little is positively known of the second order except that they "proceeded out" of the first, Ra or Phra (the Sun), being a reputed son of Ptah and Neith, and Khon or Khonsu (Hercules), descended from Amon. From the second issued the third order, virtually consisting of the higher gods or godhead clothed in mortal forms (00 Ovnto), and therefore more nearly representing popular ideas. They were, it is said, the only divinities generally worshipped throughout Egypt. Osiris was son of Helios (Phra), the "divine offspring congenerate with the dawn," and at the same time an incarnation of Kneph or Agathodæmon, the good spirit, including all his possible manifestations, either physical or moral. So in Isis were summed up all preceding Nature-goddesses; she was as it were mother and founder of religion, for it was said that she gave to each of the Egyptian nomes a fragment of the lacerated body of her husband; that is, she substituted for the obscure provincial idolatry a general form of pantheism. Osiris represented in a familiar form the beneficent aspect of all higher emanations; he was the Sun, and also the fertilising Nile 16, inventor of agriculture, and for the same reason patron of the bull" and of the year. In him was developed the conception of a Being purely good, so that it became necessary to set up another power as his adversary, called Seth, Babys, or Typhon, to account for the injurious influences of Nature.

What the sun is in heaven, such was Osiris among men; a powerful king and benefactor, model of all succeeding monarchs 18. Osiris and Horus were said to have been the last

13 Herod. ii. 42.

15 Diod. i. 21.

14 Σπέρμα συγγενές ημερας.

16 Môou, or Deus Nilus. Wilkinson, 2nd Ser. vol. ii. p. 56.

18 46

17 “O Bous yrwgyias xxi rgo¶ns ovμßoλov." Clem. Alex. Strom. 5.7, p. 671. Pott. Meyas Bariλeus susgysTns." Plut. Isis and Osiris, 12. Αγαθων ποιητικός ων Όσιρις κεκληται.” Iamblich. Myst. 8. 3, p. 159. “Αγαθοποιος” and “ εὐεργετης.” Plut. ib. 42.

of the gods properly so called who sat on the throne of Egypt". But when succeeding Pharaohs had assumed the titles of divinity among the ordinary insignia of their rank 20, a confusion arose, which, blending mortal with immortal, history with theology, made it difficult, perhaps impossible, clearly to distinguish the actual from the ideal, the man from the tutelary God". In the attempt to adopt the dogma of the all-pervading presence of Deity to the forms of narrative, it became necessary to imagine the epochs of the past filled up by a genealogical series terminated by God at one extremity, and by the reigning Pharaoh as his earthly representative at the other. Thus, in his last manifestation, the Supreme Being became father and precursor of mankind, connecting by kindly approximation 22 with a heavenly source the present forms of human authority. The insuperable barrier appeared to have been surmounted 23. It was not that any of the historical Pharaohs really pretended to be considered as gods"; but that in ages past those great institutions and benefits, which in their origin transcend all human experience, and which appear to surpass man's inventive power, were supposed to have been personally communicated by the great spirit of Nature from whence they really sprung. With the phenomena of agriculture, supposed to be the invention of Osiris, the Egyptians connected the highest truths of their religion. The soul of man was as the seed hidden in the ground, and the mortal framework similarly consigned to its dark resting-place awaited its restoration from life's unfailing 19 Herod. ii. 144. "D." Diod. S. i. 13.

20 They were called "Immortal sons of the Sun, Lords of the three regions, Suns, Lords of Truth," &c. Creuz. S. ii. 260. Hermapion in Amm. Marc. xvii. 4. Champollion. Precis. vii. 131. 165. 170. Athenæus, xiii. 566. The Khan of Tartary was a son of God," and Chosroes, the Persian monarch, is styled "Saviour among men, among gods a perfect and eternal man, among men a most conspicuous god, rising with the sun, and giving eyes and illumination to the night."

21 Paus. i. 42. Herod. i. 106.

2 Isis and Osiris, ch. 57.

23 Pope's Essay on Man, i. 7. Pind. Nem. vi. 4. Creuz. Symb. ii. 257, 258. 24 Herod. ii. 142, 143.

source.

26

Osiris was not only benefactor of the living, he was also Hades, Sarapis, and Rhadamenthes, the monarch of the dead 25. Death, therefore, in Egyptian opinion, was only another name for renovation, since its God is the same power who incessantly renews vitality in Nature. Every corpse duly embalmed was called an "Osiris," and in the grave was supposed to be united, or at least brought into approximation, to the Divinity". For when God became incarnate for man's benefit, it was implied that in analogy with his assumed character he should submit to all the conditions of visible existence. In death, as in life, Isis and Osiris were patterns and precursors of mankind; their sepulchres stood within the temples of the superior gods; yet though their remains might be entombed at Memphis or Abydus their divinity was unimpeached, and they either shone as luminaries in the heavens 29, or in the unseen world presided over the futurity of the disembodied spirits whom death had brought nearer to them 30.

$ 9.

NOTION OF A DYING GOD.

The notion of a dying god, so frequent in oriental legend, was the natural inference from a literal interpretation of Nature worship; since Nature, which in the vicissitudes of the seasons seems to undergo a dissolution, was to the earliest religionists the express image of the Deity, or rather one and the same

25 Plut. Isis, ch. 28. 61. 78. The epithet of "the good" has been supposed to be given him more especially in this character, as it was to the Greek Hades. Bunsen's Egypt, i. p. 494, ".

26 Ὁ λαμβανων και ὁ δίδους. Isis and Osiris, ch. 29. 27 Herod. ii. 86. 123. Plut. Isis, 20.

28 Herod. ii. 170. Diod. i. 22.

29 Isis and Osiris, ch. 21.

Eccles. xii. 7.

30 Miss Martineau, in her "Eastern Life" (vol. i. p. 65), eloquently describes the feeling in which the Egyptians learned to look beyond the limits of the living world, and how their religion thus became a worship of the dead.

with the "varied God," whose attributes were seen not only in its vitality but in its changes. The unseen mover of the universe was rashly identified with its obvious fluctuations'; and since the lessons of external appearance, that first great teacher, influence the fancy long before they reach the understanding, an ordinary Pantheist who contemplated "one" all-pervading spirit, adorable even in the animal, would find nothing inconsistent in the idea that God is liable to death, or that as dwelling in all forms he might in ages past have been more emphatically manifested in one, though it were a human and perishable one. The speculative Deity suggested by the drama of nature was worshipped with imitative and sympathetic rites. A period of mourning about the autumnal equinox, and of joy at the return of spring, was almost universal. Phrygians and Paphlagonians, Bæotians, and even Athenians, were all more or less attached to such observances'; the Syrian damsels sat weeping for Thammuz or Adonis, mortally wounded by the tooth of winter"; and the priests of Attys, an analogous incarnation of solar power, emasculated themselves and danced in female clothing in devotional mimicry of the temporary enfeeblement of their God. These rites were evidently suggested by the arrest of vegetation, when the sun, descending from its altitude, appears deprived of his generating power; and those ceremonies of passionate lamentation which, in the East, were commonly offered to the dead, were adopted in the periodical observances of religion. Mourning, mutilation, self immola

1 σε Όρωμεν ότι προσιόντος μεν του ήλιου γενεσις εστι, απιόντος δε φθισις.” Aristot. de Gen. et Corr. ii. 10. 9. Ravaisson sur la Metaphysique, i. p. 561. Schwegler's Notes, ii. p. 255. Comp. Herod. ii. 77.

Creuz. S. ii. 420.

2 Plut. Isis, 69. 3 Ezek. viii. 14. Macrob. Sat. i. 21. Herod. i. 36. 39. The boar being a very general emblem of winter. (Creuz. S. ii. 424.) The Vedic Rudra, the Destroyer, is called the Boar of the skies. (Lassen, i. 763.) A boar yoked with a lion represent winter and summer yoked by Destiny. (Apollod. i. 9. 15.) Comp. the Libethrian legend of the river "Sus," whose destructive violence was said to have laid bare the bones of "Orpheus." (Paus. ix. 30.) Wild boars are still very numerous on the Nahr Ibrahim (the Adonis) in the Lebanon, and in severe winters often commit great ravages. (Kelly's Syria, p. 101.)