Chapter 11

CHAPTER III.

✦

THE “GODS” OF THE EGYPTIANS.

Throughout this book we have had to refer frequently
to the “ gods ” of Egypt ; it is now time to explain
who and what they were. We have already shown
how much the monotheistic side of the Egyptian
religion resembles that of modern Christian nations,
and it will have come as a surprise to some that a
people, possessing such exalted ideas of God as the
Egyptians, could ever have become the byword they
did through their alleged worship of a multitude of
“ gods ” in various forms. It is quite true that the
Egyptians paid honour to a number of gods, a number
so large that the list of their mere names would fill
a volume, but it is equally true that the educated
classes in Egypt at all times never placed the “gods”
on the same high level as God, and they never imagined
that their views on this point could be mistaken. In
prehistoric times every little village or town, every
district and province, and every great city, had its
own particular god ; we may go a step farther, and

THE VILLAGE GOD.

say that every family of any wealth and position had
its own god. The wealthy family selected some one
to attend to its god, and to minister unto his wants,
and the poor family contributed, according to its
means, towards a common fund for providing a dwell¬
ing-house for the god, and for vestments, etc. But
the god was an integral part of the family, whether
rich or poor, and its destiny was practically locked
up with that of the family. The overthrow of the
family included the overthrow of the god, and seasons
of prosperity resulted in abundant offerings, new vest¬
ments, perhaps a new shrine, and the like. The god
of the village, although he was a more important
being, might be led into captivity along with the
people of the village, but the victory of his followers
in a raid or fight caused the honours paid to him to
be magnified and enhanced his renown.

The gods of provinces or of great cities were, of
course, greater than those of villages and private
families, and in the large houses dedicated to them,
i.e., temples, a considerable number of them, represented
by statues, would be found. Sometimes the attributes
of one god would be ascribed to another, sometimes
two or more gods would be “ fused ” or united and
form one, sometimes gods were imported from remote
villages and towns and even from foreign countries,
and occasionally a community or town would repudiate
its god or gods, and adopt a brand new set from some

GODS OF PRE-DYNASTIC TIMES.

neighbouring district. Thus the number of the gods
was always changing, and the relative position of
individual gods was always changing ; an obscure, and
almost unknown, local god to-day might through a
victory in war become the chief god of a city, and
on the other hand, a god worshipped with abundant
offerings and great ceremony one month might sink
into insignificance and become to all intents and
purposes a dead god the next. But besides family and
village gods there were national gods, and gods of
rivers and mountains, and gods of earth and sky,
all of which taken together made a formidable number
of “ divine ” beings whose good-will had to be secured,
and whose ill-will must be appeased. Besides these,
a number of animals as being sacred to the gods were
also considered to be “divine,” and fear as well as
love made the Egyptians add to their numerous classes
of gods.

The gods of Egypt whose names are known to us
do not represent all those that have been conceived
by the Egyptian imagination, for with them as with
much else, the law of the survival of the fittest holds
good. Of the gods of the prehistoric man we know
nothing, but it is more than probable that some of
the gods wdio were worshipped in dynastic times
represent, in a modified form, the deities of the savage,
or semi-savage, Egyptian that held their influence on
his mind the longest. A typical example of such a

T1I0TH AND WORDS OF POWER. 87

god will suffice, namely Tliotli, whose original emblem
was the dog-headed ape. In very early times great
respect was paid to this animal on account of his
sagacity, intelligence, and cunning; and the simple-
minded Egyptian, when he heard him chattering just
before the sunrise and sunset, assumed that he was
in some way holding converse or was intimately
connected with the sun. This idea clung to his mind,
and we find in dynastic times, in the vignette repre¬
senting the rising sun, that the apes, who aie said
to be the transformed openers of the portals of heaven,
form a veritable company of the gods, and at the
same time one of the most striking featuies of the
scene. Thus an idea which came into being in the most
remote times passed on from generation to generation
until it became crystallized in the best copies of the
Book of the Dead, at a period when Egypt was at its
zenith of power and glory. The peculiar species of
the dog-headed ape which is represented in statues
and on papyri is famous for its cunning, and it was
the words which it supplied to Thoth, who in turn
transmitted them to Osiris, that enabled Osiris to be
“ true of voice,” or triumphant, over his enemies. It
is probably in this capacity, ie., as the friend of the
dead, that the dog-headed ape appears seated upon
the top of the standard of the Balance in which the
heart of the deceased is being weighed against the
feather symbolic of Maat; for the commonest titles

LOCAL AND NATIONAL GODS.

of the god are “ lord of divine books,” “ lord of divine
words,” i.e., the formulae which make the deceased to
be obeyed by friend and foe alike in the next world.
In later times, when Thoth came to be represented by
the ibis bird, his attributes were multiplied, and he
became the god of letters, science, mathematics, etc. ; at
the creation he seems to have played a part not unlike
that of “ wisdom ” which is so beautifully described
by the writer of Proverbs (see Chap. VIII. vv. 23-31).

Whenever and wherever the Egyptians attempted
to set up a system of gods they always found that
the old local gods had to be taken into consideration,
and a place had to be found for them in the system.
This might be done by making them members of
triads, or of groups of nine gods, now commonly called
“ enneads ” ; but in one form or other they had to
appear. The researches made during the last few
years have shown that there must have been several
large schools of theological thought in Egypt, and
of each of these the priests did their utmost to proclaim
the superiority of their gods. In dynastic times there
must have been great colleges at Heliopolis, Memphis,
Abydos, and one or more places in the Delta, not
to mention the smaller schools of priests which pro¬
bably existed at places on both sides of the Nile from
Memphis to the south. Of the theories and doctrines
of all such schools and colleges, those of Heliopolis
have survived in the completest form, and by careful

IDENTITY OF TEMU AND RA. 89

examination of the funeral texts which were inscribed
on the monuments of the kings of Egypt of the Vth
and YIth dynasties we can say what views they held
about many of the gods. At the outset we see that
the great god of Heliopolis was Temu or Atmu, the
setting sun, and to him the priests of that place
ascribed the attributes which rightly belong to Ra,
the Sun-god of the day-time. For some reason or
other they formulated the idea of a company of the
gods, nine in number, which was called the “great
company ( jpaut ) of the gods,” and at the head of this
company they placed the god Temu. In Chapter
XYII of the Book of the Dead 1 we find the following
passage : —

“ I am the god Temu in his rising ; I am the only
One. I came into being in Nu. I am Ra who rose
in the beginning.”

Next comes the question, “ But who is this ? ” And
the answer is : “ It is Ra when at the beginning he rose
in the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis Magna)
crowned like a king in rising. The pillars of the
god Shu were not as yet created when he was upon
the staircase of him that dwelleth in Khemennu
(Hermopolis Magna).” From these statements we
learn that Temu and Ra were one and the same god,
and that he was the first offspring of the god Nu,
the primeval watery mass, out of which all the gods

See Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, p. 49.

THE GODS AS NAMES OF RA.

came into being. The text continues : “ I am the great
god Nu who gave birth to himself, and who made his
names to come into being and to form the company
of the gods. But who is this ? It is Ba, the creator
of the names of his members which came into being
in the form of the gods who are in the train of Ba.”
And again : “ I am he who is not driven back among
the gods. But who is this ? It is Tern, the dweller
in his disk, or as others say, it is Ba in his rising
in the eastern horizon of heaven. Thus we learn
further that Nu was self-produced, and that the gods
are simply the names of his limbs ; but then Ba is
Nil, and the gods who are in his train or following are
merely personifications of the names of his own
members. He who cannot be driven back among

the gods is either Temu or Ba, and so we find that

Hu, Temu, and Ba are one and the same god. The
priests of Heliopolis in setting Temu at the head of their
company of the gods thus gave Ba, and Nu also, a
place of high honour ; they cleverly succeeded in
making their own local god chief of the company, but
at the same time they provided the older gods with
positions of importance. In this way worshippers
of Ba, who had regarded their god as the oldest of
the gods, would have little cause to complain of the
introduction of Temu into the company of the gods,
and the local vanity of Heliopolis would be gratified.

But besides the nine gods who were supposed to

THE COMPANY OF THE GODS. 91

form the “ great company ” of gods of the city of
Heliopolis, there was a second group of nine gods
called the “ little company ” of the gods, and yet a
third group of nine gods, which formed the least
company. Now although the paut or company of nine
gods might be expected to contain nine always, this
was not the case, and the number nine thus applied
is sometimes misleading. There are several passages
extant in texts in which the gods of a paut are
enumerated, but the total number is sometimes ten
and sometimes eleven. This fact is easily explained
when we remember that the Egyptians deified the
various forms or aspects of a god, or the various phases
in his life. Thus the setting sun, called Temu or
Atmu, and the rising sun, called Khepera, and the
mid-day sun, called Ea, were three forms of the same
god ; and if any one of these three forms was included
in a paut or company of nine gods, the other two
forms were also included by implication, even though
the paut then contained eleven instead of nine gods.
Similarly, the various forms of each god or goddess
of the paut were understood to be included in it,
however large the total number of gods might become.
We are not, therefore, to imagine that the three com¬
panies of the gods were limited in number to 9 x 3,
or twenty -seven, even though the symbol for god be
given twenty-seven times in the texts.

We have already alluded to the great number of

TEMU AND SHU.

gods who were known to the Egyptians, but it will
be readily imagined that it was only those who were
thought to deal with man’s destiny, here and hereafter,
who obtained the worship and reverence of the people
of Egypt. These were, comparatively, limited in
number, and in fact may be said to consist of the
members of the great company of the gods of Heliopolis,
that is to say, of the gods who belonged to the cycle
of Osiris. These may be briefly described as follows : —

1. Temu or Atmu, i.e., the “ closer” of the day, just
as PtalT was the “ opener ” of the day. In the story of

— *""* — ijhW*1" *lin,|",r

the creation he declares that he evolved himself under
the form of the god Khepera, and in hymns he is said
to be the “ maker of the gods,” “ the creator of men,”
etc., and he usurped the position of Ra among the gods
of Egypt. His worship must have been already very
ancient at the time of the kings of the Vth dynasty,
for his traditional form is that of a man at that time.

2. Siiu was the firstborn son of Temu. According
to one legend he sprang direct from the god, and
according to another the goddess Hathor was his
mother; yet a third legend makes him the son of
Temu by the goddess Iusaset. He it was who made
his way between the gods Seb and Hut and raised
up the latter to form the sky, and this belief is com¬
memorated by the figures of this god in which he
is represented as a god raising himself up from the
earth with the sun’s disk on his shoulders. As a

TEFNUT AND SEB.

power of nature he typified the light, and, standing
on the top of a staircase at Hermopolis Magna,1 he
raised up the sky and held it up during each day.
To assist him in this work he placed a pillar at each
of the cardinal points, and the “ supports of Shu ” are
thus the props of the sky.

3. Tefnut was the twin-sister of Shu ; as a power
of nature she typified moisture or some aspect of the
sun’s heat, but as a god of the dead she seems to
have been, in some way, connected with the supply
of drink to the deceased. Her brother Shu was the
right eye of Temu, and she was the left, i.e., Shu
represented an aspect of the Sun, and Tefnut of the
Moon. The gods Temu, Shu, and Tefnut thus formed
a trinity, and in the story of the creation the god
Temu says, after describing how Shu and Tefnut
proceeded from himself, “ thus from being one god I
became three.”

4. Seb was the son of the god Shu. He is called
the “ Erpa,” i.e., the “hereditary chief” of the gods,
and the “ father of the gods,” these being, of course,
Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. He was originally the
god of the earth, but later he became a god of the
dead as representing the earth wherein the deceased
was laid. One legend identifies him with the goose,
the bird which in later times was sacred to him, and
he is often called the “ Great Cackler,” in allusion

1 See above, pp. 69 and 89.

THE GODDESS NUT.

to the idea that he made the primeval egg from
which the world came into being.

5. Nut was the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris,
Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Originally she was the
personification of the sky, and represented the feminine
principle which was active at the creation of the
universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut
existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with
Shu and Tefnut ; and later Seb became the earth and
Nut the sky. These deities were supposed to unite
every evening, and to remain embraced until the morn¬
ing, when the god Shu separated them, and set the
goddess of the sky upon his four pillars until the
evening. Nut was, naturally, regarded as the mother
of the gods and of all things living, and she and her
husband Seb were considered to be the givers of food,
not only to the living but also to the dead. Though
different views were current in Egypt as to the exact
location of the heaven of the beatified dead, yet all
schools of thought in all periods assigned it to some
region in the sky, and the abundant allusions in the
texts to the heavenly bodies — that is, the sun, moon,
and stars — which the deceased dwells with, prove that
the final abode of the souls ol the righteous was not
upon earth. The goddess Nut is sometimes represented
as a female along whose body the sun travels, and
sometimes as a cow; the tree sacred to her was the
sycamore.

OSIRIS AND ISIS.

6. Osiris was the son of Seb and Nut, the husband
of Isis and the father of Horus. The history of this
god is given elsewhere in this book so fully that it is
only necessary to refer briefly to him. He was held
to be a man although of divine origin ; he lived and
reigned as a king on this earth ; he was treacherously
murdered by his brother Set, and his body was cut up
into fourteen pieces, which were scattered about Egypt ;
after his death, Isis, by the use of magical formulae
.supplied to her by Thoth, succeeded in raising him to
life, and he begot a son called Horus ; when Horus
was grown up, he engaged in combat with Set, and
overcame him, and thus “avenged his father”; by
means of magical formulae, supplied to him by Thoth,
Osiris reconstituted and revivified his body, and became
the type of the resurrection and the symbol of immor¬
tality ; he was also the hope, the judge, and the god
of the dead, probably even in pre-dynastic times.
Osiris was in one aspect a solar deity, and originally
he seems to have represented the sun after it had set ;
but he is also identified with the moon. In the
XVII Ith dynasty, however, he is already the equal
of Ba, and later the attributes of God and of all the
“ gods ” were ascribed to him.

7. Isis was the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus ;
as a nature goddess she had a place in the boat of the
sun at the creation, when she probably typified the
dawn. By reason of her success in revivifying her

9 6 SET THE OPPONENT OF HORUS.

husband’s body by means of the utterance of magical
formulae, she is called the “lady of enchantments.”
Her wanderings in search of her husband’s body, and
the sorrow which she endured in bringing forth and
rearing her child in the papyrus swamps of the Delta,
and the persecution which she suffered at the hands
of her husband’s enemies, form the subject of many
allusions in texts of all periods. She has various
aspects, but the one which appealed most to the imagina¬
tion of the Egyptians, was that of “ divine mother ” ;
in this character thousands of statues represent her
seated and suckliDg her child Horus whom she holds
upon her knees.

8. Set was the son of Seb and Hut, and the husband
of Hephthys. At a very early period he was regarded
as the brother and friend of “ Horus the Elder,” the
Aroueris of the Greeks, and Set represented the night
whilst Horus represented the day. Each of these gods
performed many offices of a friendly nature for the
dead, and among others they set up and held the ladder
by which the deceased made his way from this earth to
heaven, and helped him to ascend it. But, at a later
period, the views of the Egyptians concerning Set
changed, and soon after the reign of the kings called
“ Seti,” i.e., those whose names were based upon that of
the god, he became the personification of all evil, and
of all that is horrible and terrible in nature, such as
the desert in its most desolate form, the storm and the

NEPHTHYS, SISTER OF ISIS.

tempest, etc. Set, as a power of nature, was always
waging war with Horus the Elder, i.e., the night did
battle with the day for supremacy ; both gods, however,
sprang from the same source, for the heads of both are,
in one scene, made to belong to one body. When
Horus, the son of Isis, had grown up, he did battle with
Set, who had murdered Homs’s father Osiris, and
vanquished him ; in many texts these two originally
distinct fights are confused, and the two Horus gods
also. The conquest of Set by Horus in the first conflict
typified only the defeat of the night by the day, but
the defeat of Set in the second seems to have been
understood as the victory of life over death, and of
good over evil. The symbol of Set was an animal with
a head something like that of a camel, but it has not
yet been satisfactorily identified ; figures of the god are
uncommon, for most of them were destroyed by the
Egyptians when they changed their views about
him.

9. Nephthys was the sister of Isis and her com¬
panion in all her wanderings and troubles; like her
she had a place in the boat of the Sun at creation, when
she probably typified the twilight or very early night.
She was, according to one legend, the mother of
Anubis by Osiris, but in the texts his father is declared
to be Ka. In funeral papyri, stelae, etc., she always
accompanies Isis in her ministrations to the dead, and
as she assisted Osiris and Isis to defeat the wickedness

NU AND PTAH.

of her own husband (Set), so she helped the deceased
to overcome the powers of death and the grave.

Here then we have the nine gods of the divine
company of Heliopolis, but no mention is made of
Horus, the son of Isis, who played such an important