CHAPTER I.

THE BELIEF IN GOD ALMIGHTY.

A study of ancient Egyptian religious texts will con¬
vince the reader that the Egyptians believed in One
God, who was self-existent, immortal, invisible, eternal,
omniscient, almighty, and inscrutable ; the maker of
the heavens, earth, and underworld ; the creator of the
sky and the sea, men and women, animals and birds,
fish and creeping things, trees and plants, and the
incorporeal beings who were the messengers that ful¬
filled his wish and word. It is necessary to place this
definition of the first part of the belief of the Egyptian
at the beginning of the first chapter of this brief
account of the principal religious ideas which he held,
for the whole of his theology and religion was based
upon it ; and it is also necessary to add that, however

2 ORIGIN OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION UNKNOWN.

far back we follow bis literature, we never seem to
J approach a time when lie was without this remarkable
belief. It is true that he also developed polytheistic
ideas and beliefs, and that he cultivated them at certain
periods of his history with diligence, and to such a
degree that the nations around, and even the stranger
in his country, were misled by his actions, and de¬
scribed him as a polytheistic idolater. But notwith¬
standing all such departures from observances, the
keeping of which befitted those who believed in God
and his unity, this sublime idea was never lost sight
of; on the contrary, it is reproduced in the religious
literature of all periods. Whence came this remark¬
able characteristic of the Egyptian religion no man
can say, and there is no evidence whatsoever to guide
us in formulating the theory that it was brought into
Egypt by immigrants from the East, as some have
said, or that it was a natural product of the indigenous
peoples who formed the population of the valley of
the Nile some ten thousand years ago, according to
the opinion of others. All that is known is that it
existed there at a period so remote that it is useless
to attempt to measure by years the interval of time
which has elapsed since it grew up and established
itself in the minds of men, and that it is exceedingly
doubtful if we shall ever have any very definite know¬
ledge on this interesting point.

But though we know nothing about the period of

TIIE WORD NETER.

3

the origin in Egypt of the belief in the existence of an
almighty God who was One, the inscriptions show ns
that this Being was called by a name which was some¬
thing like Neter,1 the picture sign for which was an
axe-head, made probably of stone, let into a long
wooden handle. The coloured picture character shews
that the axe-head was fastened into the handle by
thongs of leather or string, and judging by the general
look of the object it must have been a formidable
weapon in strong, skilled hands. A theory has recently
been put forward to the effect that the picture character
represents a stick with a bit of coloured rag tied to
the top, but it will hardly commend itself to any
archaeologist. The lines which cross the side of the
axe-head represent string or strips of leather, and
indicate that it was made of stone which, being brittle,
was liable to crack ; the picture characters which
delineate the object in the latter dynasties shew that
metal took the place of the stone axe-head, and
being tough the new substance needed no support.
The mightiest man in the prehistoric days was he
who had the best weapon, and knew how to wield it
with the greatest effect ; when the prehistoric hero of
many fights and victories passed to his rest, his own
or a similar weapon was buried with him to enable
him to wage war successfully in the next world. The

1 There is no e in Egyptian, and this vowel is added merely to
make the word pronounceable.

4 DERIVATION FROM COPTIC IMPOSSIBLE.

mightiest man had the largest axe, and the axe thus
became the symbol of the mightiest man. As he, by
reason of the oft-told narrative of his doughty deeds
at the prehistoric camp fire at eventide, in course of
time passed from the rank of a hero to that of a god,
the axe likewise passed from being the symbol of a
hero to that of a god. Far away back in the early
dawn of civilization in Egypt, the object which I
identify as an axe may have had some other significa¬
tion, but if it had, it w^as lost long before the period
of the rule of the dynasties in that country.

Passing now to the consideration of the meaning of
the name for God, neter, we find that great diversity
of opinion exists among Egyptologists on the subject.
Some, taking the view that the equivalent of the word
exists in Coptic, under the form of Nuti, and because
Coptic is an ancient Egyptian dialect, have sought to
deduce its meaning by seeking in that language for the
root from which the word may be derived. But all
such attempts have had no good result, because the
word Nuti stands by itself, and instead of being de¬
rived from a Coptic root is itself the equivalent of the
Egyptian neter / and wras taken over by the translators
of the Holy Scriptures from that language to express
the words “ Cod ” and “ Lord.” The Coptic root nomti
cannot in any way be connected with nuti, and the
attempt to prove that the two are related was only

1 The letter r has dropped out in Coptic through phonetic decay.

THE MEANING OF NETER.

5

made with the view of helping to explain the funda¬
mentals of the Egyptian religion by means of Sanskrit
and other Aryan analogies. It is quite possible that
the word neter means “ strength/’ “ power/’ and the
like, but these are only some of its derived meanings,
and we have to look in the hieroglyphic inscriptions
for help in order to determine its most probable mean¬
ing. The eminent French Egyptologist, E. de Kouge, -
connected the name of God, neter, with the other word
neter, “ renewal” or “renovation,” and it would, accord¬
ing to his view, seem as if the fundamental idea of
God was that of the Being who had the power to renew
himself perpetually — or in other words, “ self-existence.”
The late Dr. H. Brugsch partly accepted this view, for
he defined neter as being “the active power which
produces and creates things in regular recurrence ;
which bestows new life upon them, and gives back to
them their youthful vigour.”1 There seems to be no
doubt that, inasmuch as it is impossible to find any
one word which will render neter adequately and
satisfactorily, “ self- existence ” and “ possessing the
powrer to renew life indefinitely,” may together be
taken as the equivalent of neter in our own tongue.