Chapter 5

M. Maspero combats rightly the attempt to make

✦

“ strong ” the meaning of neter (masc.), or neterit (fern.)
in these words : “ In the expressions ‘ a town neterit
* an arm neteri / ... is it certain that * a strong city/

1 Religion und Mythologie , p. 93.

THE MEANING OF NETER.

‘ a strong arm/ give us the primitive sense of neter ?
When among ourselves one says ‘ divine music/ ‘ a
piece of divine poetry/ ‘ the divine taste of a peach/

* the divine beauty of a woman/ [the word] divine is a
hyperbole, but it would be a mistake to declare that it
originally meant ‘ exquisite 5 because in the phrases
which I have imagined one could apply it as ‘ exquisite
music/ ‘a piece of exquisite poetry; ‘the exquisite
taste of a peach/ ‘the exquisite beauty of a woman/
Similarly, in Egyptian, ‘a town neterit ’ is ‘a divine
town ; ’ ‘ an arm neteri ’ is ‘ a divine arm/ and neteri is
employed metaphorically in Egyptian as is [the word]
‘ divine ’ in French, without its being any more neces¬
sary to attribute to [the word] neteri the primitive
meaning of ‘ strong/ than it is to attribute to [the
word] ‘ divine 5 the primitive meaning of ‘ exquisite/ ” 1
It may be, of course, that neter had another meaning
which is now lost, but it seems that the great difference
between God and his messengers and created things is
that he is the Being who is self- existent and immortal,
whilst they are not self-existent and are mortal.

Here it will be objected by those who declare that
the ancient Egyptian idea of God is on a level with
that evolved by peoples and tribes who stand com¬
paratively little removed from very intelligent animals,
that such high conceptions as self-existence and im¬
mortality belong to a people who are already on a
1 La Mythologie ftgyptienne, p. 215.

PRIMITIVE IDEA OF GOD.

high grade of development and civilization. This is
precisely the case with the Egyptians when we first
know them. As a matter of fact, we know nothing
of their ideas of God before they developed sufficiently
to build the monuments which we know they built,
and before they possessed the religion, and civilization,
and complex social system which their writings have
revealed to us. In the remotest prehistoric times it
is probable that their views about God and the future
life were little better than those of the savage tribes,
now living, with whom some have compared them.
The primitive god was an essential feature of the
family, and the fortunes of the god varied with the
fortunes of the family ; the god of the city in which
a man lived was regarded as the ruler of the city, and
the people of that city no more thought of neglecting
to provide him with what they considered to be due
to his rank and position than they thought of neglecting
to supply their own wants. In fact the god of the
city became the centre of the social fabric of that city,
and every inhabitant thereof inherited automatically
certain duties, the neglect of which brought stated
pains and penalties upon him. The remarkable
peculiarity of the Egyptian religion is that the
primitive idea of the god of the city is always cropping
up in it, and that is the reason why we find semi¬
savage ideas of God side by side with some of the
most sublime conceptions, and it of course underlies

EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF NETER.

all the legends of the gods wherein they possess all
the attributes of men and women. The Egyptian in
his semi-savage state was neither better nor worse
than any other man in the same stage of civilization,
but he stands easily first among the nations in his
capacity for development, and in his ability for evolving
conceptions concerning God and the future life, which
are claimed as the peculiar product of the cultured
nations of our time.

We must now, however, see how the word for God,
neter , is employed in religious texts and in works
which contain moral precepts. In the text of Unas,1
a king who reigned about B.c. 3300, we find the
passage : — “ That which is sent by thy ka cometh to
thee, that which is sent by thy father cometh to thee,
that which is sent by Ka cometh to thee, and it
arriveth in the train of thy Ka. Thou art pure, thy
bones are the gods and the goddesses of heaven, thou
existest at the side of God, thou art unfastened, thou
comest forth towards thy soul, for every evil word
(or thing) which hath been written in the name of
Unas hath been done away.” And, again, in the text
of Teta,2 in the passage which refers to the place in
the eastern part of heaven “ where the gods give birth
unto themselves, where that to which they give birth
is born, and where they renew their youth,” it is
said of this king, “Teta standeth up in the form of

1 Ed. Maspero, Pyramides de Saqqarah, p. 25. 2 Ibid., p. 113.

EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF NETER. 9

the star ... he weigheth words (or trieth deeds), and
behold God hearkeneth unto that which he saith.”
Elsewhere 1 in the same text we read, “ Behold, Teta
hath arrived in the height of heaven, and the henmemet
beino-s have seen him : the Semketet 2 boat knoweth
him, and it is Teta who saileth it, and the Mantchet 3
boat calleth unto him, and it is Teta who bringetli
it to a standstill. Teta hath seen his body in the
Semketet boat, he knoweth the uraeus which is in the
Mantchet boat, and God hath called him in his name
. . . and hath taken him in to Ba.” And again 4 we
have ; “ Thou hast received the form (or attribute) of
God, and thou hast become great therewith before the
gods”; and of Pepi I., who reigned about B.c. 3000,
it is said, “ This Pepi is God, the son of God.” 5

Now in these passages the allusion is to the supreme >
Being in the next world, the Being who has the
power to invoke and to obtain a favourable reception
for the deceased king by Ka, the Sun-god, the type
and symbol of God. It may, of course, be urged that
the word neter here refers to Osiris, but it is not
customary to speak of this god in such a way in the
texts ; and even if we admit that it does, it only shows
that the powers of God have been attributed to Osiris,
and that he was believed to occupy the position in

1 Ed. Maspero, Pyr amides de Saqqarali, p. 111.

2 The morning boat of the sun. 3 The evening boat of the sun.

4 Ibid., p. 150. 5 Mid., p. 222.

PRECEPTS OF KAQEMNA.

lespect of Pa and the deceased which the supreme
Being himself occupied. In the last two extracts
given above we might read “a god ” instead of “ God,”
hut there is no object in the king receiving the form
or attribute of a nameless god ; and unless Pepi becomes
the son of God, the honour which the writer of that
text intends to ascribe to the king becomes little and
even ridiculous.

Passing from religious texts to works containing
moral precepts, we find much light thrown upon the
idea of God by the writings of the early sages of
Egypt. First and foremost among these are the
“ Precepts of Kaqemna” and the “ Precepts of Ptah-
hetep,” works which were composed as far back as
B.c. 3000. The oldest copy of them which we possess
is, unfortunately, not older than B.c. 2500, but this
fact in no way affects our argument. These “precepts ”
are intended to form a work of direction and guidance
for a young man in the performance of his duty
towards the society in which he lived and towards
his God. It is only fair to say that the reader will
look in vain in them for the advice which is found
in writings of a similar character composed at a later
period; but as a work intended to demonstrate the
“ whole duty of man ” to the youth of the time when
the Great Pyramid was still a new building, these
“precepts ” are very remarkable. The idea of God held
by Ptah-hetep is illustrated by the following passages : —

IDEA OF GOD IN DYNASTIC TIMES. II

1. “ Thou shalt make neither man nor woman to be
afraid, for God is opposed thereto; and if any man
shall say that lie will live thereby, He will make him
to want bread.”

2. “ As for the nobleman who possesseth abundance
of goods, he may act according to his own dictates;
and he may do with himself that which he pleaseth ;
if he will do nothing at all, that also is as he pleaseth.
The nobleman by merely stretching out his hand doeth
that which mankind (or a person) cannot attain to ;
but inasmuch as the eating of bread is according to
the plan of God, this cannot be gainsaid.”

3. “ If thou hast ground to till, labour in the field
which God hath given thee ; rather than fill thy mouth
with that which belongeth to thy neighbours it is
better to terrify him that hath possessions [to give
them unto thee].”

4. “ If thou abasest thyself in the service of a perfect
man, thy conduct shall be fair before God.”

5. “ If thou wouldst be a wise man, make thou thy
son to be pleasing unto God.”

6. “ Satisfy those who depend upon thee as far as
thou art able so to do ; this should be done by those
whom God hath favoured.”

7. “ If, having been of no account, thou hast become
great ; and if, having been poor, thou hast become rich ;
and if thou hast become governor of the city, be not
hard-hearted on account of thy advancement, because

MAXIMS OF ICHENSU-HETEP.

thou hast become merely the guardian of the things
which God hath provided.”

8 11 What is loved of God is obedience ; God hateth
disobedience.”

9. “ Yerily a good son is of the gifts of God.” 1

The same idea of God, but considerably amplified
in some respects, may be found in the Maxims of
Khensu-hetep, a work which was probably composed
during the XVIIIth dynasty. This work has been
studied in detail by a number of eminent Egyptologists,
and though considerable difference of opinion has
existed among them m respect of details and gram¬
matical niceties, the general sense of the maxims has
been clearly established. To illustrate the use of the
word neter , the following passages have been chosen
from it : 2 —

1. “ God magnifieth his name.”

2. “ What the house of God hateth is much speaking.
Pray thou with a loving heart all the petitions which
are in secret. He will perform thy business, he will
hear that which thou sayest and will accept thine
offerings.”

3. “ God decreeth the right.”

f Tlie text was published by Prisse d’Avennes, entitled Facsimile
d'un papyrus Egyptien en caracteres hiCratiques, Paris, 1847. For a
tianslation of the whole work, see Virey, Etudes sur le Papyrus Prisse
Paris, 1887.

2 They are given with interlinear transliteration and translation
m my Papyrus of Ani, p. Ixxxv. ff., where references to the older
literature on the subject will be found.

GOD AND “GODS.”

4. “ When thou makest an offering unto thy God,
guard thou against the things which are an abomination
unto him. Behold thou his plans with thine eye, and
devote thyself to the adoration of his name. He giveth
souls unto millions of forms, and him that magnifieth
him doth he magnify.”

5. “If thy mother raise her hands to God he will
hear her prayers [and rebuke thee].”

7. “ Give thyself to God, and keep thou thyself daily
for God.”

Now, although the above passages prove the exalted
idea which the Egyptians held of the supreme Being,
they do not supply us with any of the titles and
epithets which they applied to him ; for these we must
have recourse to the fine hymns and religious medita¬
tions which form so important a part of the “ Book of
the Dead.” But before we quote from them, mention
must be made of the neteru , i.e., the beings or exist¬
ences which in some way partake of the nature or
character of God, and are usually called “ gods.” The
early nations that came in contact with the Egyptians
usually misunderstood the nature of these beings, and
several modern Western writers have done the same.
When we examine these “ gods ” closely, they are found
to be nothing more nor less than forms, or manifesta¬
tions, or phases, or attributes, of one god, that god
being Ba the Sun-god, who, it must be remembered^
kvas the type and symbol of God. Nevertheless, the

MONOTHEISM AND POLYTHEISM.

worship of the netcru by the Egyptians has been made
the base of the charge of “ gross idolatry ” which has
been brought against them, and they have been repre¬
sented by some as being on the low intellectual level
of savage tribes. It is certain that from the earliest
times one of the greatest tendencies of the Egyptian
religion was towards monotheism, and this tendency
may be observed in all important texts down to the
latest period ; it is also certain that a kind of poly¬
theism existed in Egypt side by side with monotheism
from very early times. Whether monotheism or poly¬
theism be the older, it is useless in our present
state of knowledge to attempt to enquire. According
to Tiele, the religion of Egypt was at the beginning
polytheistic, but developed in two opposite directions :
in the one direction gods were multiplied by the
addition of local gods, and in the other the Egyptians
drew nearer and nearer to monotheism.1 Dr. Wiede¬
mann takes the view that three main elements may be
recognized in the Egyptian religion : (1) A solar mono¬
theism, that is to say one god, the creator of the
universe, who manifests his power especially in the
sun and its operations ; (2) A cult of the regenerating
power of nature, which expresses itself in the adoration
of ithyphallic gods, of fertile goddesses, and of a series

1 Geschiedenis van den Godsdienst in de Oudheid, Amsterdam, 1893,
p. 25. A number of valuable remarks on this subject are given by
Lieblein in Egyptian Religion, p. 10.

GOD AND THE GOD OF THE CITY. 1 5

of animals and of various deities of vegetation ; (3) A
perception of an anthropomorphic divinity, the life of
whom in this world and in the world beyond this was
typical of the ideal life of man 1 —this last divinity
being, of course, Osiris. But here again, as Dr. Wiede¬
mann says, it is an unfortunate fact that all the texts
which we possess are, in respect of the period of the
origin of the Egyptian religion, comparatively late, and
therefore in them we find these three elements mixed
together, along with a number of foreign matters, in
such a way as to make it impossible to discover which
of them is the oldest. No better example can be given
of the loose way in which different ideas about a god
and God are mingled in the same text than the
“Negative Confession ” in the hundred and twenty-fifth
chapter of the Book of the Dead. Here, in the oldest
copies of the passages known, the deceased says, “ I have
not cursed God ” (1. 38), and a few lines after (1. 42) he
adds, “ I have not thought scorn of the god living in
my city.” It seems that here we have indicated two
different layers of belief, and that the older is repre¬
sented by the allusion to the “god of the city,” in
which case it would go back to the time when the
Egyptian lived in a very primitive fashion. If we
assume that God (who is mentioned in line 38) is
Osiris, it does not do away with the fact that he was
regarded as a being entirely different from the “god of
1 Le Livre des Morts (Review in Mus&on, Tom. xiii. 1893).

1 6 JUVENAL ON THE EGYPTIAN GODS.

the city ” and that he was of sufficient importance to
have one line of the “ Confession devoted to him.
The Egyptian saw no incongruity in setting references
to the “gods” side by side with allusions to a god
whom we cannot help identifying with the Supreme
Being and the Creator of the world; his ideas and
beliefs have, in consequence, been sadly misrepresented,
and by certain writers he has been made an object ot
ridicule. What, for example, could be a more foolish
description of Egyptian worship than the following?
“Who knows not, 0 Yolusius of Bithynia, the sort of
monsters Egypt, in her infatuation, worships. One