Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 11

* Wilkinson, iii. 329. Compare AElian, x. 24, on the enmity between worshippers of crocodiles and hawks (and Strabo, xvii. 558). The hawk-worshippers averred that the hawk was a symbol of fire; the crocodile people said that their beast was an emblem of water; but why one city should be so attached to water-worship and its neighbour to tire-worship does not appear.

** A good deal of information will be found in Wilkinson's third volume, but must be accepted with caution.

*** Wilkinson, iii. 33; Plutarch, Sympos., iv. quaest. 5; Herodot, ii. 67.

If this explanation of the _local_ worship of sacred beasts be admitted as plausible, the beast-headed G.o.ds, or many of them, may be accounted for in the same way. It is always in a town where a certain animal is locally revered that the human-shaped G.o.d wearing the head of the same animal finds the centre and chief holy place of his worship. The cat is great in Bubastis, and there is Bast, and also the cat-headed Sekhet* of Memphis. The sheep was great in Thebes, and there was the sacred city of the ram-headed Khnum or Ammon Ra.** If the crocodile was held in supreme regard at Ombos, there, too, was the sacred town of the crocodile-headed G.o.d, Sebak.

* Wilkinson, iii. 286. But the cat, though Bubastis was her centre and metropolis, was sacred all over the land. Nor was puss only in this proud position. Some animals were _universally_ worshipped.

** The inconsistencies of statement about this ram-headed deity in Wilkinson are most confusing. Ammon is an adjective = "hidden," and is connected with the ram-headed Khnum, and with the hawk-headed Ra, the sun.

While Greek writers like Porphyry and Plutarch and Jamblichus repeat the various and inconsistent Egyptian allegorical accounts of the origin of those beast-headed G.o.ds, the facts of their worship and chosen residence show that the G.o.ds are only semi-anthropomorphic refinements or successors of the animals. It has been said that these representations are later in time, and it is probable that they are later in evolution, than the representations of the deities as mere animals. Nor, perhaps, is it impossible to conjecture how the change in art was made. It is a common ritual custom for the sacrificer to cover himself with the skin and head of the animal sacrificed. In Mexico we know that the Aztec priests wore the flayed skins of their human victims. Herodotus mentions that on the one awful day when a sheep was yearly sacrificed in Thebes, the statue of Zeus, as he calls him, was draped in the hide of the beast. In the same way certain Californian tribes which worship the buzzard sacrifice him, "himself to himself," once a year, and use his skin as a covering in the ritual.* Lucian gives an instance in his treatise _De Dea Syria_ (55): "When a man means to go on pilgrimage to Hierapolis, he sacrifices a sheep and eats of its flesh. He then kneels down and draws the head over his own head, praying at the same time to the G.o.d." Chaldean works of art often represent the priest in the skin of the G.o.d, sometimes in that of a fish.**

It is a conjecture not unworthy of consideration that the human G.o.ds with b.e.s.t.i.a.l heads are derived from the aspect of the celebrant clad in the pelt of the beast whom he sacrifices. In Egyptian art the heads of the G.o.ds are usually like masks, or flayed skins superimposed on the head of a man.*** If it be asked _why_ the celebrant thus disguises himself in the sacrifice, it is only possible to reply by guess-work.

But the hypothesis may be hazarded that this rite was one of the many ways in which the sacred animal has been propitiated in his death by many peoples. It is a kind of legal fiction to persuade him that, like the bear in the Finnish Kalewala and in the Red Indian and Australian legend, "he does not die". His skin is still capering about on other shoulders.****

* [Robinson, _Life in California_, pp. 241, 803;]

Herodotus, ii. 42.

** Menant, _Recherehes_, ii. 49. See a collection of cases in our _Cupid and Psyche_, pp. lviii., lix.

*** The idea is Professor Robertson Smith's.

**** For examples of propitiation of slain animals by this and other arts, see _Prim. Cult_, i. 467, 469. When the Koriaks slay a bear or wolf, they dress one of their people in his skin, and dance round him, chanting excuses. We must not forget, while offering this hypothesis of the origin of beast-headed G.o.ds, that representations of this kind in art may only be a fanciful kind of shorthand. Everyone knows the beasts which, in Christian art, accompany the four Evangelists. These do not, of course, signify that St.

John was of the eagle totem kin, and St. Mark of the stock of the lion. They are the beasts of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, regarded as types of the four Gospel writers.

Moreover, in mediaeval art, the Evangelists are occasionally represented with the heads of their beasts--John with an eagle's head, Mark with a lion's, Luke with that of an ox.

See _Bulletin, Com. Hist. Archeol_., iv. 1852. For this note I am indebted to M. H. Gaidoz.

While Egyptian myth, religion and ritual is thus connected with the beliefs of the lower races, the animal-worship presents yet another point of contact. Not only were beasts locally adored, but G.o.ds were thought of and represented in the shape of various different beasts. How did the evolution work its way? what is the connection between a lofty spiritual conception, as of Ammon Ra, the lord of righteousness, and Osiris, judge of the dead, and bulls, rams, wolves, cranes, hawks, and so forth? Osiris especially had quite a collection of b.e.s.t.i.a.l heads, and appeared in divers b.e.s.t.i.a.l forms.* The bull Hapi "was a fair and beautiful image of the soul of Osiris," in late ritual.** We have read a hymn in which he is saluted as a ram. He also "taketh the character of the G.o.d Bennu, with the head of a crane," and as Sokar Osiris has the head of a hawk.*** These phenomena could not but occur, in the long course of time, when political expediency, in Egypt, urged the recognition of the ident.i.ty of various local deities. In the same way "Ammon Ra, like most of the G.o.ds, frequently took the character of other deities, as Khem, Ra and Chnumis, and even the attributes of Osiris ".****

* Cf. Wilkinson, iii. 86, 87.

** De Is. et Os., 29.

***Wilkinson, iii. 82.

****Op. cit., iii, 9.

There was a constant come and go of attributes, and G.o.ds adopted each other's symbols, as kings and emperors wear the uniform of regiments in each other's service. Moreover, it is probable that the process so amply ill.u.s.trated in Samoan religion had its course in Egypt, and that different holy animals might be recognised as aspects of the same deity.

Finally, the intricate connection of G.o.ds and beasts is no singular or isolated phenomenon. From Australia upwards, a G.o.d, perhaps originally, conceived of as human and moral in character, is also recognised in a totem, as Pund-jel in the eagle-hawk. Thus the confusion of Egyptian religion is what was inevitable in a land where new and old did not succeed and supersede each other, but coexisted on good terms. Had religion not been thus confused, it would have been a solitary exception among the inst.i.tutions of the country.

The peculiarity of Egypt, in religion and myth as in every other inst.i.tution, is the retention of the very rudest and most barbarous things side by side with the last refinements of civilisation (Tiele, Manuel, p. 44). The existence of this conservatism (by which we profess to explain the Egyptian myths and worship) is ill.u.s.trated, in another field, by the arts of everyday life, and by the testimony of the sepulchres of Thebes. M. Pa.s.salacqua, in some excavations at Quoarnah (Gurna), struck on the common cemetery of the ancient city of Thebes.

Here he found "the mummy of a hunter, with a wooden bow and twelve arrows, the shaft made of reed, the points of hardened wood tipped with edged flints. Hard by lay jewels belonging to the mummy of a young woman, pins with ornamental heads, necklaces of gold and lapis-lazuli, gold earrings, scarabs of gold, bracelets of gold," and so forth (Chabas, _Etudes sur l'Antiquity Historique_, p. 390). The refined art of the gold-worker was contemporary, and this at a late period, with the use of flint-headed arrows, the weapons commonly found all over the world in places where the metals had never penetrated. Again, a razor-shaped knife of flint has been unearthed; it is inscribed in hieroglyphics with the words, "The great Sam, son of Ptah, chief of artists ". The "Sams" were members of the priestly cla.s.s, who fulfilled certain mystic duties at funerals. It is reported by Herodotus that the embalmers opened the bodies of the dead with a knife of stone; and the discovery of such a knife, though it had not belonged to an embalmer, proves that in Egypt the stone age did not disappear, but coexisted throughout with the arts of metal-working. It is alleged that flint chisels and stone hammers were used by the workers of the mines in Sinai, even under Dynasties XII., XIX. The soil of Egypt, when excavated, constantly shows that the Egyptians, who in the remote age of the pyramid-builders were already acquainted with bronze, and even with iron, did not therefore relinquish the use of flint knives and arrow-heads when such implements became cheaper than tools of metal, or when they were a.s.sociated with religion. Precisely in the same way did the Egyptians, who, in the remotest known times, had imposing religious ideas, decline to relinquish the totems and beast-G.o.ds and absurd or blasphemous myths which (like flint axes and arrow-heads) are everywhere characteristic of savages. The fact is, that the Egyptian mind, when turned to divine matters, was constantly working on, and working over, the primeval stuff of all mythologies and of all religions. First, there is the belief in a moral guardian and father of men; this is expressed in the sacred hymns. Next, there is the belief in "a strange and powerful race, supposed to have been busy on earth before the making, or the evolution, or the emergence of man"; this is expressed in the mythical legends. The Egyptians inherited a number of legends of extra-natural heroes, not unlike the savage Qat, Cagn, Yehl, Pund-jel, Ioskeha and Quahteaht, the Maori Tutenganahau and the South Sea Tangaroa. Some of these were elemental forces, personified in human or b.e.s.t.i.a.l guise; some were merely idealised medicine-men. Their "wanderings, rapes and manslaughters and mutilations," as Plutarch says, remained permanently in legend. When these beings, in the advance of thought, had obtained divine attributes, and when the conception of abstract divinity, returning, perhaps, to its first form, had become pure and lofty, the old legends became so many stumbling-blocks to the faithful. They were explained away as allegories (every student having his own allegorical system), or the extranatural beings were taken (as by Plutarch) to be "demons, not G.o.ds ".

A brief and summary account of the chief figures in the Egyptian pantheon will make it sufficiently plain that this is a plausible theory of the G.o.ds of Egypt, and a probable interpretation of their adventures.

Accepting the cla.s.sification proposed by M. Maspero, and remembering the limitations under which it holds good, we find that:--

1. The G.o.ds of death and the dead were Sokari, Isis and Osiris, the young Horus and Nephthys.*

2. The elemental G.o.ds were Seb and Nut, of whom Seb is the earth and Nut the heavens. These two, like heaven and earth in almost all mythologies, are represented as the parents of many of the G.o.ds. The other elemental deities are but obscurely known.

3. Among solar deities are at once recognised Ra and others, but there was a strong tendency to identify each of the G.o.ds with the sun, especially to identify Osiris with the sun in his nightly absence.**

Each G.o.d, again, was apt to be blended with one or more of the sacred animals. "Ra, in his transformations, a.s.sumed the form of the lion, cat and hawk."*** "The great cat in the alley of persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Ra, crushed the serpent."****

* Their special relation to the souls of the departed is matter for a separate discussion.

** "The G.o.ds of the dead and the elemental G.o.ds were almost all identified with the sun, for the purpose of blending them in a theistic unity" (Maspero, _Rev. de l'hist. des Rel_., i. 126).

*** Birch, in Wilkinson, iii. 59.

***Le Page Renouf, op. cit., p. 114.

In different nomes and towns, it either happened that the same G.o.ds had different names, or that a.n.a.logies were recognised between different local G.o.ds; in which case the names were often combined, as in Ammon-Ra, Sabek-Ra, Sokar-Osiris, and so forth.

Athwart all these cla.s.ses and compounds of G.o.ds, and athwart the theological attempt at constructing a monotheism out of contradictory materials, came that ancient idea of dualism which exists in the myths of the most backward peoples. As Pund-jel in Australia had his enemy, the crow, as in America Yehl had his Khanukh, as Ioskeha had his Tawiscara, so the G.o.ds of Egypt, and specially Osiris, have their Set or Typhon, the spirit who constantly resists and destroys.

With these premises we approach the great Osirian myth.

THE OSIRIAN MYTH.

The great Egyptian myth, the myth of Osiris, turns on the antagonism of Osiris and Set, and the persistence of the blood-feud between Set and the kindred of Osiris.* To narrate and as far as possible elucidate this myth is the chief task of the student of Egyptian mythology.

Though the Osiris myth, according to Mr. Le Page Renouf, is "as old as Egyptian civilisation," and though M. Maspero finds the Osiris myth in all its details under the first dynasties, our accounts of it are by no means so early.**

* Herodotus, ii. 144.

** The princ.i.p.al native doc.u.ments are the Magical Harris Papyrus, of the nineteenth or twentieth dynasty, translated by M. Chabas (Records of the Past, x. 137); the papyrus of Nebseni (eighteenth dynasty), translated by M. Naville, and in Records of Past, x. 159; the hymn to Osiris, on a stele (eighteenth dynasty) translated by M. Chabas (Rev. Archeol., 1857; Records of Past, iv. 99); "The Book of Respirations,"

mythically said to have been made by Isis to restore Osiris-- "Book of the Breath of Life" (the papyrus is probably of the time of the Ptolemies--Records of Part, iv. 119); "The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys," translated by M. de Horrack (Records of Past, ii. 117). There is also "The Book of the Dead": the version of M. Pierret, (Paris, 1882) is convenient in shape (also Birch, in Bunsen, vol. v.). M. de Naville's new edition is elaborate and costly, and without a translation. Sarcophagi and royal tombs (Champollion) also contain many representations of the incidents in the myth.

"The myth of Osiris in its details, the laying out of his body by his wife Isis and his sister Nephthys, the reconstruction of his limbs, his mythical chest, and other incidents connected with his myth are represented in detail in the temple of Philae" (Birch, ap. Wilkinson, iii. 84).

The reverent awe of Herodotus prevents him from describing the mystery-play on the sufferings of Osiris, which he says was acted at Sais, ii. 171, and ii. 61, 67, 86. Probably the clearest and most consecutive modern account of the Osiris myth is given by M. Lefebure in Les Yeux d'Horus et Osiris.

M. Lefebure's translations are followed in the text; he is not, however, responsible for our treatment of the myth. The Ptolemaic version of the temple of Edfou is published by M.

Naville, _Mythe d'Horus_ (Geneva, 1870).

They are mainly allusive, without any connected narrative. Fortunately the narrative, as related by the priests of his own time, is given by the author of _De Iside et Osiride_, and is confirmed both by the Egyptian texts and by the mysterious hints of the pious Herodotus. Here we follow the myth as reported in the Greek tract, and ill.u.s.trated by the monuments.

The reader must, for the moment, clear his mind of all the many theories of the meaning of the myth, and must forget the lofty, divine and mystical functions attributed by Egyptian theologians and Egyptian sacred usage to Osiris. He must read the story simply as a story, and he will be struck with its amazing resemblances to the legends about their culture-heroes which are current among the lowest races of America and Africa.

Seb and Nut--earth and heaven--were husband and wife. In the _De Iside_ version, the sun cursed Nut that she should have no child in month or year; but thanks to the cleverness of a new divine co-respondent, five days were added to the calendar. This is clearly a later edition to the fable. On the first of those days Osiris was born, then Typhon or Set, "neither in due time, nor in the right place, but breaking through with a blow, he leaped out from his mother's side".*

* De Iside et Osiride, xii. It is a most curious coincidence that the same story is told of Indra in the Rig- Veda, iv.

18, 1. "This is the old and well-known path by which all the G.o.ds were born: thou mayst not, by other means, bring thy mother unto death." Indra replies, "I will not go out thence, that is a dangerous way: right through the side will I burst". Compare (Leland, Algonquin Legends, p. 15) the birth of the Algonquin Typhon, the evil Malsumis, the wolf.

"Glooskap said, 'I will be born as others are'." But the evil Malsumis thought himself too great to be brought forth in such a manner, and declared that he would burst through his mother's side. Mr. Leland's note, containing a Buddhist and an Armenian parallel, but referring neither to Indra nor Typhon, shows the _bona fides_ of the Algonquin report. The Bodhisattva was born through his mother's right side (Kern..

Der Buddhismus, 30). The Irish version is that our Lord was born through the crown of the head of the Virgin, like Athene. _Saltair na Rann_, 7529, 7530. Se also Liebrecht, _Zur Volkskunde_, p. 490. For the Irish and Buddhist legends (there is an Anglo-Saxon parallel) I am indebted to Mr Whitley Stokes. Probably the feeling that a supernatural child should have no natural birth, and not the borrowing of ideas, accounts for those strange similarities of myth.

Isis and Nephthys were later-born sisters. The Greek version of the myth next describes the conduct of Osiris as a "culture-hero". He inst.i.tuted laws, taught agriculture, instructed the Egyptians in the ritual of worship, and won them from "their dest.i.tute and b.e.s.t.i.a.l mode of living".