The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 12

"The G.o.ds are joyous at the arrival of Osiris, the son of Horus, the intrepid, the truth-speaking, the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris. The divine chiefs join him, the G.o.ds recognise the omnipotent child himself ...

the reign of justice belongs to him.

Horus has found his justification, to him is given the t.i.tle of his father; he appears with the _atef_-crown by order of Seb. He takes the royalty of the two worlds, the crown of Upper Egypt is placed upon his head.

He judges the world as he likes, heaven and earth are beneath his eye, he commands mankind-the intellectual beings, the race of the Egyptians and the northern barbarians.

The circuit of the solar disc is under his control; the winds, the waters, the wood of the plants, and all vegetables....

Sanctifying, beneficent is his name ...

evil flies afar off, and the earth brings forth abundantly under her lord.

Justice is confirmed by its lord, who chases away iniquity.

Mild is thy heart, O (Osiris) Un-nefer, son of Isis; he has taken the crown of Upper Egypt; for him is acknowleged the authority of his father in the great dwelling of Seb; he is Ra when speaking, Thoth when writing; the divine chiefs are at rest."

Here Osiris is identified with Horus, and so becomes the son of his own wife.

The Egyptian trinity has thus grown out of the triad under the influence of the solar theology, and of the old conception of a personality which possessed a concrete form. Once introduced into the Osirian creed, it spread with it throughout Egypt, and became a distinguishing feature of Egyptian theology. Along with the doctrines of the resurrection of the body and of a judgment to come, it pa.s.sed into the schools of Alexandria, and was there thrown into the crucible of Greek philosophy. The Platonic doctrine of ideas was adapted to the Egyptian doctrine of personality, and the three persons of the trinity became Unity, Mind, and Soul-absolute thought, absolute reason, and absolute energy.(186)

But while, on the one hand, there is continuity between the religious thought of ancient Egypt and the religious thought of the world of to-day, there is also continuity, on the other hand, between the religion of Egypt and that of primitive Babylonia. In the course of these lectures I have more than once pointed to the fact: the Pharaonic Egyptians were of Asiatic origin and they necessarily brought with them the religious ideas of their Eastern home. As we come to know more both of early Babylonian civilisation and of the beginnings of Egyptian history, we shall doubtless discover that the links between them are closer than we at present imagine, and much that is now obscure will become clear and distinct.

Meanwhile there is one link which I cannot pa.s.s over. Astro-theology once played a considerable part in the religion of the Egyptians. In the historical age it has lost its importance; the stars have been identified with the official deities, who have accordingly absorbed their individual attributes; but echoes of the worship formerly paid to them are still heard in the Pyramid texts. Sa?u or Orion is still remembered as a mighty hunter, whose hunting-ground was the plain of heaven, and whose prey were the G.o.ds themselves. When he rises, it is said in the Pyramid of Unas, "the stars fight together, and the archers patrol" the sky which drops with rain; the smaller stars which form his constellation pursue and la.s.so the G.o.ds as the human hunter la.s.soes the wild bull; they slay and disembowel their booty, and boil the flesh in glowing caldrons. The "greater G.o.ds" are hunted "in the morning," those of less account at mid-day, the "lesser G.o.ds" "at evening, and Sa?u refreshes himself with the divine banquet," feeding on their bodies and absorbing "their magic virtues." "The great ones of the sky" launch "the flames against the caldrons wherein are the haunches of the followers" of the G.o.ds; the pole-star, "who causes the dwellers in the sky to march in procession round" Orion, "throws into the caldron the legs of their wives."(187) We are transported to the cannibal's kitchen of some African chieftain, such as that represented on a curious stela found in Darfur, and now in the museum of Constantinople. The whole description takes us back to a period in the history of Egypt long anterior to that of the Pyramids, when the Pharaonic invaders were first beginning to mingle with the older population of the land and become acquainted with its practices. In the days of Unas the real meaning of the expressions handed down by theological conservatism had been forgotten, or was interpreted metaphorically; but they remained to prove that the age when Orion was still an object of worship superior to the G.o.ds of heaven was one which went back to the very dawn of Pharaonic history. The cult of the stars must have been brought by "the followers of Horus" from their Asiatic home.(188)

The fame of Orion was eclipsed in later days by that of Sopd or Sirius.

But this had its reason in the physio-graphical peculiarities of Egypt.

The heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, that is to say, its first appearance along with the sun, corresponded with the rise of the Nile in Upper Egypt, and accordingly became a mark of time, and the starting-point of the solar year. Its importance therefore was great, not only for the calendar, but also for those agricultural operations upon which the very existence of Egypt depended. We need not wonder, accordingly, if with the settlement of the Pharaonic Egyptians in the valley of the Nile the worship and name of Orion fell more and more into the background, while that of Sirius became pre-eminent. How far back the pre-eminence of Sirius reaches may be gathered from the fact that the twentieth nome of Northern Egypt-that of Goshen-derived its name from a combination of the mummified hawk of Horus and the cone which, as Brugsch first showed,(189) represents the shaft of zodiacal light that accompanies the rising of Sirius before the dawn of day. Sopd or Sirius is thus identified with the dead Horus who presided over Nekhen in Upper Egypt, and preceded Osiris as the G.o.d of the dead.(190)

Of the other stars and constellations we do not know much. The Great Bear was called "the haunch of beef," and was at times identified with Set, and made the abode of the souls of the wicked. Not far off was the hippopotamus, which Brugsch would identify with Draco; while among other constellations were to be found the Lion and the Horus-hawk, as well as a warrior armed with a spear.

All over the world the more prominent stars and constellations have received names. But it is only the more prominent and brilliant among them of which this is true. So far as we know, the only people who have ever systematically mapped out the heavens, dividing the stars into groups, and giving to each group a name of its own, were the Babylonians; and it was from the Babylonians that the constellations as known to Greeks and Romans, to Hindus, or to Chinese, were ultimately derived. The inference, therefore, is near at hand, that the primitive Egyptians also were indebted for their map of the sky to the same source. And the inference is supported by more than one fact.

On the one side, the names of several of the constellations were the same among both Babylonians and Egyptians. Of this the Twins, Aquarius, or the Family, are examples, while it can hardly be an accident that Orion in both systems of astronomy is a giant and a hunter. "The Bull of heaven"

was a Babylonian star, and Jupiter bore the Sumerian name of Gudi-bir, "the Bull of light"; in the Pyramid texts also we have a "Bull of heaven,"

the planet Saturn according to Brugsch, Jupiter according to Lepsius.

Still more striking are the thirty-six Egyptian decans, the stars who watched for ten days each over the 360 days of the ancient Egyptian year, and were divided into two cla.s.ses or hemispheres, those of the day and those of the night.(191) Not only did the early Chaldaean year similarly consist of 360 days; it too was presided over by thirty-six "councillor"

stars, half of which were above the earth, while the other half were below it.(192) Such a coincidence cannot have been accidental; the Babylonian and Egyptian decans must have had the same origin.

But there was yet a further parallelism between the stellar theology of Egypt and that of Babylonia. In both countries the worship of the stars pa.s.sed into an astro-theology. The official G.o.ds were identified with the planets and fixed stars, and the stellar cult of the people was thus absorbed into the State religion. But whereas this astro-theology was characteristic of Babylonia, it has done little more than leave its traces on the historical religion of Egypt. Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were identified with Horus under different forms, and Mercury with Set, while Venus became "the bark (_za_)(193) of the phnix" or soul "of Osiris."

Sirius was made the star of Isis, Orion the star of Osiris. But, like the cult of the stars itself, this astro-theology belongs to a far-off age in Egyptian history. It is the last faint reflection of a phase of religious thought which had pa.s.sed away when the monumental records first begin.

It is the same with a curious echo of ancient Babylonian cosmology, to which Prof. Hommel has drawn our attention. The old Babylonian Epic of the Creation begins with the words-

"At that time the heaven above was not known by name, the earth beneath was not named, in the beginning the deep was their generator, the chaos of the sea was the mother of them all."

The lines are the introduction to a story of the Creation of which they form an integral part. On the walls of the Pyramid of Pepi I. we read again almost the same words. Pepi, it is said, "was born of his father Tum. At that time the heaven was not, the earth was not, men did not exist, the G.o.ds were not born, there was no death."(194) But here the words have been introduced without connection with the context; they cohere neither with what precedes nor with what follows them, and are evidently nothing but an old formula torn from the cosmogony to which they once belonged, and repeated without a clear understanding of what they really meant. The phrases are found again in the later religious literature of Egypt, embedded in it like flies in amber or the fossils in an old sea-beach.(195) To recover their original meaning we must betake ourselves to the clay tablets of a.s.syria and Babylonia, and the cosmological theories of early Chaldaea. They presuppose that story of a creation out of the chaos of the deep which was indigenous in Babylonia alone.

This deep, which lay at the foundation of Babylonian cosmology, was symbolised in the temples by a "sea" across which the images of the G.o.ds were carried in "ships" on their days of festival. In Babylonia such "seas" had a reason for their existence. The Persian Gulf, it was believed, was the cradle of Babylonian culture; it was also the source of that cosmogony which saw in the deep the "mother" of all things. That it should have its mimic representatives in the temples of the country was but natural; it was from the "deep" that the G.o.ds had come, and the deep was still the home of the culture-G.o.d Ea.(196)

In Egypt, on the other hand, the sea was out of place nay more, it was altogether unnatural. If water were needed, the sacred Nile flowed at the foot of the temple or else there were ca.n.a.ls which conducted the waters of the river through the temple lands. There was no primeval deep to be symbolised, no Persian Gulf out of which the culture-G.o.d had risen with the gifts of civilisation. If the G.o.ds desired to sail in their barks, it was reasonable to suppose that they would do so on the Nile or its tributary ca.n.a.ls. And yet the supposition would be wrong. The G.o.ds had indeed their sacred "ships" as in Babylonia; but, as in Babylonia, it was on an artificially-constructed lake that they floated, and not, as a rule, on the river Nile. Could anything indicate more clearly the origin of the religious beliefs and practices of the Pharaonic Egyptians? Like the brick tombs of the Old Empire, with their recessed panels and pilasters, it points to Babylonia and the cosmological theories which had their birth in the Babylonian plain.(197)

The religion of ancient Egypt is thus no isolated fact. It links itself, on the one hand, with the beliefs and religious conceptions of the present, and, on the other hand, with those of a yet older past. But it is a linking only; Egyptian religion is no more the religion of ancient Babylonia than it is modern Christianity. In Egypt it a.s.sumed a form peculiar to itself, adapting itself to the superst.i.tions and habits of the earlier inhabitants of the land, and developing the ideas which lay latent within it. It was characterised by the inexorable logic with which each of these ideas was followed to its minutest conclusions, and at the same time by the want of any attempt to harmonise these conclusions one with the other, however inconsistent they might be. It was also characterised by a spirit of creativeness; the Egyptian created new religious conceptions because he was not afraid to follow his premisses to their end.

But he was intensely practical. Abstractions as such had little attraction for him, and he translated them into material form. The symbolism of his system of writing favoured the process: even such an abstract idea as that of "becoming" became for him a "transformation" or "change of outward shape." In spite, therefore, of the spirituality and profundity of much of his theology, his religion remained essentially materialistic. The G.o.ds might indeed pa.s.s one into the other and be but the manifold forms under which the ever-changing divine essence manifested itself, but this was because it was one with nature and the infinite variety which nature displays. Even the supreme G.o.d of Khu-n-Aten incorporated himself at it were in the visible orb of the sun.

The incarnation of the deity accordingly presented no difficulty to the Egyptian mind. It followed necessarily from the fundamental principles of his creed. The divinity which permeated the whole of nature revealed itself more clearly than elsewhere in that which possessed life. Egyptian religious thought never quite shook itself free from the influences of the primitive belief that life and motion were the same. Whatever moves possesses life, whatever lives must move;-such was, and still is, one of the axioms of primitive man. And since the deity manifested itself in movement, it could be recognised in whatever was alive. Man on the one side became a G.o.d in the person of the Pharaoh, the G.o.ds on the other side became men who had lived and died like Osiris, or had ruled over Egypt in the days of old. Even the ordinary man contained within him a particle or effluence of the divine essence which could never die; and the bodily husk in which it was incarnated could, under certain conditions, acquire the properties of that divinity to which it had afforded a home. That the divine essence could thus a.s.sume an individual form, was part of the doctrine which saw, in the manifold varieties of nature, the manifestations of a "single G.o.d." The belief in the incarnation of the deity was a necessary consequence of a materialistic pantheism. And it mattered little whether the incarnation took place under a human or under an animal shape; the human and the animal G.o.d had alike been a heritage from elements which, diverse though they may have been in origin, combined to form the Egyptian people, and both the man and the beast were alike living and therefore divine. The beast was more mysterious than the man, that was all; the workings of its mind were more difficult to comprehend, and the language it spoke was more unintelligible. But on that very account it was better adapted for the symbolism which literature and education encouraged, and which became an essential part of the texture of Egyptian thought.

If, then, we would understand the conception of the divine formed by the educated Egyptian of the historical age, we must remember the characteristics of Egyptian thought which lay behind it. Materialism and symbolism const.i.tuted the background of Egyptian religion. The one presupposed the other, for the symbol presented the abstract idea in a material and visible shape, while the materialism of the Egyptian mind demanded something concrete which the senses could apprehend. The conception of the ka, with which Egyptian religion begins, is characteristic of Egyptian religious thought up to the last. It is like the "materialised spirits" of modern spiritualism, spirits which are merely matter in an etherialised form. The Egyptian gave not only shape but substance to his mental and spiritual creations; like the "ideas" of Plato, they became sensuous realities like the written symbols which expressed them. Not only were the name and the thing never dissociated from one another, the name was looked on as the essence of the thing, and the name included its expression in both sound and writing. The bird which represented the idea of "soul" became in time the soul itself.

This very fact a.s.sisted in spiritualising Egyptian religion. Ideas and their symbols interchange one with the other; the ideas, moreover, develop and pa.s.s out of one form into another. The identification, therefore, of the abstract and the concrete, of ideas and substantial existence, made a pantheistic conception of the universe easy. The divinity clothed itself in as many forms as there were symbols to express it, and these forms pa.s.sed one into the other like phases of thought. The Egyptian was the first discoverer of the term "becoming," and the keynote of his creed was the doctrine of transformation.

Transformation, it must be remembered, is not transmigration. There was no pa.s.sage of an individual soul from body to body, from form to form; the divine essence permeated all bodies and forms alike, though it manifested itself at a given moment only under certain ones. It was in this power of manifestation that the transformation consisted. Had the Egyptian not been fettered by his materialistic symbolism, he would doubtless have gone further and concluded that the various manifestations of the divinity were subjective only-existing, that is to say, only in the mind of the observer; as it was, he held them to be objective, and to possess the same substantial reality as the symbolic pictures by which they were denoted.

With all this, however, there was no severe literalism in the interpretation of the symbol. Whatever may have been the case at the outset, the symbol was as much a metaphor in the historical ages of Egyptian history as are the metaphors of our own language. When the Egyptian spoke of "eating" his G.o.d, he meant no more than we do when we speak of "absorbing" a subject.(198) The Pyramid texts are full of such faded and forgotten metaphors; the Egyptian was conservative above all other men, and the language of religion is conservative above all others.

Doubtless, in some cases, he was the victim of the symbols and metaphors he used; but in this respect he does not stand alone. Where he has no rival is in the magnitude of the part played in his religion by the symbol and its logical development.

It was just this symbolism which enabled him to retain, on the one hand, all the old formulae with their gross materialism and childlike views of the universe, and, on the other hand, to attain to a conception of the divine being which was at once spiritual and sublime. For Egyptian religion, as we find it in the monuments of the educated cla.s.ses before the decay of the monarchy, was, in spite of its outward show of symbols and amulets, full of high thoughts and deep emotions. I cannot do better than quote the words in which it is described by one of its least prejudiced students, Professor Maspero:(199) "When we put aside the popular superst.i.tions and endeavour solely to ascertain its fundamental doctrines, we soon recognise that few religions have been so exalted in their principles. The Egyptians adored a being who was unique, perfect, endowed with absolute knowledge and intelligence, and incomprehensible to such an extent that it pa.s.ses man's powers to state in what he is incomprehensible. He is 'the one of one, he who exists essentially, the only one who lives substantially, the sole generator in heaven and earth, who is not himself generated.' Always the same, always immutable in his immutable perfection, always present in the past as in the future, he fills the universe without any form in the world being able to give even a feeble idea of his immensity; he is felt everywhere, he is perceived nowhere.

"Unique in essence, he is not unique in person. He is father because he exists, and the force of his nature is such that he is eternally begetting, without ever growing weak or exhausted. He has no need to go outside himself for this act of generation; he finds in his own bosom the material of his perpetual fatherhood. Alone in the plenitude of his being he conceives his offspring; and as in him there can be no distinction between conception and birth, from all eternity 'he produces in himself another self.' He is at once the divine father, mother, and son. Conceived of G.o.d, born of G.o.d, without separating from G.o.d, these three persons are G.o.d in G.o.d, and, far from dividing the primitive unity of the divine nature, they all three combine to const.i.tute his infinite perfection.

"Doubtless the mind of the uneducated cla.s.ses could neither understand nor rise to such lofty heights. Human intelligence supports with difficulty so pure an idea of an absolute being. All the attributes of divinity-his immensity, his eternity, his independence-place him at an infinite distance from ourselves; to comprehend and partic.i.p.ate in them, we must make him think as we think, we must lend him our pa.s.sions and subject him to our laws. G.o.d must take upon him, with human nature, all the weaknesses that accompany it, all the infirmities under which it labours; in a word, the Word must become flesh. The immaterial G.o.d must incarnate himself, must come to the land of Egypt and people it with the G.o.ds, his children.

Each of the persons of the primitive trinity thus became independent and formed a new type, from which, in their turn, other lower types emanated.

From trinity to trinity, from personification to personification, that truly incredible number of divinities was soon reached, with forms sometimes grotesque and often monstrous, who descended by almost insensible degrees from the highest to the lowest ranks of nature. The scribes, the priests, the officials, all the educated world, in fact, of Egyptian society, never professed that gross paganism which caused Egypt to be called with justice 'the mother of superst.i.tions.' The various names and innumerable forms attributed by the mult.i.tude to as many distinct and independent divinities, were for them merely names and forms of one and the same being. 'G.o.d, when he comes as a generator, and brings to light the latent forces of the hidden causes, is called Ammon; when he is the spirit who embodies all that is intelligent, he is Imhotep; when he is he who accomplishes all things with art and verity, he is Phthah; when he is G.o.d good and beneficent, he is Osiris.' What the scribe means by these words is the mysterious infinite which animates the universe, the eternal, impenetrable to eyes of flesh, but perceived vaguely by the eyes of the spirit. Behind the sensuous appearance, behind the manifestation of the divine nature wherein the popular imagination fancied it saw that nature itself, he beheld confusedly a being obscure and sublime, a full comprehension of whom is denied him, and the feeling of this incomprehensible presence lends to his prayer a deep and thrilling accent, a sincerity of thought and emotion, a thousand times more touching than that medley of amorous puerilities, of mystic languors and morbid contrition, which is so often the subst.i.tute for religious poetry."

There were two deep-rooted conceptions in the Egyptian mind which had much to do with the purity and sublimity of his religious ideas. One of these was the conception of a divine law which governed the universe, and to which the G.o.ds themselves had to submit. The other was that of a moral G.o.d, of a "good being" who rewarded-not piety but-uprightness, and punished iniquity. The world was ordered and controlled, not by chance or caprice, but by a fixed law, which was, characteristically enough, impersonated in the G.o.ddess Mat. And this law, unlike the blind destiny of the Greek or Roman, was at once divine and moral; it not only represented the order of the universe, against which there was no appeal, but it also represented an order which was in accordance with justice and truth. The law which all must obey under penalty of being cast into outer darkness, was an intelligent and moral law; it commended itself necessarily and instinctively to all intelligent beings whose thoughts, words, and deeds were alike righteous. Only those who had conformed to it could be admitted after death into the paradise of Osiris or into the company of the G.o.ds, and the seal of justification was the p.r.o.nouncement that the dead man had "spoken the truth," and that his confession in the judgment-hall of Osiris had been in agreement with the truth and with the eternal order of the universe.

Of the moral character of the Osirian creed I have already spoken. It is the first official recognition by religion that what G.o.d requires is uprightness of conduct and not ceremonial orthodoxy, the first identification of religion with morality. And the G.o.d who required this uprightness of conduct was not a "lord of hosts," who compelled adoration by the display of his power, but Un-nefer, "the good being," who existed in order to do good to men. In the conflict with evil he had apparently been worsted; but though he had died a shameful death, his disciples believed that it had been endured on their behalf, and that for those who followed in his footsteps, and whose lives resembled his, he had provided a better and a happier Egypt in another world, into which sin and pain and death could not enter, and where he ruled eternally over the cities and fields of the blest.

In the Osirian creed, writer after writer has discovered "fore-gleams" of Christianity more striking even than the doctrine of the Trinity, which belongs to the philosophy of faith. But there is nothing wonderful in the continuity of religious thought. One of the chief lessons impressed upon us by the science of the century which has just pa.s.sed away, is that of continuity; throughout the world of nature there is no break, no isolated link in the long chain of antecedent and consequent, and still less is there any in the world of thought. Development is but another name for the continuity which binds the past to the present with stronger fetters than those of destiny. It is not only the philosophy of Christianity, or the wider and more general doctrines of its creed, which find an echo in the religion of ancient Egypt; in details also Egypt is linked with the modern world. Long before the Hebrew prophets pictured the kingdom of the Messiah, an Egyptian poet, in the reign of Thothmes III., had said: "A king shall come from the south, Ameni, the truth-declaring, by name. He shall be the son of a woman of Nubia, and will be born in [the south]....

He shall a.s.sume the crown of Upper Egypt, and lift up the red crown of the north. He shall unite the double crown.... The people of the age of the son of man shall rejoice and establish his name for all eternity. They shall be removed far from evil, and the wicked shall humble their mouths for fear of him. The Asiatics shall fall before his blows, and the Libyans before his flame. The wicked shall wait on his judgments, the rebels on his power. The royal serpent on his brow shall pacify the revolted. A wall shall be built, even that of the prince, that the Asiatics may no more enter into Egypt."(200)

Yet more striking is the belief in the virgin-birth of the G.o.d Pharaoh, which goes back at least to the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty. On the western wall of one of the chambers in the southern portion of the temple of Luxor, Champollion first noticed that the birth of Amon-hotep III. is portrayed. The inscriptions and scenes which describe it have since been copied, and we learn from them that he had no human father; Amon himself descended from heaven and became the father of the future king. His mother was still a virgin when the G.o.d of Thebes "incarnated himself," so that she might "behold him in his divine form." And then the hieroglyphic record continues with words that are put into the mouth of the G.o.d.

"Amon-hotep," he is made to say, "is the name of the son who is in thy womb. He shall grow up according to the words that proceed out of thy mouth. He shall exercise sovereignty and righteousness in this land unto its very end. My soul is in him, (and) he shall wear the twofold crown of royalty, ruling the two worlds like the sun for ever."(201)

But Amon-hotep III. was not the first of whom it had been said that his father was a G.o.d. Fragments of a similar text have been found by Dr.

Naville at Der el-Bahari, from which we may gather that queen Hatshepsu also claimed to have been born of Amon. How much further back in Egyptian history the belief may go we do not know: the kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties called themselves sons of the sun-G.o.d, and the Theban monarchs whose virgin-mothers were wedded to Amon, incarnate in the flesh, did but work out the old conception in a more detailed and definite way.

It was given to the Egyptians to be one among the few inventive races of mankind. They were pioneers of civilisation; above all, they were the inventors of religious ideas. The ideas, it is true, were not self-evolved; they presupposed beliefs which had been bequeathed by the past; but their logical development and the forms which they a.s.sumed were the work of the Egyptian people. We owe to them the chief moulds into which religious thought has since been thrown. The doctrines of emanation, of a trinity wherein one G.o.d manifests himself in three persons, of absolute thought as the underlying and permanent substance of all things, all go back to the priestly philosophers of Egypt. Gnosticism and Alexandrianism, the speculations of Christian metaphysic and the philosophy of Hegel, have their roots in the valley of the Nile. The Egyptian thinkers themselves, indeed, never enjoyed the full fruition of the ideas they had created; their eyes were blinded by the symbolism which had guided their first efforts, their sight was dulled by overmuch reverence for the past, and the materialism which came of a contentment with this life. They ended in the scepticism of despair or the prosaic superst.i.tions of a decadent age. But the task which dropped from their hands was taken up by others; the seeds which they had sown were not allowed to wither, and, like the elements of our culture and civilisation, the elements also of our modes of religious thought may be traced back to the "dwellers on the Nile." We are heirs of the civilised past, and a goodly portion of that civilised past was the creation of ancient Egypt.

PART II. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS.

Lecture I. Introductory.

It is now fourteen years ago since I delivered a course of lectures for the Hibbert Trustees on the religion of the ancient Babylonians. The subject at that time was almost untouched; even such materials as were then accessible had been hardly noticed, and no attempt had been made to a.n.a.lyse or reduce them to order, much less to draw up a systematic account of ancient Babylonian religion. It was necessary to lay the very foundations of the study before it could be undertaken, to fix the characteristic features of the Babylonian faith and the lines along which it had developed, and, above all, to distinguish the different elements of which it was composed. The published texts did not suffice for such a work; they needed to be supplemented from that great ma.s.s of unpublished cuneiform doc.u.ments with which the rooms of our museums are filled. My lectures were necessarily provisional and preliminary only, and I had to content myself with erecting a scaffold on which others might build. The time had not yet come for writing a systematic description of Babylonian religion, and of the phases through which it pa.s.sed during the long centuries of its existence.