CHAP. IV. Perseus. Chemmis was a large city in the Theban nome, AFRICA. not far from Neapolis. It contained a sacred enclosure, (ieron or temenus,) in the shape of a quad- Chemmis. rangle, which was dedicated to Perseus. The pro- Temples of pylaea were built of stone, and very spacious, and before them were placed two large stone statues. The naos within the sacred enclosure was surrounded by palm trees, and contained a statue of Perseus. The Chemmitans declared that Perseus often appeared both within and without the temple, and that they sometimes found his sandal, which was two cubits long; and they added, that whenever this latter circumstance took place it was followed by general prosperity throughout Aegypt.' Elephantine is also Elephanmentioned, where, in the reign of Psammitichus, and again in the time of the Persian rule, it was garrisoned against the Aethiopians. Between this city and Syene were the two pointed mountains, Crophi and Mophi, from whence the Nile was said Crophi and to have originated. tine. Mophi. boundary The southern boundary line of Aegypt cannot be Southern drawn satisfactorily. It would appear that Ele- of Aegypt. phantine was the most southerly town, but that the Aegyptians also inhabited the half of the island of Tachompso, the other half being occupied by the Aethiopians.* We shall however return to this subject when treating of Aethiopia, and consider Elephantine as the actual frontier, which was doubtless formed by the cataracts; and, having thus concluded the topography of Aegypt, we proceed to develope our author's account of the mythology and manners of the Aegyptian people. ii. 91. For an account of the Chemmitan worship of Perseus, see chap. v. 2 ii. 30. 3 ii. 28. See also p. 361. 4 ii. 17, 29. CHAPTER V. AFRICA. CHAP. V. AEGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY. Aegyptian mythology; its effect upon Herodotus. His initiation in the mysteries. His religious reserve.-Traces the deities of Greece to an Aegyptian origin.-Effect produced on the modern student.-Religious conceptions of the Aegyptians themselves, dependent upon the spiritual and mental state of the worshipper.-Modern ideas of Aegyptian deities dependent upon the student's own state of religious culture.-Identification of Aegyptian conceptions with revealed truths, contradicted by the idolatry and conduct of the people.-Valuable character of Herodotus's information, both as an introduction to the study of Aegyptian antiquities, and a proof that no religion framed by human invention can render man pure and holy.-Herodotus's account.-Aegyptians the most pious of mankind, and the first who instituted the forms and ceremonies of religious worship.—Astrology.—Prodigies.-Omens.-Divination.-Oracles held in the highest veneration.-Aegyptian deities, divided by Herodotus into three classes.-Ist, The eight great gods.—2nd, The twelve gods.-3rd, The gods sprung from the twelve.-No heroes worshipped. -Chronology of the gods.-Explanation of the triple division.-Primeval belief in one great God.-1st Class of gods-deified attributes.—2nd Class-lower emanations.-3rd Class-physical objects, abstract ideas, etc.-Identification of the eight primary gods with Aegyptian deities.The four great deified attributes: the spirit, the intellect, the creative power, and the generative principle.—Aegyptian representation of Kneph the divine spirit, and Amun the divine intellect.-Identification of both Kneph and Amun with the Zeus of Herodotus.-Zeus worshipped in the nome of Thebes.-No sheep sacrificed.-Mythic story of Zeus and Heracles.-Horned serpents sacred.—Temple and oracle of Zeus.—Sacred women.-Aegyptian representation of Pthah, the creative power.— Identified with Hephaestus, and especially worshipped at Memphis.Aegyptian representation of Khem, the generative principle.-Identified with Pan, and especially worshipped at Mendes.-No goats sacrificed.— Herodotus's statements doubted.-Four primary Aegyptian goddesses.— Saté, or Hera, not mentioned.-Maut, or Buto, identified with Leto.Pasht, or Bubastis, identified with Artemis.-The festival at Bubastis.-Shameless conduct of the people during the pilgrimage.-Immense consumption of wine.-Neith identified with Athene. The festival of burning lamps at Sais.-Confusion between second and third class deities, and consequent necessity for an independent and arbitrary division.I. Miscellaneous divinities mentioned by Herodotus. - Helios, or the Sun.-Identified with the Aegyptian Re, or Ra.-Heracles cannot be identified. His oracle and temple.-Greek story of the attempt to sacrifice him to Zeus, and his slaying the whole crowd of worshippers.--Disbelieved by Herodotus, because the Aegyptians would not offer human sacrifices, and Heracles the hero could not single-handed have slain CHAP. V. thousands. Hermes, perhaps a mummy-formed god.-- Subsequently AFRICA. identified with Thoth.-Ares, perhaps a form of Typhon, or the evil principle. His oracle.-Festival at Papremis.-Mock-fight between the priests and votaries.-Popular legend to account for its origin.-Perseus and Proteus.-Temple of Perseus at Chemmis.-His enormous sandal.— Gymnastic games celebrated at Chemmis in his honour.-His legendary history according to the Chemmitans.-Temenus at Memphis sacred to Proteus. Aphrodite identified with Athor.- Represented with cow's horns, and confounded by Herodotus with Isis. Wooden cow at Sais probably connected with her worship and that of Osiris.-The foreign Aphrodite, or Helen the stranger.-Hera, Hestia, and Themis also to be identified with Aegyptian deities, though not known as such to Herodotus. II. Osiris, Isis, Horus, and the calf Apis.-Dualistic character of Osiris as mortal King of Aegypt and Divine Ruler of Hades.-Herodotus's hesitation and reserve in alluding to Osiris.-General division of the subject.-Mythic history of the earthly adventures of Osiris.-Rhea delivered of five children in the five intercalary days obtained by Hermes, viz. Osiris and the elder Horus, begotten by the Sun; Typhon, by Cronos; Isis, by Hermes; Nephthys, by Cronos.-Typhon marries Nephthys.-Osiris marries Isis, and begets the younger Horus.-Osiris king of Aegypt.-Instructs his subjects and mankind generally in the arts of civilization.-Typhon, the evil principle, conspires against him, encloses him in a chest, and casts it into the Nile.-Isis hears of the disaster, and discovers Anubis, the son of Osiris by her sister Nephthys.-Obtains the chest which had been stranded at Byblos; Typhon subsequently recovers it, tears the body into fourteen pieces, and scatters them about Aegypt.-Isis in a boat of papyrus regains all the pieces excepting one, and consecrates the phallus as a memorial of her loss.-Osiris returns from Hades, and assists in the final overthrow of Typhon.-Traces in the myth of a reference to astronomy.-Physical interpretation of the myth as given by Plutarch.-Herodotus's account of Osiris, Isis, and Horus.-Osiris, or Dionysus, and Isis, or Demeter, the two national deities of Aegypt.-Isis represented like Io, and perhaps regarded as the moon.-Horus the son, and Bubastis the daughter, of Osiris and Isis, concealed by Leto in the floating island of Chemmis from Typhon.Osiris, his tomb at Sais.-Annual representation of his allegorical adventures on the circular lake.-Isis the greatest Aegyptian goddess.-Represented like the Greek Io.-Her temple and festival at Busiris.—Bullocks sacrificed to her, whilst the votaries beat themselves and lament for Osiris.- Cows sacred to her.- Osiris and Isis considered by the Aegyptians to be the rulers of Hades. - Immortality of the soul propounded in the dogma of metempsychosis.-Cycle of 3000 years.-Illustration of the Aegyptian ideas of Hades in the story of Rhampsinitus.Worship of Osiris and Isis universal.-Its peculiarities.-Swine, though considered an impure animal, sacrificed at the full moon to both deities. -At the festival of Isis the tail, spleen, and caul of the pig burnt, but the rest eaten pigs of baked dough offered by the poor.-At the festival of Osiris a pig slain at every door, and Dionysiac orgies celebrated.-Herodotus's account of Apis.-Begotten on a cow by a flash of lightning.— Known by his black hair, white square mark on his forehead, eagle on his back, beetle on his tongue, and double hairs in his tail.-Public rejoicings on his appearance.-Court for Apis built at Memphis by Psammitichus. Sacrilegious conduct of Cambyses.-Further notices of Apis from Pliny, Strabo, and Diodorus.-Aegyptian conceptions of Osiris.Represented in the monuments as Judge of the Dead and Ruler of Amenti, or Hades.-Actions of deceased persons recorded by Thoth, and weighed by Anubis in the scales of Truth.-If found wanting, the soul sent back to earth in the form of an animal: if justified by its works, AFRICA. the soul introduced by Horus into the presence of Osiris.-Osiris to be regarded as the "divine goodness."-Manner of his manifestation on earth involved in mystery.-Speculative and allegorical character of the theory. Symbolical figure of Osiris.-Isis variously represented on the monuments, and often confounded with Athor and other deities.-Aegyptian ideas of Apis.-Conclusion. THE Aegyptian people made a more powerful impression upon Herodotus than any other nation with Aegyptian which he was acquainted. Their peculiar civilizamythology: tion and extraordinary monuments would alone upon have attracted his attention. But when, by vigorous its effect Herodotus. His initiateries. tion in mysteries. His reli gious re serve. research, he began to learn the remoteness of their origin, and to penetrate the depths of their mysterious theology, his own religious fervour gave fresh keenness to his pursuit, and he persevered in his anxious inquiries until he himself had been initiated into their inner mysteries. Henceforth his tongue was chained, and the pious reserve with which he names a divinity, or alludes to a sacred legend, strangely contrasts with the general openheartedness of his history, and the familiar tone of the ancient epic. Nor can we be surprised at the effect so produced upon a thoughtful and earnest observer. The antiquity of the gods of Aegypt made those of Greece seem to him but as of yesterTraces the day; and he discovered with trembling awe that the deities, to whom he had prayed from childhood, were many of them living upon earth when Aegypt was ruled by mortal kings, and more than a hundred centuries after those primeval Aegyptian divinities, from whom their attributes and individualities had been chiefly borrowed.' deities of Greece to tian origin. Effect pro duced on The modern student turns to Aegypt with the the modern same ardour, and but too often arrives at a similar student. result. He can learn the ceremonies of her religion This was undoubtedly our author's first impression. Subsequently, after considerable research, he arrived at the conclusion that the Greeks traced the origin of some of their gods only to the time when they first learnt their names, (ii. 146,) and that men were even sometimes named after the gods, and confounded with them. Therefore those Greeks appeared to him to have acted most correctly, who built two kinds of temples to Heracles, and sacrificed to the Olympian Heracles as an immortal deity, and paid honour to the other Heracles, the son of Amphitryon and Alcmene, as a hero (ii. 43, 44). CHAP. V. Religious of the themselves, spiritual state of the pendent student's culture. from her pictured walls and sculptured monuments. AFRICA. He may know the names of the deities that were invoked, the sacrifices that were offered, and almost the prayers that were addressed; but he finds it conceptions utterly impossible to arrive at the conceptions which Aegyptians were expressed in the splendid ritual. The religious dependent conceptions of the Greeks and Romans receive a upon the certain reality and fixedness from the historical and mental character of their mythology; but the ideas attach- worshipper. ed to those intellectual abstractions which have been symbolized by Aegyptian art must have depended upon the worshipper's spiritual development, or mental culture. The ideas of the modern student Modern must likewise be affected by similar influences. Acgyptian His conceptions of Aegyptian deities will take a deities decolouring from his own mind, and be brought more upon the or less into harmony with that revealed religion own state of which is our faith and anchor. From the presumed presumed religious existence in primeval times of a pure and universal belief in one great Father Almighty, and from the known connexion between Aegypt and the chosen people of God, he expects to find in that primeval theology in which Moses himself was initiated,' a body of profound truths, and scriptural dogmas. He interprets for himself the intellectual abstractions of the Aegyptians into ideas which are conformable to his own intellectual and religious culture, and is but too often disposed to ascribe revelation itself to a mere human and Aegyptian origin. But if he Identificaturns from his own speculations to contemplate the Aegyptian actual state of the people, he may find that no ideas with pl corresponding to the teachings of our church and ed truths, religion, could possibly have existed amongst the ed by the masses; that under no system of pantheism can the conduct of truths of a divine revelation be preserved, or man the people. be saved from idolatry and corruption; and that however elevated and refined, and even half scriptural, may have been those esoteric doctrines which were retained by the priestly orders and more 1 "And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Aegyptians." Acts vii. 22. tion of with reveal contradict idolatry and |