EGYPTIAN RELIGION AND SOCI OLOGY. Religion.— No satisfactory treat ment of ancient Egyptian religion has ap peared, though the subject was one of the first to awaken interest in modern times. The names of the deities of the Pantheon are well known and their general characteristics are sufficiently defined, but the gradations between them and the conceptions which gave them force are ob scured not only by the most curious inconsisten cies but by the fog of mythology which is for the most part unknown to us. Religious con ceptions existed during all periods, but never a religion in any true sense. It is plain enough that the differences in religious belief and prac tice corresponded to the primitive "condition of the land, each district having its chief object of veneration. It was a condition of Henotheism out of which, in consequence of the closer con tact produced by the union of the nomoi under a central government, there grew up a system of national polytheism in which the principal god of the capital gained pre-eminence. The original deities were objects of nature, but their development was various in the different nomoi. Only at a later date did gods appear who represented abstract or cosmogonical ideas. When intimate association occurred there was a resultant confusion of attributes and names. The hegemony of the god of the capital contained in itself the motives of Mono theism, but there is no indication that Mono theism was the original form of the Egyptian religion or that the people ever advanced to it, in spite of such phrases as °the only god" and the like. When carefully examined these ex pressions are found to refer to the deity held in special reverence in a particular locality, the °city god° or the leader of the local triad or ennead. Endowed temples and independent priests of separate deities prove that a deter mined resistance was made to any attempt to introduce monotheism, such as is actually seen in the case of Amenophis IV. Ptah was the god of Memphis; Neith, the warlike goddess of Libyan Sais; Chnum of Elephantine was the deity of the cataract regions; Nechebt was god dess of the south in general; Min was the desert god; Osiris of Abydon supplanted an earlier deity; Amon of Thebes, Anubis of Tycopolis, Turn of Heliopolis, Bast of Bubastis, Sebek of the Fayum, Hathor of Denderah, Horus of Edfu, Thoth of Hermopolis, Mont of Her monthes are examples of the local gods.
The forms of many of the deities are ex tremely grotesque. It may be a human or ani
mal shape but frequently it is a mixture of the two; the human trunk being surmounted by an animal head. Thus Ptah appears as the Apis Bull ; Hapi, Amon and Chnum as rams; Sebek as a crocodile-headed man; Nechebt as a ser pent; Mut as a vulture; Anubis as a jackal headed man; Bast as a cat-headed woman; Sechmet and Tefmut as lion-headed; Hathor as a cow; Horns as a hawk, or hawk-headed man; Thoth as an ibis. The Phcenix is possibly de rived from Benu of Hieropolis, which appears as a heron.
In various periods of the history certain deities appear as deifications of the powers of nature: Ra, the sun, the ruler of the world, having his sanctuary at Heliopolis, was even in prehistoric times conceived as a person; Horns, the bringer of light, is represented in conflict with Set, the god of darkness; Ra-Harmachis was the rising sun; Ra-Tum the sun at evening. Thoth was also worshipped as the moon. The number of mythological beings, such as Nun, the original ocean, out of which Ra proceeded, is beyond number. Mat, the goddess of truth,. represents a large class which symbolizes abstract notions. Deities are also portrayed in pairs, such as Aeb, god of earth, and Hut, god dess of Heaven, Shu and Tefnut, Osiris and Isis. In these pairs is seen the family relation which is carried out in numerous ways, not without great confusion. Much of the religion has its explanation only in connection with the future life. When the soul or "double' (ka) left the body, the latter was preserved with ex treme care and deposited in a secure tomb, for the personal existence of the disembodied spirit depended upon the absolute preservation of the mummy. The future of the individual was de termined by a judgment which is represented as weighing of the heart by Horns, who coun terbalances it with the symbol of the truth. Mat, the goddess of truth, watches the opera tion, and Thoth, scribe of the gods, registers the result. In the earliest periods specific beliefs as to their nature, qualities and powers, clustered about the individual deities, but these did not become a true mythology till the amalgamation of variant views under the influence of the national union of the nomoi. The confusion which resulted led to attempts at harmony. But little is known of this mass of mythology, which must have been very extensive if one is to judge by the allusions abounding in every religious text.