ANCIENT Rulatox. The religion of ancient Egypt hail its origin in a low kind of fetishism. or animism, of purely African character. Every village of prehistoric times seems to have had its own god or demon, worshiped in some object, usually a tree or an animal. Out of this end less pantheon. in course of time, only the 'great gods' survived: i.e. those of the principal cities. The most important deities of the surronnding places were brought into relation with the god of a city by becoming his child, his wife, etc.; thus most of the principal deities are surrounded each by his 'circle of gods.' The worship of the celestial bodies. principally of the sun, de veloped early, but was connected with the lead ing local erilts, so that. the sun never had one name throughout all Egypt. The earliest forms seem to be and Horns. whom the theologians differentiated as the midday sun and the young morning sun. respectively (both worshiped in hawk form). In the earliest texts, however, we find Heliopolis in possession of its own sun god• Atumn, in whom the later theological system saw the old setting sun. Osiris (the local god of Abydos and Poisiris) also became the set ting sun. ruling the lower heavens. In short. sooner or later, almost every local was treated as a form or phase of the sun. The confusion which existed even in the earliest religious documents cannot he de scribed. The Egyptian priests, of course, felt this confusion, hut their attempts to construct a logical system were of little avail. Their genealo gies of the gods, their identification of all simi lar divinities, who were explained as different manifestations of the same deityy their division of the world and of the natural forces among the various gods of the pantheon were contradic tory• and merely served to increase the confusion. Amcnaphis IV. endeavored to carry the identifi cation of the various divinities to its logical conclusion. and to establish a species of mono theism. in which the sun was worshiped as the supreme source of life and power. But although Amenophis carried on his propaganda with fa natical violence, the attempted reform did not survive his own reign. The highest development of the springing from the identifi cation of all divinities. led to pantheistic ideas
after we. but these advaneed thoughts did not touch the popular religion, which always remained attached to the old fetishistic local cults, to the worship of animals, ete.—to those features, in fact, which were so unintelligible to the Oreeks that they sought to explain them as veiling higher under a mysterious sym bolism. The ibis Thoth Dhouti) of became a moon-god and the father of science and letters, like the (reek Hermes, whom lie also resembled in his function as leader of the dead. Ptah of Memphis one of the creators of the world, being a craftsman and artist (like He plurstus). The cow-formed Athor of Dcnderah eventually became the goddess of love. Ammon of Thebes. after n.c. 100 the chief god of Egypt, is. of course, a sun-god; his wife Mut becomes the sky, and their child Khonsu the moon. At Eileithyia was revered the goddess, Nekhbet, whose counterpart fur Lower Egypt is Tinto; at Bubast us, the cat 1 "bastet was worshiped ; at Sais, the Libyan goddess Neit : in the Faymn. the croco dile Sobk (Souchos). The ithyphallie harvest-god Min was worshiped at Chemmis and Coptos; at Elephantine, the ram Khnumu (Chnuphis) and the goddesses Anuket and Satet. Under the New Empire, many gods were introduced and became very popular: Baal, Astarte, Anat, Ka dash, liashpu (lightning), etc. The cult of some gods can no longer be localized: for example, that of the beetle Khepre, another creator of the word and sun-god; that of the good dwarf Bes, the patron of the dance, of music, and of female dress; that of the equally benignant female hip popotamus Tueris, etc. The principal animals worshiped as gods were the bulls Apis at Mem phis, Mnevis at Heliopolis, and Bachis at Her monthis, the goat at .lendes, etc. These were all incarnations of local gods. Different is the general sacredness of an animal from a divinity; thus at one place all eats were sacred, at another all dogs. It occasionally happened that in one locality an animal was proscribed and persecuted, while in the neighboring town it was held sacred, as. for example, at Bahnasa (q.v.).