I. CHAP. a fact which intimates that he was then regarded as the living shrine, or incarnation, of the chief god of Memphis, and a similar exaltation is suggested in the title 'image of the soul of Osiris',' which has elsewhere been awarded to him. Viewed in this light Apis was to the Egyptian worshipper a present or incarnate deity. The luxuries deemed appropriate to the highest earthly monarch were all lavished on his service. He was fed with a religious scrupulosity. He was anointed with the choicest unguents. Mates of spotless beauty were provided for him. At death he was embalmed and swathed his funeral was performed with a magnificence unrivalled in the case of men: a sumptuous monument which still attracts the admiration of all artists was erected in his honour. And since mortals after death were thought to be in some mysterious way united with Osiris, the dead Apis also was entitled for this cause Osiris-Apis ('Ooopâπis), or Serapis3; and as such was worshipped with supreme devotion in the interval which elapsed before the birth or 'manifestation' of a new calf, -the vehicle to which the soul of the departed Apis was believed to be immediately transferred. Serapis. 1 Plut. De Is. et Osir. c. xx. 2 Wilkinson and others have denied that still worse abominations were connected with the animalworship of the Egyptians (see Diod. 1. 85; Herod. II. 46); but allusions like that in Lev. xviii. 23 agree too closely with the statements of the Greek historians: cf. Döllinger, pp. 226, 227. 3 That this is the true account of Serapis has been lately proved by M. Mariette, Mémoire sur le Séra péum, to whose labours Lepsius was looking hopefully when he wrote his own Appendix on 'Serapis' in the Götterkreis &c. p. 213. Respecting the Greek version of the fetching of the god Serapis from Sinope by order of Ptolemy Soter, and the consequence of identifying Serapis with the Greek Dionysus, see Bunsen, Egypt's Place, I. 431, and Maury, Revue des Deux Mondes, as before, p. 1073. I. ised, in con While animal-worship had been thus amalga- CHAP. mated more and more with adoration of the elements and of spirits ruling in the heavenly bodies, Egyptian mythology the important change to which I have before more localalluded had been also passing over the complex-nexion with ion of the mythe which centred in the greatest the Nile. pair of national divinities. There might indeed be no express intention either on the part of priest or people to relinquish the conclusions of the old mythology. In Osiris they might recognise, as heretofore, the ultimate source of all vitality, and as such might find the highest and most adequate symbol of his functions in the great orb of day. They might continue also to associate Isis with him as the counterpart of his productive powers, and discerning an appropriate emblem of that goddess in the moon or in the earth, might still, in words, attribute all the higher phenomena of life to the harmonious action of these two divinities. But such is far from being a true account of the religion of the many, or the popular theology of Egypt, in the later Pharaonic period. Owing to a general want of fixity in men's religious tenets, the ingredients of the mythe had been so altered, its area so contracted, its connexion with the world at large so broken and obscured as to have rendered it an almost novel version of the primitive story. The Egyptian mind is seen descending more and more entirely from the worship of the heavenly bodies to the contemplation of the marvellous 1 Thus Plutarch (De Is. et Osir. c. XXXIII) carefully distinguishes between the people and the more enlightened of the priests: Οἱ δὲ σοφώτεροι τῶν ἱερέων, οὐ μόνον τὸν Νεῖλον Οσιριν καλοῦσιν . . . ἀλλὰ Οσιριν μὲν I. CHAP. agencies at work in its immediate neighbourhood. In earlier times Osiris was enthroned upon the sun; but now the Nile itself is substituted for that glorious luminary. Then the spouse of the great sun-god was the mother and the nurse of universal vegetation; now she is the single land of Egypt fructified and gladdened by the Nile. Then Osiris was a nature-god, a verbal representative of forces active in the varied processes of nature: now he has been moulded into the great civilising hero of Mizraim, binding men together in a fixed society, teaching agriculture, and subduing nations not by force alone but by the charms of eloquence and music. Then his death was the suspension of all vital power without the least distinction of locality; now it coincides precisely with that season of the year in Egypt when decay and barrenness are everywhere ascendant through the Valley of the Nile. Reason of these modi The reason of this gradual localising of the fications. story,-this confusion, one might call it, of the sun with the Egyptian river-is hardly to be sought in the prevailing fancy that the Nile and sun were wont to meet together at the western horizon, and after plunging down into the under-world came forth again together from the caverns of the east'. An explanation, simple in itself and serving also to account for other kindred stories, is suggested by the fact that the Egyptian had been gradually tempted to associate every genial, fertilising power in nature with the annual overflow of his great river. In one meaning of the phrase Herodotus 1 Osburn, I. 420. I. was right, when he declared that Egypt is 'the CHAP. gift of the Nile'.' 'My river is mine own' was the ungodly boast ascribed to Egypt in the vision of the Hebrew prophet (Ezek. xxix. 3, 9,) 'my river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.' 'Turn the course of the Nile,' it has been said, 'and not one blade of vegetation would ever arise in Egypt." And the more intelligent of modern travellers, no longer open to the potent witcheries which nature once exerted on mankind, but recognising the almighty hand of God Himself throughout this 'annual miracle of mercy,' are still awe-struck by the grand phenomena presented to them as the river bursts afresh into its ancient channels. 'All nature shouts for joy. The men, the children, the buffaloes, gambol in its refreshing waters; the broad waves sparkle with shoals of fish, and fowl of every wing flutter over them in clouds. Nor is this jubilee of nature confined to the higher orders of creation. The moment the sand becomes moistened by the approach of the fertilising waters, it is literally alive with insects innumerable".' bers intro group. Nor are these the only changes introduced into other memthe primitive mythe of Isis and Osiris. Though duced into the mother of both is still Rhea (Nut or Nutpe), the Osirisdoubts have been suggested touching the true name of their father; while the chief progenitors of the gods are now distinctly represented as giving birth to a second pair, which rank in some respects upon a level with the former. Set, or Typhon, is the brother of Osiris3; and, accompanied by his spouse 1 II. 5. 2 Osburn, I. 13. • Preternaturally born, however. Plutarch says (c. XII); μǹ kaip, μηδὲ κατὰ χώραν, ἀλλ ̓ ἀναῤῥήξαντα I. CHAP. and sister Nephthys, he is placed in a position of direct antagonism to the benevolent divinities, to Isis and Osiris, and especially to the younger Horus, their child and champion; while a definite character has also been attributed to Thoth', the ibis-headed Hermes of Egyptian worship, the inventor of letters, the depository of primeval wisdom, 'the president of the reasoning faculty,' the teacher, counsellor, and secretary of Osiris himself. Particular inquiry phon. The greatest of the difficulties experienced as respecting we analyse these fresh developments of the EgypSet or Ty- tian mythology is connected with the origin and import of the evil-minded Typhon. Some of the chief names by which he was at first distinguished are Set, Seti, Sutech; but in the course of modern explorations, it has come to light that he was also identified at least on one inscription with the great The place of this ibis-headed god, 'lord of Shmun' (Hermopolis), appears to be in what is called the secondary series of Egyptian divinities. Bunsen styles him (1. 393) the 'most important of all the Cabeiri' (corresponding to Esmún, above, (p. 52). As connected with the Osiris-group he is sometimes entitled 'begotten of Osiris' himself; but the relation indicated in the text is that which he sustains far more frequently. Mr Kenrick observes of Thoth (Anc. Egypt. 1. 428), that 'with a name nearly similar, Taut, he appears also in the Phoenician history, and in the same character of the inventor of letters.' 2 See Lepsius, Götterkreis (as before), p. 206, who adds: 'Dieser Begriff des Set oder Sutech als des ausser ägyptischen Gottes dürfte überhaupt den Schlüssel zu der räthselhaften Natur desselben und seiner zu verschiedenen Zeiten verschiedenen Auffassung darbieten.' This inquiry has since been ably followed out in the Revue Archéologique, XIIo année, pp. 257 sq. The original connexion between Baal and Typhon may, I think be also traceable in the compound Baal-Zephon (i) of Exod. xiv. 2, 9, Numb. xxxiii. 7; which may again have been identical with the Avapis or "Aẞapis of Manetho and Josephus ; for this border-city of the Hyk-sos, identified by Lepsius with Pelusium (? Pelishtim, city of the Philistines), is described by them as πόλις κατὰ τὴν θεολογίαν ἄνωθεν Τυφώνιος. There is, however, some difficulty in ascertaining the original relation of Typhon to the hideous monsters of the primitive world, whom Greek writers, from Homer downwards, designated Τυφάων, Τυφωεύς, Τυφώς. |