Survey of Egyptian Symbolism and Mythology

§. 3.

Sources (cf. above). The individual reports of the biblical documents.

The Greeks. Before Herodotus: Hippys of Rhegium and others (see above), and especially Hecataeus of Miletus. He had also given particular attention to the state of Thebes (see his Fragmm. p. 21 seqq.), which is surely a main reason why Herodotus spoke less of it. Herodotus himself, in the Euterpe and Thalia. The centre of his reports is Memphis. His relation to the Egyptian priests, and through them to the old monuments and legends. Critical preliminary questions, from which alone a judgment on this writer’s Aegyptiaca can be formed.

Alexandrian period: Hecataeus of Abdera, who had visited Thebes under the first Ptole273my (see Fragmm. Historr. graecc. antiqq. p. 28 seq.). Especially Manetho, under Ptolemy Philadelphus. Content of his work: 3 volumes, 113 γενεαί [“generations”], 131 dynasties,^a from the gods and demigods down to Alexander the Great. Names of the dynasties after the cities of Egypt. Fortunes of this work: supplements of Eratosthenes. Excerpts from Manetho’s work by Julius Africanus, Eusebius, and Syncellus. Gatterer’s inquiries in the Synchronistische Universalhistorie II. 295 ff.

Diodorus of Sicily, especially on the Theban history and monuments. His sources and principles (Heyne, de fontib. Diodor. Sic. p. 104 seqq.). Strabo in the seventeenth book; Plutarch, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Horapollo (Zoëga, de obeliscis p. 559, and examination of the apology for this writer offered there); and other ancient writers who supply us with individual reports.

Modern writers and travellers, in great number. Newest sources and aids to Egyptian symbolism and mythology.

If any history of religion depends on knowledge of the country where the cult had its seat, it is the Egyptian. Survey of the Nile valley, 120 miles long, from Syene to the Mediterranean. Upper Egypt, from Syene to Chemmis (Thebaïs, Ptolemaïs). Cities, obelisks, temples, tombs, and other monuments. Middle Egypt, as far as Cercasorus. 274 Cities, pyramids, and other monuments. Lower Egypt, as far as the mouths of the Nile. The Delta. Cities and remains. The western side. Oases. The eastern side, toward the Arabian Gulf. The nomes of Egypt according to Herodot. II. 165, Diodor. I. 54, Strabo XVII. 1135, Plin. Hist. N. V. 9. Differences in the accounts, and their probable causes.

The Nile. Its regular inundations according to the inquiries of the ancients (Herodot. II. 21 seqq.; Diodor. I. 37 seqq.) and the moderns. For Upper Egypt it was the bringer of blessing; for Lower Egypt, the demiurge. Its names (Geon, χρυσορρόας [“gold-flowing”], and others). Its representation on coins and other works of art (cf. above, p. 148). Figurative representation of the river’s rise by its stages (πήχεις [“cubits”]) through the children, in varying number, set beside the river-god; compare Winckelmann’s Versuch einer Allegorie S. 550. The colossal Nile in the Museo Pio-Clementino I. 38³. 275 The bust of the Nile with the dolphins in the Musée Napoléon, Tom. II. 46.

Character of the Nile water and its influence on the fertility of the land. The drinkability of this water, and arrangements for it in earlier and later times (Auctor de bello Alexandr. cap. 5, and Schneider’s Eclogae Physicae p. 98). The inhabitants of Alexandria had no other drinking water at all, and found it especially wholesome.

Character of the land. Distinction of the Nile valley from the other regions of Egypt, taken in the widest sense. The look of Egypt during the inundation. Character of its agriculture. Influence on the industry of the old inhabitants: canals, sluices, Lake Moeris, and so on. Climate (see Leo Africanus’s Description of Africa, translated by Lorsbach, I, p. 504, compared with the reports of ancients and moderns).

276 The Egyptians of antiquity. Outward appearance: a black people with woolly hair (Herodot. II, 104). Distinction of the lighter-skinned stock, according to the oldest monuments, with the remarks of Denon and Heeren (Ideen II. 546 ff.). Origin of this latter stock.

Historical traces and conjectures of a connection between ancient Egypt and India. The legends of Sesostris and Dionysus (cf. Larcher on Herodotus II, p. 523). Likeness of ancient Egyptian and Indian architecture and sculpture; the Hindustani figures on the Egyptian mummy-case in the British Museum (Martini on Ernesti’s Archaeologia literaria p. 517; Böttiger’s Andeutungen S. 24). Agreement of Indian and Egyptian religious ideas. How is that connection to be explained? Did an Egyptian priestly colony fetch some of its knowledge from India? This is the opinion of Jones in the Asiatische Abhandlungen I, S. 242. Other reports are supplied by Eusebius and Syncellus, where a migration from the Indus is spoken of: Αἰθίοπες ἀπὸ Ἰνδοῦ ποταμοῦ ἀναστάντες πρὸς τῇ Αἰγύπτῳ ᾤκησαν [“Ethiopians, rising up from the river Indus, settled beside Egypt”] (under King Amenophis; see Marsham, Canon Chron. Secul. XIII, p. 335). Indian legend of the Palis, who are said to have brought the four Vedas from India to Egypt (Stolberg, Religionsgeschichte I, S. 340).

Historical traces and conjectures about the settlement of Egypt. Heeren’s sy277stem of the Ethiopian origin of the Egyptian priestly colonies. A glance at Meroë (see his Ideen II, 565 ff.). Character of these priestly settlements, and the stages in the rising culture of Egypt.

Castes of the Egyptian people. Divergence of Herodotus (II. 164; cf. Heeren S. 554 ff.) from Diodorus. According to the former’s account there were seven: two noble castes, the priests and the warriors; those of the tradesmen and of the boatmen; two castes of herdsmen; and the later addition of the interpreters and brokers. Origin and mutual relation of these castes. Political consideration of the priestly caste, in itself and in its relation to the kings (cf. Hecataei Fragmm. p. 28). Egyptian priestly states and their connection with one another.

Division of the periods of Egyptian history: before Psammetichus, down to 650 B.C., with subdivisions of this older time (mythic period, period of obelisks and pyramids). After Psammetichus, down to the Persian conquest, 524. Period of the Ptolemies, 331. Roman period, 30 B.C.

§. 4.

In its components Egyptian religion appears very mixed: made up of astronomical and astrological doctrines and calendrical propositions, of physical and 278 medical observations and prescriptions, and so on. As all ancient religions present the sum of the whole knowledge and belief of the nation to which they belong, so does the Egyptian.

Extent of Egyptian religion: for the most part local worship, yet with a certain uniformity of stamp. Egypt also venerated in Osiris and Isis two general national deities. Explanation of the local character from the probable origin of the Egyptian states. Explanation of the conformity from the coherence of a single priestly caste, from the sameness of the needs and influences of the land, and so on. Herodot II. 42, with Heeren’s remarks, 632 ff.

Two main parts of Egyptian religion: popular belief and priestly teaching. Difficulty of this separation in particulars.

Way of life and classes of the Egyptian priesthood (after the principal passages: Herodot. II. 36 seq., and especially Clemens Alexandrin. Strom. VI, 4, p. 756 seq.; Chaeremon apud Porphyrium, de Abst. IV, 8, p. 321; and Porphyr. de Vit. Apollon. I. 2;^b cf. de Schmidt, de Sacerdot. et sacrific. Aegypt.; Zoëga, de obeliscis p. 508; and Heyne on the inscriptions of Rosetta, Commentt. Soc. Gotting. T. XV, p. 276):

The Singer (ὁ ᾠδός); the Horoscopus (ὁ ὡροσκόπος); the Sacred Scribe (ὁ ἱερογραμματεύς); the Stolist, or Robing-priest (ὁ στολιστής); the Prophet (ὁ προφήτης. That prophet 279 was also used of a whole class of priests is proved by the mention of the Ἀρχιπροφήτης [“Chief Prophet”] and of the Propheta primarius, the latter in Apuleius, Miles. II, p. 158 ed. Oudendorp); the Ministrants (οἱ Παστοφόροι, “Pastophori”)⁴.

280 Origin and development of the general national worship of the Egyptians, bound up with the origin of Egyptian culture. The shepherd colony from Arabia in the Pelusiac marshes, in the Delta as far as Middle Egypt. The Ethiopian colony of farmers, who had built Thebes and other cities in the Thebaïd and in the Delta. Wars of the two stocks through several centuries. Victory of the Thebans. They wrest Heliopolis (On) and Pelusium from the shepherds, and build Memphis. In these wars the shepherd-king Baby treacherously slays Osiris.

The legends point to this, as do the pyramids of the shepherd Philitis (ποιμένος Φιλίτιος, Herodot. II. 128; that is, of the king of Philae). This is the first and historical ground of the myth of the death of Osiris (in Diodor. I. 22, Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride p. 472 Wytt., and others), of the festivals of the dead appointed in his memory, and of his office as ruler over the realm of the dead. Osiris was buried in Egypt; but after the Greeks had recognized their Dionysus in Osiris, they moved the place of burial to Nysa in Ethiopia (Diodor. I. 27).

So Osiris is originally a hero of high merit for the general cultivation of the land. While ancient Egypt had long known a goddess Isis, in Osiris it knew only the man famed for institutions of public benefit. Hence there is talk of the tombs of Osiris, not of the tom281bs of Isis. Hence too Osiris appears formed like a mummy, and Isis does not. Zoëga, de obeliscis p. 302 seq., 373 seq., 389, 577.

How does this account square with Herodotus’s assertion, II. 49, that the Egyptians bring sacrifice to no hero (or offerings to the dead: explanation of the passage)? This passage, compared with others in the same historian, II. 59, 64, and so on, has still other difficulties. Comparison of those reports of the shepherds with the accounts of the Hyksos in Josephus, contr. Apion. p. 1336. Are the Israelites to be understood by the Hyksos?

Osiris belongs, then, to the Ethiopian stock and to the state of Thebes. There too the great national god Ammon adopts him as a son. As a demigod, he is married to Isis. As the male, strong Nile, he becomes lord and husband of the Egyptian earth, the female Isis. Hence the other turn of the myths of his death. Now the legend of the mourning Isis is added (as the scorched and thirsting earth), and the shepherd-king Baby becomes the destroying Typhon. A relation arises like that between Adonis and Aphrodite.

Further development of these ideas. Osiris becomes the Egyptian solar year, and with later writers the sun itself; Isis becomes the lunar year and the moon (Zoëga, de obel. p. 302, 329, 590 ff.). The other 282 idea, of the office of judge of the dead, is now also transferred to Isis and heightened further; see the principal passage, Herodot. II, 173,^c with the discussion in the Dionysus, p. 235 seqq.

§. 5.

The three orders of gods of the Egyptians. The first generation of gods, of eight gods, among them Pan. The second generation, born of the first: twelve gods, among them Heracles. The third generation, from the second: three gods, among them Dionysus (Herodot. II, 145, 43, 4). Modern writers have sought to explain these reports from a calendrical system of the year, and have built on it the proposition that the whole Egyptian doctrine of the gods is nothing more than a calendar (Dornedden’s Neue Theorie S. 70, and examination of it). However little this hypothesis may be provable in its full extent, knowledge of the Egyptian year and its cycles is nonetheless important for knowledge of this people’s religious concepts.

The lunar year of the Egyptians. The old solar year of 365 days, which was presumably represented by the golden circle of King Osymandias (Diodor. I, 49). The improved solar year of 365¼ days. The relation of the two to each other in use. The temple annals kept the former, while in civil life the latter 283 held (Rhode, Versuch über den Thierkreis S. 78).

Cycles: the annual cycle of Somus, or Heracles (see the Dionysus p. 141 ff.). The Apis period, a lunisolar cycle of 25 years (see Dornedden p. 85). The Phoenix period, of 600 or 1400 years (see Marsham, Canon Chron. p. 9, 387).

Here we cast a glance at the myth of the Phoenix, after the principal passage of Herodotus (II. 73), though it had already been told earlier by Hecataeus (see Fragmm. p. 19), and Tacitus, Annal. VI. 28. Origin of the name and of the myth: the Phoenician bird, and the ceremony of burning customary among the Phoenicians. A legend whose basis is the idea of the great year (see Böttiger, myth. Vorless. p. 16, and there the explanation of de Vignoles and Forster). With this is connected the Phoenix on the hand of the Egyptian Heracles, as he appears on the Bembine Table of Isis (Jablonski, Opuscc. II, p. 287). The most famous teachers of the Christian Church found in that fable of the Phoenix an image and prototype of the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh (see the passages in Larcher, Herodot. T. II, p. 320).

The Canicular period (Σωθιακὴ περίοδος [“Sothic period”], Κυνικὸς κύκλος [“Dog-star cycle”], Periodus Sothiaca; Manetho’s βίβλος τῆς Σώθεως [Book of Sothis] doubtless referred to it): a great cycle of intercalations, which closed a sidereal year and by which everything returned to its former state. 284 It was a cycle of 3000 solar years^d (see the inquiries in Marsham p. 387, and Ideler, historische Untersuchungen über die astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten p. 214). Reminders of the Persian period of Tashter (the Dog Star; compare Herder’s Vorwelt S. 271 f.). The era of Sesostris in the manuscript of the Imperial Library at Paris (Larcher, Supplement T. II, p. 552 to his Hérodote).

The months of the Egyptians, in their order and with their names. How do they relate to the figures of the zodiac? (Cf. Jablonski, Opuscull. T. I and II, p. 274 seqq.; the ancient Egyptian and the Alexandrian-Greek calendar; and Rhode p. 12.)

The Egyptian zodiac. Its origin; various attempts to explain it, from Kircher down to Gatterer, Ideler, and Rhode, the last of whom derives it from the climate and the occupations of the inhabitants of Egypt that depend on it. The zodiacs recently discovered at Tentyra (Dendera). Great divergence of opinions about them. According to some they date from the old Pharaonic period, before the Persian invasion; according to others, from the time after Alexander (see Visconti, Notice sommaire des deux Zodiaques de Tentyra, in Larcher, Hérod. II, p. 567 seqq.). In Rhode’s wholly opposite explanation much is left out of account altogether: for example, the Egyptian doctrine of the decans, and the universality of the custom of setting the Egyptian 285 deities on boats (see the principal passage of Porphyry, de antro Nympharum cap. 10, and van Goens there).

The priestly legend in Herodotus II, 142, of the 11,340 years and of the sun’s several times altered position. The conclusions of some modern writers about the great age of human culture, drawn from the figures of the zodiac and from the advance of the nodes in the ecliptic. The 16,000 years according to Bode’s Ptolemaeus and Rhode p. 42. The idea of Weishaupt in the Apologie des Mißvergnügens und Übels S. 242 f., and the turns that have lately been given to this idea, with the historical (see above) and other antitheses.

Relation of the ancient Egyptian figures of the zodiac to those of the Greek zodiac.

The decans. Each sign of the zodiac was divided into three parts of ten degrees, and the whole zodiac therefore into 36 parts. These 36 subordinate gods, three in each sign, were called decans. Various accounts of the names of these decans in Origen, Firmicus, and others; see the third plate in Dupuis, Origine de tous les cultes, and his Tom. VII, p. 129 seqq., with the remarks of Salmasius, de annis climactericis p. 842. From these some seek to explain the dynasties of Manetho; see Dupuis.

The seven planets. Their names in the lexicon in Kircher are not 286 Egyptian, as Jablonski has shown (Rempha Aegyptiorum Deus, Opuscc. II, p. 30 seqq.). The gods are the presiders over and regents of time (see Herodot. II, 82). The seven days of the week, the months, and their relation to the deities (Marsham, Canon p. 197), and the division of the planets by their twelve houses; see the plate in Dupuis cited above. The Egyptian reckoning of the day from evening; see Lydus, de mensibus p. 13.

These astronomical insights now took on an astrological character, and this astrotheology of the Egyptian priests was applied to natural science, agriculture, medicine, and every branch of public and private life. At the very birth of a child its horoscope was cast, and the position of the planets, the sign of the zodiac, and all sidereal circumstances were set in practical relations. From the stars were judged the healing powers of plants and the rules for treating them, as well as the diseases of men and animals (see the principal passage of Herodotus cited above, compared with Diodorus I, 81). And those 36 decans now become as many daemons, who divide among themselves the 36 parts of the human body and exercise their dominion over them.

Here a word on the medicine of the Egyptians, after the principal passage of Herodotus II, 84, and the explanations of Kurt Sprengel. At the same time, reminder of the Apoteles287matica of Manetho, in which we possess a late, but nonetheless characteristic, monument of this Egyptian astrology. Similar writings are still found here and there in manuscript in the libraries. We will give from one manuscript of this kind⁵ an example of an astronomical botany of medicinal plants.

This work opens with the praise of an Egyptian king, Nechepso, who learned the sympathies of stones and plants from the teaching of Hermes. Then follows a consideration of the influence of the stars on plants, and of the influence of the constellations on particular countries, for example of the Scorpion on Italy and of the Archer on Crete. Then it treats of time and place: when and where the plants are to be gathered. When the sun stands in the Ram, all plants are at their most potent, for the Ram is the exaltation (ὕψωμα) of the sun; and because it belongs to most of the 288 gods, it also shares in most of the divine powers. Then the description of how the herbs are to be prepared for medicinal use in this sign. So far the introduction.

To this are joined the single figures of the zodiac, with the plants belonging under them, from the Ram to the Archer, where the manuscript breaks off. For each plant its medicinal powers are given, and its manner of preparation for this purpose shown. For example: “The plant of the Crab, comfrey (Beinwell, Symphytum: καρκίνου βοτάνη σύπφυτος [sic: σύμφυτος]).^e Both the root and the fruit of it are very potent, for from the root an ointment is prepared for laying on wounds,” and so on.

Those planetary deities, those signs of the zodiac, and the other beings of the astrotheological system now also appear on works of ancient sculpture, subordinated to whichever deity is thought of as the highest in the prevailing system. If the conjecture of some were well grounded, that on one of the zodiacs at Tentyra the two female figures enclosing the whole represent Isis, we would have here an ancient Egyptian representation of such a subordination of the whole sidereal system of gods under a supreme being. The later representations can all be shown from coins. So now Zeus appears at the centre of the chorus of planets and of the 289 zodiac surrounding it (see the relief in Hirt’s archäologisches Bilderbuch, plate 2). Now it is Pan who with his pipe leads the chorus of the planets and of the constellations of the zodiac (see the gem from the collection of the Duke of Orléans in Dupuis, pl. XXII). Now Serapis is made ruler of the sphere. So he appears on an Egyptian coin of Antoninus Pius, surrounded by the heads of the seven planets, formed after the conception of the time, and in the outer circle by the figures of the zodiac⁶.

§. 6.

If we ask for the ground of that intimate connection of astronomy with natural science and medicine, and with all the other practical institutions, we must take into account the nature of Egypt, with its striking and regular phenomena, and above all the dependence of the whole Egyptian existence on the great river of the land, the Nile. Its rise and fall, 290 bound to fixed periods of time, offered observation of nature and calendrical reckoning a firm point from which they started and to which everything in turn was referred. The position of the sun, the phases of the moon, the Nile, and sowing and harvest, together with all the other physical features of the place, therefore necessarily coincide in the Egyptian’s view. The concepts of Osiris as solar year and as Nile, and of Isis as moon and as the nature of the land, are given precisely by this. From here, too, the mythic history of these deities borrows its main features.

In the course of time these fundamental ideas were altered in the most manifold ways, and what had originally been wholly foreign to the Egyptian figures of the gods had to let itself be joined to them. We recall here, as an example, dominion over the sea, which had been a hostile daemon to the old Egyptian, and was now nonetheless administered by Isis. So the Alexandrian Egyptians, as dwellers on the coast whose existence depended partly on sea trade, conceived the old goddess of the land. She now appears walking beside the Pharos, with flying cloak, the sistrum in her hand, spreading a sail. In this capacity she bears the epithet Pharia⁷.

291 Those ideas of Isis were now raised higher and higher, especially as they were joined with those of Neith at Saïs. So under that deity the female principle of all existence and universal earthly nature itself is conceived. This was a mode of conception for which the occasion lay in the very name of the goddess,^f if that name means πλησμονή, or the all-sufficient and overflowing fullness (Jablonski, Voces p. 98). In this sense image-making too had taken hold of her when it represented her with many breasts, surrounded by the images of the four elements: the salamander, the eagle, the dolphin, and the lioness. At least one testimony⁸ entitles us to call the image Isis in this connection.

292 That the conceptions of Osiris too were raised by stages is shown by many traces, and the instruction in the mysteries at Saïs, of which Herodotus II, 170 seq. speaks very reservedly, may have had much to report on this. His images were modelled accordingly. The vulture or hawk, in which the Egyptian recognized the image of the highest power and of divine governance (Zoëga, de obel. p. 439, 443), was given to this god, and on Egyptian-Greek gems he appears with the vulture’s head (for example on the Stosch gem No. 5; see Schlichtegroll, Auswahl vorzügl. Gemmen der Stosch. Samml. I, S. 33). The conjectures about the origin of the name Osiris give very different results (see Jablonski, Voces p. 187 seq., with Te Water’s remarks, and Opuscull. II, p. 319).

The idea of the hostile brother, Typhon, is now generalized in the same measure. The sea hated by the old Egyptian, 293 and the scorching hot wind, were this very Typhon, under whom people then conceived more generally all the evil influences of nature, and so evil itself. This idea took on very many forms, especially among the Greeks, from the older theogony down to the later poems (see Moser’s note on Nonnus, Dionysiaca VIII, v. 272). In the original Egyptian symbolism he appears now as a hippopotamus (Zoëga, obel. p. 445, 591), now in other fearful forms and threatening postures: for example on the sculptures at Tentyra, where, in animal form, armed now with a club and now with a long knife, he pursues Isis.

§. 7.

To Isis and Osiris is joined Anubis, and indeed in several relations. Anubis is the genius of the Dog Star (Sirius, Σῶθις). The Egyptians regarded this star as the forerunner of the Nile flood. From the manner of its rising the priests foretold the height of the flood, and so the fertility of the year, which took its true beginning with the rising of this star. Arrangements for this observation of the heavens: the horns of the gazelle, or of the ὄρυξ [“oryx”], between which the priests, with various ceremonies, watched the rising Sirius (Zoëga, obel. p. 166; Jablonski, in his explanation of the Table of Isis, Opuscc. 294 I, p. 233).

From this arose the concept of the prophesying, divining god, and for this reason he was given the dog’s head, because of this animal’s power of scent and because of the influences of the moon’s changes observable in it: latrator Anubis [“Anubis the barker”]. Anubis the golden (so his name is explained; Jablonski, Voces p. 32) is for the same reasons also Agathodaemon, the beneficent genius of fertility; and his name too, it is conjectured, points to animal fertility^g (σωθὶ, gravida [“pregnant”]; see the same work, p. 336). Chiefly in this relation, and as forerunner of the Nile flood, Anubis carries on many Egyptian monuments the water vessel and the Nilometer.

But Anubis also stands beside Osiris in other relations. He is the watcher at his corpse. He conducts the mummy of Osiris, lying on a lion (the image of the Nile, according to Horapollo I, 21), down to the sea. He stands beside him, as judge of the dead, with the writing tablet. As Psychopompus he holds the urn for the libation to the dead; and in the higher meaning of the secret worship too he is joined to Osiris as ruler over life and death (Zoëga, obel. p. 320 seqq.).

Now Egypt knew, under the name of Thoth (Θώθ), a genius of the highest science and wisdom. Just as Anubis was the forerunner of Osiris as the flooding Nile, and companion of Isis as moon goddess, and was called the herald of all bless295ings for the land, so he was joined to both deities as Thoth, and in this capacity he is to both a wise counsellor, servant, and companion. All the symbolic and mythic predicates of Anubis were now transferred to Thoth, who was likewise conceived with the dog’s head and the other attributes of the former. The Egyptians also called this Thoth Ἑρμῆς, Hermes, a significant name meaning pater scientiae [“father of knowledge”], if Zoëga is right (de obelisc. p. 224, 581).

Egyptian ideas of Hermes. He is the inventor and presider over all higher science, as Osiris and some of the oldest kings had made the inventions of public utility, agriculture and the like. But in this very capacity, as first teacher of religion, he becomes one of its first objects (parallel with the Indian and Persian ideas of Budha and Hom). The inventions of Hermes in Egyptian and Greek legend. The invention of the division of the day from the regular urination of the gazelle or the cat. The invention of writing from the flight of cranes (Palamedes). The writings of Hermes, according to the hugely magnifying legend: the forty-two books in the principal passage of Clement, Stromat. VI, p. 757 seq. (cf. Fabric. B. Gr. I, p. 46 seq., ed. Harles). Hence too the learned Eratosthenes had entitled his work on the old discoveries in astronomy, and on the scientific 296 endeavours of the ancient world in general, Ἑρμῆς.

Judgment of those legends and statements. First, so far as possible, the separation of the Greek additions, and the removal of the later Platonic and even Christian doctrines from the writings still extant (Casaubon, Exercitt. Baron. p. 71). Used with this caution, even the later writers can lead to good results. So, for example, the opening of Iamblichus’s work de mysteriis Aegypt. (toward the correction of which we shall give a contribution from manuscripts on another occasion), rightly understood, already shows us that Hermes was a collective name for all the knowledge and writings that the priests kept as the property of their caste. Little of substance, however, is settled by inquiring into the age from which the writings and fragments still extant under the name of Hermes may come. But that, to return to myth, the ideas of Anubis and of Thoth were fused in the Greek Ἑρμῆς, the sequel will show further.

§. 8.

With these deities some other beings are connected who appear as objects of the general cult. Isis had borne to Osiris Harpocrates, the lame and limping 297 god (Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. p. 470). His Egyptian name was Phoch-rat (Φουκράτης), which denoted that bodily defect (Jablonski, Voces p. 38, and Cuper, Harpocrates). The significant gesture of the finger laid on the mouth, and the bald side of the head, were no less characteristic marks of this being.

Strong and bearded appears the other son of Isis, Horus (Ὦρ, the adorned one). In the mythic history of Osiris he is presented as the avenger of his father and as his mighty successor. Hence on the Bembine Table of Isis he is armed with the spear with which he slays Typhon, represented as a hippopotamus. Sometimes he has a vulture’s head, like Osiris, from whom in painting, however, he was distinguished by a lighter colour (Jablonski, Opuscull. I, 421 seqq.; II, 237).

At the ground of these images and myths lay the idea of the solar year, in its beginning and progress. The sun after the winter solstice, still slow in its course and appearing weak, yet gradually growing, was represented as Harpocrates, with the speaking predicates. The summer solstice and the full force of the sun were denoted by Horus. The spring sun was the sun in the Ram, which sign many call the first sign of the Egyptian zodiac (Theonis Scholia in Arati Phaenom. p. 69); and in this relation many also gave Ammon the ram’s 298 head and the ram’s horns (see Jablonski’s explanation of the Bembine Table of Isis, p. 240 seq., and Panth. II, p. 249). So the Ram appears on this view of the zodiac. In Rhode’s explanation the whole zodiac takes on another meaning, and the Ram falls at the autumnal equinox.

But Somus, or Heracles, also entered this circle of gods, as ruler of the solar year. Indeed he was himself called the solar year and the god of the year. In particular he was conceived as the spring sun, and his name Som (Sem) is explained in this relation as the power of god. As the spring sun growing again, he coincided with the idea of Harpocrates. The Egyptian language denoted this union by the combined name Σεμφουκράτης (that is, Heracles-Harpocrates), and Heracles, like Harpocrates, was counted among the deities who bring and give healing (see the proof-passages in the Dionysus p. 139 seqq.).

The customs of the festival of Osiris also pointed to such a course of the year. The seventeenth of the Egyptian month Athyr (13 November) was the day of Osiris’s death. There followed the funeral rites, during which Isis went to Phoenicia to seek the lost Osiris. So, under manifold customs of mourning, the rest of the month Athyr and the month Choeac passed. On the seventh of the following month, Tybi (2 January), Isis returned from Phoenicia, and after 299 a few days she found her husband again (Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. p. 371).

§. 9.

A great number of symbols served to denote that personified solar year, and that union of the deities of the year with one another. We will pick out a few as examples, with reference to the illustrations added below.

On the first plate, Fig. 5, appears the dog-headed Anubis, with the young Horus on one hand and the sacred water vessel in the other⁹. On the same plate, No. 6, Harpocrates¹⁰ is represented with the whip, the sign of power and dominion (which is why Osiris too often carries it), sitting in the well-known posture on the calyx of a lotus flower, the image of the never-failing Nile and of never-extinguished life. On a gem in Caylus I, Tab. 9, No. 1, the hairy Horus sits in just this way on the lotus flower, whip in hand. Opposite him stands the Cynocephalus, a 300 kind of ape that was kept in the Egyptian temples in order to observe in it the changes of the moon, which were supposed to have a great influence on this animal. Hence the new moon was represented under the image of an upright Cynocephalus (Horapollo I, 14). Just so he appears on the gem in Caylus. Both Horus and Cynocephalus sit facing each other on a boat which ends in a ram’s head on the side of the Cynocephalus and in a bull’s head toward Horus, alluding to the position of the moon in the Ram and of the sun in the sign of the Bull. The general conception that some have wished to find in this image we leave to its own worth. We recalled it only for the special attributes of Horus and the relation to the moon that it indicates.

Harpocrates, with the well-known gesture, holding in one hand the club, that attribute of Heracles, and riding on a ram on whose head lies a sphere, appears on a coin of the Emperor Hadrian¹¹. Here, then, the ideas of Harpocrates and Heracles noted above already coincide in the image.

An Egyptian coin of the Emperor Antoninus Pius shows Isis seated on a chair, 301 on whose back two hoopoes are seen. She is suckling her son, and on a table before her stands the vessel that runs out into a long spout and has a serpent for its handle¹². The hoopoe (upupa, cucupha) was an image of filial love, because it was believed to feed its parents when they grew old. This bird therefore occurs fairly often on Egyptian monuments, or its head set on a staff: for example, on the temple wall at Tentyra, in Denon pl. 119, No. 8. Osiris also carries such a staff on a Stosch gem (see Schlichtegroll II. 62).

The vessel illustrated here is the jug used in the secret worship of several nature deities. As a water vessel it was dedicated to the presiders over the moist element; by the lamp joined to it, it signified fire; and by the serpent, the ever self-renewing force of nature and the other conceptions that lay in the symbol of the serpent. Poppy heads and fruits in special receptacles were often joined to it as well¹³.

§. 10.

302 Among the general deities of Egypt, Serapis later came forward and even eclipsed all the others: especially from the Alexandrian period, and still more in the following one, when the Romans, devoted to foreign worship, attributed to him the concept of the supreme god. The origin of his name is as uncertain as that of Osiris. From Alexander’s time he took the place of Osiris decisively, and in all relations.

Concepts of him: lord of the elements; holder of the keys of the realm of waters and of the Nile; god of the earth; presider over all telluric powers; and god of the underworld. Giver of life, judge of the dead, and pardoner in death. Hence his twofold meaning: he is the friendly and the fearful god. He is the former as nourisher and author of wealth, as preserver 303 and physician, and in so far identified with Aesculapius, as god of the table and giver of joy. He is the latter as god of the winter sun and of darkness, as ruler over the realm of the dead. Hence he has his seat in the necropolises, and hence the formulas and prayers addressed to him on inscriptions and on mummy-cases.

As Anubis (and Hermes) was joined there to Osiris, so here to Serapis, and in all relations: to the god of the Nile and of waters and the closer of nature, as to the ruler in the underworld and judge of the dead. The development of these ideas of Serapis seems to belong to the time of the Ptolemies. The origin of his worship, however, is older. He was venerated at Rhakotis long before Alexandria was built, and in Middle and Hither Asia, as in Greece, traces are found of a somewhat earlier acquaintance with this being. Perhaps old Memphis already knew him, as may be conjectured from comparing several passages of Herodotus and others.

Quite recently some have wished to recognize Serapis among the temple images of Tentyra, in a clumsy human figure with a long tail at the back and the modius on its head (in Denon pl. 116, fig. 5), in the character of a companion of Typhon, as a fearful, evil genius (see Rhode on the zodiac, p. 92). If this hypothesis were well grounded, Serapis would most probably belong to old Pha304raonic Egypt. The idea of the evil and fearful spirit does not contradict the later prevailing concepts of Serapis, as appears from the above; and given the loss of so many old Egyptian names of gods, the circumstance that none of the older writers mentions him would also be explicable. Yet that assumption still requires confirmation from elsewhere, to attain even a high degree of probability.

To grasp the pictorial representation of Serapis, one must first recall the Canobus. Under this name was known and venerated one of the nature gods whom people called, by preference, now the great, now the good. The name was also given a reference to the fullness and blessings of nature, and the meaning golden ground was found in it, with reference to fertile Egypt. His form showed the Nile jug, or some other spherical vessel with a human head set on it, sometimes joined with serpents and other attributes of the kind. The older Phoenicia, Hither Asia, and Greece knew similar formations of gods with a similar meaning. Among the Greeks, however, this ruder representation early gave way to the human form.^h

In Egypt, under the first Ptolemies, a Serapis of more cultivated form was set up. He was an earnest god with the modius (a measure of grain) on his head, who had beside him the animal wound about by a serpent, 305 with the heads of a dog, a lion, and a wolf. This Serapis, who had been brought nearer to the Greek Hades, legend derived from Sinope in Pontus. He became the chief god of the world-city of Alexandria, and soon the owner of countless temples throughout the world of the time. But even now the ruder form did not wholly vanish. In the old city of Canobus, at the mouth of the Nile named after it, that nature-being maintained itself in its old shape and remained, as before, the chief object of a secret worship. A secret doctrine also developed out of this cult, of which we find many traces in the writings of the philosophers.

This Canobus we see often on coins, for example on an Egyptian coin of the Emperor Galba (in Zoëga, Numi Aegypt. Tab. III, No. 5)¹⁴. The Serapis who had become more human¹⁵, with the three-headed animal, the modius on his head, and the sceptre in his hand, appears on a coin of the Emperor Alexander Severus (in the same collection, Tab. XVI, No. 8).

§. 11.

306 A glance at the local deities of Egypt. We pick out only the few that are said to have been developed to a higher significance in the priestly system.

Thebaïs. Still today the land of temples. The ruins of Tentyra, Hermonthis, Latopolis, Chnubis, Apollinopolis, Elephantine, and others; but above all of Thebes, or Diospolis magna (survey after the travellers; compare Larcher in the Table géographique). The Memnonium; the temple of Ammon at Carnac (Denon pl. 43). Thebes, the city of Ammon (Ἀμοῦν). Explanation of this name (Herodot. II, 42; Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. p. 455, and there Hecataeus of Abdera; cf. Fragmm. historr. graecc. antiqq. p. 28). Reports of the ancients about this deity; of which more below, in the survey of the myths of Zeus.

Amenophis, Memnon (Ἀμένωφις, Φαμένωφις, Μέμνων). The legends of the ancients about this being. The reports of the Egyptians and of others who visited Egypt. The myths of the Greeks about the son of Tithonus and Aurora. The statue of Memnon; its sounding at the first ray of the sun (Strabo XVII, p. 1170 seq.; Pausan. I, 48;ⁱ and the numerous reports of other ancient writers in Jablonski, de Memnone). Which is the true statue of Memnon? Pococke’s at Medinet Abu, the mutilated one; or Norden’s, of black marble, somewhat 307 further north? (Langlès on Norden’s Reise II, p. 159 ff.; compare the illustration in Denon, pl. 44.)

Explanations. Was it a symbolic statue, with reference to astronomical observations of the priests? (So Jablonski, de Memn.; hence his explanation, Ἀμένωφις, i.e. εὐαγγελιστής, qui bonum annunciat [“he who announces good tidings”]; compare his Voces p. 29, an explanation that Wesseling on Herodotus II, 106 finds very well grounded. The other name of Amenophis, Ἰσμάνδης or Ὀσυμανδύας, denoted a speaking stone; Jabl. de Memnon. p. 106 seq.) Or did the legend arise from a figurative designation of a gnomon of the year, or of a so-called tomb of Osiris (as Dornedden would have it)? Or is this legend to be connected with other reports of sound and light (e.g. Apollodori Fragg. p. 401; Plutarch, Sympos. VIII. 3; and others)? Or did priestly trickery lie at its ground? (Böttiger, Andeutungen S. 22.)

Another god of the Thebaïd was Kneph (Κνήφ) or Κνοῦφις. Origin and meaning of his name. He is the ἀγαθὸς δαίμων [“good spirit”] (Jablonski, Voces p. 112). According to Plutarch (de Isid. p. 359 D) the inhabitants of the Thebaïd venerated no demigod but him. How can this be reconciled with the oldest ideas of Osiris (after Zoëga; see above)? Conceptions of this deity according to the various reports of the ancients (Bibl. der alten Lit. und Kunst VII. 43). His probable meaning in the priestly system (see below). 308 His symbols: a kind of serpent (Horapollo I, 64).

Memphis, in Middle Egypt, with its national god Phthas (Φθᾶς). Ideas of the Egyptians and Greeks about him: Demiurge; Ἥφαιστος (Herodot. II. 192,^j and the commentators there; Cic. de Nat. D. III. 22). Philosophemes about him (of which below). His temple was in the later Pharaonic period the chief temple of Egypt, and to be regarded as the archive of the realm; from it, too, the Aegyptiaca of Herodotus chiefly proceed.

Lower Egypt. Mendes (Μένδης), a well-known city at the mouth of the Nile named after it. Here, and in Chemmis or Panopolis in Upper Egypt, was venerated the Mendesian goat, named after the former city: the animal-god whom people placed beside Pan. Conjecture about the meaning of the name Μένδης: foecundus [“fruitful”]. Fundamental concept of this being: foecunditas prolifica naturae, et praesertim solis [“the prolific fruitfulness of nature, and especially of the sun”]. The goat still appears on imperial coins of the Mendesians, whose city had its name from that deity (Zoëga, numi Aegypt. imperat. p. 117, 215).

Athribis (Ἄθριβις), a city in the Delta. Here Ἀθώρ or Ἀθύρ was venerated, whom Herodotus II, 41 already mentions under the name Ἀφροδίτη. From Athor, too, the old name of the city, Ἀτάρβηχις, was derived (see Larcher on the passage cited). Meaning of that name of the deity venerated here: darkness, night 309 (Jablonski, Voc. p. 20). Her attributes: the mouse, because of the blindness ascribed to this animal; the dove, in which the idea of Aphrodite lay at the ground¹⁶.

Saïs (Σάϊς). Is this city the Tsohan and Tanis of the Bible? (See the inquiries in Larcher, Table géogr., under these words.) The goddess venerated here bore the name Σάϊς or Νηΐθ: according to Jablonski (Voc. 161), the decider, she who determines. Meaning of this being, and the probable gradual heightening of this idea. Connection with the concept of Isis: new moon, earthly nature, and so on. (See the principal passage, Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. p. 454 Wytt., and there also the well-known inscription at Saïs: Ἐγώ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸς καὶ ὂν καὶ ἐσόμενον, καὶ τὸν ἐμὸν πέπλον οὐδείς πω θνητὸς ἀπεκάλυψεν [“I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my robe no mortal has yet lifted”]; and the addition in Proclus on Plato’s Tim. p. 310 30: ὃν ἐγὼ καρπὸν ἔτεκον, ἥλιος ἐγένετο [“the fruit that I bore became the sun”].) The festival of lamps at Saïs (Herodot. II, 62).

§. 12.

A glance at the Egyptian priestly teaching. Sources. Herodotus speaks only of two general deities, Osiris and Isis (see above). Besides these he mentions the secret doctrine several times, without, however, giving its content. Later, when much had already perished, great attention was turned to it; and so Plutarch, Eusebius, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and other writers are our authorities.

All these reports would have to count as late inventions if the assertion were correct that the slavish spirit of the constitution, the restriction to mere hieroglyphic writing, and similar causes had kept the Egyptian priesthood of every period within the bounds of merely practical, or at least very moderate theoretical, knowledge. It is hard here to keep the right measure: neither to present the Egyptian priests as possessors of transcendent wisdom, nor to take from them what credible ancient writers nonetheless attribute to them. Since Zoëga has proved that the ancient Pharaonic Egyptians too knew alphabetic writing, double caution is needed here.

Fundamental concepts and chief tenets of the priestly system (after the principal passages: Damas311cius, de principiis, in J. C. Wolf, Anecdot. Gr. III. 260; Eusebius, Praepar. Evangel. III, 6 seqq.; Plutarch, de Isid. 452 seqq.; Iamblichus, de myster. VIII. 3; and others; compare Kleuker, Über die Emanationslehre S. 50 ff.):

Athor, the ancient Night, in which all was hidden, first bore Phtas and Neith, that is, the male and female primal power (primal light and highest wisdom). From Phthas and Neith came forth Phanes and Kneph, the first-born light and the spirit of life of all things. This Kneph presents himself first in a triad. Immediately after follow the seven primal powers (usually represented under the predicate of the seven tones of the universe).

To this the cosmogony attaches. Athor bore in the aether the egg of the world, which was at first still dark. Phthas then breathed out the world-egg; the egg burst, and Phanes, the first-born, came forth from it in twofold shape, and with him the birth of all beings, of all gods and men.

Phthas is the male expression of the highest wisdom; he is the sapientia mascula [“male wisdom”], and is therefore called man-woman. Neith is the female expression of it, the sapientia femina [“female wisdom”], and is therefore called woman and man. From Phthas she receives the veil of nature and weaves it on; she is the All, and her first-born, Phanes, is called the sun of the worlds. Neither Phthas nor Neith are separate deities, but expressions of one and the same divine being. Kneph is the world-spirit, who pervades the whole con312nection of beings. Accordingly Athor would be the eternal deity not yet revealed (Deus in statu non manifesto [“God in an unmanifested state”]). Pthas and Neith would be, in the series of concepts, 1 and 2; and Phanes and Kneph, 3 and 4.

The elements of a system of this kind lie in the ancient writers last cited. But it will always remain hard to distinguish properly some modes of conception of the Greek reporters from the original priestly dogma. For example, that cosmic idea of the seven-voiced sound: in what relation does it stand to the Pythagorean and Platonic theorems on the world-soul and musical harmony? On the latter, compare the learned treatise of Boeckh in the third volume of the Studien.

Here a few remarks on the characteristic custom of the oriental religions, the Egyptian among them, of dividing the chief expressions of one fundamental being into separate persons, and then binding them again into one concept. Even the Egyptian names of gods show traces of this, in compounds such as Semphukrates, and so on. Then the giving of special names to denote special relations of one and the same being. So, for example, Osiris was called, as son of Isis, Ἀρσαφής (Plutarch, de Isid. p. 498), and in another relation Σείριος (Diodor. I. 11). The grown Horus was called Ἀρούηρις (Arueris, Plutarch, de Isid. p. 458; yet the 313 latter passage is suspect; see Wyttenbach there). That Arueris was in turn venerated as a separate deity is well known, and so far serves to confirm the proposition above. Ἰσμάνδης (Strabo XVII, p. 559), or, as Diodorus calls him, Ὀσυμανδύας (I, 47), Usmandi, was only another name for the Theban Amenophis, and denoted the speaking stone. Such examples could be multiplied without end. Only by keeping this custom constantly in view can many misunderstandings in the ancient religions be avoided.

§. 13.

Animal worship. First the phenomenon itself: veneration of certain species of animals. Differences of worship according to the nomes. Veneration of individuals as representatives of the species.

Mnevis (Μνεῦις): the bull of light and of the sun, or the bull of the City of the Sun, On, Ἡλιόπολις (Jablonski, Voc. 146, 184). His outward appearance; his sacred place (On); his relation to Apis; his reference to Osiris.

Apis (Ἆπις; cf. Alberti on Hesychius s. v., from Valckenaer, and Wesseling on Herodot. III. 28 seq.). Religious conceptions of him; his outward appearance. His finding (εὕρεσις). The course of this festival. His sacred place, Memphis (Diodor. I. 20). His death and burial.

314 Grounds of this striking phenomenon. The universality of animal worship in inner Africa (the serpent worship there), both by species and by individuals (see the travellers in Heeren, Ideen II. 661 ff.). Various hypotheses explaining the Egyptian animal worship: from crude fetishism, through the motive of fear; from the observed usefulness or harmfulness of certain species of animals (for which, to be sure, some features of the oldest religion of the Athenians speak, see above, as does the spirit of the whole Egyptian priestly system, directed toward agriculture); from astronomy (see the data in de Schmidt, de Zodiaci origine Aegypt., and the systems of Dupuis, Gatterer, and others). Meaning of the animals in hieroglyphic writing.

Distinction of the origin of animal worship from its development, after Heeren’s correct remark. The high antiquity of this cult, in which one must attend to the general impulses and fundamental drives of human nature: to the more innocent sense of the primeval world, which in the animal form saw “the strange Isis-veil of a godhead” (Fr. Richter in the Levana II, S. 297). Did the priestly system perhaps also contain philosophemes about animal worship, and, conjecturally, which?

Animal-headed deities of the Egyptians. Principal source: Herodot. II, 142, together with the remarks of other ancient writers down to Olympiodorus (in vita Platonis p. XXX ed. Fisch.), and with 315 the illustrations on the numerous Egyptian monuments, with proper distinction of periods. Does the general proposition follow from this, that the god proper, local or national, was animal-headed, and that the pure human form, or at least the human head, characterizes only the servant of those deities? Or are those animal heads merely animal masks, as some have lately sought to maintain? Grounds for this: Denon’s remark that dress in masks is often clearly indicated on the ancient Egyptian monuments; the passage of Diodorus I, 62 on the faces of lions, bulls, and dragons as signs of dominion.

Remark: More could be adduced here, and indeed from very old testimonies: for example, the passage of Hecataeus of Miletus (in the Greek commentators on Iliad III. 6) on the ram masks of the Pygmies; passages of Pausanias on Greek temple symbolism; observation of the representations on the vases of Magna Graecia; and the like. But do all these data suffice to establish so extensive an antithesis? The passage of Porphyry, de abstin. IV, 9, p. 325 ed. Rhoer, also deserves particular attention. To this belongs the head of Isis with the hide of a cow and three stars (Dactyl. Stoschiana II, Tab. 8, No. 42)¹⁷.

316 Here a remark on horns as an attribute of old deities and heroes. The horned Astarte of the Phoenicians in Euseb. Praep. Ev. I, p. 28. The horned Cecrops on an old coin of Athens in Haym, Thesaur. Brit. Tom. II, p. 161. The meaning of royal dignity and power (Winckelmann’s Allegorie S. 547); but other ideas too.

§. 14.

The doctrine of the state after death. Principal passage: Herodot. II, 123. Only it must be rightly understood, if it is not to stand in contradiction with Pausan. Messen. 32, 4. Herodotus speaks not of the immortality of the soul, but of the transmigration of souls.

Egyptian popular belief: the whole man goes down to the underworld. Hence the conception of Amenthes as an ordered state modelled on this life. Hence too the great national gods are rulers of this realm of the dead: first Isis, then Osiris, joined to her, then Serapis (Zoëga, de Obelisc. p. 302 seq., compared with Fr. Schlegel’s remark, Über die Weisheit der Indier S. 112. Hence the frequent representations on mummy-cases and sarcophagi, where the judges of the dead are shown in action. Hence too Herodotus’s Dionysus as assessor of Demeter; see the passage of Herodotus cited).

317 These fundamental ideas now gave occasion to the most important works of architecture in Upper, Middle, and Lower Egypt, and to a very careful apparatus for the dead. Survey (compare the references in Heeren II, 650 ff., and Böttiger, Andeutungen S. 10 ff.): the necropolises, chambers and palaces of the dead; the royal tombs of the Thebaïd by the Memnonium, after Denon. The Serapea, especially the Serapeum in the Libyan desert near Memphis (see the references in the Dionysus p. 185 seq.). The pyramids in relation to the tombs.

The mummies, and their name. The custom of mummifying. Three kinds; see Herodot. II, p. 86 seqq.; Diodor. I, p. 91 ff., with the explanations of the moderns, after chemical analyses of the mummies. Religious customs at embalming. The flight of the παρασχίστης [“slitter”] after he had cut into the corpse. The explanation of this custom from the fundamental ideas of death above. The concepts of the Egyptians about the entrails and the material body as the ground of all fleshly lust (see the characteristic prayer translated from the Egyptian by the Pythagorean Euphantus, in Porphyry, de Abstin. IV, 10, p. 329 ed. de Rhoer). Here lies the germ of Orphic, Pythagorean, and Christian ideas and views of life, for which the classical passage of Diodorus I, 51 must be taken as the basis. See below, §20 ff.

318 The burial arrangements in Lower Egypt; see Diodor. I, 92. Here the dead were brought in boats to the necropolises, including across Lake Moeris. The Egyptian boat: βᾶρις (see Valckenaer, Opuscull. I, p. 143; Jablonski, Voc. 49). The Egyptian court of the dead (Heyne, Opuscc. acadd. I, p. 135 seqq.). The Egyptian Amenthes is the prototype of the Greek ᾅδης. Charon himself belongs to the Egyptians. He is the silent one (Jablonski, Voc. p. 393; compare Dornedden’s Neue Theorie der Gr. Myth. S. 257 ff., where quite particular turns are given to these concepts).

The great national gods and guides of the solar year are also the presiders over the realm of the dead. What influence had this on the development of the idea of the transmigration of souls? Consideration of the zodiac in relation to metempsychosis (compare the Dionysus p. 90, 292 seq.). The original conceptions of this kind were probably Egyptian; but how much of them belongs to the Pythagoreans and the later Greek schools? See below, §20 ff.

§. 15.

Oracles. That of Buto (Βουτώ, Ω[?]τώ)^k in the city of that name (see Herod. II. 59, 83, 154) was the most esteemed. Oracles of Apis at Memphis, of Ammon at Thebes, of Horus, of Bubastis, of Neith, of Som 319 or Heracles. Egypt the parent land of the Dodonaean oracle (see above).

Sacrifice: the customs at it, and the concepts that lay at their ground. Human sacrifice too, down to the reign of King Amasis (Diodor. Sic. I, 88, and Wesseling there). Among religious acts ancient Egypt also knew penances.

Festivals of various character. Herodot. II, 59 seqq. The six sacred cities: Bubastis, Busiris, Saïs, Heliopolis, Buto, and Papremis. The journey to Bubastis, and the characteristic peculiarities of this popular festival. The feast of Isis at Busiris; the λυχνοκαΐα [“burning of lamps”] at Saïs; the festival of the sun at On. Influence of this festival calendar on the judgment of the Egyptian zodiac and of the other temple representations.

The Egyptian phallagogies, Herodot. II. 48. Derivation of the name from the Egyptian language (φαλλός, puer [“boy”], Jablonski, Vocc. 367; with this, however, the rich and further-reaching remarks of Zoëga, de obelisc. p. 213 seqq., are to be joined. Nor may the universality of this cult in the whole of ancient Asia, and so on, be overlooked). Connection of the esoteric instruction on this cult with the doctrine of immortality.

The mythic lore of the Egyptians was, to judge from many reports, very rich, and the higher priestly tradition differed from the popular myths in essentials.

320 The national character, especially in its religious expressions, appears partly from the above and partly from particular features specially noted. The frugality of this people. The meanness of private dwellings; the splendour and size of the public buildings. Reminder of the principal passage cited above (Diodor. I, 51). The mummy-case at Egyptian banquets (Herodot. II. 78, and the different explanation that Plutarch gives, Symposiac. p. 148 B). Influence of the division into castes, and of the constitution, which remained on the whole always the same through the long Pharaonic period, together with all the institutions hanging on it, on the spirit and way of thinking of the Egyptian nation. The hieroglyphs on the Rosetta inscription are the same as those found on the oldest obelisks.

§. 16.

Institutions, works, and means of instruction.

Architecture. In no country of antiquity did it have so extensive a purpose. Reminder of the above: the pyramids. Their name; the explanations of Silvestre de Sacy and others. Their probable purpose. The Labyrinth, after the description of the ancients, Herodot. II. 148, Diodor. I, 66, Strabo XVII, p. 1165 (with the criticism of Jablonski, de Memn. p. 55, who holds it 321 for a work of the period of the Israelites, who were employed on it), and others; compared with Gibert’s Mémoire in the transactions of the Académie des Inscriptions XXVIII, p. 241, on the ruins at Sennour, in which he recognizes the remains of the Labyrinth. On its probable symbolic meaning (compare Gatterer, Commentt. Soc. Gotting. Vol. IX, p. 60 seqq.).

Sculpture, partly as actual image-making on the works of architecture, partly as hieroglyphic writing. Painting.

Kinds of hieroglyphs (see above, the table at p. 174). Their six periods, after Zoëga, de Obelisc. p. 440, 549 seqq., from the oldest time into the fourth century after Christ. Number of characters now known: 958. Their early symbolic meaning. The ἑρμηνεῖς [“interpreters”] (Gatterer’s Weltgeschichte in ihrem Umfang S. 212). An example of a symbolic hieroglyph, on the portal of a temple at Diospolis, in Clement of Alex., Strom. l. V, cap. 7. Hieroglyphic sculpture on the temple walls, on the obelisks, and in the religious books proper (Plotin. Enn. V. 8. 6). Historical, legislative, and religious purpose of hieroglyphic writing. Here the characteristic passage from Proclus on Plato’s Tim. p. 31: “The events of the ancient world are always new to the Egyptians through memory; memory is always renewed through history; and history is taken from the pillars.” Later theurgic use (abuse) of the hierogly322phs. Conditions and attempts of their decipherment (see the survey in the N. Leipz. L. Z. 1806, nos. 1 and 2, by Beck).

Alphabetic writing. It was already in use in the Pharaonic period (see Zoëga l. l., with Heeren’s remarks, Ideen II, 481 ff.). The way the Egyptians wrote is explained by Herodotus (II, 36, with which Coray on Heliodorus, Aethiop. p. 315, is to be compared). Two classes of alphabetic writing: the common (ἐπιστολογραφική [“epistolographic”]) and the sacred, ἱερατική [“hieratic”]. In all probability, and indeed, after the passage of Plotinus cited, certainly, even the hieratic script was not used for the religious writings proper of the priests, but only for the commentaries on them. Parallels with the Indian and other institutions of the Asiatic peoples. Conclusions from this.

§. 17.

Examples of Egyptian symbols.

The Ibis, the Egyptian serpent-heron, of white colour (ἡ Ἶβις, Herodot. II, 75 seq.; Ibis Tantalus Linn.). A destroyer of the vermin on the Nile; hence a sacred bird, and as such mummified. The first sign of the Egyptian alphabet; hence sacred to Thoth (Theuth Ibicephalus [“ibis-headed Theuth”]), or as an attribute beside the head of Theuth. (So on coins of Hadrian from the city of Hermopolis, that is, the city of Her323mes; see Zoëga, Numi Aegypt. Imper. Tab. XXI, with his remarks, p. 123. Also on gems: for example, on a Stosch gem, II, No. 29, German edition; Böttiger’s Andeutungen S. 17.)

The sparrow-hawk, over the entrances of the temples and elsewhere: for example, its golden image on the necklace of the male mummy at Dresden, with outspread wings (see Becker, Augusteum I. S. 17). Its general meaning: the divine and the holy. Hence it is very frequent on Egyptian and Egyptianizing monuments: for example, on a gem that Winckelmann declares to be very old (Dactyl. Stosch. II. 45, No. 24). But in particular the hawk or falcon was called by the ancients the sacred bird; hence its Greek name ἱέραξ. Its Egyptian name βαιήθ meant the soul (after Horapollo I, 7, with the explanations of Jablonski, Voces p. 47). Various legends about the nature of this animal in Aelian, Hist. A. X, 14, and Porphyry, de Abst. IV. 9, p. 326 ed. Rhoer, with the remarks of Cuper in the Harpocrates p. 72. It became the symbol of the female principle of nature, because this species was said to have no male among it; and also the symbol of the year, because people believed they perceived the different periods of the year in its physical behaviour.

To it corresponds the highest of all Egyptian symbols, the beetle (κάνθαρος), as the image of the male principle. Legends about it, after the principal passage of Porphyry, de abstin. IV. 9, p. 327, and Hora324pollo I, 10. Its generation takes place without female assistance, in a ball formed of ox dung, which is hidden under the earth for 28 days and afterwards brings forth the young. That number of days became an image of the moon’s changes, and the life alternating every six months under the earth and on the earth, which people observed in this animal, became an image of the sun. Hence the beetle on most of the monuments of Egypt, from the oldest obelisks and the doors of the old temples down to the latest image-making (cf. Zoëga, de Obelisc. p. 547, and in many other places).

Hence the custom of the Egyptians of giving their gems, whose base they ground flat in order to engrave on it, the form of a beetle on the upper side, which remained convex (Scarabaeus). Hence the sacredness of this symbolic form. Such scarabs were worn as amulets at the neck. Examples of these scarabs in great number in Denon pl. 97; compare Schlichtegroll on the Dactyl. Stosch. II. 38.

The serpent. First, a general glance at serpent worship among ancient and modern peoples, with notice of the fundamental ideas in it: the serpent as image of evil (F. W. J. Schelling’s Philosophische Schriften I, S. 456). The views of the Medo-Persian religion, and similar conceptions. Serpent worship in Africa. Egyptian serpent worship. The serpent in very different relations 325 on the monuments of Egypt (compare Zoëga, Numi Aegypt. Imperator. p. 109, 201, 253; Bibl. der alt. L. u. K. VII, p. 34 ff., with Tychsen’s note). The harmless and sacred serpents in the Thebaïd (Herodot. II. 74). The serpent as image of Kneph (Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. p. 418). A female serpent in the hand of Isis on a Memphite coin of Antoninus (Zoëga l. l. Tab. XXI, No. 215), and in the hand of the Babylonian Urania.

In that relation to beneficent, divine powers the Greeks called the harmless serpent, especially, presumably, the Theban one, ἀγαθοδαίμων [“good spirit”]. It occurs on coins now with the head of Serapis (as the good god; see above), now with the sistrum, now with definite attributes of fertility, for example with ears of grain and poppy heads. Here the upright posture is also characteristic, and the thick, swollen upper body. So this animal appears among several other images of serpents, once also on the zodiac of Tentyra. It was the serpent in its force and strength, and physical phenomena lay at the ground of it. So upright and swollen did Denon see the serpent provoked by the Psylli or the Egyptian jugglers (see his Voyage p. 88, with pl. 104). So it appears on gems (for example in Stosch II. 28, ed. Schlichtegr., on a glass paste). To this belongs too the Egyptian coin of the Emperor Nero (Zoëga, 326 num. Tab. II, No. 9) with the legend νεο αγαθ δαιμ [“new good spirit”], alluding to Nero, who was thereby proclaimed a new good genius of Egypt¹⁸.

The Sphinx. Historical survey of the main opinions hitherto, and judgment of them. Origin of the idea and of the name from an Ethiopian species of ape? An image from the zodiac? The union of the Lion with the Virgin, and a reference to the Nile flood (de Schmidt, de Origine Zodiaci Aegypt. p. 51)? Attention to the principal passage of Herodotus II. 175 (ἀνδρόσφιγξ [“man-sphinx”]. Remark: the Greek lexicographers on that historian therefore explain this word as something noteworthy). Observations on the Egyptian monuments concerning the man-sphinx.

Meaning of this figure: strength and 327 wisdom (see Zoëga, numi Aegypt. imper. p. 141, and there Clement V, 517, and Synesius, de Regno p. 7, 101: τοῦ συνδυασμοῦ τῶν ἀρετῶν ἱερὸν σύμβολον, τὴν μὲν ἰσχὺν θηρίου, τὴν δὲ φρόνησιν ἀνθρώπου [“a sacred symbol of the union of the virtues, the strength of a beast and the wisdom of a man”]).

Origin of the name, very variously explained. The old Greek name was βίξ, φίξ; hence the Φίκιον ὄρος, the Sphinx Mountain near Thebes in Boeotia. Zoëga traces this to the Coptic Phiih (ὁ δαίμων, the divine one). More is remarked by Jablonski, Voc. p. 333, and Te Water in the additions, p. 469.

Did ancient Egypt also know female sphinxes? The denial hitherto, on various grounds. Affirmation, because of the definite passage of Aelian, Hist. A. XII, 7 (Valckenaer on Herod. p. 187), and because of the female facial formation of some of these beings, for example on the obelisks of Augustus (compare Bibl. d. Alt. Lit. u. Kunst VI, 133). Should not, then, Zoëga’s new conjecture (de obelisc. p. 590) deserve attention, that the bearded man-sphinx sometimes denotes the strong, male Nile, and the beardless, female sphinx the Egyptian earth? Moreover, a colossal sphinx stands before the great group of pyramids at Giza, facing the Nile.

The usual place of these beings is the entrance of the temples, where they often stand in whole rows (Strabo XVII, p. 1158, with Denon’s reports). This temple guard they also kept, by several traces, in ancient Greece, especially in connection 328 with the secret worship and the festival of Bacchus (Herodot. IV. 79; cf. the Dionysus p. 261). Further modifications of this idea among the Greeks: the cruel Theban Sphinx in the Boeotian myth (Heyne on Apollodorus p. 242, second edition). The riddling virgin in Sophocles, King Oedipus 1199¹⁹.

Ancient numismatics is rich in representations from this circle. Compare, for example, the whole series of sphinx coins of Chios in Pellerin, Recueil III, Tab. 114, for which Eckhel’s remarks in the Doctrina numorum veterum I, p. 139 seq., and II, 564, must be consulted. We give below the illustration of a sphinx coin, at the same time with the purpose of supplying, for our remarks in the first book, an example of that temple symbolism which sought to exhaust the divine in a great many relations by heaping up a fullness of attributes, but precisely thereby was bound to overstep the measure of art and become enigmatic.

On this Egyptian coin of the Emperor Hadrian we see the beardless Sphinx, 329 with the lotus on her head. Her forepart is covered with a veil down to the feet. From her breast springs the reversed head of a crocodile; under her feet creeps a serpent; and on her back appears a griffin with the wheel. Here, then, the most various qualities of the deity are joined in the strangest way: those of strength and wisdom, of hidden governance, the idea of eternity, that of the beneficent genius, and so on. One can designate this representation by the technical name Pantheum. But the unity by which these different things might melt together into one representation could hardly be found without more definite data; and so the riddling virgin, especially in such surroundings, herself remains a riddle²⁰.

330 Here a glance at the fabulous beasts of the Orient. How far can these symbolic animal forms be paralleled with the Egyptian Sphinx? For example, the fourth incarnation of Vishnu was that of the man-lion, treated in the Narasingha Purana²¹; and that winged and bearded beast, with a man’s head, the tiara, and the body of a lion, on the portico of the palace at Persepolis. Herder (in the Vorwelt S. 58) finds here an idea like the Egyptian: mighty wisdom indicated. Heeren (Ideen I, S. 295), after Ctesias in Aelian, H. A. IV. 21, has recalled the martichoras. Examination of these very divergent views. We have had this image added below, after a seal impression that Münter communicated to us²². A glance at the Hebrew prophets and their animal images, down to the attributes of the four Evangelists.

§. 18.

The palm. From its branches the couch of the Egyptian priests was 331 made (Chaeremon in Porphyry, de Abst. IV, 7, p. 318). This tree was famous for its great age (Ol. Celsius, Hierobotan. part. I, p. 534). It was the image of the cycle of the year, because it puts out new branches every month. In the Rosetta inscription palm-bearers are mentioned (Te Water on Jablonski, Voc. p. 48, and there on the Greek name βαΐς; Böttiger, Isisvesper S. 126).

Among the kinds of lotus (Λωτός), among which a tree of this name must also be distinguished, the one especially sacred was that which is taken to be the Nelumbium speciosum Linn. (Sprengel, Hist. rei herb. I, p. 30; Larcher on Herodotus II, 92, IV. 177). Symbolic meaning: first with reference to the Nile as demiurge, then to water in general as principle of nature, and to the continuance of life. Reminder of the Indian lotus as attribute of Ganga (that is, of the personified sacred river Ganges; Bartholom., System. Brahman. p. 38). Legends relating to cosmogony: Brahma (Narahjan) and Osiris appear as creative movers of the waters on the lotus leaf (Th. Maurice, Ancient History of Hindostan I, 60). Hence this plant appears very often on Egyptian monuments in the most various relations: as the garland of Isis; as attribute of Osiris, of Harpocrates (Cuper, Harpocr. p. 14 seqq.), and of Canobus (see the Dionysus p. 197); 332 as architectural ornament in the temples; on the winged cap (calantica) of the priests; and so on.

The persea (περσέα), originally an Ethiopian tree, transplanted to Egypt with the priestly colonies (Diodor. I, 34; Scholiast on Nicander, Ther. 764). It has heart-shaped leaves, and its fruit is of pleasant taste: the Cordia Myxa, according to Schreber (see Sprengel, Hist. rei herb. I, p. 30). The tree of Isis, according to Plutarch, de Isid. et Osir. p. 548 Wyttenb. Hence it is frequent on monuments as an attribute of this goddess, but also of other Egyptian deities; it is also painted on mummy-cases.

The so-called Egyptian Tau²³. Its original name. Extraordinary divergence of opinions about it in older and more recent times. Survey of the main explanations. The Church Fathers recognized in it an actual cross, the crux ansata [“handled cross”], and knew much that was remarkable to tell of this sign, especially in the history of the destruction of the Alexandrian temple of Serapis (see Tertullian, apolog. p. 7; Cedrenus p. 325; compare the recently edited Chronicon of Julius Pollux, p. 366 ed. Hardt). Salmasius followed that opinion in the epist. de cruce (appended to his work de latere Christi aperto). The 333 opinion put forward by La Croze and Jablonski: that it is the indication of a phallus, with reference to the sign of the planet Venus, ♀ (Jablonski, Voces p. 258, with Te Water’s additions). Zoëga’s criticism and counter-arguments, and his own explanation: it is a key of the Nile, and in the hand of Isis it denotes the great closer of nature (with the agreement of Denon and others; compare his pl. 117, where a series of these signs from a temple at Philae is given). So Isis often appears: for example, the Dresden one of black marble (Augusteum I, Tab. III).

On the other hand Visconti (Museo Pio-Clement. II, p. 36 seqq.) has worked out Jablonski’s opinion very learnedly, with regard to Asiatic and especially Indian symbolism (compare Böttiger’s Isisvesper p. 123, who holds the two explanations reconcilable by distinguishing different ages), and Larcher too agrees with Jablonski’s hypothesis (Herod. II, 272). Pococke’s view (Descript. of the East I, p. 93): it is an emblem of the four elements. Pluche found a Nilometer in it. Others recognize a key in it, and from this concept, taken quite generally, they derive the meaning of dominion, especially dominion over the earth. In the Rosetta inscription this sign is said to stand in place of the Greek χώρα [“land”] (Schlichtegroll on the Dactyl. Stosch. II, 39 f.).

Inquiries of Petit-Radel (on the Musée Napoléon IV. 109). 334 He starts from the observation that this sign is by no means peculiar to Egyptian monuments, but is very widely spread, more or less modified, on monuments of various kinds and regions. It has even been found in northern runic graves, of which specimens are given there. Further, it occurs in connection with deities that have no direct link with Egypt: for example, as attribute of the Artemis of the old style, on gems. He communicates some impressions of this from the Thesaurus gemmar. astrifer.²⁴ (Supplement to pl. 56 B). Attention is drawn especially to the connection of this sign with the sun and the moon: indirectly, in so far as it is given to solar deities such as Horus, or because the sacred sparrow-hawk carries it in its beak (for example, on the fragment of a papyrus roll in Millin, Monumens inéd. No. 7); but also directly and immediately, for example on the gem cited (see our plate) 335 and on some other monuments of this kind. From all this is derived the proposition that it is most probably a symbol of the division of the year into three seasons, customary among the Egyptians and several ancient peoples. Criticism.

Other symbolic implements and attributes. For example, the staff with the eye, as attribute of Osiris, an image of foresight and dignity (Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. p. 398, 465; compare the Stosch gem in the Dactyliotheca Stosch. II, p. 34).

The sistrum (σεῖστρον). The Egyptian name of this temple instrument: Kemkem (see Jablonski, Voces p. 306, with the learned additions of Te Water). This sacred implement appears extraordinarily often on monuments of every kind (also on coins; see below, Tab. I, No. 4), and its form undergoes the most various modifications. A description of its true form is supplied by the principal passage of Apuleius (Metam. XI, p. 759 seq. ed. Oudendorp, with Amaduzzi’s explanations; see Te Water l. l.).

This significant symbol, like several others, had its mythic history, and gave the wit of the interpreting Greeks rich material for the most various explanations. For example: Isis had invented it herself, and so it had its name from her (Istrum, Sistrum, with a sibilant prefixed: Isidor. Etymol. II, cap. 21). This example may suffice for characterization. So much is certain: in the worship of Isis it was essential, and to this 336 the sistrata turba [“sistrum-bearing crowd”] (Martial XI, 29) and other frequent allusions of the ancient poets refer. It was a sacred Isis-rattle for beating time in the temple music, especially at the great festival of the lost and refound Osiris.

The other interpretation, which sees in it a Nile measure (Nilometron, Mekiah, which Serapis later carried; see the Dionysus p. 197), whose little rods marked the degrees of the Nile flood, agrees very well with that relation to the festival of Osiris, since that festival rendered sensible the periods of the year visible in the rise and fall of the river of the land. Other interpretations gave the instrument a greater generality. So Greek interpreters already recognized in the four little rods that it often had an indication of the four elements of the world: ideas bound up with the heightening of the concept of Isis herself, and to that extent true for the time of their invention, even though it remains hard to determine which of these modes of conception may be the oldest.