The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)

Plutarch tells us that Isis, in the minds of the Egyptians, was the female receptive part of nature. Osiris was the light, Typhon the darkness, the obscuration of the sun and the moon; Osiris was the fruit-giving Nile-water, Typhon the salt and barren sea; Osiris was moisture, Typhon drought, the parching wind, which overcomes and consumes moisture; Osiris was health, Typhon disease; Osiris was the orderly, unchanging; Typhon the passionate, irrational, and giant-like; disturbances, blight, and tempest.87 It is incorrect, Plutarch observes, in conclusion, to call water, the sun, or the earth and sky Osiris and Isis; and not less so to call the glowing sun and hot wind Typhon. If we merely ascribe to Typhon all that is immoderate or irregular in these, whether in the way of excess or defect, and hold in reverence and honour all that is orderly and good and useful as the work of Isis, as the image, likeness, and essence of Osiris, we shall hardly go wrong.88

Thus there can be little doubt about the meaning of the myth. When the Nile receded and the sirocco from the south drove back the refreshing north wind, when the hot days – for these are the seventy-two fellow-conspirators of Typhon – parched up the soil; then had Typhon struck down Osiris. Then, as Plutarch says, "the Egyptians bewailed the decay of the fruits, and prayed the gods to send new in the place of those that were gone, and allow them to spring forth again." When the seed was cast into the ground, the Egyptians buried Osiris: but the sacred rites were an imitation of the sufferings of Isis, and the incidents which occurred when the body was deposited in the tomb. The progressive decay of productive power towards the north during the hot days, and the winter, which was indicated in the myth by the carrying of the corpse of Osiris to the sea, and the custom of carrying the chest to the coast (p. 57), is part of the Egyptian conception; that Isis discovers the body at Byblus on the Phenician coast is probably an invention of the Greeks, who confounded the Phenician horned goddess Astarte, Ashtaroth Karnaim, with Isis. When Egypt was again fertilised by the inundation, when the days began to lengthen after the winter solstice, when the sun shone with fresh brightness, and the new fruit budded forth, then Horus, the child born about the winter solstice, waxed strong at Buto in the north of Egypt – then he overcame Typhon. The renewed power of the sun, the returning life of nature, the fresh blessings of the new year – these are the avenging son of Osiris.

When the creative and receptive powers of nature had thus been comprehended in the forms of Osiris and Isis, the divinities in whom creative power and receptivity had hitherto been perceived naturally coalesced with these forms to a greater or less degree. Thus Ptah of Memphis, Tum of Thebes, the sun-god of Heliopolis, are combined with Osiris (the title Ptah-Osiris is not uncommon in the inscriptions,) though they are also retained as separate deities. Thus also Isis is identified with Neith of Sais, with Mut of Thebes, with Hathor, with Bast,89 the goddess of Bubastis. Horus, again, is identified with Chem and Ra, though at the same time his personality as the youthful, vigorous spirit of light is strongly marked. Plutarch is certainly right in his remark that the Egyptians regard Osiris as the personification of everything in heaven and the under world.90 All the other deities were transfigurations and manifestations of Osiris, mere modifications of his nature. When Osiris is called the soul of Ra,91 this can hardly have any other meaning but this, that the appearance of the sun-god in the visible world is an incarnation of the invisible nature of Osiris.

The Egyptians often represented their deities with the heads, or in the shape of, the animals sacred to them; that is, they recognised the nature of the deities who were primarily conceived under the form of men, in the races of the beasts which they allotted to them. To the Egyptians these animals must have appeared so closely and intimately connected with the deity to which they belonged, that the nature of the deity was better expressed and made more visible in the shape of the beast than in the shape of man. We must assume that the predominance of a distinct mark or characteristic property in the races of animals, that their simple, uniformly instinctive life created this conception in the mind of the Egyptians, to whom a fixed and unalterable course of action, an unchanging and typical nature, was the ideal. The force of nature, the regular recurrence of certain phenomena, coalesced in the Egyptian mind with the blind, unchanging action of animals. Yet animals were also seen to possess freedom and movement, and an individual existence. This combination of the type and the individual must have seemed to the Egyptians to correspond to the nature of their deities. The mystery of life, the natural law, which lay at the base of their worship, must for them have reached its most distinct and lively realisation in these animals.

The bull is the sacred animal of the creative gods: the cow of the goddesses of birth and receptivity; the ram is sacred to Chnum; the hawk and the cat to the deities of light and the sun; the beetle to Ptah; a kind of heron to Osiris; the vulture to Ptah and Isis; a kind of ibis to Thoth; the dog-ape to Anubis, the "ruler in the west;92" the crocodile to the god Sebek, who was worshipped at Arsinoe, &c., &c. Herodotus tells us that when a cat died in a house, all the inhabitants shaved their eyebrows; and that at conflagrations the Egyptians directed all their attention to saving the cats, not to quenching the flames, and if, in spite of their efforts, a cat leapt into the flames and was burnt, the Egyptians made a great lamentation.93 "To each of the races of the sacred animals," says Diodorus, "a certain piece of land is consecrated, the products of which suffice for the food and tending of the race. Those entrusted with the care of each race have to feed them. To feed the hawks they cut up pieces of flesh, and call loudly to the birds till they come and take their food. The cats they coax by giving them bread and milk, or chopped fish from the Nile, and thus provide them with suitable food. These duties they do not scruple to perform before the whole people; on the contrary, they are proud of them as of the highest offices which they can attain to in the service of the gods. With special symbols to distinguish them, they proceed through town and country, and as it is known from the symbols what animal it is whose servants are approaching, all who meet them bow the knee and pay homage. If one of the animals dies, it is wrapped in a costly covering, and, amid loud lamentations and beating of the breast, it is carried away to embalment. Steeped in oil of cedar, or any other kind remarkable for its scent and powers of preservation, the corpse is then buried in the holy sepulchres. Anyone who intentionally kills a sacred animal is punished with death; and everyone who has caused the death of an ibis or a cat, intentionally or unintentionally, must die, and is often killed in the most cruel manner, without any sentence passed upon him, by the collected mob. So deeply rooted is the reverence for sacred animals in the feeling of the people, so persistently does everyone cling to the worship of them, that even at the time when Ptolemy was not yet declared an ally by the Romans, and the nation was most anxious to pay respect to visitors from Italy, and to give no cause for war, when a Roman had unintentionally killed a cat, the mob gathered at his house, and neither the officers sent by the king to quiet them, nor the prevailing awe of the Romans, could protect him from their vengeance. This fact I have not received from hearsay: I was in Egypt and saw the occurrence. But what is done for the animals which are kept in the temples is easy to narrate, but difficult for anyone to believe who has not seen it."94

Among the races of animals which, according to Egyptian belief, shared in the nature of the deities to which they were sacred, were certain pre-eminent specimens. These were recognised by certain signs by the priests, and passed for a special incarnation of the deity. They were brought into his temple, and there worshipped and prayed to as his manifestation. The most sacred among these selected animals was Apis, the bull, in the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that a ray of light from heaven had impregnated the cow, which brought forth an Apis: by Plutarch, the impregnation is said to take place by a ray of the moon.95 The priests recognized Apis in a black bull, which had a triangular white spot on the forehead, a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred beetle of Ptah, white spots on his back in the shape of an eagle, and bi-coloured hairs in the tail.96 When an Apis was found, he was, says Diodorus, in the first place brought for forty successive days to the meadow of the "city of the Nile" (Nilopolis), where women were shown to him, who were afterwards excluded from the sight of the Apis. Then he was conveyed on a boat in a golden shrine like a god to the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. There he was bathed in the holy place, and anointed, and the most precious frankincense was constantly burned before him. He received the most beautiful garments, the richest bedding-places, and the most handsome cows as his "bed-fellows"; the most distinguished men provided him with the best food at a very great expense. When the Apis died of old age he was honoured with a splendid funeral. "When, on the death of Alexander, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, made himself master of Egypt, it happened that the Apis died, and the person entrusted with his care not only spent his own large fortune upon his burial, but borrowed, in addition, fifty talents from Ptolemy. Even in my own times certain feeders of the sacred animals have spent not less than one hundred talents on a single funeral."97

"The Egyptians," Diodorus remarks, "are of opinion that the soul of the dead Osiris passed into this bull, and thus continues among them, and will so continue among their descendants." Plutarch says that the Apis at Memphis was an image of the soul of Osiris. According to the usual account of the priests, Osiris and Apis were one; for they taught that the Apis was to be regarded as a fair image of the soul of Osiris. Strabo tells us, "The bull Apis, which is revered as a god, is the same as Osiris. The temple in which the Apis was kept stands beside the temple of Hephæstus (Ptah). There is also a temple of Serapis in that city, before which we saw sphinxes, buried in the sand, some to the middle, some to the neck."98 Evidence from other sources, no less than the monuments, confirms these accounts of Diodorus and Plutarch. The monuments exhibit the Apis with the sun's disk and the royal serpent between his horns, and Greek papyri tell us that the keeper with whom the Apis was placed was known as the "Herdman of Osorapi," i. e. of Osiris-Apis (Osarhapi).99 We may assume that this Osorapi was the Serapis or Sarapis of the Greeks, and the temple of Serapis a temple of Osorapi. The sphinxes buried in sand at Memphis have been discovered on the plateau on which the inhabitants buried their dead to the west of the ruins of this city. They are found here in two rows as often before the entrance of temples between Abusir and Sakkarah. It is by following this path of sphinxes that the discoverers were recently enabled to find the ruins of the temple of Serapis, i. e. the temple of the grave of Osiris-Apis, and the sepulchral chambers of the Apis-bulls hewn in the rocks around it. The oldest of the tombs hitherto opened belongs, according to the inscriptions, to an Apis buried in the time of Amenophis III. (1524-1488 B.C.). Above ground rises a massive structure, truncated at the top, and decorated with reliefs. This is the mortuary chapel. A sloping passage, the entrance to which lies before this structure, leads beneath the earth to a sepulchral chamber, where stands a sarcophagus with the mummy of the Apis. The relief on the structure above exhibits the king bringing a drink-offering to the Apis. Beside the picture of the bull we read, "The living Osiris, the lord of the sky: he is Tum (p. 51): his feathers are upon him: he gives life for evermore." On the sarcophagus of an Apis buried in a similar tomb in the reign of Horus (1455-1443 B.C.), we read: – "Apis-Osiris, the great deity who dwells in Amenti, the ever-living lord." King Ramses II. (1388-1322 B.C.), in the second half of his reign, caused a broad gallery to be excavated under the rock, on both sides of which chambers of about twenty feet high were subsequently cut out as occasion required; in these were placed the remains of the dead Apis-bulls in sarcophagi of basalt or granite. When the gallery of Ramses was no longer sufficient, Psammetichus I. caused a gallery still larger and more beautiful to be excavated, and provided with handsome cells. After Darius had extended this second gallery, the bodies of the bulls were buried in the chambers of it down to the times of the latest Ptolemies. As yet sixty-four tombs in all have been discovered; but of these only four were uninjured. All the rest had been already opened by the Arabs, plundered, and in part destroyed. The inscriptions on the tombs in the galleries give the same representation of the Apis as the older sepulchres. He is "the Osiris again restored to life," the "revived Apis of Ptah," "the living Apis, which is Osiris abiding in Amenti," the "second Ptah." On a sarcophagus we read: – "Here is Osiris Apis, who dwells in Amenti, the great God, the eternal Lord, the ruler for all time." Another inscription remarks "that he had been sought for three months in the valleys of Upper Egypt, and on the islands of Lower Egypt. When found he had been brought to his throne in the temple, to his father Ptah, in such and such a year, on such and such a day. The happy duration of his life had been six-and-twenty years; then the deity had been carried to burial, as he had established himself in the good Amenti in order to unite himself on his eternal throne with the house of centuries." Or, as it is said in another inscription, "the holiness of Apis has been brought to unite himself with the good Amenti."100

By this constantly renewed incarnation in the form of a bull, the emblem of generation, the god of life gave the Egyptians a guarantee for the continuance of his grace, and the perpetuation of their life in this world and the next. Whether other forms of incarnation beside this were ascribed to the god cannot be determined.

At the time when the Nile began to rise, or shortly before it, there appeared in Egypt from year to year a peculiar kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers on the back of the head.101 This was known to the Egyptians as Bennu. This bird, which announced or caused the fertilisation or new life of the land, could not but belong to the god of life. The whole race, or a select specimen, appears in special connection with Osiris, and the temple at Heliopolis. In the oldest portions of the Book of the Dead, which belong to the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen, we find, "I am that great Bennu of On" (Heliopolis); and the commentary adds, "Bennu is Osiris, viz., the Osiris in On."102 The inscriptions say of the great Bennu that "it was self-begotten," that "it caused the divisions of time to arise."103 This production of himself signifies the creative power of Osiris, and the origin of the seasons might well be attributed to the bird which regularly appeared announcing the return of the period of fertilization. With the cultus of the Bennu at Heliopolis is connected the story of the phœnix. Herodotus tells us that he was informed by the inhabitants of Heliopolis that a bird, which, if it resembled the pictures, was gold-coloured and red, and like an eagle in shape and size, came from Arabia to their city once in every 500 years, and buried the corpse of his father in myrrh in the sanctuary of the sun-god.104 From later accounts we learn that the phœnix, on reaching the age of 500 years, prepared a funeral pile of spices, and burned himself upon it; then he recreated himself, and carried the remains of his old body to Heliopolis.105 Tacitus says: "In the consulship of Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius (i. e. in the year 34 A.D.) after a lapse of centuries, the phœnix appeared in Egypt. This bird, which was sacred to the sun, returned after an interval of 500 years, according to the most common accounts; according to others after an interval of 1461 years. The first phœnix appeared in the reign of Sesostris; the second under Amasis; the third in the time of the third Ptolemy; and as there was only a lapse of 250 years between this Ptolemy and the reign of Tiberius, some regarded the last phœnix as a spurious one."106 Ælian remarks: "The Egyptians are not agreed when the 500 years are completed; and the priests were at variance whether the bird would appear then or later, and when he ought to come; but amid their dissensions the bird suddenly appeared at the right time."107 Pliny informs us that the cycle of the great year was connected with the life of this bird, and with his return the stars came again into their old position.108 Horapollo maintains that the phœnix was a symbol of the sun, and signified one who returned after a long time from a far country.109 There is no doubt, therefore, that the alleged appearance of the phœnix signified to the Egyptians the close of an astronomical period. On the monuments the planet Venus is described as the "star of Bennu-Osiris." As the morning star announced the day, the light returning out of darkness, it could easily be appropriated to Osiris, and that period might be connected with the cycles of the planet Venus.110

The selected cats of the sun-god and his daughter, the goddess of Bubastis, the hawk of Horus, the ibis of Thoth, the vulture of Mut, were regarded by the Egyptians with no less veneration than the bulls of Osiris. In a hymn to a male cat, which was kept for Ra at Heliopolis – the hymn is to be found on a memorial pillar of the fourth century B.C. – we read: "Thy head is the head of the sun-god; thy nose is the nose of Thoth, the twice mighty lord of Hermopolis. Thy ears are the ears of Osiris, who hears the voice of all who call upon him; thy mouth is the mouth of the god Tum, the lord of life, he has preserved thee from every stain. Thy heart is the heart of Ptah; he has purified thee from every stain of evil in thy members: thy teeth are the teeth of the god Chunsu (the moon-god). Thy thighs are the thighs of the god Horus, the avenger of his father Osiris, who has retaliated upon Set the mischief he purposed against Osiris."111 Selected crocodiles – and even the crocodile was worshipped, at least in some regions, as in the Thebais and around the lake of Moeris – were to be found at Thebes and Arsinoe. "For both these animals," says Herodotus "(and they are so tame that they allow themselves to be touched), the priests put ornaments of glass and gold in their ears, and bracelets on their fore-feet, and give them the best of food both of meal and from the sacrifices, and attend to them with the utmost care. When they die they are embalmed, and buried in the sacred tombs."112 Strabo, who travelled through Egypt more than four hundred years later than Herodotus, narrates that a sacred crocodile was kept in the lake of Moeris, which was tame to the priests. He was fed with the bread, wine, and flesh brought to him by visitors. "Our host," Strabo continues, "a man of distinction at Arsinoe, who showed us the sacred things of the city, took cakes, roast meat, and a drink mixed with honey, and went with us to the lake. On the shore lay the crocodile; the priests went up to him, two of them opened his jaws; and the third put in first the cakes, then the meat, and last of all he gave him the drink. Then the crocodile ran into the water and swam to the opposite bank. Another stranger came with similar presents: the priests took them, ran round the lake and offered them to the crocodile, when they had found him, in the same manner as before."113 Clement of Alexandria describes the glory of the Egyptian temples, and then continues thus: "The innermost shrine is veiled with a curtain of cloth of gold; when the priest removes the veil you see a cat, a crocodile, or a serpent of the land rolling on a purple coverlet."

According to the account of Herodotus, the dead cats were embalmed in sacred tombs at Bubastis, the hawks at Buto, the ibis at Hermopolis.114 Mummies of cats have been discovered at Thebes and Sheikhassan; mummies of bulls, cows, jackals, dogs, and vultures at Thebes and Sioot; of hawks and ibises at Thebes, Hermopolis, Abydus, and Memphis; of crocodiles at Thebes and Manfalut.115

This reverence for beasts, the excessive regard for the nourishment of the sacred kinds and the preservation of their bodies, the offering of prayers to them, the worship of bulls, birds, and crocodiles as living gods, the royal honours with which these selected examples were buried, would of necessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and culture in the country, had not the Egyptians united a deeper feeling with their worship of animals. In the living and yet typical forms of beasts as contrasted with the deadness of nature, they saw not only creations of the deities, but manifestations of the divine life itself. The consecrated race of animals participated in the nature of the god to whom it belonged, and the specimens in the temples were an unbroken series of incarnations of the deity.

In a different sense from the sacred animals, man also was in the eyes of the Egyptians a manifestation of the divine life and nature. If we set aside the position of the kings (see below), we find no indication that man was regarded as the incarnation of particular deities or their attributes. Yet man had a share in the immortality of the gods; and he who studied and desired the divine was thought by his bodily death to arrive at a complete divine existence. The primary result of this feeling was that the body must be preserved as the vehicle of personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man. Beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool, secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. No nation has devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses, whether of men or of sacred animals, as the Egyptians. It was almost the first duty of the living to attend to the dead. And with his body must be preserved all that the deceased person had done or acquired in life: his occupation, his actions must live on in the grave, like his corpse. Pictures in his tomb must represent his life, and inscriptions must give an account of it. "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, "speak of the dwellings of the living as a lodging; but of the tombs of the dead as eternal habitations, because the dead pass an endless time in Hades. Hence they bestow less toil upon their houses; but their tombs they furnish in a most extraordinary manner."116

The tombs are always turned towards the west, and are deeply hollowed out in soil, or hewn in the rocks of the Libyan mountains. Those of the wealthier sort generally consist of two chambers, an upper and a lower, or a front and a back one. The upper or front chamber is furnished with a description of the life of the dead person, his possessions, his office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life exhibited in relief and pictures. It served as a chapel in which the offerings to the dead were made. In the lower or hinder chamber lay the corpse. The corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place in the common sepulchres. The preservation of the corpse was accomplished in various ways. Either the entrails were taken out through an aperture and placed in separate vessels, or the corpse was protected against corruption by the injection of various substances; or finally it was allowed to lie for a considerable time in saltpetre.

Like the embalmment and the tomb, the cerements and the coffin were more or less costly, according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. The dead person was placed in a receptacle adapted to the shape of the corpse, provided with a mask to represent his face, and adorned with inscriptions and pictures. On the breast was generally depicted the beetle of Ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of Osiris. This receptacle was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which were made of more or less costly wood. Rich persons added to their coffins the stone sarcophagus, a hollow block of granite, the heavy lid of which was then made so fast to the lower part that it could not be opened without destroying the whole.