Mysteria

1. INTRODUCTION.

In all ages mystery has had a special attraction for mankind. Curiosity is innate in us. The child asks about everything, What is this, what is it for, why is it made so, or so? The child fairly harries its parents with questions, never wearies of raising new ones, often so unexpected and so difficult, that it would puzzle the wisest philosopher to answer them. And this instinct of inquiry is dominant in the adult, too. The grown man wants to know what is to be found behind every curtain, every locked door, in every sealed letter. And when sated with such trifles he must push inquiry further, into the infinite; must lift the veil that hides the wondrous image at Sais; must pluck from the forbidden tree of knowledge the tempting golden fruit. He would with the Titans storm heaven, and ascend to heights “where stirs no breath of air, where stands the boundary-stone of creation.” At last when Faust, after manifold crosses and disappointments, sees that “we can know nothing,” the thought “consumes the heart within him.”

And so we must ever be worried by the reflection that the great riddle of existence will not be solved; nay, never can be solved. Why, we ask, why does anything exist at all? and what does exist, whence comes it, and whither does it go? And though oceans of ink were written on worlds of paper to define the relation between the Here and Beyond, we should not know, after it all, the lot of the thought-endowed tenant of the narrowest human brain-case after its term of living is reached. Never shall we be able to comprehend Being as having a beginning and an end, but neither shall we ever understand how, without beginning or end, it may endure for ever, and extend limitless ever farther and farther into the shoreless ocean of the All. The thinker must by force refrain himself from such inference, lest his brain should be seized by delirium; and the progressive man of action turns to what is sure and clear and understandable, while the listless disciple of Buddha, despairing of ever comprehending existence, longs for nirvana, the soul’s state of everlasting rest and freedom from cares.

Mankind, then, is encompassed by a vast mystery which never has been discovered, though it presses upon us with force all around, and though we know it exists and are conscious that it attends us at every step we take. But man is too proud to endure the thought that anything is beyond his powers: man must in all things do what the primordial creative power does. The Eternal Incomprehensible created worlds that no mortal eye can see: man with the help of glasses sees them. The Eternal set worlds circling around worlds in such wise that for long we mortals were led into error, and took the earth to be the centre of the universe: but men made calculations and measurements, and discovered that their giant sphere was but a grain of sand among colossal worlds. The Eternal caused mountains to rise and rivers to flow, man, too, piled up mountains and scooped out river-beds and seas. Immense oceans separated the continents: man navigated the oceans and discovered shores never seen before. The lightning, issuing from the clouds, rends asunder great trees that have stood for centuries: man imitates the lightning, and employs the electric current for sending messages across continents and oceans, and for illumination. Steam, vapor of water, he harnesses to his car, or employs it to propel ships across the seas. He takes the sun’s rays and makes of them a limner’s pencil. Even the Eternal himself man fashions after his own thoughts, and gives to him a name and attributes, a throne and a court, a form, and even a son. And lest he should in any point fail of acting like the Unsearchable, man sets over against the grand everlasting mystery of creation and eternity, which he cannot comprehend, other mysteries of his own invention—the mystery of the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Redemption, the Trinity, and the rest; and requires his fellow men to acknowledge and reverence these things as mysteries, and to worship as truth what man’s own self-conceit has devised in rivalry with the Eternal.

Thus are mysteries of man’s invention propagated from generation to generation. The love of mystery is contagious; the one who hears of mysteries will himself invent more, and with them impose upon others. And the Initiates shut themselves up in secret chambers, swear fearful oaths never to betray to anyone what others know already, employ emblems which they interpret in one sense or another, speak in language peculiar to themselves, exchange special signs with one another, whisper to each other mysterious words, admit persons to their secret associations with direful or with harmless tests and rites, and form aristocracies of intellect, of creed, or of benevolence, of art or of science, even of humor and of folly. Such is the origin of mystic teachings and secret societies, the teachings designed to hold the societies together, and the societies to propagate the teachings: one hand washes the other. In all ages, among all races we find these mysteries existing under the most various forms, and for ends the most diverse, but they all have this in common that they shut out the profane (outsiders), and that their end is to win and hold power and influence. But they have also had secondary aims such as could be attained without secret doctrines or secret association; and these aims have been of all kinds. Now the purpose may be to promote social freedom and religious or scientific enlightenment, anon to repress these; again, it may be to enrich the members, or, on the other hand, to stimulate them to self-sacrificing charity; or a society will have for its object the Beautiful, and will create works of art to glorify the Eternal, but another society will despise whatever is ideal, professing contempt for the world and themselves; or the aim may be nothing short of the destruction of all human society and a return to Chaos.

A variegated picture and full of life! At the head of the moving procession stalk priests in long robes, begarlanded, carrying the sacred image of Isis or chanting hymns to the Eleusinian Demeter. Then come the wild-eyed troops of the Bacchantes, and in sharp contrast to these, philosophers of the Pythagorean League, in white cloaks, looking down on the populace with a smile of mild scorn; after these the unpretending Essenes, who shoulder the cross of suffering, the Roman brotherhoods (collegia), and then the English and German gilds of stonemasons, with hammer, compass, and square; the Knights Templar, in white cloaks blazoned with the red cross, their haughty mien betraying contempt of all authority; the Fathers of the Company of Jesus, in black cassock and four-cornered hat, eyes sanctimoniously downcast, every man of them a corpse in the hands of his superiors; then come seigneurs and scholars and men of every condition, in white aprons and blue ribbons, and last of all an indistinguishable multitude of variously-clad figures. Let us contemplate the several groups of this picture. First, the priests of the so-called heathen religions of antiquity. Here we have men using a twofold manner of speech. To the people they gave out a teaching different from that communicated to the Initiates of their secret associations, their mysteries. How came that about, how is it accounted for, and how can it be justified?

2. THE GODS.

To answer these questions we must study the origin of religious ideas and the forms they assumed in different periods. Here we meet a phase of thought which stands related to the vain attempts to fathom the Eternal, to scrutinize the Unsearchable, and which, therefore, is necessarily connected with the earliest expression of man’s love of the mysterious.

In the dim ages before the dawn of civilization, when the cave-dweller, or the lake-dweller, had completed his day’s work, and his children were in safety for the night, and their hunger stilled, then, in the glad consciousness of duty discharged, he would rise above mere sense, and would contemplate his surroundings with greater attention than would be possible amid his hard labors as breadwinner. Then, surely, what most profoundly impressed his imagination was the blue vault of the sky across which by day the sun, source of light and warmth, or of blazing and scorching heat, and at night the mild-faced moon, diffusing her witching beams, and the innumerable twinkling stars glided in strange unalterable series. Beneath the arch lay extended the surrounding country, and the man gazed on the diversified panorama of snow-decked alp, roaring cataract, mirror-like lake, and verdant daisy-gemmed prairie. Or he contemplated the tossing billows of the sea, the dread phenomena of the thunder clap and the lightning flash, the ravages of the hurricane, the crash of mountains rent by internal forces, the pitiless, headlong sweep of the river that has overflowed the plain.

These manifestations of the forces of nature, whether winsome or fearsome, impressed the man; and acknowledging his nothingness and impotence he prostrated himself before them and worshiped them. But in worshiping the forces of nature, he must needs think of them as a personality; and the process of personification necessarily began with the phenomena which possess the most pronounced individuality, viz., on the earth, rocks, mountains, trees, animals, rivers, lakes; in the sky, the sun, moon, and stars; between earth and sky, the clouds, winds, thunder, and lightning; finally, fire, the production of which was the first step in human culture.

The further observation of nature led man from particular to general concepts: those were formed more easily, these were hard to compass, and to understand their import required a greater power of reflection. Mythology had its origin in the simple worship of nature, and in this wise.

In the mind of the man who knows nothing of the true relations of the heavenly bodies, all existence must be divided into two principal categories, heaven overhead, earth underfoot. Heaven and Earth—that is the beginning of all mythologies and cosmogonies. Heaven and Earth are for the Israelite the first works of the Eternal; for the Chinese they are “father and mother of all things”; for the Hellenes and the Teutons the first divine beings (Uranos and Gaea, Wodan and Ertha). As men further considered the question how this whole scene of nature, both in its grateful and in its terrible aspects, came to be, Heaven and Earth were regarded as sexed beings, Heaven as fructifying, noble, lofty, male, controlling the lightning and thunder; Earth as prolific, conceptive, passive, female. Heaven and Earth formed a union, and Sun, Moon, and Stars were reputed their children. Among the heavenly bodies the first place is held by the Sun, god of day, who, at his rising in the East by magic power compels his brother and sister deities to obey him: he reigns alone in a sea of light and splendor. Sister and consort of the Sun is the Moon, and the course of these two across the heavens, their rising and their setting, their shining and their obscuration are the source of endless fanciful myths: in these myths, however, there are frequent transformations, the same hero being now the Sun, again Heaven, and the same heroine being now the Moon, anon the Earth. And phantasy discovered in Sun and Moon so many diverse properties that it separated these from one another, and by degrees formed out of them distinct personalities. The Sun, rising out of the ocean and again sinking into it, became Poseidon (Neptune), and the invisible Sun that through the night tarries in the underworld became god of the world of shades, Pluto; and so with other phenomena of the sun. The Moon, too, in her different forms of waxing, full, and waning moon, rising and setting moon, gives rise to groups of three or four sisters (Graces, Fates, Furies), and to many other forms of goddesses, and these are sad, austere, chaste, or alluring, winsome, complaisant; or the Moon assumes the form of some fair daughter of man, who, being loved by some god, becomes mother of gods and heroes. Hence god-descended races and dynasties, whose fortunes and wars are the subject of epics, tragedies, and romances, and the innumerable host of the stars, in the fanciful shapes in which imagination grouped them, afforded inexhaustible material for story and myth. Here was seen a herd faithfully guarded by the herdsman, there a chase conducted by bold hunters, or a company of daring mariners going to win the golden fleece, or the golden apples of the Hesperides, or the thousand eyes of the watchful Argus. On the mantle of the goddess of night phantasy saw pictured Aries, Taurus, Capricornus, Capella, Ursus Major, Orion, Bootes, Draco, Hercules, and all the other figures of the endless web of poesy in which are told the wondrous deeds of gods and heroes.

Such is the light in which mythology appeared when, in the beginnings of scientific inquiry, the forces of nature were personified. As centuries passed the true sense of these myths, transmitted from father to son, was lost, and the whole was taken to be actual fact. But the master minds discerned the true state of the case, and soon regained the real meanings. Such men as Aristotle, Plutarch, and others often told in their writings what they thought regarding the traditions, but not so the wily priests within the walls of the temples. Their secret doctrines doubtless conveyed a more or less rationalistic interpretation of the myths and a purer theology, though it must be admitted that, in order to guard the mysteries of the secret associations, and to save the priesthood from becoming superfluous, this teaching was tricked out in mysticism, symbolism and allegory; and above all that it was accompanied by certain dramatic representations and certain moralizing ceremonies.

The countries of antiquity whereof we know with certainty that they possessed “mysteries,” i. e., secret associations under priestly guidance, are Egypt, Chaldaea, and Greece.

3. EGYPT.

As the sources of the Nile were undiscovered till a very recent date, so do the sources of Egyptian civilization remain hidden still. We know fairly well how the population of Egypt was made up. It consisted of an aboriginal stock, whose physical characters, as given in writings or in sculptures, show that it was of negro origin, and of a conquering people belonging to the same race as the inhabitants of Europe in high antiquity: this race invaded the Nile land probably from Asia, made themselves masters of it, and in time mingled with the aborigines. The great moving cause of Egyptian civilization was always the Nile, called in Egypt Hapi; for the Nile was the essential factor, by the annual overflow of its fertilizing waters in Summer and Autumn, in determining the conformation of the land, the climate, the seasons, and, consequently, the manners and usages of the inhabitants. Hence in the language of the natives, Egypt was called Kemt, the dark land, because of the rich deposits of loam left after the floods of the Nile.

But this name attached only to the Nile valley, bounded on the East and West by stony deserts, which the Egyptians did not reckon as belonging to their country. The Semites called the land Misr, or Misraim; the Greeks gave first to the river, then to the region, the name Egypt (on what grounds we know not), and finally to the river the name Neilos. It has ever been a land of enigmas, this Nileland. Whence comes its river? Why does it overflow the country in Summer and Autumn? Why those mighty pyramids? What were the doings in those temples, planted so close together? What mean those strange characters, the hieroglyphs? Why do the gods wear heads of animals, and why, on the other hand, have the sphinxes a human head on a lion’s body?

In order to exercise undisputed mastery over the country the conquerors divided among themselves all the land and all the authority. They formed two hereditary classes or estates—Priests, who controlled the minds, and Warriors, who controlled the bodies of the conquered people. Of the subject race there were several classes, most probably six, though the accounts we have are mutually contradictory. These classes are: Artists, mechanics, traders, mariners, agriculturists, herdsmen; in the latter class of the swineherds, most despised of all Egyptians, because of the unclean animal which they tended.

Now, while the warrior class had the management of military affairs and the executive government, and as a rule supplied the occupants of the throne, the priests possessed the legal lore and the scientific knowledge, and prescribed to the people what they must believe, while among themselves and in the company of Initiates they thought very differently.

The Egyptian religion has its foundation in astronomy. The regular overflow of the Nile, which involved a precise division of the year into seasons, must at an early period have led to a diligent observation of the course of the stars, in order to make timely preparation for the floods; and the splendor of the starry sky in that region, near the tropics, where hardly a single constellation is out of sight through the whole year, favored the study of astronomic science. The Egyptians contemplated the glories of the heavens, not with the stolidity of the Chinese, who therein see only objects to be counted and measured; nor yet with the idealist imagination of Europeans. Hence their personifications of the world of stars are uncouth, confused, without grace or charm.

The heavenly body that for us is mightiest of all, the sun, must have been for the Egyptians the most ancient and the mightiest of gods. Their sun-god was named Re. But even as among the Hellenes, so in Egypt the several attributes of the sun were assigned to different personalities. Thus, the rising sun, as the youthful warrior-god Horos, was early distinguished from Re; over against Horos stood his opposite and his twin-brother, Set, spirit of darkness. For mothers the sun-god had Isis, Hathor, and Neit, goddesses of heaven. To these deities were added Aah, the moon-god, and the gods of the several stars and constellations. Besides these gods of the whole land, particular places and regions had their own gods; thus Ptah was lord and god of Memphis, Amon of Thebes, and so on.

Very often certain worshipful objects, as trees and animals inhabited by spirits, were developed into local deities. In this way the fetichism of the black aboriginal people got entry into the more cultured religion of the light-complexioned conquerors, and had a very powerful influence on it. Few were the indigenous animals that were not worshiped in one place or in many as the wrappages of deities. That worship was paid to animals not for their own sake, is best seen from the way in which the gods are portrayed, namely, for the most part with a human body and the head of the animal sacred to them, though in some cases entirely in human form. Thus Amon, god of Thebes, has the head of a ram, Hathor of Anut the head of a cow, Anubis that of a jackal, Bast that of a cat, Sechet of a lioness, Sebak of a crocodile, and so on. And inasmuch as it was believed that gods dwelt in them, such animals were themselves made objects of worship; for example, the ox Hapi (Gr. Apis) at Memphis, the goat at Mendes, and so forth. This honor belonged to the entire species, and as representing the species, certain individual animals were maintained in the temples by the contributions of the faithful, and had servitors to wait upon them. Any harm done to these fetiches was sternly punished: to kill one of them was death. Not so when a god did not grant the prayers of the faithful, e.g., for rain: in that case the priests made the fetich pay the penalty. First, they threatened the animal, but when menaces were vain, they killed the sacred beast, though in secret; the people must not know of it.

4. THE HIGHER DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

As Egypt advanced in civilization and the government became more concentrated, the local deities and zoolatry were less regarded, while the light-gods, the sun-gods, Re and Horos, with their associate deities, became more prominent. The lives and fortunes of these light-gods, and in particular their wars with the powers of darkness, became the subject of myths. The inhabitants of the Nile valley imagined to themselves the sun’s course not as the progress of a chariot like that in which the Mithra of the Persians and the Helios of the Greeks were borne, but as the voyage of a Nile bark on which Re navigates the ocean of the heavens. In the battle with dark Set he falls and drops into the netherworld in the West, but the youthful Horos, sun-god of the coming day, takes his place and begins his career across the sky. This ever-rejuvenescent sun-god, who through all transformations remained still the same deity, so that the self-same goddess was now his mother, anon his consort, was so truly the supreme god, nay, the sole god of Egypt, that his hieroglyph, the sparrowhawk, came to be the sign of the idea “god,” and in writing that sign was attached to the names of gods to indicate that they were such. On the other hand, the names of the mothers and consorts of the sun-gods had appended to them the sign for a cow.

From this it is seen that the religion of Nileland—that is to say, the religion of the priests—was slowly progressing toward monotheism. Unlike the beliefs of the commonalty, the secret teachings or mysteries of the priests, as gradually developed, regarded not simply the existence of the gods, but, above all, what the gods stood for. For a while this development halted at the sun-god, and reached its first stage in the city Anu (in lower Egypt), called by the Greeks Heliopolis (city of the sun), where they incorporated the god of the place, Tum, in the sun-god Re. This took place under the fourth dynasty, whose monarchs built the great pyramids of Ghizeh at Memphis. But one of the greatest of these transformations was in giving the name of Osiris, god of the city Abdu (Gr. Abydos) in upper Egypt, to the god of the sunset, ruler of the netherworld and of the kingdom of death. Isis became his sister and consort, Set at once his brother and his slayer, Horos his son, who, as a new sun, takes his place after sunset, and also his avenger on Set. Horos gives Set battle, but as he cannot destroy him utterly, leaves to him the desert as a kingdom, while Horos himself holds the Nile valley. This story of gods was represented scenically on public holidays, but only the Initiated, i. e., the priests and their followers who had been let into the secret, knew the meaning of the representation. Even the name of Osiris and his abode in the realm of the dead were kept secret, and outsiders heard only of the “great god” dwelling in “the West.” Besides the mysteries of Osiris, the most famous of all, there were other mysteries of local Egyptian gods transformed into sun-gods; and so the sun mythos was further developed. Thus Thot, god of Hermopolis, whose sacred animal was the bird Ibis, became Horos’s auxiliary in the war with Set, and also became the moon-god, the god of chronometry and of order, inventor of writing, revealer of the sacred books. Memphis alone, capital of the ancient kingdom, held her god Ptah too exalted a being to share in the transformation of the rest; for Ptah was regarded by his worshipers as father of all gods, creator of the world and of men, and more ancient than Re; besides, he was the god of the royal court. Nevertheless, he did not escape the fate of becoming a sun-god. The most celebrated object of Egyptian zoolatry was sacred to Ptah, namely, Apis (Hapi), the sacred bull of Memphis, symbol of the sun and also of the fructifying Nile. This bull must be black with a white spot on the forehead, and with a growth under the tongue having the form of the sacred beetle. The bull was kept in the temple at Memphis from calfhood till death; the body was then mummified, laid out in state, and honored with inscriptions as a god. The behavior of Apis in various conjunctures and circumstances was reputed to be oracular.

Another form of the sun-god was the Sphinx, a half-human, half-brute figure in stone, repeated a thousand times in the Nile valley. The most famous sphinx of all is seen at the great pyramids of Ghizeh. Regular avenues flanked by sphinxes formed the approaches of the great temples. In Egypt the sphinx was thought of as male; the head was that of some king, and the whole figure represented the sun-god Harmachis, a name compounded of Re and Horos (Ra-Harmchuti). In later times the sphinx was introduced in Asia and Greece; the Grecian sphinx is always female.

When the local deities of Egypt were reduced to system, Re was still supreme, but now Re had a father, Nunu, god of Chaos, source of all being—clearly a product of priestly meditation, quite alien to the popular mind. Re was the first divine ruler of the earth. The stars were his companions. He was succeeded by his son Shu (represented with a lion’s head), god of air, who made the props that sustain the sky. Shu was followed by the god Keb and the goddess Nut, parents of Osiris and Isis, who then became the earth’s rulers. To them, after Set’s usurpation, succeeded Horos the avenger and the goddess Hathor. A second class comprises the inferior gods, as Thot, Anubis, etc.; and in a third class are the local deities. The number of gods and of daemons subordinate to them was enormous. But in their gods the Egyptians looked not at all for the perfection of goodness, nor did they regard right behavior as essential for gaining heavenly favor; they rather looked on the practices of religion frankly as a means of advancing their individual interests with the gods.

Now, the greater the number of gods the less was the difference between them, and the easier became the transition to the belief in the sun-god as supreme and only true deity—a belief entertained by the priesthood, not by the people. Re became for the priests the one god, creator of the universe; and this was due to the fact that the priests of the foremost cities, following the example of those of Heliopolis, praised the local god as supreme over all, and at the same time made him identical with Re, whose name was appended to the original name, thus, Tum-Re, Amon-Re. When Thebes became the capital of the kingdom its god Amon naturally took the foremost place, and while Thebes flourished, in the beginning of the so-called new empire, it was known to all Initiates that the sun-god was the one true god, self-created, sole object of the worship paid to the innumerable host of other gods. Nay, the evil deity Set came to pass for a form of Re, and was allowed a place in the Sun’s bark. Self-creation was also attributed to the moon-god. The king, as lord of the whole country, prayed in identical words in every place to the local deity as lord of heaven and earth.

5. A REFORMATION IN THE LAND OF NILE.

But now the secret doctrine of the priests was to be published to the people. The pharao Amenhotep IV., of the 18th dynasty (about 1460 B. C.), saw in the power of the priesthood a menace to the dignity of the crown. He therefore proclaimed as the sole god the sun, not under any human form, as had been the custom, but in its own proper shape of a disk (in Egyptian, aten), as had been the usage at Heliopolis. Amenhotep ordered all images of other gods associated with the sun to be destroyed, assumed for himself the name Chuenaten, “Splendor of the Sundisk,” quit Thebes, and built in middle Egypt, east of the Nile, a new royal seat, Chutaten, “abode of the Sundisk.” The priests of the deposed gods in Thebes and in certain other cities (not in all) lost their places, and the great estates of the priestly corporations were confiscated. Of course the court officers and civil functionaries loyally followed the example of their master; but only a very small fraction of the priesthood gave up their convictions for the sake of livelihood.

Hardly was Chuenaten gathered to his fathers after a reign of twelve years, when his reform was undone. His sons-in-law, who succeeded him, returned step by step to the religion of Amon, and again fixed the royal seat at Thebes; nevertheless, they were held to be heretics by the priests, now reinstated in their ancient power. The temples erected to the Sundisk were leveled with the ground, the half-completed city of the sun was obliterated, the confiscation of the estates of priestly corporations reversed, and the temples, images, and priesthood of Amon reinstated. The intellectual life of Egypt was thenceforth paralyzed, and the ancient mystic teachings of the priests were never again disturbed by any wave of movement or progress. The people went back to stupid formalism, and sank even deeper into daemonism and sorcery. To draw them away from the true god the priests taught them to worship deceased kings and queens, at the same time amusing them with gorgeous sacrifices, processions, and festivals. The distance separating the priesthood from the people—and the Pharaos were, though not of the priestly class, reckoned as compeers of the priests—was signalized by the temples with their various compartments in the inmost of which, the holy of holies (adyton), were guarded the mysteries of the priests, while the people were admitted only to the temple proper and its forecourt. In all probability the famed Labyrinth near Lake Moeris, at Crocodilopolis, was designed for priestly ends. The labyrinth was an underground maze of chambers. Herodotus tells that there were 1,500 chambers above ground and as many under the surface, and that the underground chambers were not shown to the profane, for they contained the remains of Pharaos and of sacred crocodiles. Not Herodotus only, but Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny celebrate the glory of this vast palace, in whose hidden compartments, no doubt, fit quarters were found for the mysteries.

6. THE EGYPTIAN REALM OF THE DEAD

Finally, the secret teaching of the priests played a part in the people’s ideas regarding death and the other life. According to the Egyptian teaching, man is made up of three constituent parts, viz., besides the body, the soul (ba), conceived to be of purely material essence, which at death quitted the body in the form of a bird; and the immaterial spirit (ka), which held to the man the same relation a god held to the animal in which he dwelt: at death the spirit departed from the body like the image of a dream. The gods, too, had their ka and their ba. The continued existence of both soul and spirit was contingent on the care the corpse received; if the ka and the ba were to live on, the body must be embalmed and laid in a chamber hollowed in a rock, or in a sepulchral edifice (of such buildings the pyramids were the most notable), and the relatives must supply to the dead meat and drink and clothing. The spirit of the deceased went to Osiris, lord of the other world—a luxuriant plain (Aaru) in the West, where the earth’s products required no toil, but grew spontaneous. By means of the magic formula with which Horos recalled to life the slain Osiris, the dead is not only in like manner revivified, but is even made one with Osiris; and hence in the formulas of funeral service which constitute the so-called “Book of the Dead,” the deceased is addressed as Osiris with addition of his own name. Therefore, he may now sail in the sun-bark, and lead a glorious life in the other world, and walk amid the stars like other gods. The pictures on the walls of the sepulchral chambers show that the Egyptians conceived the other life to be much like the present, only pleasanter and fuller. The deceased is portrayed surrounded by such enjoyments as were attainable in Nileland—banquets, property, the chase, voyaging, music, and the like. But from the texts of the “Book of the Dead,” which used to be laid with the dead in the sepulchre, we see that these representations had a more spiritual import in the “middle” than in the “old” empire. In these texts the deceased himself speaks, identifying himself with some god, or with one god after another; no longer with Osiris only, for according to the developed teaching of that time all the gods are one god. The route of the dead toward the other world is the sun’s track from East to West; but on his journey he needs the help of the sorcerer’s art against the host of daemons and monsters that threaten him. Arrived there, he acquires the power of revisiting the earth at will in the form of god, man, or animal, or even, should he so choose, in his own former body. At this period puppets made of wood or of clay, and sundry tools and utensils, were laid in the grave with the dead for their service. Under the “new empire” the representations of the other life and of the way thither are more detailed and more fanciful. Here, too, we find representations of the famous “judgment of the dead,” an event belonging to the life beyond, and not, as the Greeks mistakenly supposed, to the present state and to the time immediately before burial. Osiris presides over the tribunal with two-and-forty assessors, in whose presence the newcomer has to prove himself guiltless of any one of two-and-forty sins, thus, for example: “Never have I done an injustice, never have I stolen, never have I craftily compassed the death of any man, never have I killed any sacred animal,” etc. Yet all this was rather a magic formula for attaining blessedness according to Egyptian notions than a truthful protestation of guiltlessness in order to establish the postulant’s moral purity. Nevertheless, in a picture of the Judgment of the Dead in the “Book of the Dead” the deceased is brought by the goddess of truth and righteousness (Ma) into the palace of Osiris, and his sins and his good deeds are weighed in a balance. The hippopotamus is present as accuser and the god Thot as defender.

7. THE SECRET TEACHING OF THE PRIESTS OF NILELAND.

Though from the foregoing we get a general notion of the relation between the priests and the people, still we are not clear as to the nature of the secret teaching and the mode of its organization. Here we have to depend almost entirely on the accounts given by Greek writers, not always trustworthy, and on conjecture or inference.

Unquestionably the secret doctrine necessitated a species of secret society which presumably consisted of the higher orders of priests, and which comprised subdivisions only loosely held together. It is stated positively that the pharao for the time being was always admitted to membership. Hence the king was the only Egyptian outside of the priestly order that was acquainted with the secret doctrine, and thus was all danger of betrayal at home most effectually averted. But as the priests had less to fear in this regard from foreigners, because foreigners went away again; and as in the indoctrination of foreigners the priests saw an opportunity for cultivating their own reputation for erudition, therefore they often willingly admitted to initiation men of distinction from abroad, and especially Greeks. Among the fabulous personages who were believed to have been impelled by thirst for knowledge to visit Egypt, there to learn the secret wisdom of the priests, were the bards Orpheus, Musaeus, and Homer; among the historic characters were the lawgivers Lycurgus and Solon, the historian Herodotus, the philosophers Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Democritus, the mathematician Archimedes, and very many more.

But it was not always easy for these to lift the veil that hid the mysteries. Pythagoras, for example, though recommended by King Aahmes (Amasis), applied in vain to the priests of Heliopolis and Memphis, and only after he had submitted to the circumcision prescribed for postulants did he receive from the priests of Diospolis instruction in their recondite sciences.

In the form of admission to this secret doctrine were long and tedious but significant ceremonies, and the Initiates had at certain intervals to ascend a number of degrees, or stages of knowledge, till they mastered the sum of the wisdom taught by the priests. But with regard to the mode of this progression and the difference between the degrees we have unfortunately no reliable testimony.

Of the contents of the Egyptian secret teaching we know little more than we do of its forms, for all Initiates were pledged to strictest silence regarding the subject matter of instruction. Yet we are not without scattered hints from competent authorities, and in the light of these we cannot go seriously astray. According to the Greek historian Diodorus, who lived in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, and who had himself been initiated in Egypt, Orpheus, or rather the Orphic mystae named after him, owed the Grecian mysteries to the priests of Egypt; and to the same source were Lycurgus and Solon beholden for their legislation, Pythagoras and Plato for their philosophical systems, and Pythagoras furthermore for his mathematical knowledge, and Democritus for his astronomical doctrine. Now, as for the exact sciences here mentioned, the Egyptian secret teaching could not have comprised anything thereanent which was not attainable by anybody with the scientific helps of the time; nor anything in the way of astronomic knowledge not relating to the calculation of time; and if with regard to this knowledge nothing fundamental was taught to the people, then that was a base huckstering of mysteries and not a secret teaching. As for legislation, the systems of Lycurgus and Solon differ so much from each other, and are so pronouncedly Spartan and Athenian, respectively, in spirit, that from them we cannot infer what the teaching was in that department. The probability is that the two Grecian lawgivers merely used the Egyptian laws as a basis, and for the rest adapted their ideas to the needs of their respective countries. Nor is it to be assumed that because the Egyptian priests were also judges, therefore their ideas on legislation, which assuredly they must have applied freely and above board, belonged to their mysteries.

From the hieroglyphic remains, however, it appears that there existed in Egypt high-grade schools conducted by the priests, and hence we may infer that in these institutions the Greek searchers after knowledge obtained instruction in lawgiving and in the exact sciences of the Egyptians.

It is true that the hieroglyphs, a species of Egyptian writing which consisted of figures of actual objects, were known only to the priests; but in early times that was so only because the rest of the people could not read and write. Afterward there was a special popular form of writing (demotic) derived from the hieroglyphs and resembling an earlier abbreviated form of hieroglyphic writing, the hieratic or writing of the priests.

It is different with philosophical and religious speculation, in which positive, unimpeachable conclusions such as may be had in the exact sciences, are out of the question, and which has no practical application as in jurisprudence and diplomatics; which, in fact, gives play rather to hypothesis and arbitrary opinion, to mysticism and symbolism. This, therefore, was the subject matter of the teaching conveyed to Initiates in the Egyptian mysteries, but for good reasons then withheld from the vulgar, because here the very existence of the priestly class was at stake: the priesthood would lose all its importance once the people were aware that the priests had no regard for the received religion.

Hence there is no doubt that the secret doctrine of the Egyptian priests was at once philosophic and religious; that is, that it tested the traditional belief, analyzed it, and accepted what it found to be reasonable and rejected what appeared irrational; and it was sharply distinguished from the popular belief, which took tradition for absolute and indubitable truth.

What, then, were the principles underlying the philosophic religion of the Egyptian priests? Putting aside all arbitrary and fine-drawn theories, we infer from various clear indications that it was of a monotheistic character, i. e., that it postulated one personal god, and that it rejected polytheism and zoolatry, as well as the materialistic conceptions of the popular creed with regard to what takes place after death. Indeed, we hold it not improbable that the secret doctrine was often more radical than the views of the royal reformer Amenhotep IV., or Chuenaten, and that, unlike him, the priests believed the true god to be, not a material thing, the sun’s disk, but the unseen creator himself, called by them Nunu, father of Re, and source of all things. Thus we find in the “Book of the Dead” and in later writings mention of a “demiurge (or architect) of the universe,” to whom no special divine name is given. Plutarch, too, in his ingenious work, “Of Isis and Osiris” (cc. 67, 68), says: “The godhead is not any mindless or soulless creature subject to man,” an allusion to zoolatry; and again: “There is only one rational being that orders all things, but one ruling providence, and subordinate powers which are set over the several things and which in different nations receive through traditional usage, distinctive worship and distinctive appellations. And hence Initiates employ now symbols obscure, anon more obvious, whereby they guide the understanding to the divine being, yet not without danger of falling into the mire of superstition or the abyss of unbelief. Therefore must one take philosophy for his mystagogue (guide to the mysteries), in order to have a true understanding of all the teachings and all the rites of the mysteries.”

The belief in one personal creator having been accepted, the Egyptian mythology was naturally declared erroneous, and its true signification was expounded by the priests to the initiated. That this interpretation of the myths as allegorical accounts of personified natural phenomena was the essential part of the mysteries appears from the testimonies of learned Greeks, some of them Initiates, e. g., Plutarch (“Isis and Osiris,” c. 3) writes: “Not the white vesture and the shaven beard make the servant of Isis: he alone is truly that, who receives due instruction upon the rites and ceremonies used in that divine service, who investigates judiciously, and meditates upon the truth therein contained.” Again (c. 8): “There is in the rites of the Egyptian priests nothing irrational, nothing fabulous or superstitious. Instead of irrationality we find principles and precepts of morality; instead of fable and superstition, authentic history and facts of nature.” And c. 9: “The image of the goddess Neit at Sais, regarded also as the image of Isis, bears this inscription: ‘I am the All that was, that is, that is to be; my veil no mortal has ever raised.’” Finally, c. 11: “When we hear the Egyptian myths of the gods, their wandering about, their dismemberment and sundry other like incidents, we must recall the remarks already made, so as to understand that the stories told are not to be taken literally as recounting actual occurrences.” The more cautious Herodotus (II., 61) agrees with Plutarch, though he expresses himself more enigmatically: “On the festival of Isis in the city of Bubastis, after the sacrifice all, both men and women, thousands of them, beat themselves. But for me to name the one for whose sake they beat themselves were impiety.”

All the traditions and rites of the Egyptian popular religion then were explained in a rationalist sense to the initiated. Many particulars of this explanation have been lost, but what has been lost can hardly have been of any real value for us, and is little to be regretted.

8. BABYLON AND NINIVE.

In the traditions of classic antiquity the secret wisdom of the Egyptian priests was not held in greater esteem than that of their fellow-priests in Chaldaea or Babylonia, the enlightened empire on the lower Tigris and Euphrates, of which Assyria, land of the upper Tigris, was only a colony. Recent research has brought up the question which civilization was the earlier, that of the Nileland or that of Western Asia, in the region of the twin rivers. But as we possess with regard to the Babylonian religion even less information than with regard to the Egyptian, we must be content with a brief account of it.

The Chaldaean religion beyond a doubt had its origin in the country around the lower Tigris and Euphrates among a people of Turanian or Ural-Altaic stock (akin to the Turks), called Sumerians, or Akkadians: its root was Shamanism, a form of religion peculiar to the Turkic races. The most ancient religious writings of this people (among whom cuneiform writing originated) consist in formulas for exorcising evil spirits; these spirits are usually represented as coming from the desert in groups of seven. Over these daemons presided the spirit of the heavens (In-lilla, afterward called Anu, i. e., sky); after Anu greatest reverence was paid to the spirit of the earth (In-kia or Ea), who was afterward spirit of the waters also. From the higher spirits were evolved gods and goddesses innumerable. The most ancient goddess was Ba-u, a name signifying “primordial water,” or chaos. After Ba-u came the “daughter of the heavens,” named at first Anun, later Ninni or Ninna, and afterward Istar.

The Sumerian groundwork of Chaldaean civilization and religion was built upon by a Semitic people, the Babylonians and Assyrians proper, traces of whom are found nearly 4000 years B. C., and whose domination seems established B. C. 2500. The highest god of this race was called simply “God” (in their language Ilu), or “Lord” (Baal). Sun and moon were worshiped as his images. The scene of the life after death was laid in the realm of shades (shualu, in Hebrew Sheol). This religion was blended with that of the Sumerians. The gods Anu and Ilu became one god of the sky, Bel; and Istar became Bel’s wife. Other Sumerian gods were associated with the planets worshiped by the Semites: Marduk with Jupiter, Nindar with Saturn, Nirgal with Mars, Nabu with Mercury, while Istar was specially related to Venus. There was a sort of trinity made up of Samas (sun), Sin (moon), Ramman (god of storms). Similarly, Anu, spirit of the sky, and Ea, spirit of the earth, were placed side by side with Bel. This system was completed about 1,900 B. C., and it remained unchanged in Assyria, save that there the autochthonous god Assur held the first place among the gods.

Among the Babylonians and Assyrians the priests were held in great reverence. In Assyria they stood next after the king, and the king was high priest; in the Babylonian kingdom they occupied a more independent and more influential station. Like the priests of Egypt, they probably had a secret doctrine withheld from the vulgar. From the meanings of the Babylonian deities’ names, as given above, it is easy to infer the nature of this secret doctrine. The Chaldees were throughout all antiquity known as observers of the heavenly bodies. And though probably they were astrologers rather than astronomers, at least they knew enough about the stars, the heavens, and the facts of meteorology to regard them for what they were instead of holding them to be gods. We therefore believe that the Chaldaean priests among themselves looked on the objects which before the people they held to be gods as simply sky, sun, moon, planets, lightning, thunder.

Besides the early cuneiform writings already mentioned (forms of exorcism), there have been found amid the ruins of Babylon great “libraries” of writings on tiles, in the cuneiform characters. Among these are “penitential psalms” and hymns to gods. In the following psalm, deciphered from the tile tablets, a priest, in the name of a penitent sinner, entreats the goddess: