Each month there was a fortnight of youth and of growing splendour, followed by a fortnight's agony and ever-increasing pallor. It was born to die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each of these cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world. One invariable accident from time to time disturbed the routine of its existence. Profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow greedily swallowed it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of fading gradually. These eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much as did those of the sun, were scarcely more than momentary, the gods compelling the monster to cast up the eye before it had been destroyed.

Every evening the lunar bark issued out of Hades by the door which Râ had passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon, the star-lamps scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving light here and there like the camp-fires of a distant army. However many of them there might be, there were as many Indestructibles—Akhîmû Sokû—or Unchanging Ones—Akhîmû Ûrdû—whose charge it was to attend upon them and watch over their maintenance.[**]

They were not scattered at random by the hand which had suspended them, but their distribution had been ordered in accordance with a certain plan, and they were arranged in fixed groups like so many star republics, each being independent of its neighbours. They represented the outlines of bodies of men and animals dimly traced out upon the depths of night, but shining with greater brilliancy in certain important places. The seven stars which we liken to a chariot (Charles's Wain) suggested to the Egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the horizon.[*]

Two lesser stars connected the haunch—Maskhaît—with thirteen others, which recalled the silhouette of a female hippopotamus—Rirît—erect upon her hind legs,[*] and jauntily carrying upon her shoulders a monstrous crocodile whose jaws opened threateningly above her head. Eighteen luminaries of varying size and splendour, forming a group hard by the hippopotamus, indicated the outline of a gigantic lion couchant, with stiffened tail, its head turned to the right, and facing the Haunch.[***]

The Lion is sometimes shown as having a crocodile's tail. According to Biot the Egyptian Lion has nothing in common with the Greek constellation of that name, nor yet with our own, but was composed of smaller stars, belonging to the Greek constellation of the Cup or to the continuation of the Hydra, so that its head, its body, and its tail would follow the [ ] of the Hydra, between the [ ] and [ ] of that constellation, or the [ ] of the Virgin.

Most of the constellations never left the sky: night after night they were to be found almost in the same places, and always shining with the same even light.

Others borne by a slow movement passed annually beyond the limits of sight for months at a time. Five at least of our planets were known from all antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances carefully noted. Sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed Horus. Ùapshetatûi, our Jupiter, Kahiri-(Saturn), Sobkû-(Mercury), steered their barks straight ahead like Iâûhû and Râ; but Mars-Doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. As a star Bonu, the bird (Yenus) had a dual personality; in the evening it was Uati, the lonely star which is the first to rise, often before nightfall; in the morning it became Tiûnûtiri, the god who hails the sun before his rising and proclaims the dawn of day.

Sahû and Sopdît, Orion and Sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious world. Sahû consisted of fifteen stars, seven large and eight small, so arranged as to represent a runner darting through space, while the fairest of them shone above his head, and marked him out from afar to the admiration of mortals.

With his right hand he flourished the crux ansata, and turning his head towards Sothis as he beckoned her on with his left, seemed as though inviting her to follow him. The goddess, standing sceptre in hand, and crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most radiant star, answered the call of Sahû with a gesture, and quietly embarked in pursuit as though in no anxiety to overtake him. Sometimes she is represented as a cow lying down in her bark, with tree stars along her back, and Sirius flaming from between her horns.[*]

Not content to shine by night only, her bluish rays, suddenly darted forth in full daylight and without any warning, often described upon the sky the mystic lines of the triangle which stood for her name. It was then that she produced those curious phenomena of the zodiacal light which other legends attributed to Horus himself. One, and perhaps the most ancient of the innumerable accounts of this god and goddess, represented Sahû as a wild hunter. A world as vast as ours rested upon the other side of the iron firmament; like ours, it was distributed into seas, and continents divided by rivers and canals, but peopled by races unknown to men. Sahû traversed it during the day, surrounded by genii who presided over the lamps forming his constellation. At his appearing "the stars prepared themselves for battle, the heavenly archers rushed forward, the bones of the gods upon the horizon trembled at the sight of him," for it was no common game that he hunted, but the very gods themselves. One attendant secured the prey with a lasso, as bulls are caught in the pastures, while another examined each capture to decide if it were pure and good for food. This being determined, others bound the divine victim, cut its throat, disembowelled it, cut up its carcass, cast the joints into a pot, and superintended their cooking. Sahû did not devour indifferently all that the fortune of the chase might bring him, but classified his game in accordance with his wants. He ate the great gods at his breakfast in the morning, the lesser gods at his dinner towards noon, and the small ones at his supper; the old were rendered more tender by roasting.

As each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his own youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to maintain the perpetual splendour of his light.

The nome gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities, and formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of these natural categories. In vain do they present themselves under the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally discloses the principal features of their original physiognomies. Osiris of the Delta, Khuûmû of the Cataract, Harshâfitû of Heracleopolis, were each of them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining Nile. Wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are more especially installed and worshipped: Khnûmû at the place of its entering into Egypt, and again at the town of Hâûrît, near the point where a great arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards the Libyan hills and form the Bahr-Yûsuf: Harshâfitû at the gorges of the Fayûm, where the Bahr-Yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, Osiris at Mendes and at Busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which was held to be the true Nile by the people of the land. Isis of Bûto denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of Egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*]

But the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky—the earth with its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and fertile lands—was represented as a man: Phtah at Memphis, Amon at Thebes, Mînû at Coptos and at Panopolis. Amon seems rather to have symbolized the productive soil, while Mînû reigned over the desert. But these were fine distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his worshippers often invested Amon with the most significant attributes of Mînû.

The Sky-gods, like the Earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one consisting of women: Hâthor of Denderah, or Nît of Sais; the other composed of men identical with Horus, or derived from him: Anhûri-Shû of Sebennytos and Thinis; Harmerati, Horus of the two eyes, at Pharbaethos; Har-Sapdi, Horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the Wâdy Tumilât; and finally Harhûdîti at Edfû. Râ, the solar disk, was enthroned at Heliopolis, and sun-gods were numerous among the nome deities, but they were sun-gods closely connected with gods representing the sky, and resembled Horus quite as much as Râ. Whether under the name of Horus or of Anhûri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity was as it were fused into that of the Sun. Horus the Sun, and Râ, the Sun-Cod of Heliopolis, had so permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. One by one all the functions of Râ had been usurped by Horus, and all the designations of Horus had been appropriated by Râ. The sun was styled Harmakhûîti, the Horus of the two mountains—that is, the Horus who comes forth from the mountain of the east in the morning, and retires at evening into the mountain of the west;[*] or Hartimâ, Horus the Pikeman, that Horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the celestial river; or Harnûbi, the Golden Horus, the great golden sparrow-hawk with mottled plumage, who puts all other birds to flight; and these titles were indifferently applied to each of the feudal gods who represented the sun.

The latter were numerous. Sometimes, as in the case of Harkhobi, Horus of Khobiû,[*] a geographical qualification was appended to the generic term of Horus, while specific names, almost invariably derived from the parts which they were supposed to play, were borne by others. The sky-god worshipped at Thinis in Upper Egypt, at Zarît and at Sebennytos in Lower Egypt, was called Anhuri. When he assumed the attributes of Râ, and took upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as denoting the conqueror of the sky. He was essentially combative. Crowned with a group of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to strike the foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day.[**] The sun-god who at Medamôfc Taûd and Erment had preceded Amon as ruler of the Theban plain, was also a warrior, and his name of Montû had reference to his method of fighting. He was depicted as brandishing a curved sword and cutting off the heads of his adversaries.[***]

Each of the feudal gods naturally cherished pretensions to universal dominion, and proclaimed himself the suzerain, the father of all the gods, as the local prince was the suzerain, the father of all men; but the effective suzerainty of god or prince really ended where that of his peers ruling over the adjacent nomes began.

The goddesses shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women had in human law.[*] Isis was entitled lady and mistress at Bûto, as Hâthor was at Denderah, and as Nit at Sais, "the firstborn, when as yet there had been no birth." They enjoyed in their cities the same honours as the male gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they queens, and all bowed down before them. The animal gods, whether entirely in the form of beasts, or having human bodies attached to animal heads, shared omnipotence with those in human form. Horus of Hibonû swooped down upon the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk, Hâthor of Denderah was a cow, Bastit of Bubastis was a cat or a tigress, while Nekhabit of El Kab was a great bald-headed vulture.[**] Hermopolis worshipped the ibis and cynocephalus of Thot; Oxyrrhynchus the mor-myrus fish;[***] and Ombos and the Fayûm a crocodile, under the name of Sobkû,[****] sometimes with the epithet of Azaï, the brigand.[v]

We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Græco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siût?[**] How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined their choice.

The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the east, or passed away in the west.

If Râ was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the Nile-gods, Khnûmû, Osiris, Harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving Nile and the overflowing of its waters? It is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the Fayûm or of Ombos. The crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices. When instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. The crocodile is amphibious; and Sobkû was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank.

Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were assigned to them later.[*]

Each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is generally called, a triad. But there were several kinds of triads. In nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom.

Thus, Thot of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of Seshaît-Safk-hîtâbûi and Hahmâûît. Tûmû divided the homage of the inhabitants of Helio-polis with Nebthôtpît and with Iûsasît. Khnûmû seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract—Anûkît the constrainer, who compresses the Nile between its rocks at Philse and at Syene, and Satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight and swift as an arrow.[*] Where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. Nît of Sai's had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a lion's whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.[**]

Hâthor of Denderah had completed her household with Haroêris and a younger Horus, with the epithet of Ahi—he who strikes the sistrum.[*]

A triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and was unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a curse from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to ensure the perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a blessed and prosperous family, as that of gods should be. Triads of the former kind were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new triads, each containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine son. Two fruitful households arose from the barren union of Thot with Safkhîtâbûi and Nahmâûît: one composed of Thot, Safkhîtâbûi, and Harnûbi, the golden sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other Nahmâûît and her nursling Nofirhorû entered.

The persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form triads were not all of the same class. Goddesses, especially, were made to order, and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the linguistic device to which they owe their being. From Râ, Amon, Horus, Sobkû, female Ras, Anions, Horuses, and Sobkûs were derived, by the addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine names—Râît, Amonît, Horît, Sobkît.[*] In the same way, detached cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. Imhotpû, "he who comes in peace," was merely one of the epithets of Phtah before he became incarnate as the third member of the Memphite triad.[**] In other cases, alliances were contracted between divinities of ancient stock, but natives of different nomes, as in the case of Isis of Bûto and the Mendesian Osiris; of Haroêris of Edfu and Hâthor of Denderah.

In the same manner Sokhît of Letopolis and Bastît of Bubastis were appropriated as wives to Phtah of Memphis, Nofirtûmû being represented as his son by both unions.[*] These improvised connections were generally determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of conterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations, and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples.

The system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned unbrokenly up to the last days of Egyptian polytheism, far from in any way lowering the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means of enhancing it in the eyes of the multitude. Powerful lords as the new-comers might be at home, it was only in the strength of an auxiliary title that they could enter a strange city, and then only on condition of submitting to its religious law. Hâthor, supreme at Denderah, shrank into insignificance before Haroêris at Edfû, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.[**]

On the other hand, Haroêris when at Denderah descended from the supreme rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady Hâthor. His name came first in invocations of the triad because of his position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place, Hâthor was none the less the real chief of Denderah and of its divine family.[*] Thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the one who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the triad: in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess.

The son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority. When Isis and Osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant Horus, naked, or simply adorned with necklaces and bracelets; a thick lock of hair depended from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels, or else sitting, nursed him upon her knees, offering him her breast.[*] Even in triads where the son was supposed to have attained to man's estate, he held the lowest place, and there was enjoined upon him the same respectful attitude towards his parents as is observed by children of human race in the presence of theirs. He took the lowest place at all solemn receptions, spoke only with his parents' permission, acted only by their command and as the agent of their will. Occasionally he was vouchsafed a character of his own, and filled a definite position, as at Memphis, where Imhotpû was the patron of science.[**]

But, generally, he was not considered as having either office or marked individuality; his being was but a feeble reflection of his father's, and possessed neither life nor power except as derived from him. Two such contiguous personalities must needs have been confused, and, as a matter of fact, were so confused as to become at length nothing more than two aspects of the same god, who united in his own person degrees of relationship mutually exclusive of each other in a human family. Father, inasmuch as he was the first member of the triad; son, by virtue of being its third member; identical with himself in both capacities, he was at once his own father, his own son, and the husband of his mother.

Gods, like men, might be resolved into at least two elements, soul and body;[*] but in Egypt, the conception of the soul varied in different times and in different schools. It might be an insect—butterfly, bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird—the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane—bi, haï—whose wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black shadow—khaîbît—that is attached to every body, but which death sets free, and which thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it can move about at will, and go out into the open sunlight.

Finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from the surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and coloured projection of the human figure, a double—ka—reproducing in minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom it belonged.[*]

The soul, the shadow, the double of a god, was in no way essentially different from the soul, shadow, or double of a man; his body, indeed, was moulded out of a more rarefied substance, and generally invisible, but endowed with the same qualities, and subject to the same imperfections as ours. The gods, therefore, on the whole, were more ethereal, stronger, more powerful, better fitted to command, to enjoy, and to suffer than ordinary men, but they were still men. They had bones,[**] muscles, flesh, blood; they were hungry and ate, they were thirsty and drank; our passions, griefs, joys, infirmities, were also theirs. The sa, a mysterious fluid, circulated throughout their members, and carried with it health, vigour, and life.

They were not all equally charged with it; some had more, others less, their energy being in proportion to the amount which they contained. The better supplied willingly gave of their superfluity to those who lacked it, and all could readily transmit it to mankind, this transfusion being easily accomplished in the temples. The king, or any ordinary man who wished to be thus impregnated, presented himself before the statue of the god, and squatted at its feet with his back towards it. The statue then placed its right hand upon the nape of his neck, and by making passes, caused the fluid to flow from it, and to accumulate in him as in a receiver. This rite was of temporary efficacy only, and required frequent renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained.