We see only that these were the gods who chiefly protected the sun-god against its enemies and helped it to follow its regular course. Thus Harhûditi, the Horus of Edfû, spear in hand, pursues the hippopotami or serpents which haunt the celestial waters and menace the god. The progress of the Sun-bark is controlled by the incantations of Thot, while Uapûaîtû, the dual jackal-god of Siufc, guides, and occasionally tows it along the sky from south to north. The third Ennead would seem to have included among its members Anubis the jackal, and the four funerary genii, the children of Horus—Hapi, Amsît, Tiûmaûtf, Kabhsonûf; it further appears as though its office was the care and defence of the dead sun, the sun by night, as the second Ennead had charge of the living sun. Its functions were so obscure and apparently so insignificant as compared with those exercised by the other Enneads, that the theologians did not take the trouble either to represent it or to enumerate its persons. They invoked it as a whole, after the two others, in those formulas in which they called into play all the creative and preservative forces of the universe; but this was rather as a matter of conscience and from love of precision than out of any true deference. At the initial impulse of the lord of Heliopolis, the three combined Enneads started the world and kept it going, and gods whom they had not incorporated were either enemies to be fought with, or mere attendants.

The doctrine of the Heliopolitan Ennead acquired an immediate and a lasting popularity. It presented such a clear scheme of creation, and one whose organization was so thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of tradition, that the various sacerdotal colleges adopted it one after another, accommodating it to the exigencies of local patriotism. Each placed its own nome-god at the head of the Ennead as "god of the Nine," "god of the first time," creator of heaven and earth, sovereign ruler of men, and lord of all action. As there was the Ennead of Atûmû at Heliopolis, so there was that of Anhûri at Thinis and at Sebennytos; that of Minû at Coptos and at Panopolis; that of Haroêris at Edfû; that of Sobkhû at Ombos; and, later, that of Phtah at Memphis and of Amon at Thebes. Nomes which worshipped a goddess had no scruples whatever in ascribing to her the part played by Atûmû, and in crediting her with the spontaneous maternity of Shû and Tafnûît.

Nît was the source and ruler of the Ennead of Saïs, Isis of that of Bûto, and Hâthor of that of Denderah.[**] Few of the sacerdotal colleges went beyond the substitution of their own feudal gods for Atûmû. Provided that the god of each nome held the rank of supreme lord, the rest mattered little, and the local theologians made no change in the order of the other agents of creation, their vanity being unhurt even by the lower offices assigned by the Heliopolitan tradition to such powers as Osiris, Sibû, and Sit, who were known and worshipped throughout the whole country.

The theologians of Hermopolis alone declined to borrow the new system just as it stood, and in all its parts. Hermopolis had always been one of the ruling cities of Middle Egypt. Standing alone in the midst of the land lying between the Eastern and Western Mies, it had established upon each of the two great arms of the river a port and a custom-house, where all boats travelling either up or down stream paid toll on passing. Not only the corn and natural products of the valley and of the Delta, but also goods from distant parts of Africa brought to Siûfc by Soudanese caravans, helped to fill the treasury of Hermopolis. Thot, the god of the city, represented as ibis or baboon, was essentially a moon-god, who measured time, counted the days, numbered the months, and recorded the years. Lunar divinities, as we know, are everywhere supposed to exercise the most varied powers: they command the mysterious forces of the universe; they know the sounds, words, and gestures by which those forces are put in motion, and not content with using them for their own benefit, they also teach to their worshippers the art of employing them.

Thot formed no exception to this rule. He was lord of the voice, master of words and of books, possessor or inventor of those magic writings which nothing in heaven, on earth, or in Hades can withstand.[***]

He had discovered the incantations which evoke and control the gods; he had transcribed the texts and noted the melodies of these incantations; he recited them with that true intonation—mâ khrôû—which renders them all-powerful, and every one, whether god or man, to whom he imparted them, and whose voice he made true—smâ khrôû—became like himself master of the universe. He had accomplished the creation not by muscular effort to which the rest of the cosmogonical gods primarily owed their birth, but by means of formulas, or even of the voice alone, "the first time" when he awoke in the Nû. In fact, the articulate word and the voice were believed to be the most potent of creative forces, not remaining immaterial on issuing from the lips, but condensing, so to speak, into tangible substances; into bodies which were themselves animated by creative life and energy; into gods and goddesses who lived or who created in their turn. By a very short phrase Tûmû had called forth the gods who order all things; for his "Come unto me!" uttered with a loud voice upon the day of creation, had evoked the sun from within the lotus. Thot had opened his lips, and the voice which proceeded from him had become an entity; sound had solidified into matter, and by a simple emission of voice the four gods who preside over the four houses of the world had come forth alive from his mouth without bodily effort on his part, and without spoken evocation. Creation by the voice is almost as great a refinement of thought as the substitution of creation by the word for creation by muscular effort. In fact, sound bears the same relation to words that the whistle of a quartermaster bears to orders for the navigation of a ship transmitted by a speaking trumpet; it simplifies speech, reducing it as it were to a pure abstraction. At first it was believed that the creator had made the world with a word, then that he had made it by sound; but the further conception of his having made it by thought does not seem to have occurred to the theologians. It was narrated at Hermopolis, and the legend was ultimately universally accepted, even by the Heliopolitans, that the separation of Nûît and Sibû had taken place at a certain spot on the site of the city where Sibû had ascended the mound on which the feudal temple was afterwards built, in order that he might better sustain the goddess and uphold the sky at the proper height. The conception of a Creative Council of five gods had so far prevailed at Hermopolis that from this fact the city had received in remote antiquity the name of the "House of the Five;" its temple was called the "Abode of the Five" down to a late period in Egyptian history, and its prince, who was the hereditary high priest of Thot, reckoned as the first of his official titles that of "Great One of the House of the Five."

The four couples who had helped Atûmû were identified with the four auxiliary gods of Thot, and changed the council of Five into a Great Hermopolitan Ennead, but at the cost of strange metamorphoses. However artificially they had been grouped about Atûmû, they had all preserved such distinctive characteristics as prevented their being confounded one with another. When the universe which they had helped to build up was finally seen to be the result of various operations demanding a considerable manifestation of physical energy, each god was required to preserve the individuality necessary for the production of such effects as were expected of him. They could not have existed and carried on their work without conforming to the ordinary conditions of humanity; being born one of another, they were bound to have paired with living goddesses as capable of bringing forth their children as they were of begetting them. On the other hand, the four auxiliary gods of Hermopolis exercised but one means of action—the voice. Having themselves come forth from the master's mouth, it was by voice that they created and perpetuated the world. Apparently they could have done without goddesses had marriage not been imposed upon them by their identification with the corresponding gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead; at any rate, their wives had but a show of life, almost destitute of reality. As these four gods worked after the manner of their master, Thot, so they also bore his form and reigned along with him as so many baboons. When associated with the lord of Hermopolis, the eight divinities of Heliopolis assumed the character and the appearance of the four Hermopolitan gods in whom they were merged. They were often represented as eight baboons surrounding the supreme baboon, or as four pairs of gods and goddesses without either characteristic attributes or features; or, finally, as four pairs of gods and goddesses, the gods being, as far as we are able to judge, the couple Nû-Nûît answers to Shû-Tafnûît; Hahû-Hehît to Sibû and Nûîfc; Kakû-Kakît to Osiris and Isis; Ninû-Ninît to Sit and Nephthys. There was seldom any occasion to invoke them separately; they were addressed collectively as the Eight—Khmûnû—and it was on their account that Hermopolis was named Khmûnû, the City of the Eight. Ultimately they were deprived of the little individual life still left to them, and were fused into a single being to whom the texts refer as Khomninû, the god Eight.

By degrees the Ennead of Thot was thus reduced to two terms: take part in the adoration of the king. According to a custom common towards the Græco-Roman period, the sculptor has made the feet of his gods like jackals' heads; it is a way of realizing the well-known metaphor which compares a rapid runner to the jackal roaming around Egypt.

As the sacerdotal colleges had adopted the Heliopolitan doctrine, so they now generally adopted that of Hermopolis: Amon, for instance, being made to preside indifferently over the eight baboons and over the four independent couples of the primitive Ennead. In both cases the process of adaptation was absolutely identical, and would have been attended by no difficulty whatever, had the divinities to whom it was applied only been without family; in that case, the one needful change for each city would have been that of a single name in the Heliopolitan list, thus leaving the number of the Ennead unaltered. But since these deities had been turned into triads they could no longer be primarily regarded as simple units, to be combined with the elements of some one or other of the Enneads without preliminary arrangement. The two companions whom each had chosen had to be adopted also, and the single Thot, or single Atûmû, replaced by the three patrons of the nome, thus changing the traditional nine into eleven. Happily, the constitution of the triad lent itself to all these adaptations. We have seen that the father and the son became one and the same personage, whenever it was thought desirable. We also know that one of the two parents always so far predominated as almost to efface the other. Sometimes it was the goddess who disappeared behind her husband; sometimes it was the god whose existence merely served to account for the offspring of the goddess, and whose only title to his position consisted in the fact that he was her husband. Two personages thus closely connected were not long in blending into one, and were soon defined as being two faces, the masculine and feminine aspects of a single being. On the one hand, the father was one with the son, and on the other he was one with the mother. Hence the mother was one with the son as with the father, and the three gods of the triad were resolved into one god in three persons.

Thanks to this subterfuge, to put a triad at the head of an Ennead was nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to the nine canonical divinities. Thus, the Theban Ennead of Amon-Maut-Khonsû, Shû, Tafnûît, Sibû, Nûît, Osiris, Isis, Sît, and Nephthys, is, in spite of its apparent irregularity, as correct as the typical Ennead itself. In such Enneads Isis is duplicated by goddesses of like nature, such as Hâthor, Selkît, Taninît, and yet remains but one, while Osiris brings in his son Horus, who gathers about himself all such gods as play the part of divine son in other triads. The theologians had various methods of procedure for keeping the number of persons in an Ennead at nine, no matter how many they might choose to embrace in it. Supernumeraries were thrown in like the "shadows" at Roman suppers, whom guests would bring without warning to their host, and whose presence made not the slightest difference either in the provision for the feast, or in the arrangements for those who had been formally invited.

Thus remodelled at all points, the Ennead of Heliopolis was readily adjustable to sacerdotal caprices, and even profited by the facilities which, the triad afforded for its natural expansion. In time the Heliopolitan version of the origin of Shû-Tafnûît must have appeared too primitively barbarous. Allowing for the licence of the Egyptians during Pharaonic times, the concept of the spontaneous emission whereby Atûrnû had produced his twin children was characterized by a superfluity of coarseness which it was at least unnecessary to employ, since by placing the god in a triad, this double birth could be duly explained in conformity with the ordinary laws of life. The solitary Atûrnû of the more ancient dogma gave place to Atûrnû the husband and father. He had, indeed, two wives, Iûsâsît and Nebthotpît, but their individualities were so feebly marked that no one took the trouble to choose between them; each passed as the mother of Shû and Tafnûîfc. This system of combination, so puerile in its ingenuity, was fraught with the gravest consequences to the history of Egyptian religions. Shu having been transformed into the divine son of the Heliopolitan triad, could henceforth be assimilated with the divine sons of all those triads which took the place of Tûmû at the heads of provincial Enneads. Thus we find that Horus the son of Isis at Bûto, Arihosnofir the son of Nit at Sais, Khnûmû the son of Hâthor at Esneh, were each in turn identified with Shû the son of Atûrnû, and lost their individualities in his. Sooner or later this was bound to result in bringing all the triads closer together, and in their absorption into one another. Through constant reiteration of the statement that the divine sons of the triads were identical with Shû, as being in the second rank of the Ennead, the idea arose that this was also the case in triads unconnected with Enneads; in other terms, that the third person in any family of gods was everywhere and always Shû under a different name. It having been finally admitted in the sacerdotal colleges that Tûmû and Shû, father and son, were one, all the divine sons were, therefore, identical with Tûmû, the father of Shû, and as each divine son was one with his parents, it inevitably followed that these parents themselves were identical with Tûmû. Reasoning in this way, the Egyptians naturally tended towards that conception of the divine oneness to which the theory of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad was already leading them. In fact, they reached it, and the monuments show us that in comparatively early times the theologians were busy uniting in a single person the prerogatives which their ancestors had ascribed to many different beings. But this conception of deity towards which their ideas were converging has nothing in common with the conception of the God of our modern religions and philosophies. No god of the Egyptians was ever spoken of simply as God. Tûmû was the "one and only god"—nûtir ûâû ûâîti—at Heliopolis; Anhûri-Shû was also the "one and only god" at Sebennytos and at Thinis. The unity of Atûmû did not interfere with that of Anhûri-Shû, but each of these gods, although the "sole" deity in his own domain, ceased to be so in the domain of the other. The feudal spirit, always alert and jealous, prevented the higher dogma which was dimly apprehended in the temples from triumphing over local religions and extending over the whole land. Egypt had as many "sole" deities as she had large cities, or even important temples; she never accepted the idea of the sole God, "beside whom there is none other."

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CHAPTER III.—-THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT

THE DIVINE DYNASTIES: RÂ, SHÛ, OSIEIS, SÎT, HOEUS—THOT, AND THE INVENTION OF SCIENCES AND WRITING—MENES, AND THE THREE FIRST HUMAN DYNASTIES.

The Egyptians claim to Be the most ancient of peoples: traditions concerning the creation of man and of animals—The Heliopolitan Enneads the framework of the divine dynasties—Râ, the first King of Egypt, and his fabulous history: he allows himself to be duped and robbed by Isis, destroys rebellious men, and ascends into heaven.

The legend of Shu and Sibil—The reign of Osiris Onnophris and of Isis: they civilize Egypt and the world—Osiris, slain by Sit, is entombed by Isis and avenged by Horus—The wars of Typhon and of Horus: peace, and the division of Egypt between the two gods.

The Osirian embalmment; the kingdom of Osiris opened to the followers of Horus—The Book of the Dead—The journeying of the soul in search of the fields of Ialû—The judgment of the soul, the negative confession—The privileges and duties of Osirian souls—Confusion between Osirian and Solar ideas as to the state of the dead: the dead in the hark of the Sun—The going forth by day—The campaigns of Harmakhis against Sit.

Thot, the inventor: he reveals all sciences to men—Astronomy, stellar tables; the year, its subdivisions, its defects, influence of the heavenly bodies and the days upon human destiny—Magic arts; incantations, amulets—-Medicine: the vitalizing spirits, diagnosis, treatment—Writing: ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic.

The history of Egypt as handed down by tradition: Manetho, the royal lists, main divisions of Egyptian history—The beginnings of its early history vague and uncertain: Menés, and the legend of Memphis—The first three human dynasties, the two Thimie and the Memphite—Character and, origin of the legends concerning them—The famine stela—The earliest monuments: the step pyramid of Saqgdrah.

THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT

The divine dynasties: Râ, Shû, Osiris, Sît, Horus—Thot, and the invention of sciences and writing—Menés, and the three first human dynasties.

The building up and diffusion of the doctrine of the Ennead, like the formation of the land of Egypt, demanded centuries of sustained effort, centuries of which the inhabitants themselves knew neither the number nor the authentic history. When questioned as to the remote past of their race, they proclaimed themselves the most ancient of mankind, in comparison with whom all other races were but a mob of young children; and they looked upon nations which denied their pretensions with such indulgence and pity as we feel for those who doubt a well-known truth. Their forefathers had appeared upon the banks of the Nile even before the creator had completed his work, so eager were the gods to behold their birth. No Egyptian disputed the reality of this right of the firstborn, which ennobled the whole race; but if they were asked the name of their divine father, then the harmony was broken, and each advanced the claims of a different personage.[*] Phtah had modelled man with his own hands;[**] Khnûmû had formed him on a potter's table.[***]

Râ at his first rising, seeing the earth desert and bare, had flooded it with his rays as with a flood of tears; all living things, vegetable and animal, and man himself, had sprung pell-mell from his eyes, and were scattered abroad with the light over the surface of the world.[*] Sometimes the facts were presented under a less poetic aspect. The mud of the Nile, heated to excess by the burning sun, fermented and brought forth the various races of men and animals by spontaneous generation, having moulded itself into a thousand living forms. Then its procreative power became weakened to the verge of exhaustion. Yet on the banks of the river, in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found whose condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the larger kinds. Some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling to free themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect, feebly stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters were completing their articulation and taking shape within the matrix of earth.[**]

It was not Râ alone whose tears were endowed with vitalizing power. All divinities whether beneficent or malevolent, Sit as well as Osiris or Isis, could give life by weeping; and the work of their eyes, when once it had fallen upon earth, flourished and multiplied as vigorously as that which came from the eyes of Râ.

The individual character of the creator was not without bearing upon the nature of his creatures; good was the necessary outcome of the good gods, evil of the evil ones; and herein lay the explanation of the mingling of things excellent and things execrable, which is found everywhere throughout the world. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Sit and his partisans were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. Daily their eyes shed upon the world those juices by which plants are made poisonous, as well as malign influences, crime, and madness. Their saliva, the foam which fell from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared. When any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, and produced something strange and baleful—a serpent, a scorpion, a plant of deadly nightshade or of henbane. But, on the other hand, the sun was all goodness, and persons or things which it cast forth into life infallibly partook of its benignity. Wine that maketh man glad, the bee who works for him in the flowers secreting wax and honey, the meat and herbs which are his food, the stuffs that clothe him, all useful things which he makes for himself, not only emanated from the Solar Eye of Horus, but were indeed nothing more than the Eye of Horus under different aspects, and in his name they were presented in sacrifice. The devout generally were of opinion that the first Egyptians, the sons and flock of Râ, came into the world happy and perfect;[*] by degrees their descendants had fallen from that native felicity into their present state.

Some, on the contrary, affirmed that their ancestors were born as so many brutes, unprovided with the most essential arts of gentle life. They knew nothing of articulate speech, and expressed themselves by cries only, like other animals, until the day when Thot taught them both speech and writing.

These tales sufficed for popular edification; they provided but meagre fare for the intelligence of the learned. The latter did not confine their ambition to the possession of a few incomplete and contradictory details concerning the beginnings of humanity. They wished to know the history of its consecutive development from the very first; what manner of life had been led by their fathers; what chiefs they had obeyed and the names or adventures of those chiefs; why part of the nations had left the blessed banks of the Nile and gone to settle in foreign lands; by what stages and in what length of time those who had not emigrated rose out of native barbarism into that degree of culture to which the most ancient monuments bore testimony. No efforts of imagination were needful for the satisfaction of their curiosity: the old substratum of indigenous traditions was rich enough, did they but take the trouble to work it out systematically, and to eliminate its most incongruous elements. The priests of Heliopolis took this work in hand, as they had already taken in hand the same task with regard to the myths referring to the creation; and the Enneads provided them with a ready-made framework. They changed the gods of the Ennead into so many kings, determined with minute accuracy the lengths of their reigns, and compiled their biographies from popular tales. The duality of the feudal god supplied an admirable expedient for connecting the history of the world with that of chaos. Tûmû was identified with Nû, and relegated to the primordial Ocean: Râ was retained, and proclaimed the first king of the world. He had not established his rule without difficulty. The "Children of Defeat," beings hostile to order and light, engaged him in fierce battles; nor did he succeed in organizing his kingdom until he had conquered them in nocturnal combat at Hermopolis, and even at Heliopolis itself.[*]

Pierced with wounds, Apôpi the serpent sank into the depths of Ocean at the very moment when the new year began. The secondary members of the Great Ennead, together with the Sun, formed the first dynasty, which began with the dawn of the first day, and ended at the coming of Horus, the son of Isis. The local schools of theology welcomed this method of writing history as readily as they had welcomed the principle of the Ennead itself. Some of them retained the Heliopolitan demiurge, and hastened to associate him with their own; others completely eliminated him in favour of the feudal divinity,—Amon at Thebes, Thot at Hermopolis, Phtah at Memphis,—keeping the rest of the dynasty absolutely unchanged.[*] The gods in no way compromised their prestige by becoming incarnate and descending to earth. Since they were men of finer nature, and their qualities, including that of miracle-working, were human qualities raised to the highest pitch of intensity, it was not considered derogatory to them personally to have watched over the infancy and childhood of primeval man. The raillery in which the Egyptians occasionally indulged with regard to them, the good-humoured and even ridiculous rôles ascribed to them in certain legends, do not prove that they were despised, or that zeal for them had cooled. The greater the respect of believers for the objects of their worship, the more easily do they tolerate the taking of such liberties, and the condescension of the members of the Ennead, far from lowering them in the eyes of generations who came too late to live with them upon familiar terms, only enhanced the love and reverence in which they were held. Nothing shows this better than the history of Râ. His world was ours in the rough; for since Shu was yet nonexistent, and Nuit still reposed in the arms of Sibû, earth and sky were but one.[**]

Nevertheless in this first attempt at a world there was vegetable, animal, and human life. Egypt was there, all complete, with her two chains of mountains, her Nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and the nomes themselves. Then the soil was more generous; the harvests, without the labourer's toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when the Egyptians of Pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any person or thing, they said that the like had never been known since the time of Râ.

It is an illusion common to all peoples; as their insatiable thirst for happiness is never assuaged by the present, they fall back upon the remotest past in search of an age when that supreme felicity which is only known to them as an ideal was actually enjoyed by their ancestors. Râ dwelt in Heliopolis, and the most ancient portion of the temple of the city, that known as the "Mansion of the Prince"—Haït Sarû,—passed for having been his palace. His court was mainly composed of gods and goddesses, and they as well as he were visible to men. It contained also men who filled minor offices about his person, prepared his food, received the offerings of his subjects, attended to his linen and household affairs. It was said that the oîrû maû—the high priest of Râ, the hankistît—his high priestess, and generally speaking all the servants of the temple of Heliopolis, were either directly descended from members of this first household establishment of the god, or had succeeded to their offices in unbroken succession.

In the morning he went forth with his divine train, and, amid the acclamations of the crowd, entered the bark in which he made his accustomed circuit of the world, returning to his home at the end of twelve hours after the accomplishment of his journey. He visited each province in turn, and in each he tarried for an hour, to settle all disputed matters, as the final judge of appeal. He gave audience to both small and great, he decided their quarrels and adjudged their lawsuits, he granted investiture of fiefs from the royal domains to those who had deserved them, and allotted or confirmed to every family the income needful for their maintenance. He pitied the sufferings of his people, and did his utmost to alleviate them; he taught to all comers potent formulas against reptiles and beasts of prey, charms to cast out evil spirits, and the best recipes for preventing illness. His incessant bounties left him at length with only one of his talismans: the name given to him by his father and mother at his birth, which they had revealed to him alone, and which he kept concealed within his bosom lest some sorcerer should get possession of it to use for the furtherance of his evil spells.

But old age came on, and infirmities followed; the body of Râ grew bent, "his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to earth and his saliva dropped upon the ground." Isis, who had hitherto been a mere woman-servant in the household of the Pharaoh, conceived the project of stealing his secret from him, "that she might possess the world and make herself a goddess by the name of the august god." Force would have been unavailing; all enfeebled as he was by reason of his years, none was strong enough to contend successfully against him. But Isis "was a woman more knowing in her malice than millions of men, clever among millions of the gods, equal to millions of spirits, to whom as unto Râ nothing was unknown either in heaven or upon earth." She contrived a most ingenious stratagem. When man or god was struck down by illness, the only chance of curing him lay in knowing his real name, and thereby adjuring the evil being that tormented him. Isis determined to cast a terrible malady upon Râ, concealing its cause from him; then to offer her services as his nurse, and by means of his sufferings to extract from him the mysterious word indispensable to the success of the exorcism. She gathered up mud impregnated with the divine saliva, and moulded of it a sacred serpent which she hid in the dust of the road. Suddenly bitten as he was setting out upon his daily round, the god cried out aloud, "his voice ascended into heaven and his Nine called: 'What is it? what is it?' and his gods: 'What is the matter? what is the matter?' but he could make them no answer so much did his lips tremble, his limbs shake, and the venom take hold upon his flesh as the Nile seizeth upon the land which it invadeth." Presently he came to himself, and succeeded in describing his sensations. "Something painful hath stung me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my two eyes see it not; my hand hath not wrought it, nothing that I have made knoweth it what it is, yet have I never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain that may overpass it.... Fire it is not, water it is not, yet is my heart in flames, my flesh trembleth, all my members are full of shiverings born of breaths of magic. Behold! let there be brought unto me children of the gods of beneficent words, who know the power of their mouths, and whose science reacheth unto heaven." They came, these children of the gods, all with their books of magic. There came Isis with her sorcery, her mouth full of life-giving breaths, her recipe for the destruction of pain, her words which pour life into breathless throats, and she said: "What is it? what is it, O father of the gods? May it not be that a serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee; that one of thy children hath lifted up his head against thee? Surely he shall be overthrown by beneficent incantations, and I will make him to retreat at the sight of thy rays." On learning the cause of his torment, the Sun-god is terrified, and begins to lament anew: "I, then, as I went along the ways, travelling through my double land of Egypt and over my mountains, that I might look upon that which I have made, I was bitten by a serpent that I saw not. Fire it is not, water it is not, yet am I colder than water, I burn more than fire, all my members stream with sweat, I tremble, mine eye is not steady, no longer can I discern the sky, drops roll from my face as in the season of summer." Isis proposes her remedy, and cautiously asks him his ineffable name. But he divines her trick, and tries to evade it by an enumeration of his titles. He takes the universe to witness that he is called "Khopri in the morning, Râ at noon, Tûmû in the evening." The poison did not recede, but steadily advanced, and the great god was not eased. Then Isis said to Râ: "Thy name was not spoken in that which thou hast said. Tell it to me and the poison will depart; for he liveth upon whom a charm is pronounced in his own name." The poison glowed like fire, it was strong as the burning of flame, and the Majesty of Râ said, "I grant thee leave that thou shouldest search within me, O mother Isis! and that my name pass from my bosom into thy bosom." In truth, the all-powerful name was hidden within the body of the god, and could only be extracted thence by means of a surgical operation similar to that practised upon a corpse which is about to be mummified. Isis undertook it, carried it through successfully, drove out the poison, and made herself a goddess by virtue of the name. The cunning of a mere woman had deprived Râ of his last talisman.

In course of time men perceived his decrepitude. They took counsel against him: "Lo! his Majesty waxeth old, his bones are of silver, his flesh is of gold, his hair of lapis-lazuli." As soon as his Majesty perceived that which they were saying to each other, his Majesty said to those who were of his train, "Call together for me my Divine Eye, Shû, Tafnûît, Sibû, and Nûît, the father and the mother gods who were with me when I was in the Nû, with the god Nû. Let each bring his cycle along with him; then, when thou shalt have brought them in secret, thou shalt take them to the great mansion that they may lend me their counsel and their consent, coming hither from the Nû into this place where I have manifested myself." So the family council comes together: the ancestors of Râ, and his posterity still awaiting amid the primordial waters the time of their manifestation—his children Shû and Tafnûît, his grandchildren Sibû and Nûît. They place themselves, according to etiquette, on either side his throne, prostrate, with their foreheads to the ground, and thus their conference begins: "O Nû, thou the eldest of the gods, from whom I took my being, and ye the ancestor-gods, behold! men who are the emanation of mine eye have taken counsel together against me! Tell me what ye would do, for I have bidden you here before I slay them, that I may hear what ye would say thereto." Nû, as the eldest, has the right to speak first, and demands that the guilty shall be brought to judgment and formally condemned. "My son Râ, god greater than the god who made him, older than the gods who created him, sit thou upon thy throne, and great shall be the terror when thine eye shall rest upon those who plot together against thee!" But Râ not unreasonably fears that when men see the solemn pomp of royal justice, they may suspect the fate that awaits them, and "flee into the desert, their hearts terrified at that which I have to say to them." The desert was even then hostile to the tutelary gods of Egypt, and offered an almost inviolable asylum to their enemies. The conclave admits that the apprehensions of Râ are well founded, and pronounces in favour of summary execution; the Divine Eye is to be the executioner. "Let it go forth that it may smite those who have devised evil against thee, for there is no Eye more to be feared than thine when it attacketh in the form of Hâthor." So the Eye takes the form of Hâthor, suddenly falls upon men, and slays them right and left with great strokes of the knife. After some hours, Râ, who would chasten but not destroy his children, commands her to cease from her carnage; but the goddess has tasted blood, and refuses to obey him. "By thy life," she replies, "when I slaughter men then is my heart right joyful!"