Chapter 8 (part 11)

, p. 160. 9. Ibid. , p. 161. 10. Ibid. , p. 163. 11. Ibid. , p. 187. 12 The variant version says, "I developed myself from the primeval matter which I had made." and adds, "My name is Osiris, ###, the substance of primeval matter."] "none other who worked with me. I laid the foundations of all things by my will, and all things evolved themselves therefrom. I united myself to my shadow, and I sent forth Shu and Tefnut out from myself; thus from being one god I became three, and Shu and Tefnut gave birth to Nut and Seb, and Nut gave birth to Osiris, Horus-Khent-an-maa, Sut, Isis, and Nephthys, at one birth, one after the other, and their children multiply upon this earth." Summary of theories. The reader has now before him the main points of the evidence concerning the Egyptians' notions about God, and the cosmic powers and their phases, and the anthropomorphic creations with which they peopled the other world, all of which have been derived from the native literature of ancient Egypt. The different interpretations which different Egyptologists have placed upon the facts demonstrate the difficulty of the subject. Speaking generally, the interpreters may be divided into two classes: those who credit the Egyptians with a number of abstract ideas about God and the creation of the world and the future life, which are held to be essentially the product of modern Christian nations; and those who consider the mind of the Egyptian as that of a half-savage being to whom occasional glimmerings of spiritual light were vouchsafed from time to time. All eastern nations have experienced difficulty in separating spiritual from corporeal conceptions, and the Egyptian is no exception to the rule; but if he preserved the gross idea of a primeval existence with the sublime idea of God which he manifests in writings of a later date, it seems that this is due more to his reverence for hereditary tradition than to ignorance. Without attempting to decide questions which have presented difficulties to the greatest thinkers among Egyptologists, it may safely be said that the Egyptian whose mind conceived the existence of an unknown, inscrutable, eternal and infinite God, who was One-whatever the word One may mean here and who himself believed in a future life to be spent in a glorified body in heaven, was not a being whose spiritual needs would be satisfied by a belief in gods who could eat, and drink, love and hate, and fight and grow old and die. He was unable to describe the infinite God, himself being finite, and it is not surprising that he should, in some respects, have made Him in his own image. [1. The variant version has, "I brought into my own mouth my name as a word of power, and I straightway came into being." 2 The papyrus from which these extracts are taken is in the British Museum, No. 10188. A hieroglyphic transcript and translation will be found in Archæologia , vol. lii., pp. 440-443. For the passages quoted see Col. 26, l. 22; Col. 27, l. 5; and Col. 28, l. 20; Col. 29, l. 6.]