Chapter 43 (part 82)

He is depicted in the form of a seated deity having upon his head disk and plumes. Nut the female principle of Nu; she is depicted with the head of a snake surmounted by a disk, or with the head of a cat. Ptah was associated with the god Khnemu in carrying out at the Creation the mandates of Thoth the divine intelligence; his name means the "opener," and he was identified by the Greeks with {Greek H!'faistos }, and by the Latins with Vulcan. He was worshipped at a very early date in Memphis, which is called in Egyptian texts "The House of the Ka of Ptah,", and according to Herodotus his temple there was founded by Mena or Menes. He is called the "exceedingly great god, the beginning of being," "the father of fathers and power of powers," and "he created his form, [1. Lanzone, Dizionario , tav. 166, No. 2. For fuller descriptions of the gods and their titles and attributes see Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie , Leipzig, 1884-88; Pierret, Le Panthéon Égyptien , Paris, 1881; Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Aegypter , Münster, 1890; Strauss and Corney, Der altaegyptische Götterglaube , Heidelberg, 1889. For illustrations of the various forms in which the gods are depicted, see the Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia , Turin, 1881 (not yet complete). 2. Lanzone, op. cit., tavv. 168-71. 3. {Greek Tou^to de` tou^ H!fai'stou to` i!drusasðai e`n au?th^ } (ii., 99).] and gave birth to his body, and established unending and unvarying right and truth upon the earth." As a solar god he is called "Ptah, the Disk of heaven, who illumineth the world by the fire of his eyes,"; and in the Book of the Dead he is said to have "opened" the mouth of the deceased with the tool with which he opened the mouths of the gods. He is depicted in the form of a mummy standing upon maat and in his hands he holds a sceptre on the top of which are the emblems of power, life, and stability; from the back of his neck hangs the menat (see p. 1, note 2). Ptah formed at Memphis the chief member of the triad Ptah-Sekhet and Nefer-Tmu . In many texts the god Ptah is often joined to the god Seker whose individual attributes it is not easy to describe; Seker is the Egyptian name of the incarnation of the Apis bull at Memphis. That Seker was a solar god is quite clear, but whether he "closed" the day or the night is not certain. Originally his festival was celebrated in the evening, wherefrom it appears that he represented some form of the night sun; but in later times the ceremony of drawing the image of the god Seker in the hennu boat round the sanctuary was performed in the morning at dawn, and thus, united with Ptah, he became the closer of the night and the opener of the day. He is depicted as a mummied body with the head of a hawk, and he sometimes holds in his hands emblems of power, sovereignty, and rule. Another form of Ptah was Ptah-Seker-Ausar wherein the creator of the world, the sun, and Osiris as the god of the dead, were represented.