 6 We had, therefore, good grounds for supposing that the first Egyptians were semi-savages, like those still living in Africa and America, having an analogous organization and similar weapons and tools. A few lived in the desert in the oasis of Libya or in the deep valleys of the Red Land, Doshirit, to Doshiru, between the Nile and the Sea, the poverty of the country fostering their native savagery. Others, settled on the Black Land, gradually became civilized, and we have found of late considerable remains of those of their generations who, if not anterior to the times of written records, were at least contemporary with the earliest kings of the first historical dynasty. Their houses were like those of the fellas of today, low huts of waddle dobbed with puddled clay, or of bricks dried in the sun. They contained one room, either oblong or square, the door being the only aperture. Those of the richer class only were large enough to make it needful to support the roof by means of one or more trunks of trees, which did duty for Collins. Earthen pots turned by hand, flint knives and other implements, mats of reeds or plated straw, two flat stones for grinding corn, a few pieces of wooden furniture, stools and headrests for use at night, comprised all the contents. Their ordinary pottery is heavy and almost devoid of ornament, but some of the finer kinds have been molded and baked in wickerwork baskets, which have left a quaint, trellis-like impression on the surface of the clay. In many cases the vases are bi-color, the body being of a fine, smooth red, polished with a stone, while the neck and base are of an intense black, the surface of which is even more shining than that of the red part. Sometimes they are ornamented with patterns in white, of flowers, palms, ostriches, gazelles, boats with undulated or broken lines, or geometrical figures of a very simple nature. More often the ground is colored of fine yellow, and the decoration has been traced in red lines. Jars, saucers, double vases, flat plates, large cups, supports for amphorae, trays raised on a foot. In short, every kind of form is found in use at that remote period. The men went about nearly naked, except the nobles, who wore panther-skin, sometimes thrown over the shoulders, sometimes drawn round the waist, and covering the lower part of the body, the animals tail touching the heels behind, as we see later in several representations of the negroes of the upper nile. They smeared their limbs with greaser oil, and they tattooed their faces and bodies, at least in part, but in later times this practice was retained by the lower classes only. On the other hand the custom of painting the face was never given up. To complete their toilette it was necessary to accentuate the arch of the eyebrow with a line of coal, antimony powder. A similar black line surrounded and prolonged the oval of the eye to the middle of the temple, a layer of green colored the underlid, and ochre and carmine enlivened the tints of the cheeks and lips. The hair, plated, curled, oiled, and plastered with grease, formed an erection which was as complicated in the case of the man as in that of the women. Should the hair be too short, a black or blue wig, dressed with much skill, was substituted for it. Ostrich feathers waved on the heads of warriors, and a large lock, flattened behind the right ear, distinguished the military or religious chiefs from their subordinates. When the art of weaving became common, a belt and loincloth of white linen replaced the leather and garment. Wind round the waist, but so low as to leave the navel uncovered, the loincloth frequently reached to the knee. The hindre part was frequently drawn between the legs and attached in front to the belt, thus forming a kind of drawers. Tales of animals and wild beasts' skin were henceforth only the insignia of authority, with which priests and princes adorned themselves on great days and at religious ceremonies. The skin was sometimes carelessly thrown over the left shoulder and swayed with the movement of the body. Sometimes it was carefully adjusted over one shoulder and under the other, so as to bring the curve of the chest into prominence. The head of the animal, skillfully prepared and enlivened by large eyes of enamel, rested on the shoulder or fell just below the waist of the wearer. The paws, with the claws attached, hung down over the thighs. The spots of the skin were manipulated so as to form five-pointed stars. On going out of doors, a large wrap was thrown over all. This covering was either smooth or hairy, similar to that in which the Nubians and Abyssinians of the present day enveloped themselves. It could be draped in various ways, transversely over the left shoulder like the fringed shawl of the Chaldeans, or hanging straight from both shoulders like a mantel. In fact it did duty as a cloak, sheltering the wearer from the sun or from the rain, from the heat or from the cold. They never sought to transform it into a luxurious garment of state, as was the case in later times with the Roman toga, whose amplitude secured a certain dignity of carriage, and whose folds, carefully adjusted beforehand, fell around the body with studied grace. The Egyptian mantel, when not required, was thrown aside and folded up. The material, being fine and soft, it occupied but a small space and was reduced to a long thin roll. The ends being then fastened together, it was slung over the shoulder and round the body like a cavalry cloak. Travellers, shepherds, and all those whose occupations called them to the fields, carried it as a bundle at the ends of their sticks. Once arrived at the scene of their work, they deposited it in a corner with their provisions until they required it. The women were at first contented with a loincloth like that of the men. It was enlarged and lengthened till it reached the ankle below and the bosom above, and became a tightly fitting garment, with two bands over the shoulders like braces to keep it in place. The feet were not always covered. On certain occasions, however, sandals of coarse leather, plated straw, split reed, or even painted wood adorned those shapely Egyptian feet, which, to suit our taste, should be a little shorter. Both men and women loved ornaments and covered their necks, breasts, arms, wrists, and ankles with many rows of necklaces and bracelets. The bracelets were made of elephant ivory, mother of pearl, or even flint, very cleverly perforated. The necklaces were composed of strings of pierced shells, interspersed with seeds and little pebbles, either sparkling or of unusual shapes. Subsequently, imitations in terracotta replaced the natural shells, and precious stones were substituted for pebbles, as were also beads of enamel, either round, pear-shaped, or cylindrical. The necklaces were terminated and a uniform distance maintained between the rows of beads by several slips of wood, bone, ivory, porcelain, or terracotta, pierced with holes through which ran the threads. Weapons at least among the nobility were an indispensable part of costume. Most of them were for hand-to-hand fighting, sticks, clubs, lances, furnished with a sharpened bone or stone point, axes and daggers of flint, sabers and clubs of bone or wood variously shaped, pointed or rounded at the end, with blunt or sharp blades, inoffensive enough to look at, but wielded by vigorous hand, sufficient to break an arm, crush in the ribs, or smash a skull with all desirable precision. The plain or triple-curved bow was the favorite weapon for attack at a distance, but in addition to this there were the sling, the javelin, and a missile almost forgotten nowadays, the boomerang. We have no proof, however, that the Egyptians handled the boomerang with the skill of the Australians, or that they knew how to throw it so as to bring it back to its point of departure. Such was approximately the most ancient equipment as far as we can ascertain, but at a very early date copper and iron were known in Egypt. Long before historic times the majority of the weapons in wood were replaced by those of metal, daggers, sabers, hatchets, which preserved, however, the shape of the old wooden instruments. Those wooden weapons which were retained were used for hunting, or were only brought out on solemn occasions when tradition had to be respected. The war-baton became the commander's wand of authority, and at last degenerated into the walking stick of the rich or noble. The club at length represented merely the rank of a chieftain, while the crook and the wooden-handled mace, with its head of ivory, biorite, granite, or white stone, the favorite weapons of princes, continued to the last the most revered insignia of royalty. Life was passed in comparative ease and pleasure. Of the ponds left in the open country by the river at its fall, some dried up more or less quickly during the winter, leaving on the soil an immense quantity of fish, the possession of which birds and wild beasts disputed with man. Other pools, however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many vivaria in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks. Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the Egyptians from early times. Where the ponds failed, the neighboring Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. Standing in light canoes, or rather supported by a plank on bundles of reeds bound together, they ventured into mid-stream, in spite of the danger arising from the ever-present hippopotamus, or they penetrated up the canals amid a thicket of aquatic plants, to bring down with the boomerang the birds which found covert there. The fowl and fish which could not be eaten fresh were dried, salted or smoked, and kept for a rainy day. Like the river, the desert had its perils and its resources. Only too frequently the lion, the leopard, the panther, and other large felidsa were met with there. The nobles, like the pharaohs of later times, deemed it as their privilege or duty to stalk and destroy these animals, pursuing them even to their dens. The common people preferred attacking the gazelle, the oryx, the mouflon sheep, the ibex, the wild ox, and the ostrich, but did not disdain more humble game, such as the porcupine and long-eared hare. Not a script-packs in which the jackal and the hyena ran side by side with the wolf-dog, and the lith Abyssinian greyhound, scented and retrieved for their master the prey which he had pierced with his arrows. At times a hunter, returning with the dead body of the mother, would be followed by one of her young, or a gazelle, but slightly wounded, would be taken to the village and healed of its hurt. Such animals, by daily contact with man, were gradually tamed, and formed about his dwelling on motley flock, kept partly for his pleasure and mostly for his profit, and becoming, in case of necessity, ready stock of provisions. Birds were therefore made to enlarge this flock, and the wish to procure animals without seriously injuring them caused the Egyptians to use the net for birds and the lasso and bola for quadrupeds, weapons less brutal than the arrow and the javelin. The bola was made by them of a single rounded stone, attached to a strap about five yards in length. The stone, once thrown, the cord twisted round the legs, muzzle or neck of the animal pursued, and by the attachment thus made the pursuer, using all his strength, was enabled to bring the beast down half-strangled. The lasso has no stone attached to it, but a noose prepared beforehand, and the skill of the hunter consists in throwing it round the neck of his victim while running. They caught indifferently, without distinction of size or kind, all that chance brought within their reach. The daily chase kept up these half-tamed flocks of gazelles, wild goats, water-bucks, stocks, and ostriches, and their numbers are reckoned by hundreds on the monuments of the ancient empire. Experience alone taught the hunter to distinguish between those species from which he could draw profit and others whose wildness made them impossible to domesticate. The subjection of the most useful kinds had not been finished when the historic period opened. The ass, the sheep, and the goat were already domesticated, but the pig was still out in the marshes in a semi-wild state, under the care of special herdsmen, and the religious rites preserved in the remembrance of the times in which the ox was so little-tamed, that in order to capture wild grazing the animals needed for sacrifice or for slaughter it was necessary to use the lasso. Europeans are astonished to meet nowadays whole peoples who make use of herbs and plants whose flavor and properties are nauseating to us. These are mostly so many legacies from a remote past. For example, castor oil, with which the berbers rub their limbs, and with which the fellaheen of the syed flavor their bread and vegetables, was preferred before all others by the Egyptians of the pharaonic age for anointing the body, and for culinary use. They had begun by eating indiscriminately every kind of fruit which the country produced. Many of these, when their therapeutic virtues had been learned by experience, were gradually banished as articles of food, and their use restricted to medicine. The herbs fell into disuse, and only reappeared at sacrifices or at funeral feasts. Several varieties continue to be eaten to the present time. The acid fruits of the nabeka and of the carob tree, the astringent figs of the sycamore, the insipid pulp of the dome-palm, besides those which are pleasant to our western palates, such as the common fig and the date. The vine flourished, at least in middle and lower Egypt. From time immemorial the art of making wine from it was known, and even the most ancient monuments enumerate half a dozen famous brands, red or white. Vetches, lupins, beans, chickpeas, lentils, onions, fenugreek, the bamea, the melokia, the arum colocasia, all grew wild in the fields, and the river itself supplied its quota of nourishing plants. Two of the species of lotus which grew in the Nile, the white and the blue, have seed vessels similar to those of the poppy. The capsules contain small grains of the size of millet seed. The fruit of the pink lotus grows on a different stalk from that of the flower and springs directly from the root. It resembles a honeycomb in form. Or to take a more prosaic simile, the rose of a watering pot. The upper part has twenty or thirty cavities, each containing a seed as big as an olive stone, and pleasant to eat either fresh or dried. This is what the ancients called the bean of Egypt. The yearly shoots of the papyrus are also gathered. After pulling them up in the marshes, the points are cut off and rejected, the part remaining being about a cubit in length. It is eaten as a delicacy and is sold in the markets, but those who are fastidious partake of it only after baking. Twenty different kinds of grains and fruits, prepared by crushing between two stones, are kneaded and baked to furnish cakes or bread. These are often mentioned in the texts as cakes of nabeka, sweet cakes, and cakes of figs. Lily lobes made from the roots and seeds of the lotus were the delight of the gourmand, and appear on the tables of the kings of the nineteenth dynasty. Bread and cakes made of cereals formed the habitual food of the people. Dura is of African origin. It is the grain of the south of the inscriptions. On the other hand it is supposed that wheat and six-road barley came from the region of the Euphrates. Grate was among the first to procure and cultivate them. The soil there is so kind to man that in many places no agricultural toil is required. As soon as the water of the Nile retires, the ground is sewn without previous preparation, and the grain, falling straight into the mud, grows as vigorously as in the best plowed furrows. Where the earth is hard it is necessary to break it up, but the extreme simplicity of the instruments with which this was done shows what a feeble resistance it offered. For a long time the hoe sufficed. It was composed either of a large stone tied to a wooden handle, or was made of two pieces of wood of unequal length, united at one of their extremities and held together towards the middle by a slack cord. The plow, when first invented, was but a slightly enlarged hoe drawn by oxen. The cultivation of cereals, once established on the banks of the Nile, developed from earliest times to such a degree as to supplant all else, hunting, fishing, the rearing of cattle, occupied but a secondary place compared with agriculture, and Egypt became what she still remains, a vast granary of wheat. The part of the valley first cultivated was from Gebel Silsila to the apex of the delta. Between the Libyan and Arabian ranges it presents a slightly convex surface, furrowed lengthways by a depression in the bottom of which the Nile is gathered and enclosed when the inundation is over. In the summer, as soon as the river had risen higher than the top of its banks, the water rushed by the force of gravity towards the lower lands, hollowing in its course long channels, some of which never completely dried up, even when the Nile reached its lowest level. Cultivation was easy in the neighborhood of these natural reservoirs, but everywhere else the movements of the river were rather injurious than advantageous to man. The inundation scarcely ever covered the higher ground in the valley, which therefore remained unproductive. It flowed rapidly over the lands of medium elevation, and moved so sluggishly in the hollows that they became weedy and stagnant pools. In any year the portion not watered by the river was invaded by the sand. From the lush vegetation of a hot country there was but one step to an absolute aridity. At the present day an ingeniously established system of irrigation allows the agriculturalist to direct and distribute the overflow according to his needs. From Gebel-Ain to the sea the Nile and its principal branches are bordered by long dykes, which closely follow the windings of the river and furnish sufficiently stable embankments. Numerous canals lead off to right and left, directed more or less obliquely towards the confines of the valley. They are divided at intervals by fresh dykes, starting at the one side from the river and ending on the other, either at the bar Youssef or at the rising of the desert. Some of these dykes protect one district only, and consist merely of a bank of earth. Others command a large extent of territory, and a breach in them would entail the ruin of an entire province. These latter are sometimes like real ramparts made of crude brick carefully cemented. A few, as at Cauchyish, have a core of hewn stones which later generations have covered with masses of brickwork and strengthened with constantly renewed buttresses of earth. They wind across the plain with many unexpected and apparently aimless turns. On closer examination, however, it may be seen that this irregularity is not to be attributed to ignorance or caprice. Experience had taught the Egyptians the art of picking out, upon the almost imperceptible relief of the soil, the easiest lines to use against the inundation. Of these they have followed carefully the sinuosities, and if the course of the dykes appears singular, it is to be ascribed to the natural configuration of the ground. Subsidiary embankments thrown up between the principal ones, and parallel to the Nile, separate the higher ground bordering the river from the lowlands on the confines of the valley. They divide the larger basins into smaller divisions of varying area, in which the irrigation is regulated by means of special trenches. As long as the Nile is falling, the dwellers on its banks leave their canals in free communication with it, but they dam them up towards the end of the winter, just before the return of the inundation, and do not reopen them till early in August, when the new flood is at its height. The waters then flowing in by the trenches are arrested by the nearest transverse dyke and spread over the fields. When they have stood there long enough to saturate the ground, the dyke is pierced, and they pour into the next basin until they are stopped by a second dyke, which in its turn forces them again to spread out on either side. This operation is renewed from dyke to dyke, till the valley soon becomes a series of artificial ponds, ranged one above another, and flowing one into another from Gebel Silsila to the apex of the delta. In autumn, the mouth of each ditch is dammed up anew, in order to prevent the mass of water from flowing back into the stream. The transverse dykes, which have been cut in various places, are also repaired, and the basins become completely landlocked, separated by narrow cause-waves. In some places the water thus imprisoned is so shallow that it is soon absorbed by the soil. In others it is so deep that after it has been kept in for several weeks it is necessary to let it run off into a neighboring depression, or straight into the river itself. History has left us no account of the vicissitudes of the struggles in which the Egyptians were engaged with annihile, nor of the time expended in bringing it to a successful issue. Legend attributes the idea of the system and its partial workings out to the god Osiris. Then many's, the first mortal king, is said to have made the dyke of Koshiesh, on which depends the prosperity of the delta and Middle Egypt, and the fabulous Miseris is supposed to have extended the blessings of the irrigation to the Fayyun. In reality, the regulation of the inundation and the making of cultivable land are the work of unrecorded generations who peopled the valley. The kings of the historic period had only to maintain and develop certain points of what had already been done, and Upper Egypt is to this day checkered by the networks of waterways with which its earliest inhabitants covered it. The work must have begun simultaneously at several points, without previous agreement, and as it were instinctively. A dyke protecting a village, a canal draining or watering some small province, demanded the efforts of but few individuals. Then the dykes would join one another, the canals would be prolonged till they met others, and the work undertaken by chance would be improved, and would spread with the concurrence of an ever-increasing population. What happened at the end of last century shows us that the system grew and was developed at the expense of considerable quarrels and bloodshed. The inhabitants of each district carried out the part of the work most conducive to their own interest, seizing the supply of water, keeping it and discharging it at pleasure, without considering whether they were injuring their neighbors by depriving them of their supply, or by flooding them. Hence arose perpetual strife and fighting. It became imperative that the rites of the weaker should be respected, and that the system of distribution should be coordinated, for the country to accept a beginning at least of social organization analogous to that which it acquired later. The Nile thus determined the political as well as the physical constitution of Egypt. End of Section 7. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 8. Of History of Egypt, Volume 1 by Gaston Maspero. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 1. The Nile and Egypt, Part 8. The country was divided among communities, whose members were supposed to be descended from the same seed, Pait, and to belong to the same family, Paitu. The chiefs of them were called Ropaitu, the guardians or pastors of the family, and in later times their name became a title applicable to the nobility in general. Families combined informed groups of various importance under the authority of a head chief, Ropaitu Ha. They were in fact hereditary lords dispensing justice, levying taxes in kind on their subordinates, reserving to themselves the redistribution of land, leading their men to battle, and sacrificing to the gods. The territories over which they exercised authority formed small states, whose boundaries, even now in some places, can be pointed out with certainty. The principality of the Terabinth occupied the very heart of Egypt, where the valley is widest, and the course of the Nile most advantageously disposed by nature, a country well-suited to be the cradle of an infant civilization. Siut, the capital, is built almost at the foot of the Libyan range, on a strip of land barely a mile in width, which separates the river from the hills. A canal surrounds it on three sides, and makes, as it were, a natural ditch about its walls. During the inundation it is connected with the mainland only by narrow causeways, shaded with mimosas, and looking like a raft of verdure aground in the current. The site is as happy as it is picturesque. Not only does the town command the two arms of the river, opening or closing the waterway at will, but from time in memorial the most frequented of the routes into Central Africa has terminated at its gates, bringing it to the commerce of the Sudan. It held sway at the outset over both banks, from range to range, northward as far as Deirut, where the true bar Yusuf leaves the Nile, and southward to the neighborhood of Gebel Sheikh Haridi. The extent and original number of other principalities is not so easily determined. The most important to the north of Siut were those of the Haare and the Oleander. The principality of the Haare never reached the dimensions of that of its neighbor the Terabinth, but its chief town was Camunu, whose antiquity was so remote that a universally accepted tradition made it the scene of the most important acts of creation. That of the Oleander, on the contrary, was even larger than that of the Terabinth, and from Hineesu its chief governor ruled alike over the marshes of the Fayyum and the plains of Benesuaf. To the south, Apu, on the right bank, governed a district so closely shut in between a bend of the Nile and two spurs of the range that its limits have never varied much since ancient times. Its inhabitants were divided in their employment between weaving and the culture of cereals. From early times they possessed the privilege of furnishing clothing to a large part of Egypt, and their looms at the present day still make those checked or striped maleas which the fellow women wear over their long blue tunics. Beyond Apu, Tiness, the Ghirga of the Arabs, situate on both banks of the river, rivaled Camunu in antiquity and Siut in wealth. These plains still produce the richest harvests and feed the most numerous herds of sheep and oxen in the Syene. As we approach the cataract information becomes scarcer. Kubtee and Anu of the south, the Coptos and Hermontheus of the Greeks, shared peaceably the plain occupied later on by Thebes and its temples, and Nekhabit and Zobu watched over the safety of Egypt. Nekhabit soon lost its position as a frontier town, and that portion of Nubia lying between Gebel, Silcilla and the Rapids of Syene formed a kind of border province, of which Nimbut Ambus was the principal sanctuary, and Abu Elephantin the fortress. Beyond this were the barbarians and those inaccessible regions whence the Nile descended upon our earth. The organization of the Delta it would appear was more slowly brought about. It must have greatly resembled that of the lowlands of Equatorial Africa, towards the confluence of the Bar El Abiyad and the Bar El Ghazal. Great tracts of mud, difficult to describe as either solid or liquid, marshes dotted here and there with sandy islets, bristling with papyrus reeds, water lilies, and enormous plants, through which the arms of the Nile sluggishly pushed their ever-shifting course, low-lying wastes intersected with streams and pools, unfit for cultivation and scarcely available for pasturing cattle. The population of such districts, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with nature, always preserved relatively ruder manners and a more rugged and savage character, impatient of all authority. The conquest of this region began from the outer edge only. A few principalities were established at the apex of the Delta in localities where the soil had earliest been one from the river. It appears that one of these divisions embraced the country south of and between the bifurcation of the Nile. Aounu of the north, the Heliopolis of the Greeks, was its capital. In very early times the principality was divided and formed three new states, independent of each other. Those of Aounu and the Hunch were opposite to each other, the first on the Arabian, the latter on the Libyan bank of the Nile. The district of the white wall marched with that of the Hunch on the north and on the south touched the territory of the Oliander. Further down the river, between the more important branches, the governors of Sais and of Bubastus, of Athrubis and of Boussiris, shared among themselves the primitive Delta. The two frontier provinces of unequal size, the Arabian on the east in the Wadi Tumilat, and the Libyan on the west to the south of Lake Mariotis, defended the approaches of the country from the attacks of Asiatic Bedouins and of African nomads. The marshes of the interior and the dunes of the literal were not conducive to the development of any great industry or civilization. They only compromised tracks of thinly populated country, like the principalities of the Harpoon and of the Cal, and others whose limits varied from century to century with the changing course of the river. The work of rendering the marshes salubrious and of digging canals, which had been so successful in the Nile Valley, was less efficacious in the Delta, and proceeded more slowly. Here the embankments were not supported by a mountain chain. They were continued at random across the marshes, cut at every turn to admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. The waters left their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a fresh course for themselves across country. If the inundation were delayed, the soft and badly drained soil again became a slew, should at last but a few weeks longer than usual the work of several generations was for a long time undone. The Delta of one epic rarely presented the same aspect as that of previous periods, and northern Egypt never became as fully mistress of her soil as the Egypt of the South. These first principalities, however small they appeared to us, were yet too large to remain undivided. In those times of slow communication, the strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its authority did not extend over a wide radius. That part of the population of the Terabinth, living sufficiently near to Sioux to come into the town for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the rule of the prince who governed there. On the other hand, those who lived outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some places of assembly to attend to the administration of justice, to sacrifice in common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the fields and of local manufacturers. Those towns which had the good fortune to become such rallying points naturally played the part of rivals to the capital, and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so to speak, gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the prince. When they succeeded in doing this, they often preserved for the new state thus created the old name, slightly modified by the addition of an epithet. The primitive territory of Sioux was in this way divided into three distinct communities, two which remained faithful to the old emblem of the tree, the upper Terabinth, with Sioux itself in the center, and the lower Terabinth, with Couset to the north, the third in the south and east took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in their mountains, and called themselves the Serpent Mountain, whose chief town was that of the Sparrowhawk. The territory of the Oleander produced by its dismemberment the principality of the upper Oleander, that of the lower Oleander, and that of the knife. The territory of the harpoon in the delta divided itself into the western and eastern harpoon. The fission in most cases could not have been accomplished without struggles, but it did take place, and all the principalities having a domain of any considerable extent had to submit to it, however they may have striven to avoid it. This parceling out was continued as circumstances afforded opportunity, until the whole of Egypt, except the half desert districts about the cataract, became but an agglomeration of petty states nearly equal in power and population. The Greeks called them gnomes, and we have borrowed the word from them, the natives named them in several ways, the most ancient term being nute, which may be translated domain, and the most common appellation in the recent times being husbou, which signifies district. The number of gnomes varied considerably in the course of centuries. The hieroglyphic monuments and classical authors fixed them sometimes at thirty-six, sometimes at forty, sometimes at forty-four, or even fifty. The little that we know of their history, up to the present time, explains the reason of this variation. Ceaselessly quarreled over by the princely families who possessed them, the gnomes were alternately humble and exalted by civil wars, marriages, and conquest, which caused them continually to pass into fresh hands, either entire or divided. The Egyptians whom we are accustomed to consider as a people respecting the established order of things, and conservative of ancient tradition, showed themselves as restless and as prone to modify or destroy the work of the past as the most inconstant of our modern nations. The distance of time which separates them from us, and the almost complete absence of documents, gives them an appearance of immobility, by which we are liable to be unconsciously deceived, when the monuments still existing shall have been unearthed. Their history will present the same complexity of incidents, the same agitations, the same instability which we suspect or know to have been characteristic of most other oriental nations. One thing alone remained stable among them in the midst of so many revolutions, and which prevented them from losing their individuality and from coalescing into a common unity. This was the belief in and worship of one particular deity. If the little capitals of the petty states whose origin is lost in a remote past, Edfu and Dendura, Nekhabit and Buto, Siut, Thinus, Camunu, Sais, Bubastus, Athrubis, had only possessed that importance which resulted from the presence of an ambitious petty prince, or from the wealth of their inhabitants, they would never have passed safe and sound through the long centuries of existence which they enjoyed from the opening to the close of Egyptian history. Fortune raised their chiefs, some even to the rank of rulers of the world, and in turn abased them, side by side with the earthly ruler whose glory was but too often eclipsed, there was enthroned in each Noma divine ruler, a deity, a god of the domain, Nityr Nuiti, whose greatness never perished. The princely families might be exiled or become extinct, the extent of the territory might diminish or increase, the town might be doubled in size and population or fallen ruins, the god lived on through all these vicissitudes, and his presence alone preserved intact the rites of the state over which he reigned as a sovereign. If any disaster befell his worshipers, his temple was the spot where the survivors of the catastrophe rallied around him, their religion preventing them from mixing with the inhabitants of neighboring towns and from becoming lost among them. The survivors multiplied with that extraordinary rapidity which is the characteristic of the Egyptian fella, and a few years of peace suffice to repair losses which apparently were irreparable. Local religion was the tie which bound together those diverse elements of which each principality was composed, and as long as it remained, the numbs remained. When it vanished, they disappeared with it. The incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the representations on the ancient monuments of Egypt is at first glance very striking. Nearly every illustration in the works of Egyptologists brings before us the figure of some deity receiving, with an impassive countenance, the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. One would think that the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and contained just sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship. When penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an actual rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but are limited at almost unconscious existence. They severally represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe. Thus Napreet was identified with the ripe ear or the grain of wheat. Mashkhanit appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth, and Raninit presided over the naming and the nature of the newly born. Neither Raninit, the fairy godmother, nor Mashkhanit exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. Every day of every year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in travail, by the other in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious sound, and one which would afterwards serve to exercise the influence of evil fortune. No sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place than they hastened to another, where approaching birth demanded their presence and their care. From child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if they fulfilled the single offices in which they were accounted adepts, the pious asked nothing more of them. Bands of mysterious Synoselephi haunting the eastern and the western mountains concentrated the whole of their activity on one passing moment of the day. They danced and chattered in the east for half an hour to salute the sun at his rising, even as others in the west hailed him on his entrance in to-night. It was the duty of a certain genie to open the gates in Hades, or to keep the paths daily traversed by the sun. These genie were always at their posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than that of punctually fulfilling their pointed offices. Their existence, generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. As being completed the divinities fell back into their state of inertia, and were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next occasion. Scarcely visible even by glimpses they were not easily depicted, their real forms being often unknown these were approximately conjectured from their occupations. The character and costume of an archer, or of a spearman, were ascribed to such as roamed through Hades, to pierce the dead with arrows or with javelins. Those who prowled around souls to cut their throats and hack them to pieces were represented as women armed with knives, carvers, done-eat, or else as lacerators, no-keet. Some appeared in human form, others as animals, bulls or lions, rams or monkeys, serpents, fish, ibises, hawks. Others dwelt in inanimate things, such as trees, systroms, stakes stuck in the ground, and lastly, many betrayed and mixed origin in their combinations of human and animal forms. These latter would be regarded by us as monsters. To the Egyptians they were beings, rarer perhaps than the rest, but not the less real, and their like might be encountered in the neighborhood of Egypt. How could men who believed themselves surrounded by sphinxes and griffins of flesh and blood doubt that there were bullheaded and hawk-headed divinities with human busts? The existence of such paradoxical creatures was proved by much authentic testimony. More than one hunter had distinctly seen them as they ran along the furthest plains of the horizon, beyond the herds of gazelles of which he was in chase, and shepherds dreaded them for their flocks as truly as they dreaded lions, or the great philiadsay of the desert. This nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements, the origin of which was known to the Egyptians themselves. They knew that Hathor, the Milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from very ancient times, and they called her the Lady of Puanit, after the name of her native country. Bisu had followed her in course of time, and claimed his share of honors and worship along with her. He first appeared as a leopard, then he became a man clothed in a leopard's skin, but of strange countenance and alarming character, a big-headed dwarf with high cheekbones and a wide and open mouth, once hung an enormous tongue. He was at once jovial and marshal, a friend of the dance and of battle. In historic times all nations subjugated by the pharaohs transferred some of their principal divinities to their conquerors, and the Libyan Shahididi was enthroned in the valley of the Nile, in the same way as the Semitic Ba'alu and his retinue of Astartis, Anitis, Etchefs, and Kudshus. These divine colonists fared like all foreigners who have sought to settle on the banks of the Nile. They were promptly assimilated, wrought, molded, and made into Egyptian deities scarcely distinguishable from those of their old race. This mixed pantheon had its grades of nobles, princes, kings, and each of its members was representative of one of the elements constituting the world, or of one of the forces which regulated its government. The sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the universe. They were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. But when the people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among them, this unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each num, each city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. Some said that the sky was the great Horus, Haroriris, the Sparrowhawk of model plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of creation. Owing to a punning assonance between his name and the ward Horu, which designates the human countenance, the two senses were combined, and to the idea of the Sparrowhawk there was added that of a defined face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right eye being the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to illuminate the night. The face shone also with the light of its own, the Zodiacal light, which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a little before sunrise and a little after sunset. These luminous beams, radiating from a common center, hidden in the heights of the firmament, spread into a wide pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested upon the earth, but whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith. The divine face was symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four thick locks of hair. These were the pillars which up bore the firmament and prevented its falling into ruin. A no less ancient tradition disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the Sparrowhawk, or of the face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, Cebu and Nuit, from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be. Most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth gods Cebu as extended beneath Nuit, the starry one. The goddess stretched out her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. But there were also many who believed that Cebu was concealed under the form of a colossal gander, whose mate once laid the sun-egg, and perhaps still laid it daily. From the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her, and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it, after the manner of his kind, he had received the flattering epithent of Nagugu Ori, the great cackler. Other versions repudiated the goose in favour of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a cow, a large-eyed hathor, of beautiful countenance. The head of the good-beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover the world flow along her spine, the star-covered underside of her body, which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points of the world. The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according to the revealing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk, Atanu, by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Ra, as was also the planet itself. Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Ra formed the right eye of the divine face. When Horus opened his eyelids in the morning, he made the dawn and the day, when he closed them in the evening, the dusk and night were at hand. Where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, Ra was considered as her son, his father being the earth-god, and he was born again with every new dawn, wearing a side-lock, and with his finger to his lips as human children were conventionally represented. He was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the east by the celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with its rays. Nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not always contain the same kind of bird. A lapwing or a heron might come out of it, or perhaps in memory of Horus, one of the beautiful golden sparrow-hawks of southern Egypt. A sun-hawk, hovering in high heaven on outspread wings, at least represented a bold and poetic image, but what can be said for a sun-caf? Yet it is under the innocent aspect of a spotted calf, a suckling calf of pure mouth, that the Egyptians were pleased to describe the sun-god when Cebu, the father, was a bull, and Hathor, a heifer. But the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was likened to the life of a man. The two deities presiding over the east received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive a newborn child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and of its life. It soon left them and proceeded under the belly of Nuit, growing and strengthening for minute to minute, until at noon it had become a triumphant hero whose splendor is shed abroad over all. But as night comes on his strength forsakes him, and his glory is obscured, he is bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old man leaning upon his stick. At length he passes away beyond the horizon, plunging westward into the mouth of Nuit, and transversing her body by night to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along which he had traveled on the preceding day. A first bark, the Sakhtit, awaited him at his birth, and carried him from the eastern to the southern extremity of the world. Mazit, the second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of Manu, which is at the entrance to Hades. Other barks, with which we are less familiar, conveyed him by night from his setting until his rising at Morn. Sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then they were magic and self-directed, having neither oars nor sails nor helm. Sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, like that of an Egyptian boat, a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and forecast the wind, a pilot a stern to steer, a quarter master in the midst to transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern, and half a dozen sailors to handle poles or oars. Peacefully the bark glided along the celestial river amid the acclamations of the gods who dwelt upon its shores. But occasionally a puppy, a gigantic serpent, like that which hides within the earthly nile and devours its banks, came forth from the depths of the waters and arose in the path of the god. As soon as they caught sight of it in the distance, the crew flew to arms, and entered upon the struggle against him with prayers and spear-thrusts. Men in their cities saw the sun faint and fail, and sought to sucker him in his distress. They cried aloud, they were beside themselves with excitement, beating their breasts, sounding their instruments of music, and striking with all their strength upon every metal vase or utensil in their possession, that their clamour might rise to heaven and terrify the monster. After a time of anguish, raw emerged from the darkness and again went on his way, while a puppy sank back into the abyss, paralyzed by the magic of the gods, and pierced with many a wound. Apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the sun king steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws which even his will could not change. Day after day he made his oblique ascent from east to south, hence to descend obliquely towards the west. During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he came closer to Egypt. During the winter it increased, and he went farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the gods' departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men, and when the river overflowed at the annual inundation, the sun was carried along with it outside the regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer to Egypt. As the inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its great distance from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the waters. It was again brought back to us by the rising strength of the next flood, and as this phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity of the sun's oblique movements was regarded as the necessary consequence of the periodic movements of the celestial Nile. End of Section 9 Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Section 10 Of History of Egypt Volume 1 by Gaston Maspero. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. Chapter 2. The Gods of Egypt, Part 2 The same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. At an interval of twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disc of the moon, Yahuhu Ahuhu, Yahuhu Ahuhu, followed the disc of the sun along the ramparts of the world. The moon also appeared in many various forms, here as a man born of nute, there as a synocephalus or an ibis, elsewhere it was the left eye of Horus, guarded by the ibis or synocephalus. Like Ra, it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it, the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the sow. But it was, when at the full, about the fifteenth of each month, that the lunar eye was in greatest peril. The sow fell upon it, tore it out of the face of heaven, and cast it, streaming with blood and tears into the celestial Nile, where it was gradually extinguished and lost for days. But its twin, the sun, or its guardian, the synocephalus, immediately set forth to find it and to restore it to Horus. No sooner was it replaced than it slowly recovered and renewed its radiance. When it was well, Uzate, the sow again attacked and mutilated it, and the gods rescued and again revived it. Each month there was a fortnight of youth and growing splendor, followed by a fortnight's agony and ever-increasing power. 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 Ra had passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon the star-lamp scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving light here and there like the camp-buyers of a distant army. However many of them there might be, there were as many indestructibles, Akhihmu, Soku, or unchanging ones, Akhihmu, Urdu, 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 neighbors. 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 likened to a chariot, Charles's wane, suggested to the Egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the horizon. Two lesser stars connected the haunch, Mashkhayat, with thirteen others, which recall the silhouette of a female hippopotamus, Wereet, 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 splendor, forming a group hard by the hippopotamus, indicated the outline of a gigantic lion cuchon, 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 Biyo, 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 hydra or 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, born by a slow movement, passed annually beyond the limits of sight for months at a time. But most of our planets were known from all antiquity, and their characteristic colors and appearance carefully noted. Sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed Horus, Wapshetutti, our Jupiter, Kahiri, Saturn, Sobku, Mercury, steered their bark straight ahead, like Iahu and Ra, but Marj Doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. As a star, Bonu, the bird, Venus, 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 Tiyanuturi, the god who hails the sun before his rising, and proclaims the dawn of day. Sahu and Soptit, Orion and Sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious world. Sahu 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 crooks and sada, 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 scepter in hand, and crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most radiant star, answered the call of Sahu 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 Sahu 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. Sahu traversed it during the day, surrounded by Genie 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 side 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, disemboweled it, cut up its carcass, cast the joints into a pot, and superintended their cooking. Sahu 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 youth 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 nomadic gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities and formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or the 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, Koumou of the Cataract, Harshafitu of Heracliopolis, 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. Koumou at the place of its entering into Egypt and again at the town of Hauret, near the point where a great arm branches off from the eastern stream to flow towards the Libyan hills and form the Bar Yousif, Harshafitu at the gorges of the Fayum, where the Bar Yousif leaves the valley, and finally Osiris at Mendes and at Buciris, towards the mouth of the Middle Branch, which was held to be the true Nile by the people of the land. Isis of Buto denoted the black vegetable mold 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, Fata at Memphis, Aman at Thebes, Minu at Coptos and at Penopolis. Aman seems rather to have symbolized the productive soil, while Minu reigned over the desert. But these were fine distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his worshippers often invested Aman with the most significant attributes of Minu. The sky-gods, like the earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one consisting of women, Hathor of Dendurah, or Neat of Sayis, the other composed of men identical with Horus or derived from him, Anhurishu of Sabanitos and Thinus, Hamarati, Horus of the Two Eyes, at Farbethos, Harsapdi, Horus the source of the zodiacal light in the Wadi Tumulat, and finally Harhuditi at Edfu. Ra, the solar disk, was enthroned at Heliopolis, and some 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 Ra. Whether under the name of Horus or Anhuri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity as it were fused into that of the sun. Horus the sun, and Ra the sun-god 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 Ra had been usurped by Horus, and all the designations of Horus had been appropriated by Ra. The sun was styled Harmakkuiti, 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 Hartima, Horus the pikeman, that Horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the celestial river, or Hanubi, the golden Horus, the great golden sparrow-hawk with modelled plumage, who puts all of the 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 Harkobi, Horus of Kobiu, 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 Athenaeus in Upper Egypt, at Zarete and Sebenitos in Lower Egypt, was called Anhoori. When he assumed the attributes of Ra, 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 his foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day. The sun-god, who at Metamoth, Todd, and Arment, had preceded Ammon as ruler of the Theban Plain, was also a warrior, and his name of Mantu had referenced 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 at the adjacent Nomez 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 Buto, as Hathor was at Dundara, and as Neat at Tsais, the first born when as yet there had been no birth. They enjoyed in their cities the same honors as the male gods and theirs. 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 Hibbonu swooped down upon the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk. Hathor of Dundara was a cow, Bastet of Bubastus was a cat or a tigress, while neck-hubbit of El Cobb was a great bald-headed vulture. Hermopolis worshipped the ibis and Cenocephalus of Thot. Oxyrhynchus, the Mormyrus fish, and Ambos and the Phayum a crocodile, under the name of Subku, sometimes with the epithet of Azei, the brigand. We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each Nomez to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Greco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal or even the dog at Siut? How came Siut 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 Cenocephaly with the charge of hailing the God morning and evening, as he appeared in the east or passed away in the west. CHAPTER II If Ra 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, Canumu, Osiris, Harshafiti, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigor 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 neighborhood of a marsh or of a rock encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the Fayyum or the Ambos. 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 animals seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. The crocodile is amphibious, and sub-ku 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 neighbors. 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 Nome's 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 thought of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of Szechet, Seik, Habitui, and Hamuit. Tumu derived the homage of the inhabitants of Heliopolis with Nebthepit and with Iosuit. Kanumu seduced and married the two fairies of the neighboring cataract, Anukit the constrainer, who compresses the nile between its rocks at Filet and at Sain, and Satit the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight and swift as an arrow. Where a goddess reigned over Nome, the triad was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. Neat of Seis had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendys, and borne for him a lion's-welp, Ari Hosnophor. Hathor of Dendera had completed her household with Hororus and a younger Horus, with the epithet of Ahi, he who strikes the system. 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 God 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 thought with Saf-Kitabui and Nama-Huit, one composed of thought Saf-Kitabui and Harnaby, the golden sparrowhawk, into the other Nama-Huit and her nurseling Norfer-Hiru 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 Ra, Amon, Horus, Sabku, female Ra's, Anions, Horus' and Sabku's were derived. By the addition of the regular feminine affects to the primitive masculine names, Ra'it, Amanit, Horate, Sabkit. In the same way detached cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. Imhatpu, he who comes in peace, was merely one of the epithets of Patah 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 nomades, as in the case of Isis of Buto and the Mendocianocyrus, of Herorus of Edphu and Hathor of Dendura. In the same manner, Saqqit of Letopolis and Bastit of Bubastus were appropriated as wives to Patah of Memphis, Nofir-Tumu being represented as his son by both unions. These improvised connections were generally determined by considerations of vicinity. The gods of coterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or consolidate relations, and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers, whose unremitting hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire people. The system of triads begun in primitive times and continued unbrokenly up to the last days of Egyptian polytheism, far from 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 newcomers 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. Hathor, supreme at Dendura, shrank into insignificance before Herorus at Edphu, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband. On the other hand, Herorus, when at Dendura, descended from the supreme rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the Lady Hathor. 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, Hathor was none the less the real chief of Dendura 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 depending from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels, or as 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 vouched safe to character of his own, and filled a definite position as at Memphis, where Im Hotpu 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, by, high, whose wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space, or the black shadow, kaibit, that is attached to everybody but which death sets free, and which thence forward 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 colored 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 molded out of a more rarified 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, vigor, 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 who 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 a receiver. This right was of temporary efficacy only, and required frequent renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained. By using or transmitting it, the gods themselves exhausted their saw of life, and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger, while the latter went to draw fresh fullness from a mysterious pond in the northern sky, called the Pond of the Saw. Divine bodies, continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their vigor far beyond the turmoil to the bodies of men and beasts. Age instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them into precious metals. Their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to gold, their hair, piled up and painted blue after the manner of great chiefs, was turned into lapis lazuli. This transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether do away with the ravages of time. Decrepitude was no less irremediable with them as with men, although it came to them more slowly. When the sun had grown old, his mouth trembled, his driveling ran down to the earth, his spittle dropped upon the ground. None of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny, for them as for mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the tomb. The ancients long refused to believe that death was natural and inevitable. They thought that life once began might go on indefinitely. If no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of itself? And so men did not die in Egypt, they were assassinated. The murderer often belonged to this world and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from a hillside, a tree which fell upon the passerby and crushed him. But too often the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. He was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slighly insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with irresistible violence, illness being a struggle between the one possessed and the power which possessed him. As soon as the former succumbed he was carried away from his own people, and his place knew him no more. But had all ended for him with the moment which he had ceased to breathe? As to the body, no one was ignorant of its natural fate. It quickly fell into decay, and a few years sufficed to reduce it to a skeleton. And as for the skeleton, in the lapse of centuries that too was disintegrated and became a mere train of dust, to be blown away by the first breath of wind. The soul might have a longer career in fuller fortunes, but these were believed to be dependent upon those of the body, and commensurate with them. Every advance made in the process of decomposition robbed the soul of some part of itself. Its consciousness gradually faded until nothing was left, but a vague and hollow form that vanished altogether when the corpse had entirely disappeared. From an early date the Egyptians endeavored to arrest this gradual destruction of the human organism, and their first effort to this end naturally was directed towards the preservation of the body, since without it the existence of the soul could not be ensured. It was imperative that during that last sleep, which for them was fraught with such terrors, the flesh should neither become decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be free from offensive odor and secure from predatory worms. They set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it. The oldest burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades only. When one of them died, his son or his nearest relative carefully washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes, which were destined to overpower, at least temporarily, the odor of death. Having taken these precautions they placed the body in the grave, sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin. The dead man was placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the east, in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of leather or a fleece, in the position of a child in the fetal state. The knees were sharply bent at an angle of forty-five degrees, with the thighs, while the latter were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as almost to touch the elbows. The hands are sometimes extended in front of the face, sometimes the arms are folded and the hands are joined on the breast or neck. In some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk. The deceased could only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation. The dryness of the ground selected for these burial places retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally destroyed. CHAPTER II. THE GODS OF EGYPT. PART IV. Being decay could not be prevented it was determined to accelerate the process by taking the flesh from the bones before interment. The bodies thus treated are often incomplete, the head is missing or is detached from the neck and laid in another part of the pit, or on the other hand the body is not there, and the head only is found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones, or a layer of cut flints. The forearms and the hands were subjected to the same treatment as the head. In many cases no trace of them appears, in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered about haphazard. Other mutilations are frequently met with, the ribs are divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground or enclosed together in an earthenware chest. These precautions were satisfactory insofar as they ensured the better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the Egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. The human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor continuity. It was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no connecting links. This drawback, it is true, was remedied by the artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies. The bones were laid in their natural order, those of the feet at the bottom, then those of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself. But the superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally incomplete. When they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living. Having taken this precaution they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could really enjoy life, so long as one half only of the body remained, and the other was lost forever. They therefore sought to discover the means of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the body. It had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted away, and the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance, while its integrity ensured that of the soul. An attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative action of the sand, and without mutilating the body to secure at will that incorruptibility, without which the persistence of the soul was but a useless prolongation of the death agony. It was the God Anubis, the jackal lord of sepulcher, who was supposed to have made this discovery. He cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most rapidly decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected it first of all with the height of a beast, and over this laid thick layers of linen. The victory that God had thus gained over corruption was, however, far from being a complete one. The bath in which the dead man was immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body. The chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the period of saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously diminished. When any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn. This shriveled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened skin, spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer's salts, were not the man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been. As nevertheless he was secure against immediate destruction, the Egyptians described him as furnished with his shape. Henceforth he had been purged of all that was evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security whatever awaited him in the future. The art of Anubis, transmitted to the embalmers and employed by them from generation to generation, had, by almost eliminating the corruptible part of the body without destroying its outward appearance, arrested decay, if not forever, at least for an unlimited period of time. If there were hills at hand, thither the mummy dead were still born, partly from custom, partly because the dryness of the air and of the soil offered them a further chance of preservation. In districts of the delta where the hills were so distant as to make it very costly to reach them, advantage was taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above the marches, and there a cemetery was founded. Where this resource failed, the mummy was fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after being placed within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough hermetically fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of any moisture. Be assured on this point the soul followed the body to the tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines of the visible and invisible world. Here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which pertained to it upon the earth, as it had been a double before death so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions of animal life after its own fashion. It moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechanically, rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any rational desire for immortality. Unceasing regret for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful and inert existence. O my brother, withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day. Put not sorrow within thy heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth? The West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein its inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy-forms, never more waking to see their brethren, never more to recognize their fathers or their mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but stagnant and dead. That water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but liquid putrification, this water that is mine. Since I came into this funerial valley I know not where nor what I am. Give me to drink of running water. Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the north that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow. By day the double remained concealed within the tomb. If it went forth by night it was from no capricious or sentimental desire to revisit the spots where it had led a happier life. Its organs needed nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed nothing but hunger for food, thirst for drink. Wanton misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living. It prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground, broken meats which had been left to forgotten, house and stable refuse, and should these meager resources fail, even the most revolting dung and excrement. This ravenous scepter had not the dim and misty form, the long shroud of floating draperies of our modern phantoms, but a precise indefinite shape, naked or clothed in the garments which it had worn while yet upon earth, and emitting a pale light to which it owed the name of luminous, Ku, Ku. The devil did not allow its family to forget it, but used all the means at its disposal to remind them of its existence. It entered their houses and their bodies, terrified them waking and sleeping by its sudden apparitions, struck them down with disease or madness, and would even suck their blood like the modern vampire. One effectual means there was, and one only, of escaping or preventing these visitations, and this lay in taking to the tomb all the various provisions of which the devil stood in need, and for which it visited their dwellings. Very sacrifices and the regular cults of the dead originated in the need experienced for making provision for the sustenance of the menace after having secured their lasting existence by the mummification of their bodies. The zels and oxen were brought and sacrificed at the door of the tomb chapel, the haunches, heart, and breast of each victim being presented and heaped together upon the ground, that there the dead might find them when they began to be hungry. Zels of beer or wine, great jars of fresh water, purified with natron or perfumed, were brought to them that they might drink their fill at pleasure, and by such voluntary tribute men bought their good will, as in daily life they bought that of some neighbor too powerful to be opposed. The gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows upon men. Their bodies suffered change and gradually perished until nothing was left of them. Their souls, like human souls, were only the representatives of their bodies, and gradually became extinct if means of arresting the natural tendency to decay were not found in time. Thus the same necessity that forced men to seek the kind of sepulchre which gave the longest term of existence to their souls compelled the gods to the same course. At first they were buried in the hills, and one of their oldest titles describes them as those who are upon the sand, they firm putrefaction. Afterwards when the art of embalming had been discovered the gods received the benefit of the new invention and were mummified. Each nome possessed the mummy in the tomb of its dead god. At thinnest there was the mummy and tomb of An-Hurri, the mummy of Osiris Het-Mendis, the mummy of Tumu at Heliopolis. In some of the gnomes the gods did not change their names in altering the mode of their existence. The deceased Osiris remained Osiris. Nith and Hathor, when dead, were still Nith and Hathor, at Sais and at Dundara. But Ptah of Memphis became Socaris by dying, Uaputu, the jackal of Siut, was changed into Anubis, and when his disc had disappeared at evening An-Hurri, the sunlit sky of thinnest was Contamentit, Lord of the West, until the following day. That bliss which we dream of enjoying in the world to come was not granted to the gods any more than to men. Their bodies were nothing but inert larvae, with unmoving heart, weak and shriveled limbs, unable to stand upright, were it not that the bandages in which they were swathed stiffened them into one rigid block. Their hands and heads alone were free, and were of the green or black shades of putrid flesh. Their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted the light. A sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from which they suffered, and gods who were noted for their compassionate kindness when alive became pitiless and ferocious tyrants in the tomb. When once men were bitten to the presence of Socaris, Contamentific, or even of Osiris, mortals came terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to look him in the face either among gods or men, for him the great are as the small. He spareth not those who love him, he beareth away the child from its mother, and the old man who walketh on his way, full of fear, all creatures make supplication before him, but he turneth not his face towards them. Only by the unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding him as though he were a simple human double, could living or dead escape the consequences of his furious temper. The living paid him his dues in palms and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals, but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them. He did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchre meals, or offerings of kindred on feast days. All that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands. When their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he insisted that these should first be offered informally presented to himself. Then he was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a double whose name and parentage were pointed out to him. He took possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his bounty gave the remainder to its destined recipient. Thus death made no change in the relative positions of the feudal God and his worshippers. The worshipper who called himself the amukhu of the God during life was the subject and vassal of his mummied God even in the tomb, and the God-hu, while living, reigned over the living after his death continued to reign over the dead. He dwelt in the city near the prince and in the midst of his subjects, Ra living in Heliopolis along with the prince of Heliopolis, Herora in Edfu together with the prince of Edfu, Neat in Sais with the prince of Sais. CHAPTER II Although none of the primitive temples have come down to us, the name given them in the language of the time shows what they originally were. A temple was considered as the feudal mansion, Ha'it, the house, Piru, P, of the God, better cared for and more respected than the houses of men, but not otherwise differing from them. It was built on a site slightly raised above the level of the plain, so as to be safe from the inundation, and where there was no natural mound, the want was supplied by raising a rectangular platform of earth. A layer of sand spread uniformly on the subsoil provided against settlements or infiltrations, and formed a bed for the foundations of the building. This was first of all a single room, circumscribed, gloomy, covered in by a slightly vaulted roof, and having no opening but the doorway, which was framed by two tall masts, went floated streamers to attract from afar the notice of worshippers. In front of its façade was a court, fenced in with palisading. Within the temple were pieces of matting, low tables of stone, wood, or metal, a few utensils for cooking the offerings, a few vessels for containing the blood, oil, wine, and water with which the God was every day regaled. As provisions for sacrifice increased, the number of chambers increased with them, and rooms for flowers, perfumes, stuffs, precious vessels, and food were grouped around the primitive abode, until that which had once constituted the whole temple became no more than its sanctuary. Where the God dwelt, not only in spirit but in body, and the fact that it was incumbent upon him to live in several cities did not prevent his being present in all of them at once. He could divide his double, imparting it to as many separate bodies as he pleased, and these bodies might be human or animal, natural objects or things manufactured, such as statues of stone, metal, or wood. Several of the Gods were incarnate in Rams, Osiris at Mendes, Harshafitu at Heracleopolis, Kanumu at Elephantine. Living rams were kept in their temples, and allowed to gratify any fancy that came into their animal brains. Other Gods entered into bulls, Ra at Heliopolis, and subsequently Ptah at Memphis, Minu at Thebes, and Montu at Hermontes. They indicated beforehand by certain marks such beasts as they intended to animate by their doubles, and he who had learnt to recognize these signs was at no loss to find a living God when the time came for seeking one, and presenting it to the adoration of worshipers in the temple. And if the statues had not the same outward appearance of actual life as the animals, they nonetheless concealed beneath their rigid exteriors an intense energy of life, which betrayed itself on occasion by gestures or by words. They thus indicated in language which their servants could understand the will of the Gods, or their opinion on the events of the day. They answered questions put to them in accordance with prescribed forms, and sometimes they even foretold a future. Each temple had a fairly large number of statues representing so many embodiments of the local divinity, and of the members of his triad. These ladders shared, albeit in a lesser degree, all the honors and the prerogatives of the Master. They accepted sacrifices, answered prayers, and if needful they prophesied. They occupied either the sanctuary itself, or one of the halls built about the principal sanctuary, or one of the isolated chapels which belonged to them, subject to the suzerainty of the feudal God. The God has his divine court to help him in the administration of his dominions, just as a prince is aided by his ministers in the government of his realm. This state religion, so complex both in principle and in its outward manifestations, was nevertheless inadequate to express the exuberant piety of the populace. There were casual divinities in every nome whom the people did not love any the less because of their inofficial character, such as an exceptionally high palm tree in the midst of the desert, a rock of curious outline, a spring trickling drop by drop from the mountain to which hunters came to slake their thirst in the hottest hours of the day, or a great serpent believed to be immortal, which haunted a field, a grove of trees, a grotto, or a mountain ravine. The peasants of the district brought it bread, cakes, fruits, and thought that they could call down the blessings of heaven upon their fields by gorging the snake with offerings. Everywhere on the confines of cultivated ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are fine single sycamores, flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand. Their fresh greenness is in sharp contrast with the surrounding fawn-colored landscape, and their thick foliage defies the midday sun even in summer. But on examining the ground in which they grow, we soon find that they drink from water which is infiltrated from the Nile, and whose existence is in no wise betrayed upon the surface of the soil. They stand as it were with their feet in the river, though no one about them suspects it. Egyptians of all ranks counted them divine and habitually worship them, making them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers, vegetables, and water in porous jars daily replenished by good and charitable people. Passers-by drank of the water, and requited the unexpected benefit with a short prayer. There were several such trees in the Memphite Nome, and in the Leto Paulite Nome from Dashur to Giza, inhabited, as everyone knew, by detached doubles of Nuit and Hathor. These combined districts were known as the Land of the Sycamore, a name afterwards extended to the city of Memphis, and their sacred trees are worshiped at the present day, both by Muslims and Christian fellowheem. The most famous among them all, the Sycamore of the South, Nihit Resit, was regarded as the living body of Hathor on earth. Side by side with its human gods and prophetic statues, each Nome proudly advanced one or more sacred animals, one or more magic trees. Each family, and almost every individual, also possessed gods and fetishes, which had been pointed out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an animal or object, by a dream or by sudden intuition. They had a place in some corner of the house, or a niche in its walls, lamps were continually kept burning before them, and small daily offerings were made to them, over and above what fell to their share on solemn feast days. In return they became the protectors of the household, its guardians and its counselors. Appeal was made to them in every excigency of daily life, and their decisions were no less scrupulously carried out by their little circle of worshipers than was the will of the feudal god by the inhabitants of his principality. The prince was the great High Priest. The whole religion of the Nome rested upon him, and originally he himself performed its ceremonies. Of these the chief was sacrifice, that is to say, a banquet which it was his duty to prepare and lay before the god with his own hands. He went out into the fields to lasso a half-wild bull. Skinned it, cut its throat, skinned it, burnt part of the carcass in front of his idol and distributed the rest among his assistants, together with plenty of cakes, fruits, vegetables, and wine. On the occasion the god was present both in body and double, suffering himself to be clothed and perfumed, eating and drinking of the best that was set on the table before him, and putting aside some of the provision for future use. This was the time to prefer a request to him, while he was gladdened and disposed to benevolence by good cheer. He was not without suspicion as to the reason why he was so feasted, but he had laid down his conditions beforehand, and if they were faithfully observed he willingly yielded to the means of seduction brought to bear upon him. Moreover, he himself had arranged the ceremonial in a kind of contract, formerly made with his worshipers and gradually perfected from age to age, by the piety of new generations. Of all things he insisted on physical cleanliness. The officiating priest must carefully wash, uabu, his face, mouth, hands, and body, and so necessary was this preliminary purification considered that from it the professional priest derived his name of uibu, the washed, the clean. His costume was the archaic dress, modified according to circumstances. During certain services, or at certain points in the services, it was incumbent upon him to wear sandals, the panther skin over his ear, and the thick lock of hair falling over his right ear. At other times he must gird himself with the loincloth having a jackals' tail, and take the shoes from off his feet before proceeding with his office, or attach a false beard to his chin. The species, hair, and age of the victim, the way in which it was to be brought and bound, the manner and details of its slaughter, the order to be followed in opening its body and cutting it up, were all minutely and unchangeably decreed. And these were but the least of the divine exactions, and those most easily satisfied. The formulas accompanying each act of the sacrificial priests contained a certain number of words whose due sequence and harmonies might not suffer the slightest modification whatever, even from the God himself, under penalty of losing their efficacy. They were always recited with the same rhythm according to a system of chanting in which every tone had its virtue, combined with movements which confirmed the sense and worked with irresistible effect. One false note, a single discord between the secession of gestures and the utterance of the sacramental words, any hesitation, any awkwardness in the accomplishment of a right, and the sacrifice was vain. Worship as thus conceived became a legal transaction, in the course of which the God gave up his liberty in exchange for certain compensations whose kind and value were fixed by law. By a solemn deed of transfer the worshipper handed over to the legal representatives of the contracting divinity such personal or real property as seemed to him fitting payment for the favor which he asked, or suitable atonement for the wrong which he had done. If man scrupulously observed the innumerable conditions with which the transfer was surrounded, the God could not escape the obligation of fulfilling his petition. But should he omit the least of them, the offering remained with the temple and went to increase the endowments in mortamen, while the God was pledged to nothing in exchange. Hence the officiating priest assumed a formidable responsibility as regarded his fellows. A slip of memory, the slightest accidental impurity, made him a bad priest, injurious to himself and harmful to those worshipers who had entrusted him with their interests before the Gods. Since it was vain to expect ritualistic perfections from a prince constantly troubled with affairs of state, the custom was established of associating professional priests with him, personages who devoted all their lives to the study and practice of the thousand formalities whose some constituted a local religion. Each temple had its service of priests, independent of those belonging to neighboring temples, whose members bound to keep their hands always clean and their voices true, were ranked according to the degrees of a learned hierarchy. At their head was a sovereign pontiff to direct them in the exercise of their functions. In some places he was called the First Prophet, or rather the First Servant of the God, Han Nuturtapi. At Thebes he was the First Prophet of Ammon. At Tennis he was the First Prophet of Anhuri. But generally he bore a title appropriate to the nature of the God whose servant he was. The chief priest of Ra at Hediopolis, and in all the cities which adopted the Heliopolitan form of worship, was called Oruhumal, the master of visions, and he alone besides the sovereign of the Nome, or of Egypt, enjoyed the privilege of penetrating into the sanctuary, of entering into heaven and there beholding the God face to face. In the same way the High Priest of Anhuri at Sabanitos was entitled the Wise and Pure Warrior, Ahuiti Sa'u'u'u'ibu, because his God went armed with a pike, and a soldier God required for his service a pontiff who should be a soldier like himself. These great personages did not always strictly seclude themselves within the limits of their religious domain. The gods accepted, and even sometimes solicited, from their worshippers, houses, fields, vineyards, orchards, slaves, and fishponds. The produce of which assured their livelihood in the support of their temples. There was no Egyptian who did not cherish the ambition of leaving some such legacy to the patron god of his city, for a monument to himself, and as an endowment for the priest to institute prayers and perpetual sacrifices on his behalf. In course of time these accumulated gifts at length formed real sacred fives, hapu-nutir, analogous to the wux of Muslim Egypt. They were administered by the high priest, who, if necessary, defended them by force against the greed of princes or kings. Two, three, or even four classes of prophets, or Hyer-Oduli, under his orders, assisted him in performing the offices of worship, in giving religious instruction, and in the conduct of affairs. Women did not hold equal rank with men in the temples of male deities. They there formed a kind of harem once the god took his mystic spouses, his concubines, his maid-servants, the female musicians and dancing women, whose duty it was to divert him and to enliven his feats. But in temples of goddesses they held the chief rank, and were called Hyer-Oduli's, or priestesses, Hyer-Oduli's of neat, Hyer-Oduli's of hathor, Hyer-Oduli's of pakeet. End of section 13. Read by Professor Heather Mby. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.