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Asiatic people who had become partially amalgamated with the surrounding African tribes. Max Duncker comes to this conclusion,* and says that the Berber languages are the existing representatives of the old Egyptian. This is certainly true as concerns the Copts, whose very name is almost identical with the word "Gupti," the old name from which the Greeks formed the term Ægypti.t Alfred Maury (Revue d. D. Mondes, September, 1867) says that," according to all appearances, Egypt was peopled from Asia by that Hamitic race which. comprised the tribes of Palestine, Arabia, and Ethiopia. Its ancient civilization was, consequently, the sister of that which built Babylon and Nineveh. In the valley of the Nile, as in those of the Euphrates and the Tigris, religion gave the motive to civilization, and in all the three nations there was a priesthood in close alliance with an absolute monarchy." M. de Rougé is of the same opinion. In his examination of the monuments of the oldest dynasties, he finds the name given to the Egyptians by themselves to be merely "the Men" (Rut), - a word which by the usual interchange of R with L, and of T with D, is identical with the Hebrew Lud (plural Ludim), whom the Book of Genesis declares to have been a son of Misraim. This term was applied by the Israelites to all the races on the southeast shore of the Mediterranean. It is, therefore, believed by M. de Rougé that the Egyptians were of the same family with these Asiatic tribes on the shores of Syria. Here, then, as in so many other cases, a new civilization may have come from the union of two different races, one Asiatic, the other African. Asia furnished the brain, Africa the fire, and from the immense vital force of the latter and the intellectual vigor of the former sprang that wonderful civilization which illuminated the world during at least five thousand years.

* Dieser Völkerschaften gehörten der kaukasischen Race an; ibre Sprachen waren dem Semitischen am nächsten Verwandt." G. des A. I. 11.

+ Brugsch derives it from Ki-Ptah = worshippers of Ptah.

§ 6. The Three Orders of Gods.

The Egyptian theology, or doctrine of the gods, was of two kinds, esoteric and exoteric, that is, an interior theology for the initiated, and an exterior theology for the uninitiated. The exterior theology, which was for the whole people, consisted of the mythological accounts of Isis and Osiris, the judgments of the dead, the transmigration of the soul, and all matters connected with the ceremonial worship of the gods. But the interior, hidden theology is supposed to have related to the unity and spirituality of the Deity.

Herodotus informs us that the gods of the Egyptians were in three orders; and Bunsen believes that he has succeeded in restoring them from the monuments. There are eight gods of the first order, twelve gods of the second order, and seven gods of the third order. The gods of the third order are those of the popular worship, but those of the first seem to be of a higher and more spiritual class. The third class of gods were representative of the elements of nature, the sun, fire, water, earth, air. But the gods of the first order were the gods of the priesthood, understood by them alone, and expressing ideas which they shrank from communicating to the people. The spiritual and ideal part of their religion the priests kept to themselves as something which the people were incapable of understanding. The first eight gods seem to have been a representation of a process of divine development or emanation, and constituted a transition from the absolute spiritualism of the Hindoos to the religion of nature and humanity in the West. The Hindoo gods were emanations of spirit: the gods of Greece are idealizations of Nature. But the Egyptian gods represent spirit passing

into matter and form.

Accordingly, if we examine in detail the gods of the first order, who are eight, we find them to possess the general principle of self-revelation, and to constitute, taken together, a process of divine development. These eight, according to Bunsen, are Amn, or Ammon; Khem, or Cheinmis; Mut, the Mother Goddess; Num, or Kneph; Seti,

or Sate; Phtah, the Artist God; Net, or Neith, the Goddess of Sais; and Ra, the Sun, the God of Heliopolis. But according to Wilkinson they stand in a little different order: 1. Neph, or Kneph; 2. Amun, or Ammon ; 3. Pthah; 4. Khem; 5. Sate; 6. Maut, or Mut; 7. Pasht, or Diana; and 8. Neith, or Minerva, in which list Pasht, the Goddess of Bubastis, is promoted out of the second order and takes the place of Ra, the Sun, who is degraded.

Supposing these lists to be substantially correct, we have, as the root of the series, Ammon, the Concealed God, or Absolute Spirit. His titles indicate this dignity. The Greeks recognized him as corresponding to their Zeus. He is styled King of the Gods, the Ruler, the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of the Thrones, the Horus or God of the Two Egypts. Thebes was his city. According to Manetho, his name means concealment; and the root " Amn” also means to veil or conceal. His original name was Amn; thus it stands in the rings of the twelfth dynasty. But after the eighteenth dynasty it is Amn-Ra, meaning the Sun. "Incontestably," says Bunsen, "he stands in Egypt as the head of the great cosmogonic development."

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Next comes Kneph, or God as Spirit, the Spirit of God, often confounded with Amn, also called Cnubis and Num Both Plutarch and Diodorus tell us that his name signifies Spirit, the Num having an evident relation with the Greek vevua, and the Coptic word "Nef," meaning also to blow. So too the Arabic "Nef" means breath, the Hebrew "Nuf," to flow, and the Greek Tvé, to breathe. At Esneh he is called the Breath of those in the Firmament; at Elephantina, Lord of the Inundations. He wears the ram's head with double horns (by mistake of the Greeks attributed to Ammon), and his worship was universal in Ethiopia. The sheep are sacred to him, of which there were large flocks in the Thebaid, kept for their wool And the serpent or asp, a sign of kingly dominion, — hence called basilisk, is sacred to Kneph. As Creator, he appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In Philæ he is so represented, forming on his wheel a figure of Osiris, with the inscription, "Num, who forms on his wheel the Divine Limbs of Osiris." He is also called the Sculptor

of all men, also the god who made the sun and moon to revolve. Porphyry says that Pthah sprang from an egg which came from the mouth of Kneph, in which he is supported by high monumental authority.

The result of this seems to be that Kneph represents the absolute Being as Spirit, the Spirit of God moving on the face of the waters, a moving spirit pervading the formless chaos of matter.

Perhaps the next god in the series is Pthah, by the Greeks called Hephæstus, or Vulcan, representing formation, creation by the truth, stability; called in the inscriptions, Lord of Truth, Lord of the Beautiful Face, Father of the Beginnings, moving the Egg of the Sun and Moon. With Horapollo and Plutarch, we may consider the Scarabeus, or Beetle, which is his sign, as an emblem of the world and its creation. An inscription calls him Creator of all things in the world. Iamblicus says, “The God who creates with truth is Pthah." He was also connected with the sun, as having thirty fingers, the number of days in a month. He is represented sometimes as a deformed dwarf.

The next god in the series is Khem, the Greek Pan,the principle of generation, sometimes holding the ploughshare.

Then come the feminine principles corresponding with these three latter gods. Amun has naturally no companion. Mut, the mother, is the consort of Khem the father. Seti, the Ray or Arrow, a female figure, with the horns of a cow, is the companion of Kneph. And Neith, or Net, the goddess of Sais, belongs to Pthah. The Greek Minerva Athênê is thought to be derived from Neith by an inversion of the letters,*-the Greeks writing from left to right and the Egyptians from right to left. Her name means, “I came from myself." Clemens says that her great shrine at Sais has an open roof with the inscription, "I am all that was and is and is to be, and no mortal has lifted my garment, and the fruit I bore is Helios." This would seem to identify her with Nature.

*

Plato, Timæus. Herod. II. 59. Gutschmidt and others deny this etymologic relation of Neith to Athênê.

For the eighth god of the first order we may take either Helios or Ra or Phra, the Sun-God; from whence came the name of the Pharaohs, or we may take Pasht, Bubastis, the equivalent of the Greek Diana. On some accounts it would seem that Ra was the true termination of this cycle. We should then have, proceeding from the hidden abyss of pure Spirit, first a breathing forth, or spirit in motion; then creation, by the word of truth; then generation, giving life and growth; and then the female qualities of production, wisdom, and light, completed by the Sun-God, last of the series. Amn, or Ammon, the Concealed God, is the root, then the creative. power in Kneph, then the generative power in Khem, the Demiurgic power in Ptah, the feminine creative principle of Nature in Neith, the productive principle in Mut, or perhaps the nourishing principle, and then the living stimulus of growth, which carries all forward in Ra.

But we must now remember that two races meet in Egypt, an Asiatic race, which brings the ideas of the East; and an Ethiopian, inhabitants of the land, who were already there. The first race brought the spiritual ideas which were embodied in the higher order of gods. The Africans were filled with the instinct of natureworship. These two tendencies were to be reconciled in the religion of Egypt. The first order of gods was for the initiated, and taught them the unity, spirituality, and creative power of God.* The third order-the circle of Isis and Osiris were for the people, and were

"There is a profound consolation hidden in the old Egyptian inscribed rocks. They show us that the weird figures, half man and half beast, which we find carved and painted there, were not the true gods of Egypt, but politico-religious masks, concealing the true godhead. These rocks teach that the real object of worship was the one undivided Being, existing from the Beginning, Creator of all things, revealing himself to the illuminated soul as the Mosaic "I AM THE I AM." It is true that this pure doctrine was taught only to the initiated, and the stones forbid it to be published. 'This is a hidden mystery; tell it to no one; let it be seen by no eye, heard by no ear: only thou and thy teacher shall possess this knowledge.' Brugsch, Aus dem Orient, p. 69.

May not one reason for concealing this doctrine of the unity and spirituality of God have been the stress of the African mind to variety and bodily form? The priests feared to encounter this great current of sentiment in the people, and so outwardly conformed to it.

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