Egyptian Myth and Legend, Preface

EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND

With Historical Narrative,
Notes on Race Problems, Comparative Beliefs, etc.

by

Donald Mackenzie

Gresham Publishing Co., London

[1907]

PREFACE

In this volume the myths and legends of ancient Egypt
are embraced in a historical narrative which begins with the rise of the great Nilotic
civilization and ends with the Gro-Roman Age. The principal deities are dealt
with chiefly at the various periods in which they came into prominence, while the
legends are so arranged as to throw light on the beliefs and manners and customs
of the ancient people. Metrical renderings are given of such of the representative
folk songs and poems as can be appreciated at the present day.

Egyptian mythology is of highly complex character,
and cannot be considered apart from its racial and historical aspects. The Egyptians
were, as a Hebrew prophet has declared, a “mingled people”, and this view has been
confirmed by recent ethnological research: “the process; of racial fusion begun
in the Delta at the dawn of history”, says Professor Elliot Smith, “spread through
the whole land of Egypt”. In localities the early Nilotic inhabitants accepted the
religious beliefs of settlers, and fused these with their own. They also clung tenaciously
to the crude and primitive tribal beliefs of their remote ancestors, and never abandoned
an archaic conception even when they acquired new and more enlightened ideas; they
accepted myths literally, and regarded with great sanctity ancient ceremonies and
usages. They even showed a tendency to multiply rather than to reduce the number
of their gods and goddesses, by symbolizing their attributes. As a result, we find
it necessary to deal with a bewildering number of deities and a confused mass of
beliefs, many of which are obscure and contradictory. But the average Egyptian was
never dismayed by inconsistencies in religious matters: he seemed rather to be fascinated
by them. There was, strictly speaking, no orthodox creed in Egypt; each provincial
centre had its own distinctive theological system, and the religion of an individual
appears to have depended mainly on his habits of life. “The Egyptian”, as Professor
Wiedemann has said, “never attempted to systematize his conceptions of the different
divinities into a homogeneous religion. It is open to us to speak of the religious
ideas of the Egyptians, but not of an Egyptian religion.”

In our introduction we deal with the divergent character
of some of the ancient myths so as to simplify the study of a difficult but extremely
fascinating subject. It is shown that one section of the people recognized a Creator
like Ptah, who begot himself and “shaped his limbs” ere he fashioned the Universe,
while another section perpetuated the idea of a Creatrix who gave birth to all things.
At the dawn of history these rival conceptions existed side by side, and they were
perpetuated until the end. It is evident, too, that the theologies which were based
on these fundamental ideas had undergone, ere the fusion of peoples occurred, a
sufficiently prolonged process of separate development to give them a racial, or,
at any rate, a geographical significance. As much is suggested by the divergent
ideas which obtained regarding the world. One section, for instance, had conceived
of land surrounded by sky-supporting mountains, peopled by gods and giants, round
which the sun ass galloped to escape the night serpent; another section believed
that the world was embraced by the “Great Circle”–Ocean–and that the Nile flowed
from sea to sea; a third conception was of a heavenly and an underground Nile. There
were also two Paradises–the Osirian and the Ra (sun god’s). Osiris judged men according
to their deeds. He was an agricultural deity, and the early system of Egyptian ethics
seems to have had its origin in the experiences enshrined in the text: “Whatsoever
a man soweth that shall he also reap”. Admission to the Paradise of the sun cult
was secured, on the other hand, by the repetition of magical formul Different
beliefs obtained also regarding the mummy. In the Book of the Dead it would
appear that the preservation of the body was necessary for the continued existence
of the soul. Herodotus, however, was informed that after a period of 3000 years
the soul returned to animate the dead frame, and this belief in transmigration of
souls is illustrated in the Anpu-Bata story, and is connected with a somewhat similar
conception that the soul of a father passed to a son, who thus became “the image
of his sire”, as Horus was of Osiris, and “husband of his mother”.

Of special interest in this connection are the various
forms of the archaic chaos-egg myth associated with the gods Ptah, Khn Seb,
Osiris, and Ra. As the European giant hides his soul in the egg, which is within
the duck, which is within the fish, which is within the deer and so on, and Bata
hides his soul in the blossom, the bull, and the tree ere he becomes “husband of
his mother”, so does Osiris “hide his essence in the shrine of Amon”, while his
manifestations include a tree, the Apis bull, the boar, the goose, and the Oxyrhynchus
fish. Similarly when Set was slain he became a “roaring serpent”, a hippopotamus,
a crocodile, or a boar. The souls of Ra, Ptah, and Khnare in the chaos egg like
two of the prominent Hindu and Chinese gods. Other Egyptian deities who are “hidden”
include Amon, Sokar, and Neith. This persistent myth, which appears to have been
associated with belief in transmigration of souls, may be traced even in Akhenaton’s
religion. We have “Shu (atmosphere god) in his Aton (sun disk)”, and a reference
in the famous hymn to the “air of life” in the “egg”. There can be little doubt
that the Transmigration theory prevailed at certain periods and in certain localities
in ancient Egypt, and that the statement made by Herodotus was well founded, despite
attempts to discredit it.

It is shown that the conception of a Creator was associated
with that form of earth, air, and water worship which was perpetuated at Memphis,
where the presiding Deity was the hammer god Ptah, who resembles the Chinese Pan-ku,
Indra of the Aryans, Tarku and Sutekh of Asia Minor, Hercules, Thor, The Creatrix,
on the other hand, was more closely associated with lunar, earth, and water worship,
and appears to have been the principal Deity of the Mediterranean race which spread
into Asia Minor and Europe. In Scotland, for instance, as we show, she is called
Cailleach Bheur, and, like other archaic tribal deities and ghosts, she was the
enemy of mankind. Similarly the Egyptian goddesses Sekhet and Hathor were destroyers,
and Tefnut was goddess of plagues. Even the sun god Ra “produced calamity after
thy (Osiris’s) heart”, as one of the late temple chants puts it.

In the chapter dealing with animal worship the racial
aspect of early beliefs, which were connected with fixed and definite ceremonies,
is illustrated in the Horus-Set myth. The “black pig” was Set (the devil) in Egypt,
pork was “taboo”, and the swineherd was regarded as “an abomination”, and not allowed
to enter temples. The Gauls and Achns, on the other hand, honoured the swineherd
and ate pork freely, while in the Teutonic Valhal and the Celtic (Irish) Paradise,
swine’s flesh was the reward of heroes. In Scotland, however, the ancient prejudice
against pork exists in localities even at the present day, and the devil is the
“black pig”. Professor Sir John Rhys, in his Celtic Folklore, records that
in Wales the black sow of All-Hallows was similarly regarded as the devil. Even
in parts of Ireland the hatred of pork still prevails, especially among certain
families. This evidence, considered with that afforded by the study of skull forms,
suggests that Mediterranean racial ideas may not yet be wholly extinct in our own
country.” Strange to say,” writes Mr. R. N. Bradley, in his recent work on Malta
and the Mediterranean Race, “it is in these lands remote from the origin that
some of the best indications of the (Mediterranean) race are to be found.” The Gaulish
treatment of the boar appears to be Asiatic. Brahma, in one of the Hindu creation
myths, assumes the form of a boar, the “lord of creatures”, and tosses up the earth
with his tusks from the primordial deep.

Another myth which seems to havoc acquired a remote
racial colouring is the particular form of the dragon story which probably radiated
from Asia Minor. The hero is represented in Egypt by Horus, with his finger on his
lips, in his character as Harpocrates, as the Greeks named this mysterious form
of the god. The god Sutekh of Rameses II, as we show, was also a dragon slayer.
So was Hercules, who fought with the Hydra, and Thor, who at Ragnarok overcame the
Midgard Serpent. Sigurd, Siegfried, the Teutonic heroes, and the Celtic Finn-mac-Coul
suck a finger or thumb after slaying the dragon, or one of its forms, and cooking
part of it, to obtain “knowledge” or understand “the language of birds”. In an Egyptian
folk tale Ahura, after killing the “Deathless Snake”, similarly understands “the
language of birds, fishes”, Harpocrates appears to be the god Horus as the dragon-slaying
Sutekh, the imported legend being preserved in the Ahura tale of the Empire period,
when Egypt received so many Asiatic immigrants that the facial type changed as the
statuary shows. Professor Elliot Smith considers that while the early Egyptian was
“the representative of his kinsman the Neolithic European . . . the immigrant population
into both Europe and Egypt” represented “two streams of the same Asiatic folk”.
Racial myths appear to have followed in the tracks of the racial drift.

In our historical narrative the reader is kept in
touch with the great civilizations of the Cretans, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians,
, which influenced and were influenced. by Egypt. Special attention is also devoted
to Palestine and the great figures in Biblical narrative–Joseph, Moses, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Nahum, and the notable kings of Israel and Judah. There are numerous quotations
from the Old Testament, and especially from the prophets who dealt with the political
as well as the religious problems of their times. To students of the Bible this
part of the volume should make special appeal. It is impossible to appreciate to
the full the power and sagacity of Isaiah’s sublime utterances without some knowledge
of the history of ancient Egypt.

DONALD A. MACKENZIE.