Egyptian Myths And Legend. Donald Mackenzie
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B.C.
The Hyksos invasion took place, according to Manetho, at the beginning of the Fifteenth Dynasty, and he calculated that the Asiatic rulers were in Egypt for 511 years. Breasted's minimum is 100 years. King and Hall, like Newberry and Garstang, allow the Hyksos a little more than 200 years, while Hawes, the Cretan explorer, whose dating comes very close to that of Dr. Evans, says that "there is a growing conviction that Cretan evidence, especially in the eastern part of the island, favours the minimum (Berlin) system of Egyptian chronology". Breasted, it will be seen, allows 420 years for the period between the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, while Petrie gives 1820 – a difference of 1400 years.
From 1580 B.C., onward, the authorities are in practical agreement; prior to that date the chronology is uncertain.
This confusion has been partly caused by the Egyptians having ignored the leap year addition of one day. Their calendar Of 365 days lost about a quarter of a day each twelvemonth and about a whole day every four years. New Year's Day began with the rising of the star Sirius (Sothos) on 17 June, and it coincided with the beginning of the Nile inundation. But in a cycle of 1461 years Sirius rose in every alternate month of the Egyptian year. When, therefore, we find in the Egyptian records a reference, at a particular period, to their first month (the month of Thoth), we are left to discover whether it was our April or October; and in dating back we must allow for the "wanderings of Sirius". Much controversial literature has accumulated regarding what is known as the Egyptian "Sothic Cycle".
Throughout this volume the dates are given in accordance with the minimum system, on account of the important evidence afforded by the Cretan discoveries. But we may agree to differ from Professor Petrie on chronological matters and yet continue to admire his genius and acknowledge the incalculable debt we owe him as one who has reconstructed some of the most obscure periods of Egyptian history. The light he has thrown upon early Dynastic and pre−Dynastic times, especially, has assured him an undying reputation, and he has set an example to all who have followed by the thoroughness and painstaking character of his work of research.
It is chiefly by modern−day excavators in Egypt, and in those countries which traded with the Nilotic kingdom in ancient times, that the past has been conjured up before us;. We know more about ancient Egypt now than did the Greeks or the Romans, and more about pre−Dynastic times and the early Dynasties than even those Egyptian scholars who took degrees in the Heliopolitan colleges when "Cleopatra's Needle" was first erected. But our knowledge is withal fragmentary. We can but trace the outlines of Egyptian history; we cannot command that unfailing supply of documentary material which is available, for instance, in dealing with the history of a European nation. Fragments of pottery, a few weapons, strings of beads, some rude drawings, and tomb remains are all we have at our disposal in dealing with some periods; others are made articulate by inscriptions, but even after civilization had attained a high level we occasionally find it impossible to deal with those great movements which were shaping the destinies of the ancient people. Obscure periods recur all through Egyptian history, and some, indeed, are almost quite blank.
When "Cleopatra's Needle" was erected by Thothmes III, the Conqueror, and the forerunner of Alexander the Great and Napoleon, Egyptian civilization had attained its highest level. Although occasionally interrupted by internal revolt or invasions from north and south, it had gradually increased in splendour until Thothmes III extended the empire to the borders of Asia Minor. The Mediterranean Sea then became an "Egyptian lake". Peace offerings were sent to Thothmes from Crete and Cyprus, the Phoenicians owed him allegiance, and hisfavours were courted by the Babylonians and Assyrians: the "Needle" records the gifts which were made by the humbled King of the Hittites.
After the passing of Thothmes, who flourished in the Eighteenth Dynasty, decline set in, and, although lost ground was recovered after a time, the power of Egypt gradually grew less and less. "Cleopatra's Needle" may be regarded as marking the "halfway house" of Egyptian civilization. It was erected at the beginning of the Age of Empire. The chief periods before that are known as the Pre−Dynastic, the Archaic Age, the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the Hyksos Age; after the fall of empire, in the Twentieth Dynasty, we have the periods of Libyan, Ethiopian, and Assyrian supremacy. Then came "The Restoration", or Saite period, which ended with the Persian Conquest. Subsequently the Greeks possessed the kingdom, which was afterwards seized by the Romans. Arabs and Turks followed, and to−day we witness a second Restoration under British rule. But not since the day when Ezekiel declared, in the Saite period: "There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt" (Ezek., xxx, 13) has a ruler of the old Egyptian race sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs.
The mythology of Egypt was formulated prior to the erection of the "Needle". Indeed, in tracing its beginnings we must go back to the pre−Dynastic times, when the beliefs of the various peoples who mingled in the ancient land were fused and developed under Egyptian influences.
We are confronted by a vast multitude of gods and goddesses. Attempts to enumerate them result, as a rule, in compilations resembling census returns. One of the Pharaohs, who lived about 4000 years ago, undertook the formidable task of accommodating them all under one roof, and caused to be erected for that purpose a great building which Greek writers called "The Labyrinth"; he had separate apartments dedicated to the various deities, and of these it was found necessary to construct no fewer than 3000, The ancient Egyptians lived in a world which swarmed with spirits, "numerous as gnats upon the evening beam". They symbolized everything; they gave concrete form to every abstract idea; they had deities which represented every phase and function of life, every act and incident of import, and every hour and every month; they had nature gods, animal gods and human gods, and gods of the living and gods of the dead. And, as if they had not a sufficient number of their own, they imported gods and goddesses from other countries.
In the midst of this mythological multitude, which a witty French Egyptologist calls "the rabble of deities", a few, comparatively speaking, loom vast and great. But some of these are but differentiated forms of a single god or goddess, whose various attributes were symbolized, so that deities budded from deities; others underwent separate development in different localities and assumed various names. If we gather those linking deities together in groups) the task of grappling with Egyptian mythology will be greatly simplified.
An interesting example of the separating process is afforded by Thoth of Hermopolis. That god of quaint and arresting aspect is most usually depicted with a man's body and the head of an ibis, surmounted by a lunar disk and crescent. As the divine lawyer and recorder, he checked the balance in the Judgment Hall of the Dead when the human heart was weighed before Osiris; as a rate, he measured out at birth the span of human life on a rod with serrated edge; he was also a patron of architects) a god of religious literature who was invoked by scribes, and a god of medicine. Originally he was a lunar deity, and was therefore of great antiquity, for, as Mr. Payne has emphasized in his History of the New World, a connection is traced between the lunar phenomena and the food supply in an earlier stage of civilization than that in which a connection is traced between the food supply and the solar phenomena.
The worship of the moon preceded in Egypt, as in many other countries, the worship of the sun. It still survives in Central Africa, and among primitive peoples elsewhere throughout the world. Even in highly civilized Europe we can still trace lingering evidences of belief in the benevolence of the lunar spirit, the ancient guide and protector of mankind.
The moon was believed to exercise a direct influence upon Nature as a generative agency; agriculturists were of opinion that seeds sown during its period of increase had more prolific growth than those sown when it was on the wane. Pliny said that "the blood of men grows and diminishes with the light of the moon, while leaves and herbage also feel the same influence". Crops were supposed to receive greater benefit in moonlight than in sunshine. In one of the Egyptian temple chants, the corn god is entreated to "give fecundity in the nighttime". The "harvest moon" was "the ripening moon", and many poets have in all ages sung its praises. It was followed in Scotland, where archaic Mediterranean beliefs appear to have tardy survival, by "the badger's moon", which marked the period for laying in winter stores, and then by "the hunter's moon", an indication that lunar worship prevailed in the archæological "hunting period". Indeed the moon bulks as largely in European as in ancient Egyptian folklore: it is still believed in certain localities to cure diseases and to inspire love; until a comparatively recent date