Egyptian Myths And Legend. Donald Mackenzie
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in Scotland during its first phase by women who visited sculptured stones to pray for offspring.
Although the strictly lunar character of the Egyptian god Thoth is not apparent at first sight, it can be traced through his association with kindred deities. At Hermopolis and Edfu he was fused with Khonsu (or Khensu), who had developed from Ah, the lunar representative of the male principle, which was also "the fighting principle". Khonsu was depicted as a handsome youth, and he symbolized, in the Theban group of gods, certain specialized influences of the moon. He was the love god, the Egyptian Cupid, and the divine physician; he was also an explorer (the root khens signifies "to traverse") and the messenger and hunter of the gods. Special offerings were made to him at the Ploughing Festival, just before the seed was sown, and at the Harvest Festival, after the grain was reaped; and he was worshipped as the increaser of flocks and herds and human families. Like Thoth, he was a "measurer", and inspirer of architects, because the moon measures time. But in this direction Thoth had fuller development; he was a "lawyer" because the orderly changes of the moon suggested the observance of well−defined laws, and a "checker" and "scribe" because human transactions were checked and recorded in association with lunar movements. Time was first measured by the lunar month.
Moon gods were also corn gods, but Thoth had no pronounced association with agricultural rites. That phase of his character may have been suppressed as a result of the specializing process; it is also possible that he was differentiated in the pastoral and hunting period when the lunar spirit was especially credited with causing the growth of trees. In the Nineteenth Dynasty Thoth was shown recording the name of a Pharaoh on the sacred sycamore. He must have been, therefore, at one time a tree spirit, like Osiris. Tree spirits, as well as corn spirits, were manifestations of the moon god.
Thoth also links with Osiris, and this association is of special interest. Osiris was originally an ancient king of Egypt who taught the Egyptians how to rear crops and cultivate fruit trees. He was regarded as a human incarnation of the moon spirit. As a living ruler he displayed his lunar qualities by establishing laws for the regulation of human affairs and by promoting agriculture and gardening; when he died, like the moon, he similarly regulated the affairs of departed souls in the agricultural Paradise of the Egyptians; he was the great Judge of the Dead, and in the Hall of Judgment Thoth was his recorder.
Like Thoth, Osiris was identified with the tree spirit. His dead body was enclosed in a tree which grew round the coffin, and Isis voyaged alone over the sea to recover it. Isis was also the herald of the Nile inundation; she was, indeed, the flood. The myth, as will be seen, is reminiscent of archaic tree and well worship, which survives at Heliopolis, where the sacred well and tree are still venerated in association with the Christian legend. In Ireland the tree and corn god Dagda has similarly for wife a water goddess; she is called Boann, and personifies Boyne River.
Osiris had many manifestations, or, rather, he was the manifestation of many gods. But he never lost his early association with the moon. In one of the Isis temple chants, which details his various attributes and evolutionary phases, he is hailed as the god. Who cometh to us as a babe each month.
He is thus the moon child, a manifestation of the ever−young, and ever−renewing moon god. The babe Osiris is cared for by Thoth.
He lays thy soul in the Maadit boat
By the magic of thy name of Ah (moon god).
Thoth utters the magic "password" to obtain for Osiris his seat in the boat, which will carry him over the heavens. This reference explains the line in the complex hymn to Osiris−Sokar: Hail, living soul of Osiris, crowning him with the moon.
We have now reached a point where Thoth, Osiris, Khonsu, and Ah are one; they are but various forms of the archaic moon spirit which was worshipped by primitive hunters and agriculturists as the begetter and guardian of life.
According to Dr. Budge, whose works on Egyptian mythology are as full of carefully compiled facts as were Joseph's great storehouses of grain, the ancient Egyptians, despite their crowded labyrinth, "believed in the existence of one great God, self−produced, self−existent, almighty, and eternal, who created the 'gods', the heavens, and the sun, moon and stars in them, and the earth and everything on it, including man and beast, bird, fish) and reptile. . . . Of this god", Dr. Budge believes, "they never attempted to make any figure, form, likeness, or similitude, for they thought that no man could depict or describe Him, and that all His attributes were quite beyond man's comprehension. On the rare occasions in which He is mentioned in their writings, He is always called 'Neter', i.e. God, and besides this He has no name. The exact meaning of the word 'Neter' is unknown."
Dr. Budge explains the multiplication of Nilotic deities by saying that the behests of "God Almighty . . . were performed by a number of gods, or, as we might say, emanations or angels", which were "of African rather than Asiatic origin". He prefers to elucidate Egyptian mythology by studying surviving African beliefs "in the great forests and on the Nile, Congo, Niger, and other great rivers", and shows that in these districts the moon god is still regarded as the creator.
A distinction is drawn by Dr. Budge between the Libyan deities and those of Upper Egypt, and his theory of one God has forcible application when confined to the archaic lunar deity. He refers to the period prior to the minglings of peoples and the introduction of Asiatic beliefs. But in dealing with historic Egyptian mythology we must distinguish between the African moon spirit, which is still identified by savage peoples with the creator god, and the representative Egyptian lunar deity, which symbolized the male principle, and was not the "first cause", but the son of a self−produced creating goddess. The difference between the two conceptions is of fundamental character.
It is apparent that some of the great Egyptian deities, and especially those of Delta origin, or Delta characterization, evolved from primitive groups of Nature spirits. At Heliopolis, where archaic Nilotic and other beliefs were preserved like flies in amber, because the Asiatic sun worshippers sought to include all existing forms of tribal religion in their own, a creation myth makes reference to the one God of the primordial deep. But associated with him, it is significant to note, were "the Fathers and the Mothers".
The "Mothers" appear to be represented by the seven Egyptian Fates who presided at birth. These were called "the seven Hathors", but their association with the Asiatic Hathor, who was Ishtar, was evidently arbitrary. The Mediterranean people, who formed the basis of the Egyptian race, were evidently worshippers of the "Mothers". In southern and western Europe, which they peopled n early times, various groups of "Mothers" were venerated. These included "Proximæ (the kinswomen), Dervonnæ (the oak spirits), Niskai (the water spirits), Mairæ, Matronæ, Matres or Matræ (the mothers), Quadriviæ (the goddesses of crossroads). The Matres, Matræ, and Matronæ are often qualified by some local name. Deities of this type appear to have been popular in Britain, in the neighbourhood of Cologne, and in Provence. "In some cases it is uncertain", comments Professor Anwyl, from whose Celtic Religion in Pre−Christian Times we quote, "whether some of these grouped goddesses are Celtic or Teutonic." They were probably pre−Celtic and pre−Teutonic. "It is an interesting parallel", he adds, "to the existence of these grouped goddesses, when we find that in some parts of Wales 'Y Mamau.' (the mothers) is the name for the fairies. These grouped goddesses take us back to one of the most interesting stages in the early Celtic religion, when the earth spirits or the corn spirits had not yet been completely individualized."
Representatives of the groups of Egyptian spirits called "the Fathers" are found at Memphis, where Ptah, assisted by eight earth gnomes called Khnumu, was believed to have made the universe with his hammer by beating out the copper sky and shaping the hills and valleys. This group of dwarfs resemble closely the European elves, or male earth spirits, who dwelt inside mountains as the Khnumu dwelt underground.
In the process of time the various groups of male and female spirits were individualized. Some disappeared, leaving the chief spirit alone and supreme. When Ptah became a great god, the other earth gnomes vanished from the Memphis creation myth. Other members of groups remained and were developed separately. This evolutionary process can be traced, we think, in the suggestive association of the two sister goddesses Isis and Nepthys. In one of the temple chants both are declared to be the mothers of Osiris, who is called The bull, begotten of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys . . . He, the progeny of the two cows, Isis and Nepthys, The