Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative TheologyClarke, James Freeman
Islamic
Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology
Clarke, James Freeman
Christianity and other religions; Religions
"I am come: to thee have I given to strike down Syrian princes;
Under thy feet they lie throughout the breadth of their country,
Like to the Lord of Light, I made them see thy glory,
Blinding their eyes with light, O earthly image of Amun!
"I am come: to thee have I given to strike down Asian peoples;
Captive now thou hast led the proud Assyrian chieftains;
Decked in royal robes, I made them see thy glory;
In glittering arms and fighting, high in thy lofty chariot.
"I am come: to thee have I given to strike down western nations;
Cyprus and the Ases have both heard thy name with terror;
Like a strong-horned bull I made them see thy glory;
Strong with piercing horns, so that none can stand before him.
"I am come: to thee have I given to strike down Lybian archers;
All the isles of the Greeks submit to the force of thy spirit;
Like a regal lion, I made them see thy glory;
Couched by the corpse he has made, down in the rocky valley.
"I am come: to thee have I given to strike down the ends of the ocean.
In the grasp of thy hand is the circling zone of the waters;
Like the soaring eagle, I have made them see thy glory,
Whose far-seeing eye there is none can hope to escape from."
A similar strain of religious poetry is in the Papyrus of Sallier, in the
British Museum.[166] This is an epic by an Egyptian poet named Pentaour,
celebrating the campaigns of Ramses II., the Sesostris of the Greeks, of
the nineteenth dynasty. This great king had been called into Syria to put
down a formidable revolt of the Kheta (the Hittites of the Old Testament).
The poem seems to have been a famous one, for it had the honor of being
carved in full on the walls at Karnak, a kind of immortality which no
other epic poet has ever attained. It particularly describes an incident
in the war, when, by a stratagem of the enemy, King Ramses found himself
separated from the main body of his army and attacked by the enemy in full
force. Pentaour describes him in this situation as calling on Amun, God of
Thebes, for help, recounting the sacrifices he had offered to him, and
asking whether he would let him die in this extremity by the ignoble hands
of these Syrian tribes. "Have I not erected to thee great temples? Have I
not sacrificed to thee thirty thousand oxen? I have brought from
Elephantina obelisks to set up to thy name. I invoke thee, O my father,
Amun. I am in the midst of a throng of unknown tribes, and alone. But Amun
is better to me than thousands of archers and millions of horsemen. Amun
will prevail over the enemy." And, after defeating his foes, in his song
of triumph, the king says, "Amun-Ra has been at my right and my left in
the battles; his mind has inspired my own, and has prepared the downfall
of my enemies. Amun-Ra, my father, has brought the whole world to my
feet."[167]
Thus universal and thus profound was the religious sentiment among the
Egyptians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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