In the Greek liturgies we note the anxious care with which particular qualifying epithets were selected and attached to the personal name of the divinity, so as to make clear what was the precise operation of divine {187} favour which the prayer aimed at evoking. This explains why so many divinities, some of whom were scarcely known outside a narrow area, were invoked as πολυώνυμε, “thou god of many names,” all possible titles of power being summed up in one word. Certain passages in the poets become intelligible only in the light of this idea: such as the well-known phrase in the chorus of the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus:[187.1] “Zeus, whosoever the god is, if this name of Zeus is dear to him, by this name I now appeal to him.” The thought and the words of the Vedic poet are often the same as the Greek: Agni is πολυώνυμος: “Agni, many are the names of thee the Immortal one”; and again, “The father adoring gives many names to thee, oh Agni, if thou shouldest take pleasure therein.”[187.2] But it is in Egypt, the land of magic, where the idea of the potency of the divine name {188} assumes dimensions that are truly gigantic. In an early metaphysical theory of the origin of things, which in its harmonious self-contradiction reaches quite to the level of Hegelian philosophy, the universe is said to have come into being, and the first god himself effects his own creation by the utterance of his own portentous name:[188.1] in the beginning was the name. It is said of the great god Ra that “his names are manifold and unknown, even the gods know them not.” Naturally, therefore, the goddess Isis was desirous of knowing his real name, and having discovered it by a ruse, she became mistress over him and all gods.[188.2] In certain Egyptian papyri containing Abraxas prayers, we find the prayer sometimes coupled with the reminder that the petitioner knows the divine mystic name;[188.3] thus equipped, the prayer is more than a mere humble entreaty. {189}