The religions of ancient Egypt and BabyloniaSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Religion
The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Assyro-Babylonian religion; Egypt -- Religion
“monotheism,” but would he not have already recognised the two tendencies
of thought which have found expression among us in these words? Was St.
Paul right when he declared that the old civilised nations had sought
after the God of Christianity, “if haply they might feel after Him and
find Him,” or is there an impassable gulf between the religious
conceptions of paganism and those of Christian Europe? Such are some of
the questions to whose solution I trust that the facts I have to bring
before you may contribute, in however humble a degree.
Lecture II. Egyptian Religion.
It is through its temples and tombs that ancient Egypt is mainly known to
us. It is true that the warm and rainless climate of Upper Egypt has
preserved many of the objects of daily life accidentally buried in the
ruins of its cities, and that even fragments of fragile papyrus have come
from the mounds that mark the sites of its villages and towns; but these
do not constitute even a tithe of the monuments upon which our present
knowledge of ancient Egyptian life and history has been built. It is from
the tombs and temples that we have learned almost all we now know about
the Egypt of the past. The tombs were filled with offerings to the dead
and illustrations of the daily life of the living, while their walls were
adorned with representations of the scenes at which their possessor had
been present, with the history of his life, or with invocations to the
gods. The temples were storehouses of religious lore, which was sculptured
or painted on their walls and ceilings. In fact, we owe most of our
knowledge of ancient Egypt to the gods and to the dead; and it is natural,
therefore, that the larger part of it should be concerned with religion
and the life to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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