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
The fact is difficult to reconcile with the view of Professor Maspero,
that Horus was originally the sky, and is in favour of the general belief
of Egyptologists, that he was from the outset the sun-god. Such, at all
events, was the opinion of the Egyptians themselves in the later period of
their history. In the Pyramid texts Horus already appears as a solar
deity, and it is only as the sun-god that his identification with the
Pharaohs can be explained. It was not the sky but the sun who watched over
the names of their doubles. It is true that the two eyes of Horus were
said to be the sun and the moon, and that a punning etymology, which
connected his name with the word _her_ or “face,” caused him to be
depicted as the face of the sky, the four locks of hair of which were the
four cardinal points. But the etymology is late, and there is no more
difficulty in understanding how the solar and lunar discs can be called
the eyes of the sun-god, than there is in understanding how the winged
disc was distinguished from him, or how even in modern phrase the “eye”
may be used as a synonym of the whole man. When we speak of “the eye of
God,” we mean God Himself.(49)
There is, however, one newly-discovered monument which may be claimed in
support of Professor Maspero’s theory. Above the Horus-hawk which
surmounts the name of the Third Dynasty king found at Nekhen, is the
hieroglyph of the sky. But the explanation of this is not difficult to
find. On the one hand, the hieroglyph embraces the hawk as the sky does
the sun; on the other hand, it gives the pronunciation of the name of
Horus, the sky in Egyptian being _her_ or _hor_, “the high” and uplifted.
And the name of Hor-em-Khuti or Harmakhis, “the Horus who issues from the
two horizons,” must be quite as old as the monument of Nekhen. What the
two horizons were is shown us by the hieroglyph which depicts them. They
were the twin mountains between which the sun came forth at dawn, and
between which he again passes at sunset.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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