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
But it was not as Tum that the sun-god of Heliopolis thus made his way
victoriously through the land of Egypt. It was under the more general and
undefined name of Ra that he was accepted in the Egyptian sanctuaries. Tum
remained the local god of Heliopolis, or else formed part of a solar
trinity in which he represented the setting sun. But Ra became a divine
Pharaoh, in whom the world of the gods was unified.
The kings of the Fifth Dynasty called themselves his sons. Hitherto the
Pharaohs had been incarnations of the sun-god, like the earlier monarchs
of Babylonia; henceforward the title of Horus was restricted to their
doubles in the other world, while that of “Son of the Sun” was prefixed to
the birth-name which they bore on earth. The same change took place also
in Babylonia. There it was due to the invasion of foreign barbarians, and
the establishment of a foreign dynasty at Babylon, where the priests
refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of a king who had not been adopted
as son by the sun-god Bel-Merodach. Perhaps a similar cause was at work in
Egypt. The Fifth Dynasty came from Elephantinê, an island which was not
only on the extreme frontier of Egypt, but was inhabited then as now by a
non-Egyptian race; it may be that the price of their acknowledgment by the
priests and princes of Memphis was their acceptance of the title of “Son
of Ra.” It narrowed their pretensions to divinity, and at the same time
implied their submission to the god of the great sanctuary which stood in
such close relations with Memphis. As we have seen, the first monument on
which the winged solar disc is found is that of a king of the Fifth
Dynasty; it there overshadows his figure and his two names; but though the
hawk of Horus stands above the name of his double, his birth-name is
without the title of “Son of Ra.”
When once the principle had been adopted that the leading gods of Egypt
were but varying forms of the sun-god, it was easy to construct Enneads,
whatever might be the number of the deities it was wished to bring into
them. Thus at Heliopolis itself Horus the son of Isis was introduced, his
confusion with the sun-god Horus facilitating the process. At This, Anher
was identified with Shu; at Thebes, Amon was made one with Tum and Ra,
with Mentu and Mut. Where a goddess was at the head of the local Pantheon
the process was the same; she interchanged with the other goddesses of the
country, and even with Tum himself. At all events, Horapollo (i. 12)
states that Nit of Sais was at once male and female.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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