The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max
the body at Byblus on the Phenician coast is probably an invention of the Greeks, who confounded the Phenician horned goddess Astarte, Ashtaroth Karnaim, with Isis. When Egypt was again fertilised by the inundation, when the days began to lengthen after the winter solstice, when the sun shone with fresh brightness, and the new fruit budded forth, then Horus, the child born about the winter solstice, waxed strong at Buto in the north of Egypt—then he overcame Typhon. The renewed power of the sun, the returning life of nature, the fresh blessings of the new year—these are the avenging son of Osiris.
When the creative and receptive powers of nature had thus been comprehended in the forms of Osiris and Isis, the divinities in whom creative power and receptivity had hitherto been perceived naturally coalesced with these forms to a greater or less degree. Thus Ptah of Memphis, Tum of Thebes, the sun-god of Heliopolis, are combined with Osiris (the title Ptah-Osiris is not uncommon in the inscriptions,) though they are also retained as separate deities. Thus also Isis is identified with Neith of Sais, with Mut of Thebes, with Hathor, with Bast,[89] the goddess of Bubastis. Horus, again, is identified with Chem and Ra, though at the same time his personality as the youthful, vigorous spirit of light is strongly marked. Plutarch is certainly right in his remark that the Egyptians regard Osiris as the personification of everything in heaven and the under world.[90] All the other deities were transfigurations and manifestations of Osiris, mere modifications of his nature. When Osiris is called the soul of Ra,[91] this can hardly have any other meaning but this, that the appearance of the sun-god in the visible world is an incarnation of the invisible nature of Osiris.
The Egyptians often represented their deities with the heads, or in the shape of, the animals sacred to them; that is, they recognised the nature of the deities who were primarily conceived under the form of men, in the races of the beasts which they allotted to them. To the Egyptians these animals must have appeared so closely and intimately connected with the deity to which they belonged, that the nature of the deity was better expressed and made more visible in the shape of the beast than in the shape of man. We must assume that the predominance of a distinct mark or characteristic property in the races of animals, that their simple, uniformly instinctive life created this conception in the mind of the Egyptians, to whom a fixed and unalterable course of action, an unchanging and typical nature, was the ideal. The force of nature, the regular recurrence of certain phenomena, coalesced in the Egyptian mind with the blind, unchanging action of animals. Yet animals were also seen to possess freedom and movement, and an individual existence. This combination of the type and the individual must have seemed to the Egyptians to correspond to the nature of their deities. The mystery of life, the natural law, which lay at the base of their worship, must for them have reached its most distinct and lively realisation in these animals.
The bull is the sacred animal of the creative gods: the cow of the goddesses of birth and receptivity; the ram is sacred to Chnum; the hawk and the cat to the deities of light and the sun; the beetle to Ptah; a kind of heron to Osiris; the vulture to Ptah and Isis; a kind of ibis to Thoth; the dog-ape to Anubis, the "ruler in the west;[92]" the crocodile to the god Sebek, who was worshipped at Arsinoe, &c., &c. Herodotus tells us that when a cat died in a house, all the inhabitants shaved their eyebrows; and that at conflagrations the Egyptians directed all their attention to saving the cats, not to quenching the flames, and if, in spite of their efforts, a cat leapt into the flames and was burnt, the Egyptians made a great lamentation.[93] "To each of the races of the sacred animals," says Diodorus, "a certain piece of land is consecrated, the products of which suffice for the food and tending of the race. Those entrusted with the care of each race have to feed them. To feed the hawks they cut up pieces of flesh, and call loudly to the birds till they come and take their food. The cats they coax by giving them bread and milk, or chopped fish from the Nile, and thus provide them with suitable food. These duties they do not scruple to perform before the whole people; on the contrary, they are proud of them as of the highest offices which they can attain to in the service of the gods. With special symbols to distinguish them, they proceed through town and country, and as it is known from the symbols what animal it is whose servants are approaching, all who meet them bow the knee and pay homage. If one of the animals dies, it is wrapped in a costly covering, and, amid loud lamentations and beating of the breast, it is carried away to embalment. Steeped in oil of cedar, or any other kind remarkable for its scent and powers of preservation, the corpse is then buried in the holy sepulchres. Anyone who intentionally kills a sacred animal is punished with death; and everyone who has caused the death of an ibis or a cat, intentionally or unintentionally, must die, and is often killed in the most cruel manner, without any sentence passed upon him, by the collected mob. So deeply rooted is the reverence for sacred animals in the feeling of the people, so persistently does everyone cling to the worship of them, that even at the time when Ptolemy was not yet declared an ally by the Romans, and the nation was most anxious to pay respect to visitors from Italy, and to give no cause for war, when a Roman had unintentionally killed a cat, the mob gathered at his house, and neither the officers sent by the king to quiet them, nor the prevailing awe of the Romans, could protect him from their vengeance. This fact I have not received from hearsay: I was in Egypt and saw the occurrence. But what is done for the animals which are kept in the temples is easy to narrate, but difficult for anyone to believe who has not seen it."[94]
Among the races of animals which, according to Egyptian belief, shared in the nature of the deities to which they were sacred, were certain pre-eminent specimens. These were recognised by certain signs by the priests, and passed for a special incarnation of the deity. They were brought into his temple, and there worshipped and prayed to as his manifestation. The most sacred among these selected animals was Apis, the bull, in the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that a ray of light from heaven had impregnated the cow, which brought forth an Apis: by Plutarch, the impregnation is said to take place by a ray of the moon.[95] The priests recognized Apis in a black bull, which had a triangular white spot on the forehead, a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred beetle of Ptah, white spots on his back in the shape of an eagle, and bi-coloured hairs in the tail.[96] When an Apis was found, he was, says Diodorus, in the first place brought for forty successive days to the meadow of the "city of the Nile" (Nilopolis), where women were shown to him, who were afterwards excluded from the sight of the Apis. Then he was conveyed on a boat in a golden shrine like a god to the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. There he was bathed in the holy place, and anointed, and the most precious frankincense was constantly burned before him. He received the most beautiful garments, the richest bedding-places, and the most handsome cows as his "bed-fellows"; the most distinguished men provided him with the best food at a very great expense. When the Apis died of old age he was honoured with a splendid funeral. "When, on the death of Alexander, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, made himself master of Egypt, it happened that the Apis died, and the person entrusted with his care not only spent his own large fortune upon his burial, but borrowed, in addition, fifty talents from Ptolemy. Even in my own times certain feeders of the sacred animals have spent not less than one hundred talents on a single funeral."[97]
"The Egyptians," Diodorus remarks, "are of opinion that the soul of the dead Osiris passed into this bull, and thus continues among them, and will so continue among their descendants." Plutarch says that the Apis at Memphis was an image of the soul of Osiris. According to the usual account of the priests, Osiris and Apis were one; for they taught that the Apis was to be regarded as a fair image of the soul of Osiris. Strabo tells us, "The bull Apis, which is revered as a god, is the same as Osiris. The temple in which the Apis was kept stands beside the temple of Hephæstus (Ptah). There is also a temple of Serapis in that city, before which we saw sphinxes, buried in the sand, some to the middle,