Lecture VI. The Gods Of Egypt.
In the language of ancient Egypt the wordnetersignified“a
god.”Sir P. le Page Renouf endeavoured to show that the
word originally meant“strong,”and that the first Egyptians
accordingly pictured their gods as embodiments of strength.^88
But it has been pointed out^89 that whereneteris used in the sense
of“strong,”it is rather the lustiness of youth that is meant, and
that a better rendering would be“fresh and vigorous.”The verb
netersignifies“to flourish”and“grow up.”Moreover, it is a
question whether between this verb and the word for“god”there
is any connection at all. It is difficult to understand how the gods
could be described as“growths”unless they were conceived of
as plants; and of this there is no evidence in ancient Egypt. We
must be content with the fact that as far back as we can trace the
history of the wordneter, it meant“god”and“god”only.
But we must also beware of supposing that the Egyptians
attached the same ideas to it that we do, or that it had the same
connotation at all periods of their history or among all classes
of the people. The pantheistic deity of Khu-n-Aten was a very
different being from the sun-god of whom the Pharaohs of the
[128] Fifth Dynasty had called themselves the sons, and between
the divinity which the multitude saw in the bull Apis and the
formless and ever-living Creator of the priesthood there was a
gulf which could hardly be bridged. But even the conception of
the Creator formed by the priesthood is difficult for us to realise.
Eighteen centuries of Christianity have left their impress upon
us, and we start from a different background of ideas from that
of the Egyptian, to whatever class he may have belonged. It
is impossible that we can enter exactly into what the Egyptian
meant by such expressions as“living for ever”or“having no
form”; even the words“life”and“form”would not have had
(^88) Hibbert Lectures on theReligion of Ancient Egypt(1879), pp. 93-100.
(^89) Brugsch,Die Aegyptologie, p. 167.