Lecture VI. The Gods Of Egypt. 119
the same connotation for him that they have for us. All that we
can do is to approximate to the meaning that he gave to them,
remembering that our translation of them into the language of
to-day can be approximative only.
The hieroglyphic writing which preserved memories of a time
that the Egyptians themselves had forgotten, represents the idea
of a“god”by the picture of an axe. The axe seems originally to
have consisted of a sharpened flint or blade of metal hafted in a
wooden handle, which was occasionally wrapped in strips of red,
white, and black cloth.^90 It takes us back to an age of fetishism,
when inanimate objects were looked upon as divine, and perhaps
reflects the impression made upon the natives of the country by
the Pharaonic Egyptians with their weapons of metal. Horus
of Edfu, it will be remembered, was served by smiths, and the
shrines he founded to commemorate his conquest of Egypt were
known as“the smithies.”The double-headed axe was a divine
symbol in Asia Minor,^91 and both in the old world and in the [129]
new the fetish was wrapped in cloths. Even at Delphi a sacred
stone was enveloped in wool on days of festival.
In the sacred axe, therefore, which denoted a god, we may
see a parallel to the standards on the prow of the prehistoric boat
or to the symbols of the nomes. It would have represented the
gods of those invaders of the valley of the Nile who brought
with them weapons of copper, and have been the symbol of the
conquering race and the deities it worshipped. As the Pharaonic
Egyptians appropriated the fetishes of the older population in
their sculptures and their picture-writing, so too would they have
appropriated what had become to the neolithic people the sign
and emblem of superior power.
(^90) SeeBeni-Hasan, pt. iii. (Archæological Survey of Egypt), pl. v. fig. 75.
(^91) The double-headed axe is carved repeatedly on the walls of the“palace of
Minos,”discovered by Dr. A. J. Evans at Knossos, and seems to have been the
divine symbol which was believed to protect the building from injury. On the
coins of Tarsus the sun-god Sandan carries an axe.