Lecture VI. The Gods Of Egypt. 121
over Western Asia. The Egyptian Nu is the counterpart of the
Babylonian Mummu, the mother of gods, as Nu was their father.
Professor Hommel may even be right in identifying the name
with the Babylonian Nun or Nunu, the lord of the deep.
But Nu survived only in the theological schools, more
especially in that of Hermopolis, the modern Eshmunên. The god
of Hermopolis was Thoth, the Egyptian De%uti. Thoth seems to
have been at the outset the moon, which was thus, as in Babylonia,
of the male sex. A legend, repeated by Plutarch,^93 relates how he
gained the five intercalatory days of the Egyptian year by playing
at dice with the moon; and he was at times identified with the
moon-gods Aah and Khonsu. The first month of the year was his,
and he was the measurer of time, who had invented arithmetic
and geometry, music and astronomy, architecture and letters. He
knew the magic formulæ which could bind the gods themselves,
and as minister of the Pharaoh Thamos had introduced writing [131]
and literature into Egypt. Henceforward he remained the patron
of books and education, on which the culture of Egypt so largely
rested. He was, in fact, the culture-god of the Egyptians to whom
the elements of civilisation were due.
It is curious that we do not know his true name, for De%uti
means merely the god“who is attached to the ibis.”Was it
really Nu? and is Thoth really a compound of a moon-god
and a sun-god? At all events the culture-god of Babylonia who
corresponded to Thoth was Ea, the deep, and one of the earliest
names of Ea was“the god Nun.”Moreover, the son of Ea was
Asari, the Osiris of Egypt; and just as Asari instructed mankind
in the wisdom and laws of Ea, so Thoth acted as the minister of
Osiris and adjudged his cause against Seb. Like Ea, too, Thoth
wrote the first books from which men derived their laws.^94
(^93) De Isid.12.
(^94) As Thoth writes the name of the king upon the sacred sycamore in order to
ensure him everlasting life, so the name of Ea is written upon the core of the
sacred cedar-tree (WAI.iv. 15,Rev.10-13); Sayce, Hibbert Lectures on the