The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

146 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

a seal-cylinder which belongs to the oldest period of Egyptian
history already declares that Daddu was“the city of the ram.”^132
Nebhât and Anubis had originally nothing to do with the god
of Busiris. Nebhât, in fact, is merely a title which has been
fossilised into the name of a deity. It is merely the ordinary
title of the Egyptian lady as“the mistress of the house,”who
thus stands on the same footing as“the lord of the house,”her
husband. The title could have been given to any goddess who
[158] was conceived of in human form, and was doubtless applied
to Isis the wife of Osiris. He was“the lord”of the city; she,
“the lady of the house.”It reminds us of the way in which the
deities of Babylonia were addressed. There, too, the god was
“the lord,”the goddess“the lady.”The old titles of Osiris and
Isis which have thus survived in the Osirian myth are essentially
Babylonian.
Nebhât or Nephthys was individualised in order to complete
the trinity of Set, of which Set was the central figure. We can tell,
accordingly, when she thus developed into a separate goddess.
It was when the doctrine of the Trinity first became dominant
in the Egyptian schools of theology, and all the chief deities of
the country were forced to conform to it. Anubis, the second
person in the trinity of Set, must have already been attached
to the cult of Osiris. How this came about is not difficult to
discover. Anubis the jackal was the god of the underworld.
Like his symbol, the jackal, he watched over the tombs, more
especially in“the mountain”far away from the cultivated land.
His sacred animal already appears mounted on its standard on
the early slate plaques of Nekhen and Abydos by the side of
the Horus-hawk. He was, in fact, worshipped in many of the
nomes, above all at Siût, where he was adored as“the opener of

(^132) As early as the age of the Pyramid texts the column Dad had come to be
explained as a picture of the spine, or rather spinal column (zad), of Osiris,
which was supposed to be preserved at Daddu or Pi-Asar-neb-Daddu or Abusir.
SeeUnas7.