Lecture IX. The Popular Religion Of Egypt.
Thus far I have dealt with the official religion of ancient Egypt,
with the religion of the priests and princes, the scribes and
educated classes. This is naturally the religion of which we know
most. The monuments that have come down to us are for the
most part literary and architectural, and enshrine the ideas and
beliefs of the cultivated part of the community. The papyri were
written for those who could read and write, the temples were
erected at the expense of the State, and the texts and figures with
which they were adorned were engraved or painted on their walls
under priestly direction. The sculptured and decorated tomb, the
painted mummy-case, the costly sarcophagus, the roll of papyrus
that was buried with the dead, were all alike the privilege of the
wealthy and the educated. The grave that contained the body
of the poor contained little else than the coarse cere-cloths in
which it was wrapped. Our knowledge, therefore, of the religion
of the people, of the popular religion as distinguished from the
religion of official orthodoxy, is, and must be, imperfect. We
have to gather it from the traces it has left in the religion of
the State, from stray references to it in literature, from a few
rare monuments which have come down to us, from its survivals
in the modern folk-lore and superstitions of Egypt, or from its
[205] influence on the decaying faith of the classical age.
There was, however, a popular religion by the side of the
official religion, just as there is in all countries which possess
an organised faith. And if it is difficult to understand fully the
religion of the uneducated classes in Western Europe to-day, or
to realise their point of view, it must be much more difficult
to do so in the case of ancient Egypt. Here our materials are
scanty, and the very fact that we know as much as we do about
the religion of the upper class makes it additionally harder to
estimate them aright.