Lecture II. Egyptian Religion. 35
garment was never separated from that which it covered; it was
regarded as an integral part of the divine essence, which could
no more be dissociated from it than the surface of a statue can
be dissociated from the stone of which it is made. The educated [036]
Egyptian came to see in the multitudinous gods of the public
worship merely varying manifestations or forms of one divine
substance; but still they were manifestations or forms visible to
the senses, and apart from such forms the divine substance had
no existence. It is characteristic that the old belief was never
disavowed, that images were actually animated by the gods or
human personalities whose likeness they bore, and whom they
were expressively said to have“devoured”; indeed, the king still
received theSaor principle of immortality from contact with
the statue of the god he served; and wonder-working images,
which inclined the head towards those who asked them questions,
continued to be consulted in the temples.^8 At Dendera the soul
of the goddess Hathor was believed to descend from heaven in
the form of a hawk of lapis-lazuli in order to vivify her statue;^9
and the belief is a significant commentary on the mental attitude
of her worshippers.
One result of the Egyptian's inability or disinclination for
abstract thought was the necessity not only of representing the
gods under special and definite forms, but even of always so
thinking of them. The system of writing, with its pictorial
characters, favoured the habit; and we can well understand how
difficult the most educated scribe must have found it to conceive
of Thoth otherwise than as an ibis, or of Hathor otherwise than
as a cow. Whatever may have been the origin of the Egyptian
worship of animals, or—which is something very different—of
the identification of certain individual animals with the principal
gods, its continuance was materially assisted by the sacred
(^8) See Maspero,Études de Mythologie et l'Archéologie égyptiennes, i. p. 85
sqq.
(^9) Mariette,Dendérah, Texte, p. 156.