The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

(lu) #1

Lecture IV. The Sun-God And The Ennead. 71


to the king, and presides over his kingdom; but it is only over the
royal Ka that he actually watches.
At Nekhen, the Horus-hawk, to whom the city was dedicated,
was represented under the form of a mummy. It was here,
perhaps, that the natron of El-Kab was first employed to preserve
the dead body from decay, and that Horus was supposed to be
entombed, like Osiris at Abydos. At any rate, there is clearly
a connection between the dead and mummified Horus and the
Horus who stands above the name of the Pharaoh's double. It
is probable, therefore, that the identification of Horus with the
kings of Upper Egypt originated at Nekhen. The Horus-hawk
was the token under which they fought and ruled; it was Horus
who had led them to victory, and in whose name the Pharaonic [076]
Egyptians, with their weapons of metal, overcame the neolithic
population of the Nile.
That Horus, accordingly, in one shape or another, should have
become the patron god of so many principalities in Southern
Egypt, is in no way astonishing.^47 He represented the Pharaonic
Egyptians; and as they moved northward, subduing the older
inhabitants of the country, they carried his worship with them.
At Heliopolis he was adored as Hor-em-Khuti or Harmakhis,
“Horus issuing from the two horizons,”and identified with Ra,
the sun-god, the patron of the city. His image may still be seen in
the sphinx of Giza, with its human head and lion's body. At Edfu,
where the Pharaonic invaders appear to have first established
themselves, he was worshipped as Hor-be%udet under the form
of a winged solar disc, a combination of the orb of the sun


(^47) The 1st (Ombite) and 2nd (Apollinopolite) nomes, the 3rd nome (originally)
with its capital Nekhen, the nomes of the“Eastern and Western Horus”
(Tuphium and Asphynis), Qus“the city of Horus the elder,”the 5th (Coptite)
nome, the 6th nome of Dendera in so far as Hathor was daughter and husband
of Horus, the 10th (Antæopolite) and 12th (Hierakopolite) nomes, and finally
the 15th, 18th, and 20th (Herakleopolite) nomes. In the Delta also Horus was
god of the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 19th, 25th, 27th, and 30th nomes, of which
the 7th and 8th were close to the Asiatic frontier.

Free download pdf