Part I. The Religion Of Ancient Egypt.
Lecture I. Introduction.
It was with a considerable amount of diffidence that I accepted the
invitation to deliver a course of lectures before this University,
in accordance with the terms of Lord Gifford's bequest. Not
only is the subject of them a wide and comprehensive one; it
is one, moreover, which is full of difficulties. The materials
upon which the lectures must be based are almost entirely
monumental: they consist of sculptures and paintings, of objects
buried with the dead or found among the ruins of temples, and,
above all, of texts written in languages and characters which
only a century ago were absolutely unknown. How fragmentary
and mutilated such materials must be, I need hardly point out.
The Egyptian or Babylonian texts we possess at present are but
a tithe of those which once existed, or even of those which
will yet be discovered. Indeed, so far as the Babylonian texts
[002] are concerned, a considerable proportion of those which have
already been stored in the museums of Europe and America are
still undeciphered, and the work of thoroughly examining them
will be the labour of years. And of those which have been copied
and translated, the imperfections are great. Not infrequently a
text is broken just where it seemed about to throw light on some
problem of religion or history, or where a few more words were
needed in order to explain the sense. Or again, only a single