76 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and BabyloniaUpper and Lower Egypt,”while the serpent of Uazit symbolised
the north, the vulture of Nekheb symbolised the south. At times,
indeed, the uræus of Uazit is transferred to Nekheb; but that
was at an epoch when it had come to signify“goddess,”as the
Horus-hawk signified“god.”From the earliest ages, however,
the plant which denoted the south, and formed part of the royal
title, was used in writing her name. She was emphatically“the
southerner,”the mistress of the south, just as her consort, the
mummified Horus, was its lord.
The euhemerising legends of Edfu made Horus the faithful
vassal of his liege lord Ra Harmakhis of Heliopolis. But from a
historical point of view the relations between the two gods ought
to have been reversed, and the legends themselves contained a
reminiscence that such was the case. In describing the victorious
march of Horus and his followers towards the north, they tell
us how he made his way past Heliopolis into the Delta, and
even established one of his“forges”on its easternmost borders.
The Horus kings of Upper Egypt made themselves masters of
the northern kingdom, introducing into it the divine hawk they
worshipped and the Horus title over their names.
The sun-god of Heliopolis was represented, like the gods of
Babylonia, as a man and not as a hawk. He was known as
Tum or Atmu, who, in the later days of religious syncretism, was
distinguished from the other forms of the sun-god as representing
[082] the setting sun. But Tum was the personal name of the sun-god;
the sun itself was called Ra. As time went on, the attributes
of the god were transferred to the sun; Ra, too, became divine,
and, after being first a synonym of Tum, ended by becoming
an independent deity. While Tum was peculiarly the setting
sun, Ra denoted the sun-god in all his forms and under all his
manifestations. He was thus fitted to be the common god of all
Egypt, with whom the various local sun-gods could be identified,
and lose in him their individuality. Ra was a word which meant
“the sun”in all the dialects of the country, and its very want of