Lecture IV. The Sun-God And The Ennead. 89
whose visible symbol is the solar disc, is He, as we learn from
them, who has created all things,“the far-off heavens, mankind,
the animals and the birds; our eyes are strengthened by his beams,
and when he reveals himself all flowers grow and live; at his
rising the pastures bring forth, they are intoxicated before his
face; all the cattle skip on their feet, and the birds in the marshes
flutter with joy.”It is he“who brings in the years, creates the [096]
months, makes the days, reckons the hours; he is lord of time,
according to whom men reckon.”^64 Beside Him, “there is no
other”God.
“Beautiful is thy setting,”begins another hymn,“O living
Aten, thou lord of lords and king of the two worlds! When thou
unitest thyself with the heaven at thy setting, mortals rejoice
before thy countenance, and give honour to him who has created
them, and pray to him who has formed them in the presence of
Khu-n-Aten, thy son, whom thou lovest, the king of Egypt who
liveth in truth. All Egypt and all lands within the circle that thou
treadest in thy glory, praise thee at thy rising and at thy setting.
O God, who in truth art the living one, who standest before our
eyes, thou createst that which was not, thou formest it all; we
also have come into being through the word of thy mouth.”^65 [097]
the Nile cometh to Egypt from the other world.”
(^64) Erman,Life in Ancient Egypt, Eng. tr., p. 262.
(^65) Another strophe of the Hymn to Aten, as translated by Professor Breasted
(De Hymnis in Solem sub rege AmenophideIV.{FNSconceptis, p. 47), is
equally explicit:“Thou hast created the earth according to thy pleasure, when
thou wast alone, both all men and the cattle great and small; all who walk
upon the earth, those on high who fly with wings; the foreign lands of Syria
(Khar) and Cush as well as the land of Egypt; each in its place thou appointest,
thou providest them with all that they need; each has his granary, his stores of
grain are counted. Diverse are the languages of men, more different than their
shape is the colour of their skin, (for) thou hast distinguished the nations of the
world (one from the other).”In the succeeding strophe the monotheism of the
worshipper of Aten, in whose eyes even the sacred Nile was the creature of the
one true God, appears in striking contrast to the ordinary polytheism of Egypt
(Breasted,l.c.p. 53):“Thou createst the Nile in the other world, thou bringest