The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

100 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

between two antagonistic currents of religious thought, appears
very clearly when we compare Egypt with Babylonia. In
Babylonia, also, there were symbols attached to the gods, some
of them representing animals and birds, others inanimate objects.
In Babylonia, moreover, the king was a god, both in his lifetime
[108] and after his death. But in Babylonia the figures of the gods
of the State religion were all human; it was only the demons of
the popular cult who were allowed to retain the bodies of beasts
and birds. The gods themselves were all depicted in human
form. The reason of this is simple: in Babylonia the Semitic
conception of the deity was predominant; there was no fetishism
to be conciliated, no animal worship to be reconciled with a
higher faith. The emblems of the gods remained emblems, and
the gods of heaven clothed themselves with the same form as the
human god on earth.
In the retention of the primitive animal worship, therefore,
we must see an evidence not only of the strength of that portion
of the population to whom it originally belonged, but also of
the conservative spirit which characterised the Egyptians. In
this case, however, the conservative spirit was the result of the
influence of the conquered race; art continued to represent Horus
with the head of a hawk, just because those who believed him to
be a bird continued to form an important part of the population.
The popular cult and the popular superstitions were too widely
spread to be disregarded.
Egyptian orthodoxy found a ready way in which to explain the
animal forms of its gods. The soul, once freed from its earthly
body, could assume whatever shape it chose, or rather, could
inhabit as long as it would whatever body it chose to enter. And
what was true of the human soul was equally true of the gods.
They too were like men, differing indeed from men only in so far
as they were already in the other world, and thus freed from the
trammels and limitations of our present existence. The soul of Ra,
which was practically Ra himself, could appear under the form of