216 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniahunter, whose hunting-ground was the plain of heaven, and
whose prey were the gods themselves. When he rises, it is said
in the Pyramid of Unas,“the stars fight together, and the archers
patrol”the sky which drops with rain; the smaller stars which
form his constellation pursue and lasso the gods as the human
hunter lassoes the wild bull; they slay and disembowel their
booty, and boil the flesh in glowing caldrons. The“greater gods”
are hunted“in the morning,”those of less account at mid-day,
the“lesser gods” “at evening, and Sa%u refreshes himself with
the divine banquet,”feeding on their bodies and absorbing“their
magic virtues.” “The great ones of the sky”launch“the flames
against the caldrons wherein are the haunches of the followers”
of the gods; the pole-star,“who causes the dwellers in the sky
to march in procession round”Orion,“throws into the caldron
the legs of their wives.”^187 We are transported to the cannibal's
[235] kitchen of some African chieftain, such as that represented on
a curious stela found in Darfûr, and now in the museum of
Constantinople. The whole description takes us back to a period
in the history of Egypt long anterior to that of the Pyramids,
when the Pharaonic invaders were first beginning to mingle with
the older population of the land and become acquainted with its
practices. In the days of Unas the real meaning of the expressions
handed down by theological conservatism had been forgotten, or
was interpreted metaphorically; but they remained to prove that
the age when Orion was still an object of worship superior to the
gods of heaven was one which went back to the very dawn of
Pharaonic history. The cult of the stars must have been brought
by“the followers of Horus”from their Asiatic home.^188
(^187) Maspero,“La Pyramide du Roi Ounas,”in theRecueil de Travaux, iv. pp.
59-61.
(^188) Elsewhere in the Pyramid texts the Akhimu-seku or planets of the northern
hemisphere are identified with the gods (Unas218-220); Unas himself rises
as a star (Unas391); Sirius is the sister of Pepi (Pepi172); while the Khû
or luminous spirits are identified with the planets (Teta289). We hear of
the“fields of the stars”(Unas419), of the morning star in the fields of Alu