Lecture II. Egyptian Religion.
It is through its temples and tombs that ancient Egypt is mainly
known to us. It is true that the warm and rainless climate of Upper
Egypt has preserved many of the objects of daily life accidentally
buried in the ruins of its cities, and that even fragments of fragile
papyrus have come from the mounds that mark the sites of its
villages and towns; but these do not constitute even a tithe of
the monuments upon which our present knowledge of ancient
Egyptian life and history has been built. It is from the tombs and
temples that we have learned almost all we now know about the
Egypt of the past. The tombs were filled with offerings to the
dead and illustrations of the daily life of the living, while their
walls were adorned with representations of the scenes at which
their possessor had been present, with the history of his life, or
with invocations to the gods. The temples were storehouses of
religious lore, which was sculptured or painted on their walls and
ceilings. In fact, we owe most of our knowledge of ancient Egypt
to the gods and to the dead; and it is natural, therefore, that the
larger part of it should be concerned with religion and the life to
come.
We are thus in an exceptionally good position for ascertaining,
at all events in outline, the religious ideas of the old Egyptians,
and even for tracing their history through long periods of time.
[022] The civilisation of Egypt goes back to a remote past, and recent
discoveries have carried us almost to its beginnings. The veil
which so long covered the origin of Egyptian culture is at last
being drawn aside, and some of the most puzzling inconsistencies
in the religion, which formed so integral a part of that culture,
are being explained. We have learnt that the religion of the Egypt
which is best known to us was highly composite, the product
of different races and different streams of culture and thought;
and the task of uniting them all into a homogeneous whole was
never fully completed. To the last, Egyptian religion remained