The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

74 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

hieroglyph which depicts them. They were the twin mountains
between which the sun came forth at dawn, and between which
[079] he again passes at sunset.

The hieroglyph belongs to the very beginning of Pharaonic
Egyptian history. It may have been brought by the Pharaonic
immigrants from their old home in the East. It is at least noticeable
that in the Sumerian language of primitive Babylonia the horizon
was calledkharraorkhurra, a word which corresponds letter
for letter with the name of Horus. The fact may, of course,
be accidental, and the name of the Egyptian god may really be
derived from the same root as that from which the word for
“heaven”has come, and which means“to be high.”But the
conception of the twin-mountains between which the sun-god
comes forth every morning, and between which he passes again
at nightfall, is of Babylonian origin. On early Babylonian seal-
cylinders we see him stepping through the door, the two leaves
of which have been flung back by its warders on either side of the
mountains, while rays of glory shoot upward from his shoulders.
The mountains were called Mas,“the twins,”in Sumerian; and
the great Epic of Chaldæa narrated how the hero Gilgames made
his way to them across the desert, to a land of darkness, where
scorpion-men, whose heads rise to heaven while their breasts
descend to hell, watched over the rising and the setting of the
sun. It is difficult to believe that such a conception of the horizon
could ever have arisen in Egypt. There the Delta is a flat plain
with no hills even in sight, while in the valley of Upper Egypt
there are neither high mountains nor twin peaks.
Horus himself is, I believe, to be found in the Babylonian
inscriptions. Mention is occasionally made in them of a god Khar
or Khur, and in contracts of the time of Khammurabi (B.C. 2200)
we find the name of Abi-Khar,“my father is Khar.”But the
age of Khammurabi was one of intercourse between Babylonia
[080] and Egypt, and the god Khar or Horus is therefore probably
borrowed from Egypt, just as a seal-cylinder informs us was the