Lecture IV. The Sun-God And The Ennead. 87
god”was unique only to the worshipper, and to the worshipper
only in so far as his worship for the moment was addressed
to this“one god”alone. When with the growth of the solar
theory the deities of Egypt began to be resolved into one another,
the title came to signify that attribute of divinity which unified
all the rest. But to the Egyptian, it must be remembered, the
attribute was a concrete thing; and though in one sense Amon and
Khnum and Horus denoted the attributes of Ra, in another sense
they were distinct personalities with a distinct history behind
them. The result was what I have called a nebulous polytheism,
in which the individual deities of the Egyptian Pantheon had
melted like clouds into one another; they had lost their several
individualities, but had not gained a new individuality in return.
The conservative spirit, which forbade the Egyptian to break
with the traditions of the past and throw aside any part of his [094]
heritage, prevented him from taking the final step, and passing
out of polytheism into monotheism.
It was just this step, however, that was taken by Amon-hotep
IV. and his followers, and which at once stamps the non-Egyptian
character of his religious reformation. Henceforward there was
to be but one God in Egypt, a God who was omnipresent and
omniscient, existing everywhere and in everything, and who
would brook no rival at his side. He was not, indeed, a new
god, for he had already revealed himself to the generations of
the past under the form of Ra, and his visible symbol was the
solar disc. But Ra had been ignorantly worshipped; unworthy
language had been used of him, and he had been confounded with
gods who were no gods at all. The new and purified conception
of the supreme divinity needed a new name under which it could
be expressed, and this was found in Aten,“the solar disc,”or
Aten-Ra,“the disc of the sun.”
It was not probable that Amon of Thebes and his worshippers
would bow their heads to the new faith without a struggle. It was
Amon who had led the fathers of Amon-hotepIV. to victory, who