jiigmt-<hnstwn imiap of the Wise 

 $ttb, toith gorget Illustrations, 



By HY. COLLEY MARCH, M.D., F.S.A. 



(Read February 17th, 1897.) 



S one creed or cult superseded another, it would be 

 difficult, in the long history of religious beliefs, to 

 find a single example of a change that was discon- 

 tinuous or abrupt. The new was a modification of 

 the old ; the old underlay and interpenetrated the 

 new. Continuity .is as inevitable in psychical 

 processes, or in spiritual things, as it is in physical 

 facts. 



The extraordinary multiplicity of the Egyptian gods, the 

 henotheism * that marked their individual worship, the extreme 

 variety and complexity of their ritual, all indicate the repeated 

 overlapping of one religious conception by another. There was no 

 displacement but only superposition. The pantheon of the Nile 

 Valley was unrestricted ; its deities were limited neither in 

 number nor in nature. And any inconsistency that might strike 

 a modern mind was ignored, or perhaps would have been denied, 

 by the intellectual subtlety of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt. 



* A word suggested by Max Miiller to denote a system of polytheism 

 in which the particular divinity who happened to be selected for 

 adoration is regarded as supreme. 



