CHAP. XII. EARLY RELIGION OF EGYPT. 211 



solicitude of Isis for her husband was held up as 

 an example worthy the emulation of every wife. 



Many were the allegorical and symbolical beings 

 who formed part of their Pantheon ; and not only 

 was every attribute of the Divinity made into a 

 separate Deity, but Genii, or imaginary Gods, were 

 invented to assume some office, either in relation to 

 the duties or future state of mankind. Even the 

 Genius of a town, a river, or a district, was created 

 in imagination, and worshipped as a God; and every 

 month and day, says Herodotus *, were consecrated 

 to a particular Deity. 



It may reasonably be supposed that in early times 

 the religion of Egypt was more simple, and free from 

 the comphcated host of fanciful beings who at a later 

 period filled astation in the catalogue of their Gods ; 

 and that the only objects of worship in the valley of 

 the Nile were, 1°, the deified attributes of the crea- 

 tive power, and of the divine intellect; 2°, the Sun 

 and Moon, whose visible power has so generally 

 been an object of veneration among mankind in 

 the early ages of the world ; and, 3°, we may add, 

 the president of that future state to which the souls 

 of the dead were supposed to pass after they had 

 left their earthly envelope. It is difficult to decide 

 whether the Egyptians had originally the belief in a 

 future state, or if the immortality of the soul was 

 a doctrine suggested at a later period, when philo- 

 sophy had remodelled their religious notions ; suf- 

 fice it to say that the oldest monuments which 

 remain bear ample evidence of its having been their 



* Heiodot. ii. &>. 



p 2 



