RELIGION AND THE ENVIRONMENT. 17 



became the seat of the central government — now This, now Thebes, 

 now Memphis, now Tanais — or as the royal house (through some dy- 

 nastic change, or intermarriage with princesses from a distance) fa- 

 vored one or another local group of gods or particular deity, so the 

 hierarchical order and the very character of the deities shifted. Thus, 

 when the Hyksos came into power, a Semitic dynasty, they favored 

 especially the god Set, whom they fancied identical with their own 

 Sedeq or El-Shaddai. They took him for their providential leader, and 

 discouraged the worship of the other gods. But when, by their op- 

 pressions, they had stirred up the Egyptians, at length, to revolt, and 

 were driven out of the country, Set, though before an honored deity, 

 was now associated with all that was evil, and was credited with en- 

 tire malevolence, and made, instead of Apap, the serpent of darkness, 

 the great antagonist of the beneficent Osiris. The hatred of the Egyp- 

 tians for the very name of Set was carried so far that it was chiseled 

 out of the monuments ; the day that had been dedicated to him be- 

 came the Black Friday of the Egyptians ; and the animals chosen to 

 symbolize him were the most hateful monsters known to them, the 

 crocodile and the hippopotamus : he became, in short, the almighty 

 destroyer and blighter — the great devil of their pantheon. 



This is no isolated instance. Repeatedly do we find wars between 

 nations, arraying their gods, in the popular belief, in hostility ; and 

 the only historical record we have of the military conflict is the myth 

 of the wars between the supernatural guardians of the different 

 peoples. Such a myth is that of the wars between the Hellenic gods 

 and the Titans and giants, and the celestial usurpation by which Zeus 

 and Apollo drive Saturn from his throne, banishing the sons of earth 

 to the regions of night and death, burying Enceladus under Etna, and 

 fastening Prometheus by eternal fetters to his rock of punishment. 

 The historical fact beneath this is the struggle between the celestial 

 deities of the Aryan invaders and the rude, burly peasant gods of the 

 peasant aborigines. 



Similarly, out of the conflicts of the Iranians with their brother- 

 people, the Brahmans — whom they seem at first to have accompanied 

 in their migration from Bactria — we have a religious change of a nota- 

 ble character. One part of the immigrants, the Iranians, seemed to 

 desire to cease their wanderings and adopt a settled agricultural life ; 

 the other were unwilling to do so, and would not respect the inclosed 

 fields of the Iranians. Hence an hereditary feud, that antagonized 

 them religiously as well as politically. Originally, both the words 

 devas, i. e., the bright ones, and asuras, the living ones, were used as 

 names of the Aryan gods, both terms being terms of respect and love. 

 But gradually the term deva came to be the favorite with the Brah- 

 mans, and the term asura or ahiira the favorite with the Iranians. 

 But, after the feud broke out, we find the dsuras of the Iranians be- 

 coming such an object of dislike to the Brahmans that gradually the 



VOL. XXIT. — 2 



