A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



pillars of support were situated at the points of the 

 compass; the northern one being located beyond the 

 Mediterranean Sea; the southern one away beyond 

 the habitable regions towards the source of the Nile, 

 and the eastern and western ones in equally inaccessi- 

 ble regions. Circling about the southern side of the 

 world was a great river suspended in mid-air on some- 

 thing comparable to mountain cliffs ; on which river the 

 sun-god made his daily course in a boat, fighting day 

 by day his ever-recurring battle against Set, the demon 

 of darkness. The wide channel of this river enabled 

 the sun-god to alter his course from time to time, as he 

 is observed to do ; in winter directing his bark towards 

 the farther bank of the channel; in summer gliding 

 close to the nearer bank. As to the stars, they were 

 similar lights, suspended from the vault of the heaven ; 

 but just how their observed motion of translation 

 across the heavens was explained is not apparent. 

 It is more than probable that no one explanation was 

 universally accepted. 



In explaining the origin of this mechanism of the 

 heavens, the Egyptian imagination ran riot. Each 

 separate part of Egypt had its own hierarchy of gods, 

 and more or less its own explanations of cosmogony. 

 There does not appear to have been any one central 

 story of creation that found universal acceptance, any 

 more than there was one specific deity everywhere 

 recognized as supreme among the gods. Perhaps the 

 most interesting of the cosmogonic myths was that 

 which conceived that Nuit, the goddess of night, had 

 been torn from the arms of her husband, Sib ft the earth- 

 god, and elevated to the sky despite her protests and 



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