EGYPTIAN SCIENCE 



her husband's struggles, there to remain supported by 

 her four limbs, which became metamorphosed into the 

 pillars, or mountains, already mentioned. The forci- 

 ble elevation of Nuit had been effected on the day of 

 creation by a new god, Shu, who came forth from the 

 primeval waters. A painting on the mummy case of 

 one Betuhamon, now in the Turin Museum, illustrates, 

 in the graphic manner so characteristic of the Egyp- 

 tians, this act of creation. As Maspero 2 points out, the 

 struggle of Sibu resulted in contorted attitudes to 

 which the irregularities of the earth's surface are to be 

 ascribed. 



In contemplating such a scheme of celestial mechan- 

 ics as that just outlined, one cannot avoid raising the 

 question as to just the degree of literalness which the 

 Egyptians themselves put upon it. We know how 

 essentially eye-minded the Egyptian was, to use a 

 modern psychological phrase that is to say, how essen- 

 tial to him it seemed that all his conceptions should be 

 visualized. The evidences of this are everywhere: all 

 his gods were made tangible; he believed in the im- 

 mortality of the soul, yet he could not conceive of such 

 immortality except in association with an immortal 

 body; he must mummify the body of the dead, else, 

 as he firmly believed, the dissolution of the spirit 

 would take place along with the dissolution of the body 

 itself. His world was peopled everywhere with spirits, 

 but they were spirits associated always with corporeal 

 bodies ; his gods found lodgment in sun and moon and 

 stars; in earth and water; in the bodies of reptiles 

 and birds and mammals. He worshipped all of these 

 things: the sun, the moon, water, earth, the spirit of 



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