136 ANCIENT EGYPT. 



alternate in a perfectly bewildering manner — here is indeed a 

 wide field for the controversalist. 



The multiplication of gods with similar attributes presents 

 a very serious difficulty in the way of any satisfactory elucida- 

 tion of the problem ; and the more so, as some of the deities 

 were in a sense competitive. Before you is a representation, 

 copied from the monuments, of some of the deities : — Osiris; 

 a form of Isis ; Neith; Ptah ; Ammon-Ra; Sebeck; Horus 

 and Anubis. The illumination is numbered 12 in the series 

 of drawings belonging to the Society. This varied pantheon 

 is in part an inheritance from the times when Egypt was 

 divided into separate states, and after the country had become 

 united certain divinities continued to enjoy a local pre- 

 dominance as the religious governors of each nome, and they 

 were venerated by all Egypt. The king is an incarnation of 

 the deity. 



I have tried to formulate something tangible out of this 

 chaos, which, however, is perhaps more apparent than real. 

 To judge from the monumental inscriptions only, the religion 

 was pantheistic ; but the other sacred writings as a whole 

 point decidedly to a form of monotheism, a unity, or a trinity 

 in unity. The system changed less over the vast period from 

 Menes to Theodosius, over 5,000 years, than many scholars 

 imagine, and this alone would point to its having been a 

 prehistoric system, that is of an origin pre-Menes. 



There is no record of any but one distinctly important 

 break during the long course of Egyptian theology known to 

 us, and this occurred probably in the reign of Amenhbtep IV., 

 a king of the XVIIIth dynasty, who assumed the name of 

 Khoo-en-aten (the sunshine) ; his mother is thought to have 

 been a Semitic princess. The king removed the capital to 

 lel el-Amarna. The old religion was overthrown, and a 

 worship of Aten, the sun's disc, instituted in its place ; but on 

 the accession of Horemheb, another king of the same dynasty, 

 the old form of religion was reverted to. It would appear 

 that some change had also taken place during the twelfth 

 dynasty, at all events in the nomenclature of the gods, for 



