in different places at one and the same time. If he desired to hear or to see, he required ears or eyes; and while, e.g., ears were ascribed to a deity in large numbers in order that he might perceive more sounds and words than human beings can perceive, yet the faculty was of limited range. It is true that certain texts speak occasionally of a deity as omnipresent and omnipotent, but these passages are in reality invocations designed to flatter that particular deity, and to induce him to maintain his reputation as a supreme power by granting his suppliant's prayer. The conception of a truly omnipotent deity was one that the Egyptians never attained; and that the ostensible references to such are, after all, but phrases to which no real conviction attached is made quite clear by the fact that similar qualities were ascribed to the reigning Pharaoh in the panegyrics of his subjects.

When the Egyptians sought to attribute a more universal character to a deity in a precise and complete sense, they had to resort to a kind of syncretism. They fabricated a number of figures as manifestations of the deity, and as bearing in that capacity various names (ren-u). To the Egyptian mind, however, the 'name' was not, as in modern languages, a general term. It was a thing by itself, and independent of the object which it denoted, and it possessed an immortality of its own. It was related in the closest way to what it signified, but was not identical with it. To have knowledge of a name was to have power over its bearer, but in certain cases the name might continue to exist apart from the latter. The 'name,' in fact, was related to its bearer in some such way as the ka, the ba, and other immortal elements were related to the individual human being.

The several names' of a deity were not simple incarnations thereof, but were generally distinct personalities. Thus, if Isis was designated by, and worshipped under, various epithets, such as Hathor, Mut, etc., these were not regarded as mere emanations existing in and through Isis, but were figures complete in themselves and endowed with a power and activity of their own. The Egyptians did homage to each by itself, and did not think of such homage as accorded to the central deity. When they wished to worship Isis herself, they required to direct their thoughts specially to her. The primary deity always remained a unity, neither surrendering any of his distinctive characteristics to the subsidiary figures, nor taking from them any of their attributes or achievements.

In order that a deity might exercise his power at a particular place, he required a material body, which served him for a longer or shorter period as a vesture or embodiment; and, by way of facilitating such material manifestation, the temples were furnished with statues or symbols which corresponded to his supposed corporeal form, and could, accordingly, be used by him at once as a place of sojourn. When such object had been animated by the presence of the deity, it was regarded as actually the deity himself. But a material tenement of this kind was not absolutely necessary. 1A god with 77 eyes and 77 ears is met with in the Magic Papyrus Harris (vii. 6), ed. F. J. Chabas, Le Papyrus magique Harris, Chalon-sur-Saône, 1860, p. 99; cf. E. A. W. Budge, Facsimiles of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, London, 1910, pl. 26, p. 26.

1 Cf. the remarks in the art. GOD (Egyptian), vol. vi. p. 276. Papyrus Anastasi, ii. pl. 6, line 3 ff. iv. pl. 5, line 6 ff.; cf. G. Maspero, Du Genre épistolaire chez les anciens Egyptiens, Paris, 1872, p. 79 f.

4 Wiedemann, Die Amulette der alten Ägypter, Leipzig, 1910, P. 16, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Eng. tr,, London, 1897, p. 293 ff., in Muséon, xv. [1896] 49 ff., and in L'Égypte, i. [Alex andria, 1895] 573 ff.

Thus the god of Edfu, in order to help the sun-god against his enemies, assumed the form of a winged solar disk, and thereafter some portion of his divinity always inhered in this new figure, which, accordingly, became one of the most potent apotropæic symbols in the religion of Egypt. In exactly the same way statues and symbols likewise permanently retained something of the divine personality. They became separate deities, whose existence in no way interfered with the continued existence of the original deity as an integral entity, or with his capacity to become incarnate in similar fashion at another place. Here we encounter a mode of thinking which is found among many other peoples, viz. the belief that in the painted figure, or even in a mere reflexion, there inheres permanently a part of the personality of the original, though without in any way taking from the latter any portion of his individuality. Such modes of thought explain the rise of numerous distinct forms of one and the same deity in a single locality, and also, when once he had become embodied there in various objects, their continued co-existence. The several forms were differentiated from one another either by the attributes which the deity had manifested in his various embodiments or by the sacred localities from which he had been derived under a certain characteristic, and at which he usually resided in a particular form. Each of these forms of the original deity had a distinct individuality. They were represented side by side in long rows of statues or reliefs, or else were enumerated in extensive lists.2

So far as a deity was not compelled by incantations to abide in a particular place in order to serve the purposes of the person casting the spell, the choice among the various available forms of incarnation lay with the deity himself. By means of certain spells, a dead man, being endowed with magical powers, could, after his resurrection to life, avail himself of existing embodiments or not, having the power to assume whatever forms he liked, as that of a bird, a serpent, a crocodile, the god Ptah, etc., and was subject to no compulsion in the matter.

What we find here is not metempsychosis, but the capacity of the dead to incarnate themselves as they willed. The number of possible transformations was unlimited. It is true that the Book of the Dead 3 gives only a few-about twelve-but these are merely a selection of peculiarly important forms, and by no means exhaust the series. The fact that in a text of late origin 4 the regular twelve transformations are brought into relation with the twelve hours of the day doubtless points to a later attempt to reduce the forms to a scheme. But the arrangement

of the relative chapters in the Book of the Dead shows no uniformity, and the forms given in that text are not exhaustive, while such a relation between forms and hours is nowhere else referred to.

Thus, in the first tale of Setna, Ahure becomes The dead might also assume a human form. incarnate in Tabubue, and Neferkaptah in an old man. In this narrative, indeed, even the pieces of a game have incarnations as the fifty-two human 1 H. E. Naville, Textes relatifs au mythe d'Horus, Geneva, 1870, pl. 12 ff.; tr. H. Brugsch, Die Sage von der geflügelten Sonnenscheibe,' in AGG xiv. [1869] 173–236.

2 e.g., the rows of statues exhibiting the forms of the goddess Sechet in Karnak, founded by Amenophis III., and completed by Sheshonk I.; cf. P. E. Newberry, in PSBA xxv. [1903] 217 ff., M. Benson and J. Gourlay, The Temple of Mut in Asher, Lon don, 1889, pp. 31, 41, 248. Some of the figures in that series bore no distinguishing epithet, and were manifestly intended to represent new, and not as yet distinctive, types of incarnation assumed by the goddess. For a series of reliefs representing forms of Amon, cf., e.g., Lepsius, Denkmäler, iii. 36c, d. For lists of the forms of Osiris, see the Book of the Dead, cxlii.-a chapter which can be traced as far back as the Theban period; cf. the important list in W. Pleyte and F. Rossi, Papyrus de Turin, Leyden, 1869-76, pls. 11-13, p. 22 ff.

3 lxxvi.-lxxxviii. The texts of the Book of the Dead dating from the Middle Kingdom devote numerous chapters to the subject; cf. the enumeration given by G. Röder, in ARW xvi. [1913] 79 f.

4 Brugsch, ZÄ v. [1867] 21-26; Wiedemann, ib. xvi. [1878) 96 f.

menials of Tabubue. The same text tells us that Ahure and her child Merab lay buried in Koptos, and yet that they repose in the tomb of the husband and father. They desire that their mummies should likewise be brought to the tomb-a desire all the more natural because the mummy was regarded as the principal form in which the dead became incarnate; it was a vesture which he could restore to life, and in which he could once more move about.

The mummy was subject to bodily needs, and the more mobile ba-soul is depicted as conveying bread and water to it through the shaft of the tomb.2. Of equal importance with the erected in the serdab, and sometimes also in the chamber of worship; in later times mainly in the latter. They were sometimes given a place in the temple, where, being near the gods, they could more naturally look for a share in the sacrificial gifts than in a tomb situated at a distance. In particular, statues were placed in temples by kings as marks of special distinction for men of merit.5

mummy were the statues, which in the Old Kingdom were

The dead man, moreover, had a singular power of incarnation in relation to the reliefs in his tomb. When he uttered his magic formula, the incidents portrayed in the reliefs became real. He incarnated himself in his own figure, and at the same time compelled the other persons and the animals and things depicted in the relief to become embodied in theirs, and to perform the actions represented. To the same mode of thought belonged the notion that a magician could by means of spells change the wax figure of a crocodile into a real crocodile."

If beatified men could thus become incarnate in so great a variety of forms, there can be no doubt that the same capacity was assigned to the gods also, though it is true that our documents furnish no lists of the forms usually or possibly assumed by the individual deities, or of the magic formulæ employed by them in order to assume such incarnations.

8

Of more importance among the forms of incarnation resorted to by the gods were the sacred animals. This idea was not indigenous to Egypt. The god-animals were originally the independent deities of the primitive inhabitants. The normally anthropomorphic and spiritually conceived deities introduced into the country during the Nagada period by the invading and conquering peoples were brought into relation with the old indigenous objects of worship. The deity of a conquering tribe that settled in a particular locality was declared to be identical with the sacred animal hitherto worshipped there, and the latter was thereafter regarded as his material manifestation. But the deity did not thereby surrender his independent existence. Thus we find, besides the Ptah incarnate in Apis, the god Ptah; and, besides the ram Amon, the god Amon. In these identifications of deity and animal, no attention was paid to possible differences in the distinctive properties of the associated pair, and this inherent disparity, as we might expect, permanently stood in the way of a real fusion between the primitive and the incarnate deity. Even when the similarity of the two was more marked, as in the case of the hawk of Edfu and the sun-god, they still maintained a 1 G. Maspero, Contes populaires 4, Paris, 1911, p. 123 ff., where further literature on the text is cited. On the figures used as 'men,' cf. Wiedemann, Altägyp. Sagen und Märchen, Leipzig, 1906, p. 136.

2 Vignette in the Papyrus Nebket in the Louvre, ed. T. Deveria and P. Pierret, Le Papyrus de Neb-Qed, Paris, 1872, pl. 3. 3 On these, cf. Maspero, Etudes de mythologie, i. [Paris, 1893] 53 ff., 77 ff.

4 Cf. the numerous statues of private persons in the hidingplace at Karnak, in G. Legrain, Statues et statuettes de rois et de particuliers' (Cat. du Musée du Caire, i. [Cairo, 1906], ii. [1909]).

5e.g. Legrain, op. cit. i. 23, 79.

6 Cf. Maspero, Études égyptiennes, i. [Paris, 1886] 1931., Études de mythologie, vi. [do. 1912] 398 f.

7 Papyrus Westcar; cf. Maspero, Contes populaires 4, p. 27 1. 8 Wiedemann, Der Tierkult der alten Ägypter, Leipzig, 1912, p. 27 ff.

mutually independent existence. The incarnation, in fact, added a fresh and independent by-form to the deity, but the distinct individuality of the latter remained as before.

These ideas emanate directly from the Egyptian conception of what is involved in personality. Man was not in himself an integral unity, nor, by analogy, was any other existent being. Each individual existence was rather a mosaic-like complex of various severally independent constituents which merely happened to be conjoined in a particular body, but was not in its own being dependent upon that body or its continued existence. Thus, in the individual human personality there were, besides the body, the various constituents of the soul-the ka, the ba, the sechem, etc.1-which, while conjoined in the man during life, first attained complete independence after death, each of them then repairing to the world beyond in order that, according to the Osirian doctrine of immortality, it might, as a result of the judgment before Osiris, be once more united with the rest in the personality so restored in the realm of the dead. In beings of a higher rank, such as kings and gods, the partition of the soul was carried still further. These had not simply a single ka and ba, but several of each, and in these the various attributes combined in the divine person were at a later date supposed to be severally incarnated.

A crucial instance of the distinct individuality of these elements is found in the idea that the divinity of the king might be detached even from himself. In this case the divine personality is figured as a man bearing a general resemblance to the earthly ruler, but sometimes it wears other crowns besides his, and it seldom has even the hawk's head corresponding to the hawk-soul of the Pharaoh. It receives sacrificial offerings from the king himself, and bestows upon him heavenly gifts.3 The proper divinity of the Pharaoh is embodied in this figure, but such disengagement of a part of the monarch's personality in no way diminishes his own individuality. The sacrificing king remains in himself complete, and is in no sense a merely partial or fragmentary being.

The ka of the Pharaoh is often represented as a little childless frequently as a grown man who walks behind the king, bearing the royal ka-name on his head, and carrying the royal symbols. It sometimes appears also as the hieroglyphic transcript of the ka-name, furnished with arms in order to hold the symbols. Here the incarnation of the ka-element in a hieroglyphic expression is effected in the same way as the individual hieroglyphs for 'life," power,' 'stability, etc., which are fitted life, power, stability, etc., of the king are embodied in the with arms and legs, and carry symbols of the monarch.

Further, attributes which seem to us purely abstract were regarded as becoming incarnate, as, e.g., the divine protection, which was em bodied in the blood of Isis, and is represented by the knot-amulet_tet. This amulet likewise is fitted with hands," or, in some instances, with 1 Wiedemann, The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Im mortality of the Soul, Eng. tr., London, 1895, also in Congrès provincial des Orientalistes, St. Etienne, 1878, p. 159 ff., and in Muséon, xv. [1896] 46 ff.

2 Lists of the sun-god's 14 kas, in F. W. von Bissing, SMA, 1911, no. 5, pp. 5, 12. The sun-god, moreover, had seven bas (J. Dümichen, Altägyp. Tempelinschriften, i., Leipzig, 1867, pl. 29; cf. P. Le Page Renouf, Life Work, ii. [Paris, 1903] 241; Brugsch, Hieroglyph.-demot. Wörterbuch, Suppl. vii. [Leipzig, 1882] 997, and R. V. Lanzone, Dizionario di mitologia egizia, Turin, 1881-86, p. 1205). We read often of the ba-u (pl.) of the king, though their precise number is not given. 3 Lepsius, Denkmäler, iii. 85a, 189, 191. 4 Ib. iii. 786.

5 Cf. the illustrations in W. M. F. Petrie, A Season in Egypt, London, 1888, pl. 20, p. 22; well-defined illustrations in Lepsius, iii. 20a, 21, 556, 61.

As in Lepsius, iii. 86a; A. Mariette, Abydos, i., Paris, 1869, pls. 28, 32; E. Naville, The Festival-hall of Ösorkon 11., London, 1892, pls. 1, 9, 14; Lepsius, iii. 2096; Mariette, Denderah, i., Paris, 1870, pls. 13, 38, 44, 45, iv., 1873, pls. 2, 12.

7 Book of the Dead, clvi.; cf. the vignette in Naville, Das ägyp. Todtenbuch der XVIII-XX Dynastie, Berlin, 1886, 1 pl. 105.

4

2

a head. Similarly, incarnate forms of various senses and ideas, as taste and feeling, hearing and sight, year, eternity, infinity, joy, male and female darkness, etc., are met with as deities to whom homage is paid, and who are, therefore, expected to manifest an individual activity in favour of the suppliant. Of such forms the most frequently mentioned is Truth, who became a goddess-the Maat worshipped in a number of temples as a woman with the symbol for 'truth' upon her head. Further, the particular truth which dwelt in a particular man or deity could become incarnate in a similar figure, and this type of truth might be eaten or drunk, while the king might offer it to the deity."

The possible co-existence of a number of individually distinct entities in another being which yet maintained an existence independent of them is seen also in a curious conception of the royal person. The Pharaoh comprised in himself the kings of Upper and of Lower Egypt, each of whom retained his own individuality. The monarch not only bore the titles and dignities that severally belonged to the two provinces, and had a double house and a double treasury, but, as king of either province, he also offered two distinct sacrifices, and in some instances had two tombs, which, as it would seem, belonged severally to the king of Upper Egypt and the king of Lower Egypt.

The king was regarded as of divine origin, and even as a god. In this aspect, however, he was not merely the incarnate form of a particular deity, but was a new addition to the pantheonone who, clothed in a human form and born of a human mother, lived as a man amongst men, and yet could associate with the other gods on a footing of perfect equality. At death he discarded his purely human traits, though he did not completely surrender his human nature. In the earlier period, he was supposed to eat the older gods, thereby acquiring their peculiar qualities, and so becoming the supreme divinity. In later times the process of complete deification after death, by which he became a kind of Osiris, is not depicted in detail.

The Pharaoh owed his divine nature to his having been begotten by a god-a transaction which is often brought clearly before us. When the procreation of a new deity had been resolved upon by the higher powers, the god Ra or AmonRå assumed the form of the reigning king, and visited the queen upon her couch in the palace. He revealed to her his divine character; his love suffused her person, and he begot the coming ruler, le.g., on the late-Theban coffin in the Museum at Cairo, first floor, vestibule, no. 1161. Similar forms of incarnation might be ascribed also to the gods, as in a relief from the reign of

Amenemhat m., ed. H. Schäfer, Amtliche Berichte aus den

königl. Kunstsammlungen, xxxiii., Berlin, 1911-12, cols. 40-46 (the Sebak of Crocodilopolis).

2 Wiedemann, in Sphinx, xvi. [1912] 40 f.

3 Altar of Pepi 1. in Turin; ed. J. Bonomi and S. Sharpe, in TSBA iii. [1874] 110 ff., pls. 1-3.

4 References for these and similar conceptions in Lepsius, Über die Götter der vier Elemente bei den Ägyptern,' in ABAW, 1856, p. 181 ff.

Cf. E. A. W. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904, i. 416 ff.

Wiedemann, AMG x. [1887] 561 ff.; A. Moret, Le Rituel du culte divin journalier en Egypte, Paris, 1902, p. 138 ff. 7 Cf. H. R. Hall, JHS xxvi. [1906] 176 f.

Pyramid Unas, 1. 496 ff. (tr. Maspero, RTr iv. [1883) 59 ff.). e.g., in reliefs (for Amenophis II.) at Luxor, ed. A. Gavet, Le Temple de Louzor [=Mém, de la mission arch. du Caire, XV. 1], Paris, 1894, pls. 63-67; in better form, with discussion, Colin Campbell, The Miraculous Birth of King Amonhotep III., Edinburgh, 1912; at Deir el-Bahri (for Hatshepsut), ed. Naville, The Temple of Deir el Bahari, ii., London, 1897, pls. 46-55; a fragment (for Ramses II.), ed. C. Campbell, op. cit. 48f.; alluded to in the Papyrus Westcar (for kings of the Vth dyn.), in the royal titles, etc.; cf. Wiedemann, in Muséon, xiii. (1804) 3721.; A. Moret, Du Caractère religieux de la royauté pharaonique, Paris, 1902, p. 48 ff.; Maspero, Études de mythologie, vi. 263–286.

So far,

and decided what his name should be. however, the god had implanted in the mother only the divine element of the son. He now commissioned the god Khnuphis to form the child's bodily members, and accordingly that deity fashioned the body of the future ruler, as also that of his ka, which was of like shape with himself,1 upon the potter's wheel, while a goddess bestowed life upon these fresh creations. Then at length the child was born in the presence of, and with the aid of, various gods and goddesses.

The circumstance that, when the god begot the child, only the divine element of the latter was created enables us to understand why occasionally not merely a single deity was implicated in the act, but why all the gods might claim to have begotten the Pharaoh, and to exist in him. To the purely concrete mode of thought characteristic of the Egyptians such an infusion of deity could be most simply represented after the manner of a procreation. It was only in respect of this divine element, and not in respect of the whole divine personality, that the god became incarnate in the king.

That a mere particle of divinity sufficed to make the newly created king a partial incarnation and a divine person is also implied in the myth of Ra and Isis. Here Isis kneads earth with the spittle of the sun-god, and forms a serpent which, in virtue of the spittle, may be a source of danger to the god himself. The same idea is found in an extant legend from the XIIth dynasty, in which Isis tries to secure a portion of the seed of Set as a means of gaining power over him. In such instances the implanted particle of deity does not always carry with it the entire range of the divine nature as an incarnation in another being. Sometimes, indeed, it is only a particular attribute that is transferred in this way. Thus the man who sucks the milk of a goddess or a sacred cow absorbs thereby, not her entire divine ego, but only her inherent immor. tality."

The choice of the reigning monarch's figure for the act of procreation was determined by the fact that the god, on other occasions of his intercourse as an incarnate being with the king, chose a form which corresponded externally to that of the Pharaoh then upon the throne. Inasmuch as the two homologous figures both existed at the same time, it is clear that the deity did not become incarnate in the king, but really assumed an independent figure of similar appearance. This figure might be designated by a special name, which applied both to the deity and to the reigning king. Thus we read of the Amon of Ramses II., of the Sechet of Saḥura, etc. When a monument, and especially a temple or chapel, was founded, not by a king, but by a private individual, the latter was, equally with the king, regarded as the creator of a new divine by-form. Thus, e.g., in the reign of Ramses II. worship is said to have been accorded,

1 The ka and its relation to the man have been discussed most recently-with references to earlier works-by Maspero, in Memnon, vi. [1912] 125 ff.

2 Naville, op. cit. ii. pl. 48; Gayet, op. cit. pl. 66. On the lifegiving frog-deities of Egypt, cf. A. Jacoby and W. Spiegelberg, in Sphinx, vii. [1903] 215 ff., viii. [1904] 78f.; and on the closely related idea that frogs might be generated from the slime of the Nile, Wiedemann, in OLZ xi. [1908), col. 179 ff.

3 As, e.g., in the Stele of Kuban, ed. E. Prisse d'Avennes, Monuments égyptiens, Paris, 1847, pl. 21, 1. 3.

4 Pleyte-Rossi, Papyrus de Turin, pls. 31, 77, 131-8; tr. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, 54 ff.

5 F. LI. Griffith, Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob, London, 1898, pl. 3, p. 4; cf. Wiedemann, in Sphinx, xiv. [1911]

39 ff.

6 Wiedemann, Die Milchverwandtschaft im alten Ägypten, in Am Urquell, iii. (1892] 259 ff.

7 Cf. the texts given by L. Borchardt in Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, no. xxxvii. (Aug. 1908) 29 f.; Brugsch, Recueil de monuments égyptiens, i. (Leipzig, 1862), pl. 4, no. 3.

not only to the Ptah of Ramses himself, but also to the Ptah of a certain Menna.1

Besides real incarnations, however, considerable interest attaches in Egypt to pseudo-incarnations. The adept in magic, when uttering his spells, frequently claimed to be a particular deity, and as such demanded obedience and threatened the powers that resisted him. It need not be supposed that he actually believed himself to be the god in question, but he was at all events convinced that such a claim would make an impression upon other gods. By way of making the identification more emphatic, the adept in some cases had the name of the particular deity inscribed upon his person. From similar motives the names of Isis and Nephthys respectively were inscribed upon the bodies of the two principal female mourners who recited the dirges in mourning celebrations, and effected the resurrection of the dead person by sympathetic magic. Whether in early times masks of the gods likewise were employed with a view to a more complete identification cannot be decided by the extant records, but the practice is attested in connexion with the cult of Isis in the Hellenistic period, and may well go back to earlier usage.

Again, the glorified dead and the gods might assume the forms of other deities. Thus Isis took the form of a sacred cow, and Horus that of the Apis bull, in order to reach the city of Apis unmolested. In this case the incarnation was effected, not in the sacred cow and the Apis bull themselves, but in figures resembling them, and so, of course, commanding a like degree of respect. The story in which Batau is said to have assumed the form of a bull with all the beautiful symbols in its hair, and thus to have been honoured as a sacred bull-though in reality it was not such must be interpreted in the same way. This text also shows the vast variety of possible metamorphoses which a higher being might assume in his incarnations. When the bull had been slaughtered, Batau caused two trees to arise from the drops of its blood, and in these he then took up his abode. From the trees, again, he passed, in the form of a splinter, into the body of a woman. She became pregnant, and the child she brought forth was his final form of incarnation, i.e. Batau himself.

In most cases a particle of the being incarnating himself was implanted in the new form that he adopted, though, as we have seen, this was not absolutely necessary. But certainly the Egyptians, with their concrete habit of thought, persistently sought to invest all beings with a tangible and material form. If the gods, or the dead, or any other entities were to endure and to evince their power, they could do so only by means of an incarnate form.

LITERATURE.-There is as yet no monograph on the Egyptian ideas of incarnation. Apart from the passages cited in the article, we have in modern literature nothing to fall back upon 1 See a writing-palette in Berlin, no. 6764. The omission of the cartouche and the mode of writing the name Menna show that the reference here is not, as Erman (ZA xxix. [1891] 48 ff.) supposed, to King Menes, but to a private individual-perhaps that charioteer of Ramses II. of whom we read in the Pentaur

poem.

2 Wiedemann, Magie und Zauberei im alten Ägypten, Leipzig,

1905, p. 13 ff. Of peculiar interest in this connexion is the Magic Papyrus Leyden, no. 348, pl. 11, line 2 ff., ed. Pleyte, Etudes égyptologiques, Leyden, 1866, p. 173 ff.; cf. Pap. Ebers, ed. G. Ebers, Leipzig, 1875, pl. 1.

3 See lamentations of Isis and Nephthys in the Papyrus Berlin, no. 1425, ed. P. J. de Horrack, Euvres diverses, Paris, 1907, p. 34 ff.; and in the Papyrus of Nes-min in the Brit. Mus., no. 10188, pl. 1, 1.4; cf. Budge, Facsimiles of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, p. 1.

4 Attested as early as the time of the Pyramid of Pepi 1., in which (line 166) that king takes the head of the Anubis jackal. 5 J. Dümichen, Die Oasen der libyschen Wüste, Strassburg, 1877, pl. 6, p. 27; cf. Brugsch, in ZA xvii. [1879] 19.

6 Papyrus d'Orbiney, pl. 14 ff.; cf. Maspero, Contes popu

laires, p. 1 ff.

except treatises dealing generally with the Egyptian religion, as cited in the artt. EGYPTIAN RELIGION, Vol. v. p. 236 f., and GOD [Egyptian], vol. vi. p. 279. A. WIEDEMANN.

INCARNATION (Greek and Roman).-The term 'incarnation' usually implies God becoming man, and connotes the opposite process to 'apotheosis.' But thought wavers in a curious way between the two. When virtue in man's esteem has won its way to heaven, when a Pollux, a Hercules, an Augustus, a Bacchus, a Quirinus-to employ the examples used by Horace (Carm. III. iii. 9-15)-have assumed their seat at the celestial board, and begun to quaff the nectar of the gods, then it is suspected that merit so transcendent must have been of heavenly origin, and a birthstory is invented which goes to show that the person who has been apotheosized was in reality already divine.

Strictly speaking, incarnation means the putting on of flesh by the divine; it need not necessarily be-although, as a matter of fact, it usually isthe flesh of man. When Zeus visited Leda in the form of a swan, that was incarnation as much as when he visited Alcmene in the form of Amphitryon; but we must insist on flesh of some kind. There would be no propriety in applying the term incarnation to the visit of Zeus to Danaë in the shape of a shower of gold. Artemis, according to one legend, compassed the destruction of Otus and Ephialtes by turning herself into a stag, and running between the young giants, who shot each other in their eagerness to hit the beast. We have also an instance of this lower form of incarnation in the tale that on the appearance of another of earth's monstrous brood the gods were so terrified that they changed themselves into beasts and took refuge in Egypt, this part of the story being perhaps a Greek attempt to account for the theriolatry in the Nile country.

To the Greek mind the specific difference between gods and men lay in the fact that the former were immortal and the latter mortal (except in case of apotheosis). All other differences, as in wisdom and beauty, were of degree, not of kind. Herein is the key to the Greek concept of incarnation, and throughout the pagan period it was really believed that the gods could and did assume the form of men. Their motives for so doing were many and various, but the most prominent was to gratify their amorous desires. The sons of Zeus by human mothers were innumerable. Among them were Perseus, Castor and Pollux, who were specially called the sons of Zeus' (though it is said that only one was really so), Heracles and Bacchus, Eacus and Sarpedon. The mothers of these were Danaë, Leda, Alcmene, Semele, Ægina, and Laodameia. Many, too, were the sons of Poseidon, most of whom are marked by gigantic size and insolence. Of the three brothers who divided the world between them, Hades alone seems to have been without issue of any kind.

The sons of the gods did not fail to follow the example of their sires in the way of amours with mortal maids or matrons; and, in consequence, a particular member of a human family might have in him or her a strain of the divine. Thus Theseus was said to have been the son of Poseidon, Troilus the son of Apollo by Hecuba, Deianeira was said to have been the daughter of Dionysus, Meleager the son of Ares, Linus the son of Apollo, and so on. These were perhaps appreciations arising out of the characters of those persons either in fact or in fiction; but one obvious motive for the invention of such stories was the general desire to ally oneself with the divine. Thus Hellen was said to Zeus, which at onee conferred the patent of nobility have been really the son not of Deucalion, but of