In an

of the world and its creation, as well as the frog and other symbols of the development of man. inscription given by Champollion (Gr. Eg. p. 314.), Phthah is called "inventor," or rather creator, "of all things in this world." At all events Iamblichus is

right in saying in the well-known passage "the god who creates with truth is called Ptah." Lastly, also, the idea of the formation of the mundane egg by Ptah must be admitted to derive from an Old Egyptian symbol, although we find it applied originally to Ra, and not to Ptah.

[Ptah also appears as the divine workman employed in all the buildings and constructions of the gods. In the future state he opened the mouth of the deceased.]

The representation of the god with the scarabæus on his head (Wilk. Mat. Hier. xx.) and the name Ter-ra, or even that exhibiting a scarabæus-headed god with the same inscription (Champ. xii. 13.), is to be explained by the scarabæus and frog being the symbols of the creator of the world. A god with the sun's disk and Uræus (Wilk. xx.) is simply called Ter. In all these we cannot do otherwise than recognise a form of Ptah.284

This is no less clear in the representations of the Frog God, a god with frog-head, whose appellation is Ka (offering), the arms upraised, "the father of the father of the Gods," an epithet also given to the Nile. The frog-headed goddess appears on the monuments of the 12th dynasty as the companion of Kneph, and may therefore be a form of Sate; at all events she is no independent goddess.285 Ptah has two companion goddesses on the monuments. One is Pekh. t, "the Lioness"

284 [Later researches have shown that for Ter is to be read Kheper. Ptah was in fact a form of the demiurgos in a cosmic sense as the creator of the material but not animated world. Gods, men, and beings were created by Khnumis, and Atum or Tomos, two other demiurgoi.-S. B.]

285 Thid.

headed, by whom he was the father of Nefer-Atum, as appears from a monument at Vienna. The other was Bast, the Boubastes of the Greeks, and compared by them to Artemis or Diana. His son was Nefer-Atum.

Ptah had a mystical ark called Hannu or Box.

His principal temple was at Memphis, built by Menes contemporaneously with the city, and afterwards enlarged and embellished by succeeding kings. Herodotus and the later Greek historians saw it still in all its pomp in their time.

VII. NT, Neith, Athena.

Neith belongs to Ptah, and is found by his side. The name is said to signify "I came from myself."286 Isis is often so called. In as far as the Creator of the world too is considered in his original acceptation, as the minister or ministra, the organ of God, the female representation of this principle is a very natural one. This is Neith, Athena. She is again the same creative principle, but, as being the conceptive element, is considered as female.

Her hieroglyphic sign (Wilk. Mat. Hier. vii.) is a symbol, which has certainly been somewhat precipitately considered a shuttle, out of fondness for comparing her with Athena: for it is not found in the representations of weaving exhibited on the primeval tomb of the 12th Dynasty.287 Still nat is the Coptic word for loom. The Egyptians wrote the name NT, the Greek transcript, No, gives us its pronunciation.

She has always the lower crown, and sometimes the shuttle, or a hawk on her head. She also carries a bow and arrows in her hand, and we have chosen this representation for our plates. 288 It has the superscription Net, Neith. In Egyptian mythology the old female Power of the Thebaid was merged in Neith, the goddess of Sais, and the name also was consequently transferred to her.

286 Hov ȧ' Éμavrñs (Plut. de Is. et Os. c. 62.).

287 Ros. Mon. Civ. xli. Comp. Text M.C., vol. ii. p. 14. seqq. 288 According to Wilkinson, Pl. 28. 1.

Her titles are Muth, the Mother, the Mistress of Heaven, the elder Goddess her. t (her). In Champollion (23.) she is holding a Kukufa-sceptre instead of the ordinary one of Lower Egypt, and is styled "the great Mother," "the mother of Helios, her first-born." In like manner she is called "the Cow, who has produced the Sun." She seems here to be entitled "the mother of the Sun," as, according to Iamblichus, she was called in Sais. As mother of the living she also appears (Champ. 234.) nursing two crocodiles.

According to Clemens289 her great shrine in Sais had an open roof like that at Onka in Thebes of Bœotia, with the far-famed inscription "I am all that was, and is, and is to be; no mortal has lifted up my veil290, and the fruit I bore is Helios."291

In Ptah and Neith the Deity completed its manifestation as the Soul of the World; and they both entered directly into the Theban representation of the first principles.

VIII. RA (Phra, Phre, Helios.)

We have already considered Neith, the goddess of Sais, in her capacity of mother of Helios. The name of this, her first-born, the shining, and nurturing, prototype of the creation of the earth, is Ra, with the article, and written by the Greeks, according to the Memphite pronunciation, Phra or Phrē, corresponding to the Hebrew transcript Phra. He must be considered as one of the old gods, because a great part of the succeeding Order is stated to be derived from Helios. In confirmation of which, in the Dynasties of the gods, Ra succeeds Ptah as his son.

289 Clem. Alex. Strom. v. p. 155.

290 Plut. de Is. et Os. c. 9., who refers this to Isis, in accordance with the enthusiasm which the later writers had for her. He says, moreover, her statue in Sais had the inscription, &c.

291 Proclus, lib. i. in Tim. p. 30.

ASHMULEAN

OXFORD

MUSEUM

His usual type is hawk-headed, although, as an exception, he is also found with a human face 292, as Horapollo 293 describes him, with the Sun's disk on his head, encircled by an Uræus. The colour of his flesh in the pictures is red, like that of the Sun's disk.

His cosmogonic nature 294 is established in the representation in the Ramesseum, which Birch has cited and explained, where the great Ramesses is sacrificing to him, as "the Lord of the two Worlds, who is enthroned on the sun's disk, who moves his egg, who appears in the abyss of Heaven." We have therefore here his creative power, as it operates by the intervention of the all-nourishing power of the sun upon the earth. Thus far, therefore, the god of Heliopolis (On) is developed in the Egyptian system mediatorially, like the Cabiri. The second Cabir is the generative power of nature, considered as a generative personality.

RECAPITULATION OF THE FOREGOING ENQUIRY.

We have seen that the gods of the first Order possessed one general attribute, that of revealing themselves— in other words, a creative power or principle. The mythological system obviously proceeded from "the concealed god" Ammon, to the creating god. The latter appears first of all as the generative power of nature in the Phallic god Khem, who is afterwards merged in Ammon-ra. Then sprung up the idea of the creative power in Kneph. He forms the divine limbs of Osiris (the primitive soul) in contradistinction to Ptah, who, as the strictly demiurgic principle, forms the visible world. Neith is the creative principle, as nature represented under a female form. Finally, her son Ra, Helios, appears as the last of the series, in the character of father and nourisher of terres292 Wilk. xxviii. 3. Pl. 4. 2.

293 Ι. 6. ἱερακόμορφος.

294 Birch, Gallery, p. 24. See Burton, E. H. Pl. lvii.

trial things. It is he, whom an ancient monument represents as the demiurgic principle, creating the mundane egg. As early as the 15th century B. C. Ammon is called Ammun-ra, "Ammun, who is Helios," consequently the beginning and end of the cosmogonic formation. We are unable, however, to prove that the whole cosmogonic system, as exhibited on the monuments of the Ptolemaic and Roman epochs, is the primitive one, or that of the 18th and 19th Dynasties.

If, however, we go back to the origin of the deities of this order, different starting-points open upon us. We see here also how the Egyptian was gradually formed out of different provincial elements, which at length were merged in two only, those of Upper and Lower Egypt, though they still leave behind them many traces in the forms of provincial worship. Ammon, Khem, and Kneph belong to the Thebaid; Ptah, Neith, and Ra to Lower Egypt. If we go still deeper into the analysis, we find the worship of Ammon (the primeval god in human form) established principally in the Thebaid, and most particularly so in the city of Ammon. That of Kneph (the ram-headed) was more frequent in Ethiopia, to the south of Elephantina; that of Neith and Ra probably originated in Sais and Heliopolis. Ptah, lastly, is the union of the influences of Upper and Lower Egypt. The primeval shrine was at Memphis, but its builder was a mighty prince of Upper Egypt, Menes of This. Now we have two wholly distinct representations of Ptah, the artistic Egyptian, and the rude Pataikos form. They are co-ordinate without being intermixed. The Temple god of Memphis is still the naked, unformed Pataikos; but Ptah, the god worshipped in all Egypt, is represented out of Memphis with the skull-cap, the sceptres, and mummy wrappings. We can hardly be wrong therefore in considering the former the primeval god of the province of Memphis; the latter, as the Upper Egyptian artistically finished