Egypt were founded, and again when these two were united under one sceptre. It is true that Râ and Osiris, with the gods of their circle, remained the general national gods, and the chief towns of their worship, Heliopolis and Abydos, sacred cities par excellence; but in the official cult the principal god of the residency had the priority, and the other divinities of the most important centres were placed side by side with him in his temple, or in other sanctuaries, as his subordinates. During the Ancient Empire, which flourished under the first six dynasties, this place was held by Ptah of Memphis, the forming or creating god, with whom the Greeks compared their Hephæstos. During the Middle Empire, which reached its culminating point under the twelfth dynasty, this place was held by Sebak or Sovku, the crocodile god-hence a Nile-god-who, introduced from the south, got his imperial temple in or near the labyrinth within the region which had been lately watered by canals, the Fayum (sea-land). During the New Empire, beginning with the eighteenth dynasty, the chief god was Amun of Thebes. Later on, certain gods from the Delta, especially Neith of Saïs, were elevated to the highest rank, although they never obtained the same amount of honour. And by the side of these gods of the reigning dynasty certain famous ancient gods were considered as their equals: such as Chnum, the architect, the god of the cataracts, who shapes man on his potter's wheel, and was worshipped in more than one place as the Creator; Thôt (Dhuti), the god of the moon, who had become the god of time, of writing, of the word, and consequently the special god of the priests; Hathor, whose cult was so widely spread that her name was also used for "goddess" in general, as Horos was used for "god"; and several others. The ignorant multitude were not scandalized by this abundance of supreme gods, every one of which was declared by his priests to be the god of gods. But the more cultivated and thoughtful members of the community could find no satisfaction in it. An explanation must needs be sought; and it was found in the doctrine, which slowly developed itself and soon became generally adopted, that all these principal gods were different revelations or shapes of the highest god Râ, and his name was added to theirs,

With this, however, all the contradictions were not yet resolved. It was only the higher gods that could be considered as shapes of Râ; but what of many hundreds of others? Polytheism has always a tendency to multiply itself. Where there are many gods the number of them ever goes on increasing, whether as personifications of phenomena hitherto unnoticed or unappreciated, or as protectors of new inventions, trades, and customs, or as local genii of spots where an important event had taken place. Such was the case everywhere in antiquity. Besides, in Egypt the extended intercourse with foreign nations under the New Empire, and the settlement of foreign tribes in the valley of the Nile, caused the pantheon to increase largely by the introduction of new gods. At the same time an always stronger striving after monotheism revealed itself. How were these

two tendencies to be combined? How were the priests to justify the belief in so many gods and the continuance of their worship, if they talked of one god, as they often did? This was effected in different ways. The many gods were names of the One God, or his revelations, or his numerous members created by himself. Thus monotheism was maintained in theory; but as no limits were assigned by it to polytheism, and the right of the latter to existence was recognised, it remained without any practical result for the popular religion.

At this point the development of the Egyptian Religion stopped. At least one effort to take the decisive step of introducing monotheism as the religion of the State, failed most completely. I refer to King Amenothes IV.'s reformation, over which great light has been shed through documents recently found; but the sudden growth, rapid victory, and as rapid suppression of the effort leaves much which puzzles us. It seems to have originated in the school of Heliopolis, where the king was already a priest before his accession, a title which he always continued to bear. Envy of the haughty priesthood of Amun-Rå at Thebes may have contributed to it; for the members of that priesthood, which eclipsed all others, had caused high priestly offices at the oldest and most venerable centres to be occupied by their sons and favourites, and of the revenues destined for the cult out of the State treasury (in this case the royal treasury) they devoured no less than three-fourths. Perhaps, too, the young prince longed to free himself from the tyrannical authority which the priests of the capital exercised over the king. However it was, no sooner had he succeeded his father than he founded a temple at Thebes for the Heliopolitan god, whose worship had been growing during the last years of Amenothes III., and which the young prince wanted to introduce as the only one recognised by the State. This god was the sun-god, commonly known by the name of Aten-Ra (Et'n-Rê), the sun-disk, though he also worshipped him under other names. Soon after, whether urged on solely by fanatical zeal, or incited by resistance, he is no longer to be restrained. He builds for himself a new capital, near the present el-Amarna, with one single temple for his god, calls it after him, Chu-t-aten (soul of the sun-disk), changes his own name into Chu-n-aten, demands an exclusive worship of Aten-Râ, leaves the detested Thebes, and persecutes the service of Amun-Râ especially with merciless zeal. Wherever he can he causes the name of this god to be erased, his images to be destroyed, his sanctuaries to fall to ruins like those of all the other gods. He does not tolerate images of the divinity any longer; his own god alone may be represented by a symbol. If he experienced opposition-which is very probable-it proved powerless. Chu-n-aten carried out his reformation, and maintained it during his reign. Such was the power of the king in Egypt, of the son of the sun, the representative of the divinity on earth. But not long after his death, it appeared that the greater part of the nation had yielded only to violence. He had no sons to succeed him, only

sons-in-law. But one of them was overcome by the reaction, which now set in with force, and was converted to Amun-Râ. And he who was

chosen by the priests of Amun, in order as king to re-establish the old order of things, was that same Har-em-hebi, who, either under Chu-n-aten himself or under one of his sons-in-law, had been a zealous votary of Aten-Râ, as commander-in-chief of the army and chief governor of the kingdom, and second only to the king. The royal reformer had overstepped the mark. Perhaps monotheism, introduced in another manner, and not imposed by mere compulsion and authority, might have been slowly received, at least by the more civilized classes, and even been diffused in Egypt; but this would only have been possible if it had attached itself to the mighty service of Amun, and required worship of this god only. Yet even this can only be regarded as possible, not as probable. The Egyptian Religion was composed of too widely different elements for a perfect unity to arise from them, and neither of its two chief elements was powerful enough to quite eliminate the other. It has not been able to -ise higher than the semi-pantheistic speculation of the Theban school.

If we were called upon to characterize the Egyptian Religion in a few words, we should call it, both as a system and as a cult, an almost monarchical polytheism in a theocratic form. The Egyptian polytheism was not purely monarchical, for there were several divine monarchies; and only by the somewhat arbitrary doctrine that all the chief gods were in reality the same under different names, could the semblance of monarchy be maintained. But this religion was undoubtedly theocratic in the strictest sense of the word. The divinity himself reigned through his son, the absolute king, his incarnation and representative on earth. The priesthood of Amun, strengthened by its victory over the heretic, and by the measureless wealth which the munificence of successful conquerors poured into its lap, had attained the most tremendous power in the State; and when, after a long time, its members had reduced the kings to weak tools in their hands, and succeeded at last in usurping the throne itself, the theocracy was altered in form only, but not in its essence. The place of the King-highpriest was taken by the Highpriest-king. But even this change was of short duration. Against another power no less favoured by the kings of the new empire, the power of the army (composed for the greater part of hired foreign troops), the priestly princes proved unable to keep their ground. They had to leave the country, and in Ethiopia they founded a new sacerdotal kingdom. Still the rule of the kings, who sprang from this military revolution, was purely theocratic.

But this only characterizes the form of the Egyptian Religion. If we search for the leading thought, contained in all its myths and symbols, and in all its institutions and ceremonies, it may best be comprised in the word "life." "For millions of years" is a constantly recurring expression. The sign of life (ankh) is the holiest and the most commonly used of all the symbols. The gods bear it in their hands, hold it to the lips of their

worshippers, and pour it out in streams over the heads of their favourites. For they actually give life, now by the light which they continually cause to triumph over the powers of darkness, again by the regular recurrence of the fructifying waters, or by mysterious operations in the centre of the earth. And hence they set such store on the possession of the lawful king. He, the son of the sun, was the living pledge that these blessings should not cease. His coronation was an agricultural festival, the beginning of the harvest; his greatest care was to spread the waters of the Nile through canals as far as possible over the fields. From this arose also their great fear of death and eternal darkness, and the efforts and sacrifices which they made to secure an eternal existence, either in the fertile land of Osiris, or as a follower of the god of light, and, as it is put, "to obtain the crown of life."

Entirely swayed by these ideas, the Egyptian, although his religious thinking did not stand still, clung to the existing state of things with an unequalled persistency. Although not scorning new and strange things, he did not relinquish what was old. He may have connected different ideas with it; but the holy texts which he muttered during the Ptolemean era were often the same as those his ancestors had uttered at the altars and the tombs more than thirty centuries ago. The nature of the land which bore and fed him had imprinted a peculiar stamp on his religion. Moreover, his religion became to him more and more the only thing of supreme value. Treasures, the fruits of his industry, and all the skill which was the product of his remarkable civilization, he spent on the building and the decorating of his tombs and temples. Those of Amun at Thebes gradually became the largest in the world. His whole literature, even that which was not destined for a religious purpose, is, with a few exceptions, saturated by a religious spirit. He bore willingly enough the yoke of foreign rulers who adored his gods, who built his temples, who endowed his priests and respected his rites; but to kill one of his holy animals, or insult one of his gods, was sufficient to make him unfurl the banner of revolt. The high antiquity, the peculiar forms of its gods, and its strange ceremonies, which were for the greater part only survivals of an era of lower development but with a mystical haze diffused over them, gave to this religion, in the eyes of the younger peoples of Europe, something venerable and mysterious. In Osiris and Isis, who, as religious conceptions, were considerably inferior to Zeus or Athene, Greeks and Romans sought satisfaction for religious wants, which they considered that their own gods could not satisfy. And Serapis, who in reality was nothing but a dead Hapi-bull, became the All-god, in whom were united Zeus, Pluton, and Helios.

THE RELIGION OF THE HITTITES.

BY THOMAS TYLER, M.A.

IN complying with the request that I would write a contribution to this volume on the Religion of the Hittites, I cannot conceal from myself a considerable difficulty, which arises from the fragmentary nature of our present sources of knowledge. The monuments as yet discovered are few, and, probably enough, some of these are separated widely one from another in respect of time. There are, besides, some notices in the Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions, and others in certain of the books of the Old Testament. But though from these sources of information, taken together, it is not possible to obtain complete information, yet we may arrive at some conclusions which may be regarded as certain, and at others which are highly probable. There is a variety in the names used in the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Hebrew authorities, but there can scarcely be any reasonable doubt that the same peoples are intended.

One of the chief causes which give interest to the Religion of the Hittites, is the probability that it was this religion which prevailed in early times in Syria and in Canaan itself—the destined residence of the Theocratic people. A treaty between Rameses II. and the Khita, or Hittites, dating about 1300 B.C., has come down to us, in which there is a list of the gods of the land of Khita. The name of Astartha, or Ashtoreth, is to be found in this list, but that most frequently occurring is given by Egyptologists as Sutekh, though the true pronunciation of the final syllable is by no means certain. It has been, indeed, thought not unlikely that this Sutekh, who appears to have been a solar deity, is to be identified with the Shaddai mentioned in Exodus vi. 3, and elsewhere. The passage in Exodus may be thus translated: "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, as EL SHADDAI, but as to My name JEHOVAH I was not known to them." This ancient deity in Palestine would thus have to be identified with the Egyptian god Set, or Seti, of whom the late Dr. Birch observed, "In the Egyptian mythology he appears as the evil principle, and also the sun-god. But the great interest of the god Set was his connection with the Hykshos and Canaanites, when he generally bears the name of Sutekh or Sut. As such he was worshipped during the shepherd rule in Amaris; after which his worship still continued, apparently in connection with Baal, and he was the type of Northern, as Horus of Southern, Egypt. . . He was the chief god of the Khita [i.e., Hittites], and at a later period, for reasons unknown, either religious or political, his name was erased from the public monuments. .. One idea is, that his name