ably studied without
a knowledge of the physical and mental conditions of the community in
which he arose. But everywhere we find that any one god may become
practically supreme. Here again the political element sometimes comes
in--a dominant city or state will impose its special god on a large
district. There is also the natural tendency among men to concentrate on
an individual figure. As legendary material has always gathered around
particular men, so the great attributes of divinity gather about the
person of a particular god who, for whatever reason, is the most
prominent divine figure in a given community. Such a god becomes for the
moment supreme, to the exclusion of other deities who under different
circumstances might have had similar claims to precedence; and under
favorable conditions a deity thus raised to the highest position may
maintain himself and end by becoming the sole deity of his people and of
the world. In any case such a divine figure becomes an ideal, and thus
influences more or less the life of his worshipers.

+725+. In Oriental polytheistic systems the desire to secure
completeness in the representation of divine activity shows itself in
the combination of two or more forms into a unity of action. On the
lower level we have the composite figures of Egypt and Babylonia,
congeries of bodies, heads, and limbs, human and nonhuman--the result
partly of the survival of ancient (sometimes outgrown) forms or the
fusion of local deities, partly of the imaginative collocation of
attributes. Many compound names may be explained in this way; in some
cases they seem to arise from accidental local relations of cults.

As illustrations of lines of growth in divine figures we may take brief
biographies of some of the greater gods. It is in comparatively few
cases that the development of a god's character can be satisfactorily
traced. There are no records of beginnings--we can only make what may be
judged to be probable inferences from names, cults, and functions. The
difficulty of the subject is increased by the fact that mythologians and
theologians have obscured early conceptions by new combinations and
interpretations, often employing familiar divine figures simply as
vehicles of late philosophical ideas or some other sort of local dogmas.

+726+. _Egypt._[1246] The cult of the sun in Egypt issued in the
creation of a group of solar divinities, the most important of whom are
Horus (Har or Hor) and Ra (or