ds came into existence when he began."

The other gods, the gods of the popular mythology were understood in
the esoteric religion to be either personified attributes of the Deity,
or parts of the nature which he had created, considered as informed and
inspired by him. Num or Kneph represented the creative mind, Phthah the
creative hand, or act of creating; Maut represented matter, Ra the sun,
Khons the moon, Seb the earth, Khem the generative power in nature, Nut
the upper hemisphere of the heavens, Athor the lower world or under
hemisphere; Thoth personified the Divine Wisdom, Ammon perhaps the
Divine mysteriousness or incomprehensibility, Osiris the Divine
Goodness. It is difficult in many cases to fix on the exact quality,
act, or part of nature intended; but the principle admits of no doubt.
No educated Egyptian conceived of the popular gods as really separate
and distinct beings. All knew that there was but One God, and understood
that, when worship was offered to Khem, or Kneph, or Maut, or Thoth, or
Ammon, the One God was worshipped under some one of his forms or in some
one of his aspects. He was every god, and thus all the gods' names were
interchangeable, and in one and the same hymn we may find a god, say
Ammon, addressed also as Ra and Khem and Turn and Horus and Khepra; or
Hapi, the Nile-god, invoked as Ammon and Phthah; or Osiris as Ra and
Thoth; or, in fact, any god invoked as almost any other. If there be a
limit, it is in respect of the evil deities, whose names are not given
to the good ones.

Common to all Egyptians seems to have been a belief, if not, strictly
speaking, in the immortality of the soul, yet, at any rate, in a life
after death, and a judgment of every man according to the deeds which
he had done in the body while upon earth. It was universally received,
that, immediately after death, the soul descended into the Lower World,
and was conducted to the "Hall of Truth," where it was judged in the
presence of Osiris and of the forty-two assessors, the "Lords of Truth"
and judges of the dead. Anubis, "the director of the weight," brought
forth a pair of scales, and, placing in one scale a figure or emblem of
Truth, set in the other a vase containing the good actions of the
deceased; Thoth standing by the while, with a tablet in his hand,
whereon to record the result. According to the side on which the balance
inclined, Osiris, the president, delivered sentence. If the good deeds
preponderate