s
righteous and good, and who more and more fills the mind of the
worshipper with noble adoration, and leads him towards the high
truths of theism. These high gods of Egypt were represented, as we
have seen, from the earliest times of which we have any knowledge,
under animal forms. As far back as we can see, Hathor is a cow, and
Horus a hawk, and Anubis a jackal. Did beast worship spring by a
process of degradation from the worship of the high gods? We have
seen how difficult it is to maintain such a view. Did the higher
worship then spring by a process of development out of the lower?
That also would be hard to prove, for the high gods of Egypt are not
beasts, however magnified and spiritualised, but beings of a
different order; they are the sky, the sun, the moon, the dawn. And
as in our opening chapters we saw reason to believe that the worship
of the great powers of nature is an original thing with early man,
and explains itself without being derived from lower forms of
religion, so we must judge with regard to Egypt too. Even if some of
the great gods came from Mesopotamia, that helps us but little to
understand their history after they arrived in Egypt. In this field
also we are driven to recognise two religions, different in nature
and of independent origin, existing side by side, and seeking to come
to terms with each other; and the combination of the two is a process
in Egyptian religion which took place before the period of which we
have knowledge. It is prehistoric.

It was formerly considered that the nature-gods of Egypt had very
little mythology connected with them; only one considerable story of
their doings was known; most of them had no history beyond the few
phrases applied by primitive thought to the great natural phenomena
to qualify them to be regarded as living and active beings. But as
more inscriptions are read, more divine myths are coming to light,
and further discoveries of the same kind may be still in store for
us. These different myths, however, are formed after the same
pattern. The great gods of Egypt are simple beings and easy to
understand, and they were never formed into an organised system like
the gods of Greece, but remain in separate dynasties or families, and
are very like each other. Many of them are sun-gods, or gods of the
morning and evening, and their stories cannot differ very widely from
each other, but they belong to different districts of the country;
that is what cons