it will hardly commend itself to any
archaeologist. The lines which cross the side of the axe-head represent
string or strips of leather, and indicate that it was made of stone
which, being brittle, was liable to crack; the picture characters which
delineate the object in the latter dynasties shew that metal took the
place of the stone axe-head, and being tough the new substance needed no
support. The mightiest man in the prehistoric days was he who had the
best weapon, and knew how to wield it with the greatest effect; when the
prehistoric hero of many fights and victories passed to his rest, his
own or a similar weapon was buried with him to enable him to wage war
successfully in the next world. The mightiest man had the largest axe,
and the axe thus became the symbol of the mightiest man. As he, by
reason of the oft-told narrative of his doughty deeds at the prehistoric
camp fire at eventide, in course of time passed from the rank of a hero
to that of a god, the axe likewise passed from being the symbol of a
hero to that of a god. Far away back in the early dawn of civilization
in Egypt, the object which I identify as an axe may have had some other
signification, but if it had, it was lost long before the period of the
rule of the dynasties in that country.

Passing now to the consideration of the meaning of the name for God,
_neter_, we find that great diversity of opinion exists among
Egyptologists on the subject. Some, taking the view that the equivalent
of the word exists in Coptic, under the form of _Nuti_, and because
Coptic is an ancient Egyptian dialect, have sought to deduce its meaning
by seeking in that language for the root from which the word may be
derived. But all such attempts have had no good result, because the word
_Nuti_ stands by itself, and instead of being derived from a Coptic root
is itself the equivalent of the Egyptian _neter_, [Footnote: The letter
_r_ has dropped out in Coptic through phonetic decay.] and was taken
over by the translators of the Holy Scriptures from that language to
express the words "God" and "Lord." The Coptic root _nomti_ cannot in
any way be connected with _nuti_, and the attempt to prove that the two
are related was only made with the view of helping to explain the
fundamentals of the Egyptian religion by means of Sanskrit and other
Aryan analogies. It is quite possible that the word _neter_ means
"strength," "power," and the like, but these are only some of its
der