It was not only gods that originated from a
primeval deity by the instrumentality of Onani ; men also were formed in the same way. In the tomb of Seti 1., founded c. 1850 B.c., there are portrayed (Leps. Denkm. iii. 136°) the four races of men, which, according to the Egyptian view, peopled the earth, and which are characterized as the flocks of the sun-god Ra. They are the reddish-brown ‘men,’ i.e. the Egyptians: the dark- yellow Asiatic Semites; the black negroes ; and the whitish-grey Libyans. According to the accompanying inscription, these beings were cre- ated by another form of the sun-god, namely the hawk-headed Horus; the negroes by Onani, the Egyptians by his tears, the Libyans by the shoot- ing forth of his eye, i.c., apparently, by his warm- ing beams. _ Agreat creative power is attributed also in other inscriptions to the tears of a deity. They play a part in the most diverse periods of Egyptian history. There are other texts besides the above which trace the origin of the Egyptians to them. But then the sun as well brought other things into being by is tears. ‘ When the sun weeps a second time,’ we read in a papyrus of ¢. 800 B.C. (Papyr. Salt, No. 825 in London, tr. by Birch in £P vi. p. 115), ‘and lets water fall from his eyes, this changes itself into working bees, which pursue their task in flowers of every kind, and honey and wax are pro- duced instead of water.’ Further products of the tears of the sun-god Horus are cloth-stuffs, wine, incense, oil, the most varied objects used for offer- ings, which, accordingly, are designated ‘the eye of Horus.’ The tear of the goddess Isis, which falls into the Nile, causes the inundation of the river, and thus brings to the land abundance, wealth, and the means of nourishment.
Not only the tears but other fluids from the body of a deity have creative power attributed to them. From the blood that issued from the phallus of the sun-god when he cut himself, sprang, accord- ing to the Book of the Dead (chs. 17. 23), two gods, Hu (Taste) and Sa (Perception), who henceforth remained in his train. After the slaughter of the bull, in which Batau, who in the fable of the Two Brothers (composed c. 1300 B.C.) is conceived of as almost a divine being, had incarnated himself (Papyr. d’Orbiney, pl. 16, 1. 8 ff.), two drops of blood
RELIGION OF EGYPT
fell upon the earth, and from these sprang two great trees, which now served Batau as an embodi- ment.—Side by side with the blood is the saliva. When saliva flows from the mouth of the senile sun-god and falls upon clayey soil, Isis forms from these materials a serpent, which at once assumes life, and whose bite threatens to be fatal to the sun-god (Wiedemann, Fel. of Anc. Egypt, 541f.).
The root idea is the same in all these instances. In every part of the body of the god, in everything that proceeds from him, there is a portion of his Ego, something Divine and therefore capable of development and life-producing. ee
(8) A further way to the formation of living beings was foundin the artificial methods attributed to the gods. We have alread had occasion to men- tion how Ptah, the god of Memphis, was supposed to fashion the sun-egg on the potter’s wheel. Tn like manner, according to the view that prevailed in Upper Egypt, the ram-headed god Chnum fashioned the ihe and his ka upon a similar wheel (relief at Luxor, in Maspero, Hist. anc. 1. p. 157). If no wheel was available, the god was capable also of forming human beings in a simpler way. When the sun-god, in the fable of the T'wo Brothers (Papyr. @’ Orbiney, pl. 9, ll. 6-8), found his favourite Batau alone, and desired to furnish him with a wife, Chnum ‘built’ a woman for him. Since the latter owed her origin to a god, she was more beautiful in her limbs than any woman in the whole land, and all gods were in her. The word ‘built? has here for its determinative the picture of a man erecting a wall, so that the Egyptian writer thought of an actual construction of a2 woman—a manner of origin for which the reconstruction of the dismembered body of the god Osiris supplied him with a fitting analogy, for after this reconstruction the god at once acquired new life (cf. p. 195%).
(y) Procreation is another process which is not left out of account by the ancient Egyptians in con- nexion with the formation of man. It is employed above all by the sun-god when his earthly repre- sentative and son, the Pharaoh, has to be brought into being. In each successive case the god assumes the form of the present occupant of the throne, unites himself with the queen, and thus generates the future ruler (see the detailed representations in Naville, Deir el bahari, ii. pll. 47-53). This belief in the Divine origin of the monarch was held fast down to the Greek period. When Alexander the Great gave himself out as the son of Jupiter Amon, he was thoroughly accommodating himself to the notions of his Egyptian subjects. The ram’s horn, moreover, which, in conformity with this origin, shows itself in the pictures of Alex- ander and his successors, has its prototype in the ancient Pharaohs, who (so, above all, Seti I. at Abydos) likewise, as sons of Amon, bear this horn.