The god who, above all, created by means of words, was Thoth; who appears sometimes, as at Hermopolis, the principal seat of his worship in Upper Egypt, as exercising this function on his own initiative, at other times as acting as the instrument of the creator proper, for whom he speaks. This was a réle to which he was specially called, as lord of the words of the gods, composer of the most powerful magical formule, god of wisdom. Since he knows what is correct and gives it correct expression, he comes to be also the god of wisdom, who, along with his two em- bodiments, the ibis and the cynocephalus, is revered above all the gods by scholars and devout students of magic.
In all the ancient Egyptian literature known to us, actual words require to be uttered by the god in the act of creation. The notion that inarticu- late sounds, his laugh and the like, could produce the same results, meets us first in the later Greek papyrus -literature of the Hellenistic and _post- Christian period, and then in the Gnostic writings (cf. Maspero, Htwdes de mythol. ii. p. 376). How far this belief is older than Hellenism cannot be determined. At all events, there is a connexion between it and the strange statement of the Church Fathers that the inhabitants of Pelusium paid Divine honours to flatulence and to the onions that caused it (Jerome, xiii. in Is 46; cf. Clem. Alex. x. 76; Minucius Felix, Oct. 28; Theoph. Ant. Oct. i. 15; Orig. c. Cels. v. 36).
The Egyptians had at their disposal a wealth of materials bearing upon the above doctrines, when it was desired to record the causes and the course of creation, but—to emphasize this point again and once for all—they never succeeded in harmon- izing the particular conceptions and constructing out of them a finished system of cosmogony.
(B) Destruction of the world.—(1) While the ancient Egyptians have much to tell of the creation of the world, they know far less about its de- struction, or even about a partial destruction of the world or of man. Presumably, this world appeared to the ancient Egyptian in a light so fair that in general he was unable to conceive of a time when it should be no more, and when no Egyptian should dwell any more on the banks of the Nile. It is true that recent investigators, founding upon some statements of a Saitic priest reported by Plato (Timeus, 22), have frequently attributed to the Egyptians a belief in a great world-conflagration. But the truth is that in the passage in question what is said is that, if a conflagration of the world should set in in consequence of the stars leaving their courses, the Nile would protect Egypt by its inundation. Egyptian papyrus - passages which have been cited for the same purpose (Ebers, Papyrus Ebers, p. 15), contain equally little to bear out the contention built upon them. They
tell of a fire which threatened to be fatal to Horus, the son of the goddess Isis, and which Isis ex- tinguished.
But there is no thought here of a
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RELIGION OF EGYPT
conflagration of the world, but of a local fire, pre- sumably in a hut in the Delta where Horus happened to be at the time. The means, again, employed by Isis are little suited to the extin- guishing of a world-conflagration (see Schaefer, Aegyp. Ztschr. xxxvi. p. 129 ff.).
(2) The only allusion as yet discovered to a deluge that threatened to destroy the whole earth, or at least parts of it, is contained in a papyrus of ce. 1200 B.c. (Leps. Denkm. vi. 118, ll. 34-39 [the tr. by Pierret in Htudes égyp. 1 ff., is not free from errors]), which contains a hymn of praise to the pantheistically conceived Deity. Here we read : ‘Thine (sc. the god’s) overflowing water [lit. ‘ Thy spreading - itself - out’] rises to the heavens, the roaring water of thy mouth is in the clouds, thy jackals are upon the mountains [i.e. the jackals which, according to an Egyptian doctrine, drew the bark of the sun-god, have been compelled to retire before the flood to the mountain-tops]. The water of the god Horus covers the tall trees of all lands, the overflowing water covers the circuit of all quarters of the heavens and of the sea. A scene of inundation would all lands (still) be, were they not under thine influence. The waters (now) move themselves in the way which thou assignest them, they pass not over the bounds which thou settest them, (the path) which thou openest for them.’ The Deity, that is to say, saved the world from destruction by the deluge, and now by his providence prevents a recurrence of that event.
(3) Another text treats of the destruction of a portion of the human race by the Deity, against whom they had rebelled, and thus belongs to the category of so-called Deluge legends in the wider sense of the term. We have this legend in two copies in Theban kings’ tombs belonging to the period B.c. 1400-1200 (Lefébure, Yombeaw de Seti f., part 4, pll. 15-18, Tombeau de Ramses III., pil. 2-5: cf. Bergmann, Hierogl. Inschriften, pll. 75-82; Naville in TSBA iv. p. 1ff, vili. p. 412 ff. ; Brugsch, Religion, etc., 436 ff., and Die neue Weltordnung, Berlin, 1881; Maspero, Les Origines, 164 ft. [Dawn of Civilization, 164 i Ig Wiedemann, Religion, etc. [Eng. ed.], 58 ff). There is a further allusion to this myth in Papyrus Sallier Iv., of the Ramesside period (cf. Chabas, Le calendrier des jours fastes ct néfastes, Chalons, 1870), which contains a list of the days of the year, with an appended note as to whether they are to be considered lucky or unlucky, and a record of the mythological occurrence which gave them this character. This text remarks on the 13th Mechir: ‘Unlucky, unlucky, unlucky! Go not out in any wise on this day. “It is the day on which the eye of Sechet grew terrible and filled the fields with desolation. On this day go not out at sundown.’ The same occurrence is in view also in the plates of glazed clay which exhibit the lion- headed goddess Sechet, with a huge eye introduced behind her. These were intended, ‘in all proba- bility, to protect their owners from a fate similar to what then befell guilty men. Their pretty frequent occurrence down to a late period proves that the legend in question not only found its way occasionally into Egypt, but had wide and long- continued vogue.