Ptah (Gr. 0a) was the god of Memphis, and,
186 RELIGION OF EGYPT
RELIGION OF EGYPT
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as such, well known to the Greeks, who for un- known reasons call him Hephestos. Herodotus visited and described his temple (Herod. ii. 99, 101, 121,176). Ptah appears in mummy form, swathed, with only the head free; the feet are placed upon the sign for truth. In Memphis he was regarded as the first king of the country and as creator, a role which at Phile is assigned to Ptah-Tatunen, a combination of Ptah and Tanen or Tatunen, a deity who makes his appearance especially in Nubia, and who, as earth-god, recalls the Egyptian Seb (Keb). Ptah is also combined with other deities so as to form new special gods. Thus we have Ptah-Aten-en-pet, ‘Ptah solar dise of the heaven,’ who illumines the earth with his rays; Ptah-Nu, the father of the gods; Ptah-Hapi, Ptah the Nile; and, above all, Ptah-Sokaris, to whom Ptah-Sokaris-Osiris, Ptah-Osiris, and Sokaris alone (see below) correspond. The triad at Mem- phis is composed of Ptah along with Sechet and their son Nefer-Tum or Imhetep (Imfthes).
Sechet (Sechmet) is a lion-headed sun-goddess, who, under the title of ‘theeye of Ra,’ slaughters Ra’s enemies. In her essential significance she coincides pretty nearly with the lion-headed Mut of Thebes, Tefnut, Pacht of Speos Artemidos, and the cat-headed Bast of Bubastis.
Nefer-Tum appears, particularly in more recent texts, as a man whose head is surmounted by a budding lotus, from which we may infer that he was a god of the regeneration and reawakening of nature, although there are no specific details of this in the inscriptions. Imhetep, ‘he who comes in peace,’ is depicted as a youth with a closely- fitting cap upon his head. He generally appears seated, with a rolled-up papyrus upon his knees, In earlier times his figure does not seem to occur, but in the later New Empire, and, above all, in the Saitic period, numerous bronzes of him are found, notwithstanding which he does not become any more prominent in the texts, where he is intro- duced as a learned god. — For the associates of Ptah, see above, p. 179”.
Sokaris, conceived of as hawk-headed, is pri- marily a sun-god. His principal festival fell at the winter solstice, and in the Ptolemaic period was celebrated on the morning [at an earlier period perhaps on the evening] of the 26th of Choiak (cf. Brugsch, Rev. égyp. i. 42 ff.). He was worshipped especially in the neighbourhood of the necropolis of Memphis (where there is still a reminiscence of him in the name Sagqgarah), and thus became blended on the one side with the Memphitice Ptah, and on the other with the god of the dead, Osiris, peor symbols were, in consequence, often assigned to him.
Nechebit of Eileithyiaspolis, the vulture-formed tutelary goddess of Upper Egypt, generally ap- pears in company with the serpent-formed Uat?-it of Buto, the tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt. The combination of the two stands for the empire of the Pharaoh, who united both their spheres of authority under his sway.
Hathor, ‘the house of Horus’ according to the later etymology, is mentioned times without num- ber, and had her principal temple at Denderah. She is the goddess of joy, the patroness of mirthful gatherings. Her sacred animal was the cow, in consequence of which she occasionally appears with a cow’s head, and, even when she wears a human form, she has very frequently cow’s ears. Another Hathor is regarded as the goddess of the under world, and yet other Hathors are the seven female beings who made their appearance at the birth of a child and, like our fairies, foretold its fortune.
Sebak (Suchos) appears with a crocodile’s head or as a crocodile. Under this same name, how-
ever, we must distinguish at least three different deities. In the first place there was a sun-god, who is combined with Ra and makes his appear- ance pre-eminently at Ombos, side by side with the sun-god Aroéris. Another Sebak constitutes a kind of by-form of Osiris. Finally, there is_a Sebak who is regarded as the god of evil. His sacred animals were the crocodiles, which were supposed to be the associates of Set in the under world, and which in most of the nomes of Egypt were hunted to the death. The centre of worship of a Sebak who was well disposed to men con- tinued till a late period to be the Fayum.
(2) FOREIGN DEITIES.—The Egyptian gods during the flourishing period of the country’s history were not exclusive. They admitted into their number such of the gods of neighbouring peoples as had been found to be powerful and capable of resistance. It is a sign of deterioration that such a course was not followed with the Greek and Roman deities, who had no place assigned to them in the temple cult, but had to be content with the worship of certain circles of the people who would regard them as special gods. In the first millennium B.c. the Egyptian religion was too ossified to permit of its assimilation of new ideas. And this a]l the more because at this very time an archaizing tendency made itself felt in religion, so that from the time of the 25th dynasty the oldest attainable religious formule are in the most unmistakable fashion sought out and employed once more. In earlier times it was different. Libyan, African, Semite deities were then worshipped in the Nile valley along with the native gods.