Connected with fetishism was the local character of the religion. Each nome, city, town, and probably vil- lage, had its divinities, and the position of many gods in the Pantheon was due rather to the importance of their cities than any powers or qualities they were supposed to have. For a detailed account of the Egyptian deities, with illustrative cuts, see Kitto's Pictorial Bible, note on Deut. iv, 16; compare also Egypt.
The Egyptian Pantheon shows three distinct ele- ments. Certain of the gods are only personifications connected with low nature-worship. Others, the great gods, are of Shemitic origin, and are connected with high nature-worship, though showing traces of the worship of ancestors. In addition, there are certain personifica- tions of abstract ideas. The first of these classes is evi- dently the result of an attempt to connect the old low nature-worship with some higher system. The second is no doubt the religion of the Shemitic settlers. It is essentially the same in character as the Babylonian and Assyrian religion, and, as the belief of a dominant race, took the most important place in the intricate system of which it ultimately formed a part. The last class appears to be of later invention, and to have had its origin m an endeavor to construct a philosophical sj-s- tem.
In addition to these particulars of the Egj-ptian re- ligion, it is imjiortant to notice that it comprised very remarkable doctrines. ]Man was held to be a responsi- ble being, whose future after death depended upon his actions done while on earth. He was to be judged by Osiris, rider of the A^'est, or unseen world, and either re- warded with felicity or punished -with torment. Wheth- er those future states of happiness and misery were held to be of eternal duration is not certain, but there is little doubt that the Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul.
The religion of the Shepherds, or Hyksos, is not so distinctly kno-wn to us. It is, however, clear from the monuments that their chief god was set, or sl'tekh, and we learn from a papyrus that one of the Shep- herd-kings, APEPi, probably Manetho's "Apophis," es- tablished the worship of set in his dominions, and rev- erenced no other god, raising a great temple to him in Zoan, or Avaris. Set continued to be worshipped by the Egyptians until the time of the 22d dynasty, when we lose all trace of him on the monuments. At this period, or aftenvards, his figure was effaced in the inscriptions. The change took place long after the ex- pulsion of the Shepherds, and was effected by the 22d dynasty, which was probably of Assyrian or Babylonian origin ; it is, therefore, rather to be considered as a re- sidt of the influence of the Median doctrine of Onnuzd and Ahriman than as due to the Egyptian hatred of the foreigners and all that concerned them. Besides set, other foreign divinities were worshipped in Egypt — the god KENPU, the goddesses icex, or iletesh, anta, and
IDOLATRY
IDOLATRY
ASTARTA. All these divinities, except astarta, as to whom we have no particular information, are treated by the Egyjitians as powers of destruction and war, as skt was considered the personification of physical evil. Skt was always identifietl by the Egyptians with Baal ; we do not know whether he was worshipped in Egypt be- fore the Shepherd-period, but it is probable that lie was.
Tliis foreign worship in Egypt was probably never reduced to a system. What wc know of it shows no regularity, and it is not unlike the imitations of the Egyptian idols made by Phoenician artists, probably as representations of Plioenician divinities. The gods of the Hyksos are foreign objects of worship in an Egyp- tian dress. See Hyksos.
3. Idolatrij of Canaan and the ncljoining Countries. — The centre of the idolatry of the Palestinian races is to be sought for in the religion of the Kephaites and the Canaanites. We can distinctly connect the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth with the earliest kind of idolatry ; and, having thus established a centre, we can understand how, for instance, the same infernal rites were celebrated to the Ammonitish Molech and the Carthaginian Baal. The most important document for the idolatry of the Hittites is the treaty conchuled between the branch of that people seated on the Orontes and Rameses II. From this wc learn that suteku (or set) and astcrat were the chief divinities of these Hittites, and that they also worshipped the mountains and rivers and the winds. The suTEKiis of several forts are also specified. See Hittites. Set is known from the Egyptian inscrip- tions to have corresponded to Baal, so that in the two chief divinities we discover Baal and Ashtoreth, tlie only Canaanitish divinities known to be mentioned in Scripture. The local worship of different forms of Baal well agrees with the low nature-worsliip with which it is found to have prevailed. Both are equally mentioned in the Bible historj^ Thus the people of Shechem wor- shipped Baal-berith, and Mount Ilermon itself seems to have been Avorshipped as Baal-Hermon, while the low nature-worship may be traced in the reverence for groves, and the connection of the Canaanitish religion with hills and trees. The worst feature of this system was the sacrifice of children by their parents — a feature that shows the origin of at least two of its olfjhoots.