We again hear of the magicians of Egypt in the nar- rative of the events before the exodus. They were summoned by Pharaoh to oppose jNIoses. The account of what they effected requires to be carefully examined, from its bearing on the question whether magic be an imposture, ^^^e read : "And the Lord sjiake unto IMoses and unto Aaron, saying. When Pharaoh shall speak unto j'ou, saying. Show a miracle for you : then thou shalt say unto Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast [it] before Pha- raoh, [and] it shall become a serpent." It is then re- lated that Aaron did thus, and afterwards : " Then Pha- raoh also called the wise men and the enchanters : now they, the scribes of Egypt, did so by their secret arts : for they cast down every man his rod, and they became serpents, but Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods" (Exod. vii, 8-12). The rods were probably long staves like those represented on the Egyptian monuments, not much less than the height of a man. If the word used mean here a sequent, the Egyptian magicians may have feigned a change : if it signify a crocodile, they could scarcely have done so. The names by which the magi- cians are designated are to be noted. That which we render " scribes'' seems here to have a general significa- tion, including wise men and enchanters. The last term is more definite in its meaning, denoting users of incan- tations. On the occasion of the first plague, the turn- ing of the rivers and waters of Eg;3'pt into blood, the opposition of the magicians agaui occurs. "And the scribes of Egypt did so bj^ their secret arts" (vii, 22). When the second plague, that of frogs, was sent, the magicians again made the same opposition (viii, 7). Once more they appear in the history. The plague of lice came, and we read that when Aaron had worked the wonder tlie magicians opposed him: "And the scribes did so by their secret arts to bring forth the lice, but they could not : so there were lice ujion man and upon beast. And the scribes said unto Pharaoh, This [is] the finger of God : but Pharaoh's heart was hard- ened, and he hearkened not unto them, as tlic Lord had said" (viii, 18, 19 [Heb. 14, 15]). After this we hear no more of tiie magicians. All we can gather from the naiTative is that the appearances produced by them were sufficient to deceive Pharaoh on three occasions. It is nowhere declared that they actually produced won- ders, since the expression " the scribes did so by their secret arts" is used on the occasion of their complete failure. Nor is their statement that in the wonders wrought by Aaron they saw the finger of God any proof that they recognised a power superior to the native ob- jects of worship they invoked, for we find that the Egyptians frequently spoke of a supreme being as God. It seems rather as if they had said, " Our juggles are of
MAGIC
643
MAGIC
no avail against the worlc of a divinity." There is one later mention of these transactions, which adds to onr infurraation, but does not decide the main question. St. Paul mentions Jannes and Jambres as having "with- stood Moses," and says that their folly in doing so be- came manifest (2 Tim. iii, 8, 9). The Egyptian charac- ter of these names, the first of which is, in our opinion, found in hieroglyphics, is not inconsistent with the opin- ion that the apostle cited a prevalent tradition of the Jews. See Jannes and Jambres.
We turn to the Egyptian illustrations of this part of the subject. Magic, as we have before remarked, was inherent in the ancient Egyptian religion. ' The Kitual is a system of incantations and directions for making annUets, with the object of securing the future happi- ness of the disembodied soul. However obscure the be- lief of the Egyptians as to the actual character of the state of the soul after death may be to us, it cannot be doubted that the knowledge and nse of the magical am- ulets and incantations treated of in the Kitual Avas held to be necessary for future happiness, although it was not believed that they alone could insure it, since to have done good works, or, more strictly, not to have committed certain sins, was an essential condition of the acquittal of the soul in the great trial in Hades. The thoroughly magical character of the IJitual is most strikingly evident in the minute directions given for making amidets (Todtenbuch, ch. c, c.xxix, cxxxiv), and the secrecy enjoined in one case on those thus occupied (ch. cxxxiii). The later chapters of the Ritual (clxiii- clxv), held to have been added after the compilation or composition of the rest, which theory, as ~Sl. Chabas has well remarked, does not prove their much more modern date {Le Papyrus Magique Harris, p. 162), contain mj^s- tical names not bearing an Egyptian etymology. These names have been thought to be Ethiopian ; they either have no signification, and are mere magical gibberish, or else they are, mamly at least, of foreign origin. Be- sides the Kitual the ancient Egyptians had books of a purely magical character, such as that which I\I. Chabas has edited in his work referred to above. The main source of their belief in the efficacy of magic appears to have been the idea that the souls of the dead, whether justified or condemned, had the power of revisiting the earth and taking various forms. This belief is abun- dantly used in the moral tale of '• The Two Brothers," (if which the text has recently been published by the trustees of the British Museum (Sdc-ct Papyri, part ii), and we learn from this ancient papyrus the age and source of much of the machinery of mediaeval fictions, both Eastern and Western. A likeness that strikes us at once in the case of a fiction is not less true of the liitual ; and the perils encountered by the soul in Hades are the first rude indications of the adventures of the heroes of Arab and German romance. The regions of terror traversed, the mystic portals that open alone to magical words, and the monsters whom magic alone can deprive of their power to injure, are here already in the book that in part was found in the reign of king Mencheres, four thousand years ago. Bearing in mind the Nigritian nature of Egyptian magic, we may look for the source of these ideas in primitive Africa. Theie we find the realities of which the ideal form is not great- ly distorted, though greatly intensified. The forests that clothe the southern slopes of snowy Atlas, full of fierce beasts ; the vast desert, untenanted save by harmful rep- tiles, swept by sand-storms, and ever Inirning under an Uiichanging sim; the marshes of the south, teeming with brutes of vast size and strength, are the several zones of the Eg\-ptian Hades. The creatures of the desert and the plains and slopes, the crocodile, tlie pach- ydcrmata, the lion, perchance the gorilla, are the genii that hold this land of fear. In what dread must the first scanty population have held dangers and enemies still feared by their swarming posterity. No wonder, then, that the imaginative Nigritians were struck with a superstitious fear which certain conditions of external