Besides those divinities represented on the monu- ments of Egypt which have Egyptian forms or nanus. or both, others have foreign forms or names, or both. Of the latter, some appear to have been introduced at a very remote age. This is certainly the case with the principal divinity of Memphis, l'tah.the Egyptian Hephaestus. The name l'tah is from a Shemitic root, for it signifies "open," and in Heb. we find the root nrQ, and its cognates. '-he or it opened "whereas t here is no word related to it in Coptic. The figure of this divinity is that of a deformed pygmy, or perhaps un- born child, and is unlike the usual representation- of divinities on the monuments. In this case there can he no doubt that the introduction took place at an ex- tremely early date, as the name of Ptah occurs in very old tombs in the necropolis of Memphis, and is found throughout the religious records. It is also to be no- ticed that this name is not traceable in the mythology of neighboring nations, unless, indeed, it corresponds to that of the flaraiKOi or TlardiKoi, whose image-, ac- cording to Herodotus, were the figure-heads of Phoeni- cian ships fiii. .'17). The foreign divinities that seem to be of later introduction are not found throughout the religious records, but only in single tablets, or are other- wise very rarely mentioned, and two out of their lour names are immediately recognised to be non-Egyptian. They are Renpu, and the goddesses Ken. Anta, and Astarta. The first and second of these have foreign forms; the third and fourth have Egyptian form.-: there would therefore seem to be an especially foreign character about the former two. ( 1.) Renpu, pronounced Rempu (?), is represented a- an Asiatic, with the full beard and apparently the general type of face given on
the monuments to mo.-t nation- ca-l of Egypt, and to the IJebu or Libyans. Thi- type is evidently that of the Shemites. His hair is bound with a fillet, which i- ornamented in front with the head of an antelope.
(2.) Ken is represented perfectly naked, bedding in both hands corn, and standing upon a lion. In the last par- ticular the figure of a goddess at Maltheiyyeh, in As- ,-\ ri.'i.inay be compared i Lavard. Nim veh, ii, 212). I rom this occurrence of a similar representation, from her be- ing naked and carrying corn, and from her being wor- shipped with khem. we m.'l\ Suppose that Ken diTC- Bponded to the Syrian goddess, at [east when the latter
had the character of Venus. She is also called Eetesh, which i- the name in hieroglj phics of the great I linite tow n on the ( (routes. This in the present case i> prob- ably a title. ~'^"~~ : it can scarcely be the name of a town where she was worshipped, applied to her as per-
REMPHAN
1037
REMPHAN
sonifying: it, (3.) Anata appears to be Analtis. and her foreign character seems almost certain from her being jointly wor- shipped with Kenpu and Ken. (4.) Astarte is of course the Ashtoreth of Canaan. On a tablet in the British Museum the prin- cipal subject is a group representing Ken, having Khem on one side and Kenpu on the other; beneath is an adoration of Ana- ta. On the half of another tablet Ken and Khem occur, and a dedication to Kenpu and Ketesh.
We have no clue to the exact time of the introduction of these divinities into Egypt, nor, except in one case, to any particular places of their worship. Their names occur as early as the period of the 18th and 19th dynasties, and it is therefore not improbable that they were introduced by the Shepherds. Astarte is mentioned in a tablet of Amenoph II, op- posite Memphis, which leads to the con- jecture that she was the foreign Venus there worshipped, in the quarter of the Phoenicians of Tyre, according to Herod- otus (ii, 112). It is observable that the Shepherds worshipped Sutekh, corre- sponding to Seth, and also called Bar (that is, Baal), and that under king Apepl he was the sole god of the foreigners. Sutekh was probably a foreign god, and was certainly identified with Baal. The idea that the Shepherds introduced the foreign gods is therefore part- ly confirmed. As to Kenpu and Ken we can only offer a conjecture. They occur together, and Ken is a form of the Syrian goddess, and also bears some relation to the Egyptian god of productiveness, Khem. Their similarity to Baal and Ashtoreth seems strong, and per- haps it is not unreasonable to suppose that they were the divinities of some tribe from the east, not of Phoeni- cians or Canaanites, settled in Egypt during the Shep- herd period. The naked goddess Ken would snggest such worship as that of the Babylonian Mylitta, but the thoroughly Shemitic appearance of Kenpu is rather in favor of an Arab source. Although we have not discovered a Shemitic origin of either name, the absence of the names in the mythologies of Canaan and the neighboring countries, as far as they are known to us, inclines us to look to Arabia, of which the early my- thology is extremely obscure.
The Israelites in Egypt, after Joseph's rule, appear to have fallen into a general, but doubtless not univer- sal, practice of idolatry. This is only twice distinctly stated and once alluded to (Josh, xxiv, 1-1 ; Ezek. xx, 7, 8; xxiii, 3), but the indications are perfectly clear. The mention of Chiun or Remphan as worshipped in the desert shows that this idolatry was, in part at least, that of foreigners, and no doubt of those settled in Low- er Egypt. The golden calf, at first sight, would ap- pear to be an image of Apis of Memphis, or Mnevis of Heliopolis, or some other sacred bull of Egypt ; but it must be remembered that we read in the Apocrypha of "the heifer Baal" (Tob. i, 5), so that it was possibly a Phoenician or Canaanitish idol. The best parallel to this idolatry is that of the Phoenician colonies in Europe, as seen in the idols discovered in tombs at Camirus in Rhodes by M. Salzmann. and those found in tombs in the island of Sardinia (of both of which there are specimens in the British Museum"), and those represented on the coins of Melita and the island of Ebusus.