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.On the monuments of the city of Sais the kings are not, like those of Thebes, presenting their offerings to Ammon Ra, but to these threatening Cabeiri.Fig.80 represents Pharaoh Hophra on his knees, presenting two cones of baked clay, typical of his gifts, to one of these monsters, with a doubleFig.80.bull's head, as an atoning sacrifice on behalf of the nation, to turn aside the threatened punishment.This fear of future punishment sometimes made the priests set the hated Typhon, the hippopotamus, who was one of the Cabeiri, at the head of a funereal tablet, as a divinity who was file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/pierre-emmanuel/.20christianity/The%20Religion%20of%20Lower%20Egypt.htm (2 of 7)11/04/2004 22:30:52The Religion of Lower Egypt.to be appeased with gifts.Herodotus tells us that these Cabeiri were more particularly the gods of the Phenician settlements in the Delta; but from the papyri we learn that their worship was common to all the natives ofp.63Lower Egypt.The Cynocephalus, or dog-faced monkey, plays an important part in the world below, and among the spirits of the dead.Four of these usually guard the bottomless pit of hell fire, sitting one at each corner of it, as in Fig.79.On the papyri they join the souls of the departed in worshipping the sun, when on its journey under ground, after sinking into the arms of the ocean; and when they accompany the boa' of Ra, as on the tablet (Egypt Inscript., pl.46), we must suppose that the god is then on its midnight passage through the valley of the shadow of death.Another Phenician deity is the foreign Venus, chiefly worshipped at Memphis, who, unlike the Egyptian goddesses, is wholly unclothed.She is Athor under a new form, having her long hair falling in two locks on her shoulders, and having a basket on her head (see Fig.81).Sheshows us a front view, and stands upon a lion that walks side-ways.She stands between two gods, each on the top of a small temple with a door.One is the Egyptian Chem, who, with his right arm raised, holds the whip.The other is a foreign god, with an Asiatic beard: he holds a spear in his right hand, and the character for life in his left hand.In place of the sacred Asp, the usual ornament of a god's forehead, he has a dog's or stag's head with two long ears, like that on the top of an Anubis-staff.The name of the goddess is Koun, the queen of Heaven; the name of the foreign god is Ranpo, Lord of Heaven, and king of the other gods.To Chem, the goddess presents a bunch of flowers, emblems of life, and to the foreign god two serpents, emblems of death, thus declaring the Gnostic and Manichean doctrine of Antitheses or oppositions between life and death, or good and evil, a doctrine of which we see many more traces in p.64Lower Egypt than in the Thebaid.The goddess Koun, or Chiun, is mentioned by the prophet Amos, in chap.v.26, where the Greek translators in the Septuagint version have changed her name into Raephan, which in Acts vii.43 is spelled Remphan; and thus by a strange change we have these two Phenician deities.both mentioned in the same sentence.This god Ranpo is sculptured on other Egyptian monuments, with spear and shield in one hand, and a battle-axe in the other, with which he is prepared to strike down his terrified worshippers.file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/pierre-emmanuel/.20christianity/The%20Religion%20of%20Lower%20Egypt.htm (3 of 7)11/04/2004 22:30:52The Religion of Lower Egypt.Fig.81.The cherubs that guarded the entrance of the garden of Eden, with flaming swords which turned on every side (Genesis iii.24.), were perhaps copied from these Cabeiri; but we must not class with these enemies of man the cherubs which ornamented the Holy of Holies in Solomon's temple (2 Chron.v.8).The goddess Anaita, who is mentioned by Strabo as ap.65Persian goddess, was another divinity, whom the people of Memphis supplicated to withhold her punishments.She wears the crown of Osiris, and at the bottom of the tablet, Fig.81, p.64, she is threatening to destroy with her battleaxe the worshippers who have covered heraltar with their various offerings.But the human mind, when it has created for itself so much to be feared, by a natural effort creates for itself also a protector.At Sais, this protector was the goddess Neith, to whom the worshipper turned in love and hope, when he had frightened himself with the belief that even the hated Typhon might take the place of his judge, and that Anaita and Ranpo were waiting to attack him, and the Cabeiri to torture him and thrust him into the pit of fire.Every king of Sais professed that he was beloved by Neith, as the kings of Thebes said they were beloved by Amun-Ra.The people of Lower Egypt lived under the shadow of her wings (see Fig.76, page 59), as the people of Upper Egypt lived under the winged sun (see Fig.1, page 1).Thus we see that in Lower Egypt the priests taught far less worthy views of their gods than had been formerly held in Upper Egypt; and it is of the first importance to remark that the worse religion belonged to the less civilised people.Love for the gods had been held by the freer and nobler race of Thebans, while fear alone was felt by the more slavish race in the Delta.The greater ignorance which led them to see no cause for gratitude towards those beings which they fancied were the rulers of the world, and authors of their lives, may be traced even in the lessened excellence of the sculpture.It is to the later times of Egyptian history--perhaps to the five centuries immediately before the Christian era--that the religious opinions contained in the funereal papyrip.66chiefly belong.The roll of papyrus buried with the mummy often describes the funeral, and then goes on to, the return of the soul to the body, the resurrection, the various trials and difficulties which the deceased will meet and overcome in the next world, and the Garden of Paradise in which he awaits the day, of judgment, the trial on that day; and it then shows the punishment which would have awaited him if he had been found guilty.The papyrus is five, ten, twenty, or even sixty feet in length.It is divided into chapters of hieratic writing, each headed with a picture.First, we see the grief for his death.The men hold up their hands in prayer, the women throw dust upon their heads, and all beat their breasts.The mummy is placed in a boat and ferried across the sacred lake.The goddesses Isis and Nephthys, in the boat with it, hang over it in grief.The procession moves forward to the temple, in front of which stand two obelisks.The priests carry a variety of standards, each an image of a god on a pole, and lead with them an animal for the sacrifice.In front of the temple a bountiful offering is made of food, birds, beasts, fishes, fruits, bread, and wine.There the mummy is received with the honours due to such costly gifts, and is placed in its tomb, by the side of which stands the tombstone.Then begin the events of the next life, in a series of four pictures
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