Comparative History of the Egyptian and Mesopotamian Religions

Vol I - History of the Egyptian Religion

C.P. Tiele

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136374685
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 2000. This is Volume VI of six of the Oriental series looking at the ancient Near East. It was written in 1882, and forms the first part of the a comparative history of Egyptian and Mesopotamian (Hamitic and Semitic) religions focusing on Egypt, translated from Dutch.

Chapter I.

Nationality of the Inhabitants of the Nile Valley.

THE cradle of civilisation, the spot where man first awoke to self-conscious and reflective life, seems to have been the valley of Smear—the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris. We are, however, unacquainted with any civilisation more ancient than that of Egypt. Compared with this eldest-born among nations, all the other peoples of the world whose traditions have come down to us are mere children. The reliable history of Egypt, authenticated by monuments of the highest antiquity, ascends to a time when all the other races were still sunk in barbarism, or at least when they had taken scarcely more than the first steps in the direction of a higher development.

If we may take for granted that Manetho gives the reigns of the Egyptian kings accurately, and that the dynasties of which he tells us are for the most part consecutive, then, long before the first man, according to the common chronology and to the tradition of the Hebrews, was made by the breath of God a living soul, Egypt already stood at the same stage of development in industry and the arts at which, centuries later, it was found by the Persians and Greeks; or rather, what is said to have astonished the latter, the civilisation they found was only the fading remnant of an epoch of splendour, the commencement of which lay far back in grey antiquity. It is, indeed, the case that to all appearance the Proto-Chaldeans preceded the Egyptians in civilisation; but, however this may be, they are a race which has left such slight traces in the annals of humanity that neither its history nor that of its religion can be written. It is not till after the foundation of the Semitic empires in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates that the history of these countries begins to be based on contemporary monuments. We are obliged to reconstruct the religion of their ancient inhabitants by an induction from that of their conquerors. The beginning of the oldest so-called Semitic ¹ or rather Mesopotamian kingdom—that is, the Chaldean—is usually placed in the twenty-first century B.C., and the oldest dynasty of the Chinese does not go much farther back. In the opinion, however, of most Egyptologists, the greatest portion of Egyptian history had then been already enacted: the Old and Middle Kingdoms of the sons of Ham had already fallen, Egypt had reached its point of culmination, and its most nourishing epoch was already left behind. The religious literature of the Hebrews, venerable as it is for its antiquity, does not begin before Moses; but we possess a MS. from Thebes in hieratic characters, written several centuries before the time of the Hebrew lawgiver under the twelfth Egyptian dynasty, and the author of which may have lived at a time considerably earlier.² There is also reason to suppose that certain portions of the Egyptian “Book of the Dead” are older still. We do not know exactly at what time the Vedas, the oldest existing records of the Aryan race, originated, but in any case their date cannot be earlier than two thousand years before our chronology; but even if they existed so early, they are still centuries more recent than the Egyptian work we named, and were at least ten centuries later of being written down. A relatively moderate calculation, that of Brugsch, places the commencement of the series of indisputably historical kings of Egypt in the forty-fifth century B.C. But if the reigns of the kings as given by Manetho, an Egyptian priest, who lived in the time of Ptolemæus Soter, and wrote the ancient history of his country, are added up, we then ascend to the fifty-first century B.C., or somewhat higher still. It has indeed been suggested that the royal houses named by him were not all consecutive, but that some were contemporary, reigning in different parts of the country at one time, and therefore that the number of years ascribed by him to such dynasties should be deducted from the sum-total. Brugsch likewise considers the ninth, tenth, fourteenth, and twenty-fifth dynasties as instances of those contemporary with others; while Bunsen, above all, has carried this supposition to excessive lengths in the construction of his chronology. Nevertheless, monuments discovered recently tend more and more to confirm the accuracy of Manetho, and justify the opinion that he chronicled the reigns of those only which were in his eyes the legitimate ruling houses, and that he did not take into account their rivals, whose rule only extended over portions of the country.³ Be that as it may, we may look upon it as extremely probable that Egyptian history begins not later, and perhaps even much earlier, than 4000 B.C. But the style of writing on the monuments of this early period has already reached such perfection and settled form, and the pictures in the tombs of the oldest dynasties betoken a civilisation so rich and so firmly established that we are obliged to allow many centuries more of slow preparation and growth anterior to the period of which the historic evidences have come down to us. When the Egyptian nation enters upon the scene of the world’s history it is already full grown. Like Pallas Athena from the head of Jupiter, it issues from the night of past ages fully equipped into the light. The brain reels in confusion when we think of the unreckoned prehistoric centuries in which its early childhood and youth were passed.

To what race and to what nationality does this people belong which thus took the lead of all other peoples of the world in the path of civilisation? Some would have us believe that it belongs to the Aryan race, others that it is to be considered as Semitic (Mesopotamian). It presents analogies, important traits of relationship to both, and is also distinguished from both by other characteristics no less weighty. If, as there is every reason to believe, these two races are two branches of a primitive stock, from which they were detached long before historic times, the Egyptians, whose ancestors certainly came from Asia either across the Isthmus of Suez or by passing across the Red Sea, may be the representatives of this anterior race commingled in Africa with the original inhabitants of the Nile Valley, whose own character, not differing from that of the other most advanced peoples of that part of the world, has left marked traces in Egyptian civilisation.

Up to the present time, however, the all but universally accepted opinion was that the Egyptians should be set apart as a race different from both Aryans and Mesopotamians. Proceeding upon Gen. x. 6, scholars spoke of the Hamitic race as that to which, besides the Egyptian, three other nations, or groups of nations named in that passage, belong. I can only look on the Hamitic race as being the fruit of a powerful imagination and of perverted exegesis. It was long ago conjectured that the division of the nations known to the Hebrews into sons of Ham, Shem, and Japheth, does not rest on an ethnographic basis, but on one of a very different nature: in other words, that the passage does not speak of three races which we have to distinguish from each other in speech and origin, but that here it sets, side by side, three groups of peoples for a reason other than that of language and descent. For comparative philology, which had already convincingly proved the unity of the Aryan nations from their community of speech, was in favour neither of a Semitic nor of a Hamitic race according to the division of Gen. x. There the Canaanites are counted as sons of Ham, and it is certain that all the Canaanite nations, including the Phœnicians, spoke a language closely related to Hebrew; yet, in spite of this, the Hebrews are reckoned as sons of Shem. The same thing holds, though in a less degree, of the sons of Phut and of Cush, who are counted, in Gen. x. 6, among the sons of Ham. Both of these are, by descent and language, much more closely related to the Arabians, Syrians, and Hebrews than to the Egyptians proper. The mode in which some have thought to vindicate, not the accuracy of the author, but the traditional exegesis of Gen. x., is one of the astonishing feats by which the advocates of a lost cause usually try to save themselves. The Canaanites, though belonging to the sons of Ham, are supposed, at their immigration into Canaan, to have there fallen in with certain Semitic tribes whose language and religion they, in one word, adopted as their own.⁴ The unreasonableness of this hypothesis is too great for it to find any support from an unbiassed investigator, and it really is not deserving of serious refutation. More thorough and scientific students have therefore adopted the opinion that the division of the nations in the chapter so often referred to is founded on a geographical basis. By Ham, Shem, and Japheth the ancient author is supposed to indicate, not three races, but three regions or zones; so that Ham was to him the representative of the south, Japheth of the north, and Shem of the middle of the world which was within his view.⁵ Attractive as this notion is, I cannot entertain it. It fails also to remove all the difficulties. The sons of Japheth named in Gen. x. dwell indeed mostly in the north, but the sons of Ham are not always to be sought more to the south than those of Shem. The Canaanites dwelt more to the north than the Arabians and Babylonians; and though they all came from the south-east, the Hebrews and other Semitic tribes came also originally from that quarter. Phut the son of Ham is to be sought for more to the north than Joktan the son of Shem; and so this explanation also is unsatisfactory.

But, in my opinion, we need no longer remain in uncertainty as to what the Hebrew author meant with his division into sons of Ham, Shem, and Japheth. His meaning at once appears when we look at the nations to whom Ham is allotted as their first ancestor. In Ham, like all the other tribal fathers, a mythical personage, the black land of Egypt itself was long since recognised. Kem, or Kam, was the name given to their native land by the inhabitants of the Nile valley themselves.⁶ There are next enumerated as his sons, Cush, which is the name given on Egyptian monuments to the Ethiopian nation to the south of Egypt proper, which in historic times migrated thither from the east from Mesopotamia, where the stock from which it was an offshoot still remained behind. Next comes Mizraim, the common Hebrew name for the kingdom of the Pharaohs, especially for Middle or Lower Egypt, a name the dual form of which⁷ excites no surprise, whether we consider it as derived from the two great divisons of the country, or find that it signifies the two enclosures, and agree with Knobel in thinking that these are the two mountain chains that border the Nile valley, or with Ebers, that they are the double walls which, according to the most ancient monuments, protected Egypt against the inroads of barbarians.⁸ Phut, or Punt as it is called on the Egyptian monuments, is a country with which the Egyptians were in many ways closely connected, but the signification of this name is somewhat uncertain: it either denotes an African tribe, or it refers to that part of Arabia which was under the rule of the Egyptians, or where at least they held some posts in military occupation. The fourth son is Canaan, at that time the region occupied by the Phœnician peoples. Now, to any one familiar with Egyptian history, it is very evident why these nations in particular are called, as distinguished from others, the sons of Ham. Mizraim is not indeed the son first named, because the author appears to travel in his enumeration from south to north, but there is no need to prove that he has full right to the name of a son of the black earth. The Cushites, or Ethiopians, were for a considerable time tributary to Egypt, and so were the Punt. Canaan also was for a long time under Egyptian dominion, and the Canaanites owed all their civilisation to Egypt, while, as will presently be seen, Phœnicians inhabited the north coast of the Delta, and even in Memphis had a special quarter of the town set apart for themselves. The sons of Ham, sons, that is, of the black Nile valley, are thus simply the Egyptians and the nations subdued and civilised by them. The division into three national groins, by the author of Gen. x., is neither ethnographic nor geographic, but—if I may be allowed the word —historico-social (cultuur-historisch). The sons of Ham represent the most ancient and to the Hebrews an offensive civilisation: the sons of Shem that next in succession which, though quickened and raised up under Egyptian influence, was yet a development much more independent and original than that of the peoples directly subject to Egypt. The central point of this civilisation is found in the Assyrian empire. Assur is named among the sons of Shem. All the other nations known to the ancient Hebrews, though they belonged to different races—Aryan or Turanian—were included under Japheth, and he is called the eldest son, either as being the greatest, the one whose territory was most extensive, or, and this is more likely, as being the one who had longest retained the primitive state of culture, and remained still at a stage of development long since left behind by the Hamitic and Semitic races. Into this question, however, I cannot now enter farther. For my purpose it is enough to have proved that the sons of Ham in Gen. x. can teach us nothing about the origin of the Egyptian people. This result, though negative, is at least in one respect valuable, for it removes an erroneous idea, which hampered investigations likely to be fruitful.

Accordingly, the question—To what race do the Egyptians belong?—remains open. The task of answering it must be left to comparative philology. Attempts in this direction have already been made. Benfey has tried to prove that the ordinary so-called Semitic languages are nothing but one of two branches of a family of languages, the other branch of which must be looked for across the Isthmus of Suez, and which, along with the Egyptian, embraces all the languages of North Africa, to the Atlantic Ocean. He has been followed in this by others, as Ernst Meier, and Paul Bötticher—(De Lagarde). Bunsen adopted the same view in a somewhat modified form. According to him, the Egyptians were an early offshoot from the Caucasian race, at a time when the Semitic and Aryan elements had not yet definitely separated from each other. In this way the points of agreement between the ancient Egyptian and both these branches of language, may, Bunsen thinks, be best explained.⁹

This idea is not unfamiliar to other Egyptologists as well. Besides De Rougé, who has only cursorily glanced at this subject, Brugsch and Ebers have laid great stress upon the close relationship between the ancient Egyptian and the Mesopotamian (Semitic) languages. The former considers it as almost certain that the Egyptian tongue has its root in the Semitic, and regards it as a fact which new investigations will more and more confirm, that this and all Semitic languages are the offspring of a common mother, whose original seat is to be sought on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris.¹⁰ The latter does not hesitate to affirm that the Egyptians are a Semitic, apparently Chaldean, stock, the cause of whose wide difference from their Eastern brethren is, that they adopted from the original inhabitants of the land in which they settled not a little both of their language and their customs.¹¹ In spite of the determined opposition that Benfey’s opinion at first encountered from various quarters, and notwithstanding that his opinions were opposed on the one side by the Hebraist Ewald, and on the other by the Aryologist Pott, Egyptologists appear more and more inclined to adopt the results of the Göttingen linguist. The question is not yet ripe for decision. One thing is certain, that the Egyptians belong originally to Asia, and are closely related to that great race, which includes the Aryans as well as the Mesopotamians. They must have migrated into Egypt long before the beginning of history, either by way of the Isthmus of Suez or across the Red Sea, and established themselves in the country between the Delta and the Cataracts. It is very remarkable that Western Asia always continued to be called among them, the holy land, the land of the gods, Ta Nuter. They are undoubtedly not a pure Aryan people, though some superficial investigators of history have set this down without much reflection. The points in which their customs and speech coincide with the so-called Semitic civilisation and language are far more numerous and important than the points of agreement between them and the Aryans. Since, however, sufficient light has not yet been thrown on this subject, and we do not wish to assert more than is really ascertained, I shall not as yet rank the Egyptian among the Semitic peoples, and I shall, on account of the many peculiarities of their religion, treat of it separately.

The inhabitants of Egypt, moreover, comprised diverse elements. The name Egypt, given to the country by the Greeks, and, according to Brugsch, derived from Ha-Ka-Ptah, i.e., house of the worship of Ptah, or,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter I. Nationality of the Inhabitants of the Nile Valley.
• Chapter II. The Sacred Literature.
• Chapter III. The Religion of Thinis-Abydos.
• Chapter IV. The Religion of Heliopolis.
• Chapter V. Religion Under the Old Kingdom.
• Chapter VI. Religion Under the Middle Kingdom.
• Chapter VII. Religion Under the New Kingdom.
• Chapter VIII. Egyptian Religion from the Fall of the Ramesids to the Persian Conquest.
• Chapter IX. Character and Moral Results of the Egyptian Religion.