| 69
The gods
of Egypt: Re and Osiris 70.
The prog-
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The Egyptians had many gods, but there were two whom they worshiped
above all others. The sun, which shines so gloriously in the cloudless
Egyptian sky, was their greatest god, and their most splendid temples
were erected for his worship. Indeed, the pyramid is a symbol sacred
to the Sun-god. (See another symbol in Fig. 34.) They called him Re (pronounced
ray). The other great power which they revered was the shining Nile.
The great river and the fertile soil he refreshes, and the green life which
he brings forth — all these the Egyptian thought of together as a single
god, Osiris, the imperishable life of the earth, which revives and fades
every year with the changes of the seasons (see Fig.
35). It was a beautiful thought to the Egyptian that this
same life-giving power which furnished him his food in this world would
care for him also in the next, when his body lay out yonder in the great
cemetery of Gizeh, which we are approaching.1
But this vast cemetery of Gizeh tells us of many other things besides
the religion of the egyptians. As we look up at the colossal pyramids behind
the Sphinx (Fig. 54) we can hardly
grasp the fact of the enormous forward stride taken by the Egyptians since
the days when they used to be buried with their flint knives in a pit scooped
out on the margin of the desert (Fig.
25). It was the use of metal which since then had carried them
so far. That Egyptian in Sinai who noticed the first bit of metal
(§ 65) lived
over a thousand years before [NEXT]
FIG. 35. THE DEAD OSIRIS EMBALMED From the body of the god stalks of grain have sprouted,
a symbol suggesting
1There were many other Egyptian gods whose earthly symbols were animals, but the animal worship usually attributed to Egypt was a degeneration belonging to the latest age. The animals were not gods in this early time, but only symbols of the divine beings; just as the winged sun-disk was a symbol of the Sun-god (Fig.34). |