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The Egyptian system, at its highest development, combined the adoration of the heavenly bodies the sun, the moon, Venus, &c., with the deified attributes of God. The great and venerable divinities, as Osiris, Pthah, Amun, were impersonations of such attributes, just as we speak of the Creator, the Almighty.
In power of expression I pronounce it to be supreme; never did anybody who had such things to explain explain them better. And the bit of Egypt'n mythology, the cunning Dreams ab't Pthah, Neith, etc., apart from their elucidative quality, wh'h is exquisite, have in them a poetry that might fill any Tennyson with despair.
The Poetic Persian sacrificed to the sun, as the completest image of Ormuzd, his God; the devout children of the far East carved their deities out of wood and ivory; but the Ethiopian, without writing, without books, without mechanical faculty of any kind, quieted his soul by the worship of animals, birds, and insects, holding the cat sacred to Re, the bull to Isis, the beetle to Pthah.
No temples, and few additions to temples, seem to have been built in Upper Egypt during this reign, which began and ended in rebellion. We find, however, a Greek inscription at Philas, of "King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra, gods Epiphanes, and Ptolemy their son, to Asclepius," a god whom the Egyptians called Imothph the son of Pthah.
Indra, the Vedic god, is likewise at first the sky through which the clouds move, and is later conceived as the creator and sustainer of the world. The same process reveals itself in Egyptian mythology for we pass from Ra, the sun deity, to Neph and Pthah who represent creative energies and to Osiris, the god of truth and goodness.
On the walls of the tombs still remain Pthah, the creator, and Neph, the divine spirit, sitting at the potters wheel, turning clay to form men; and Athor, who receives the setting sun into her arms; and Osiris, the judge of the dead. The granite statues have outlived the gods!
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