Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt. BEING A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF THESE MYTHS COMPILED FROM THE "RITUAL OF THE DEAD," EGYPTIAN INSCRIPTIONS, PAPYRI, AND By W. R. COOPER, F.R.S.L., HON. SEC. SOC. BIB, ARCHEOLOGY. With Notes and Remarks by Dr. S. BIRCH, M. RENOUF, M. LENORMANT, Being a Paper read before the Victoria Institute, THE WHOLE ILLUSTRATED WITH 129 ENGRAVINGS. LONDON: ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY. 1873. (The rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved.) Shrine of the great deity Amun-Ra, with the goddesses Mersokar and Eileithya in the form of snakes on either side of the door. Above are the solar disk and the usual cornice of everliving uræi. (Leyden Museum.) OBSERVATIONS ON THE SERPENT MYTHS OF ANCIENT EGYPT.* Illustrated with Explanatory WHIL THILE much has been done for the elucidation of the Ophiolatry of India, Greece, and Rome by many most able scholars, yet the serpent myths of Egypt,-the oldest, most abundant, and best preserved of them all, have been but little attended to since the time of Champollion and Wilkinson. On the Continent it is true that MM. Pierret, Brugsch, and Lenormant+ have published a few isolated papers upon parts of the legends of hieroglyphy, but these have never been translated into English, and even the originals are but little known. This is both a subject of regret and of surprise, for no one who considers the very early connection between Egypt and Israel in Biblical times can fail to have noticed that there were many allusions and restrictions in the ceremonial laws of the latter nation, which only by a reference to the customs of their contemporary neighbours could be duly understood. While the Romans doubted, and the Greeks ridiculed, their gods, the nobler and more primitive Egyptians loved, and were supposed to be beloved, by them. The profane and the impure divinities of the Grecian Olympus, the debaucheries of Silenus and of Pan, the fraudulent Mercury, and the unchaste Venus, find no counterpart in the Egyptian Pantheon. Not till the irruption of the semi-greek Psammetici does Theban worship become obscene, and Theban sculpture gratuitously indecent; and it may be safely asserted, without fear of contradiction, that there is, morally and scientifically, more to disgust in the Odes of Horace or The Days and Weeks of Hesiod, than in the whole vast range of ancient Egyptian literature. * Those aware of some of the tendencies of modern thought will recognize the value of this paper. Since it was read the author has kindly taken the opportunity of adding such new matter as the most recent investigations on the subject afford, in order that it might be as complete a statement of the serpent myths of ancient Egypt as could be at present published. The engravings have been carefully done on the graphotype process by Mr. John Allen.-ED. Mostly in the Revue Archéologique, of Paris, and the Zeitschrift für Egyptische Sprache, of Berlin. England as yet possesses no journal wholly devoted to exegetical archæology. |