Personal Religion in Egypt Before Christianity

Imu. m ,:ii; m^'. * ."(Ml' 1 > m I fl,'!l|i:i!.,.i iiiiiiiijiiii': ',]% ,1 I Harper's Library of Living Thought PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT BEFORE CHRISTIANITY BY W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.B.A. HARPER S BROTHERS LONDON XNEWYOEK i PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT BEFORE CHRISTIANITY W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE D.C.L., LL.D,, F.R.S., F.B.A. author of "religion and conscience" "religion of ancient Egypt" ETC. LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS 45 ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1909 Published February, igog ^ jf PREFACE THE Personal Religion here dealt with is' that which concerns private beliefs, rather than public acts, and which stands apart from Ceremonialism, and Religion as belonging to the State. The documents considered have to be viewed entire, and therefore some collateral subjects naturally come within our scope, such as creation and the nature of divinitjr. But yet such were anciently matters of individual belief rather than of general dogma. The material here Vv'orked over is all published already ; but it had not yet received the historical study which it required to place it in its true con- nection. The new results which justify this re- statement of the documents are : (i) the earlier dating of the Hermetic writings, which lie between 500 and 200 B.C., instead of being some centuries later as hitherto supposed. (2) The consequent tracing out of a gradual development of beliefs and terms which place the documents in their relative order of growth. (3) The historical pre- cision of the life of ApoUonios, as an e\ddence of its genuineness. PREFACE Some hesitation may be felt in taking the differences between documents as evidences of different age. But first it should be noted that we do not trust to mere silence or omissions of terms, but that the active use of the same word—such as Logos—in different senses, is the criterion followed. Nor can it well be that such was due to different contemporary schools, as the Hermetic writings are closely connected by style, structure, and ideas. Nor can the differences be due to esoteric and exoteric writing for different degrees, as the divine sense of Logos would not be profaned by a false sense being taught to the lower grades of learners. We have to bridge the gap between Logos as the reason of all men and animals in early writing, and Logos as Divine in later works. To place the intermediate writings in the order of development of this, and of various other terms and ideas, is the only right course until some other modifying reason may be proved. El PHfA CONTENTS CHAPTER Preface I. Our View of the Mind . i II. The Nature of the Religious Mind . i8 III. The Dateable Hkrmetic Writings . 38 IV. The Ascetics . • • 59 V. The Undated, Hermetic Writings . 85 VI. Plutarch's Analysis of Religion . 107 VII. Apollonios, or the Revivalist . 138 VIII. Summary . 166 Index . ... 169 IX PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT BEFORE CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER I OUR VIEW OF THE MIND THE religious literature of the centuries im- mediately before the estabUshment of Chris- tianity is a region of thought far too Httle known in general. The documents, though accessible to scholars, are not familiar to the ordinary reader like the other historical material of that time. This is partly due to their more recent discovery, partly to the difficulty of following their ideas and phraseology, partly to a feeling that they bear an unholy resemblance to the accepted scriptures and must be worthless imitations of such, and partly because the whole spirit of these documents is repellent to the modern idea of exact statement of ascertained facts. Each of these reasons is true of one or other of the religious works of that age, and the whole class has suffered a practical oblivion. Yet as the writers are clearly earlier than the PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT apostolic age, their works are among those most needful for an understanding of the modes of thought of that time ; further, in the wider view of the history of religion, no period is more worthy of study than that of the rise of spreading systems of thought, seen in Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Isiism, and Christianity. Even here the interest does not pause, for one of the most remarkable subjects is the mass of variations of Christianity, its interminable sects and heresies which resulted from the spread of a new gospel over all the existing schools of thought and belief, incorporating more or less of all that went before it. In so vast a subject, some kind of classified outline which can serve as key to the scope of it, is much v/anted. Before taking a general view, it is needful to understand what we are to look at, and how to distinguish the parts of the scene and their relation to each other. If we were to study the chemistry or the astronomy of ancient times in Egypt or else- where, it would be useless to begin without some scientific knowledge of the subject from a modern point of view. We must know the principal elements and their reactions before we could make any sense of ancient recipes on alchemy, we must understand the real motions of the planets before we can study ancient astronomy or astrology. Similarly it is needful to understand the nature of religious thought and its manifestations, and the OUR VIEW OF THE MIND principles of mental action, before we can rightly grasp or interpret the maze of theo-cosmosophical ideas and practices which embodied religious thought in the past. Without some preparation for such a subject the modern mind will either turn from it in disgust as tedious word-spinning, or blindly accept it as a beautiful mystery. Fortu- nately the serious work of analysis of the religious mind has been lately done, in a thorough but reverent and sympathetic manner, by Professor W. James in his Gifford Lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience. In that we have a text- book of the subject by a trained psychologist, who can disentangle the confusion of motive and feeling, and deal with each mental condition with insight and analysis. Such a work needs careful study, and we propose in the next chapter to give a summary of its system as the basis for our review of the various religious writings that we are to consider. But before starting on this subject of Religious Experience it is necessary to try to acquire some definite ideas about the mind, and to limit our subject to certain issues. Misconceptions are likely to be presupposed which would prevent the matter being understood as it is here written, and would impart entirely wrong premises into the discussions that follow. We need to fence off certain grounds of consideration, and empty our minds of all reference to questions that are not PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT necessarily in view. The individual mind is too generally in a chaos of beliefs and half-beliefs, which each have their own domain, and are not logically interfere allowed to with each other ; such a condition is probably inevitable in the attempt to grasp by human thought the vast subject of being, which is quite incommensurate with it. So very little can be understood at all, that it is hopeless to trace the boundaries between each of the great and contradictory elements that we clumsily try to harmonize in our dogmatic ela- borations. A whole system is the most hopeless end to contemplate ; all that we can do is to try to see some portions less mistily than before, and to hold to some definite line of attack and analysis. In the first place, we must rule out of the discussion here the reality of Volition. It is, of course, open to arid philosophical argument whether every action and thought is not a pure automatism, resultant inevitably and fatalistically from pre-existing states, just as it is equally open to such discussion whether there is anything outside of one phantasmagorial mind—whether that of tlie speaker or of the hearer is never stated. But every human mind in all time has acted on the reality of Volition, and it is even visible to us in the action of the minds of two animals one on the other. The most fanatical materialist does not practically hesitate to attribute moral v»^rong where it may be painfully obvious to his own feelings. OUR VIEW OF THE MIND When we once accept that man can act on nature, by selecting the direction of natural forces—which is all he ever can do—we accej^t mind interfering with the fortuitous nature of things. When such a gigantic conception is inevitable from experience, it is a minor difficulty v/hether such mind can exist apart from matter, or whether any forms of it can so exist in what we call a spiritual state. We need not stumble at difficulties of Theism or Super- humanism, when the far greater initial difficulty of conceiving Volition is forced through by the in- exorable closure of experience. Accepting here then the fact of Volition, we must leave aside its nature as being outside of the questions which we are here studying. Our business here is not the inexplicable, but the tracing out some portion of the material processes by which the mind may act, so that v*^e may discern its mechanism. These are successive portions of the subject, the bases of each of which are wholly inexplicable, (i) Life itself, with or without percept- ible volition—animal or vegetable.

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