The religion of ancient Egypt
The subject of the following Lectures was " The Conception of the Divine among the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians/' and in writing them it was this aspect of them which I kept constantly in view. The time, however, has not yet come for a systematic history of Babylonian religion, but the case is different as regards the religion of ancient Egypt.
Thanks more especially to Sir Gaston Maspero's unrivalled combination of learning and genius, we are beginning to learn what the old Egyptian faith actually was, and what were the foundations on which it rested. The development of its dogmas can be traced, at all events to a certain extent, and we can even watch the progress of their decay.
There are two facts which, I am bound to add, have been forced upon me by a study of the old religions of civilised humanity. On the one hand, they testify to the continuity of religious thought. God's light lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and the religions of Egypt and Babylonia illustrate the words of the evangelist.
They form, as it were, the background and preparation for Judaism and Christianity; Christianity is the fulfilment, not of the Law only, but of all that was truest and best in the religions of the ancient world. In it, the beliefs and aspirations of Egypt and Babylonia have found their explanation and fulfilment. But, on the other hand, between Judaism and the coarsely polytheistic religion of Babylonia, as also between Christianity and the old Egyptian faith, — in spite of its high mortality and spiritual insight, — there lies an impassable gulf. And for the existence of this gulf, I can find only one explanation, unfashionable and antiquated though it be. In the language of a former generation, it marks the dividing- line between revelation and unrevealed religion. It is like that " something," hard to define, yet impossible to deny, which separates man from the ape, even though on the physiological side the ape may be the ancestor of the man.
A. H. SAYCE.
This is better than Flinders's book with the same name. detailed and deep.