The healing gods of ancient civilizations / by Walter Addison Jayne.

  • Jayne, Walter Addison, 1853-1929.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The healing gods of ancient civilizations / by Walter Addison Jayne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    myths of the many independent deities of the Nile valley. It presented itself to a late observer [Herodotos] as a religion of innumerable external observances and me¬ chanical usages carried out with such elaborate and in¬ sistent punctiliousness that the Egyptians gained the reputation of being the most religious of all peoples.”7 The earliest glimpses of the life of the people, the evi¬ dences of the Pyramid Age, show that they were pious and devout (Herodotos, ii, 64), tenacious and sincere in their beliefs, and with a high moral discernment for truth, righteousness, and justice.8 These sentiments influenced their daily lives, and by such standards they were judged after death. Moral purity and justice in this life gained for them a life after death, in many respects like unto that upon earth. Egyptian deities. The recognized religion of the Egyptians was based upon polytheism. Although some Egyptologists find sug¬ gestions that a belief which may practically be character¬ ized as monotheistic was ancient when the pyramids were built, more particularly in the cult of Osiris and as early as 3300 b.c.,9 it never gained definite recognition or influ¬ ence, not even in the ephemeral religious revolution of Aten.10 In their primitive days, the Egyptians had con¬ ceived the forces of nature and other influences affecting their lives as living, breathing, thinking beings, revealed and manifested in various forms, as fetishes in wood or stone, or as abiding in animals, birds, and reptiles, so that earth, air, and sky teemed with spirits of all sorts carry¬ ing on the works of nature and aiding or obstructing man¬ kind. The Egyptian deities were developed from among 7 Breasted, op. cit., p. 367. 8 lb., pp. 165 ff. 9 A. H. Gardiner, “Egypt, Ancient Religion,” in EB ix, 52. 10 Budge, Gods, i, 119, 147; also Breasted, op. cit., p. 6.