of cosmogony. There does not appear to have been any one central
story of creation that found universal acceptance, any more than
there was one specific deity everywhere recognized as supreme
among the gods. Perhaps the most interesting of the cosmogonic
myths was that which conceived that Nuit, the goddess of night,
had been torn from the arms of her husband, Sibu the earth-god,
and elevated to the sky despite her protests and her husband's
struggles, there to remain supported by her four limbs, which
became metamorphosed into the pillars, or mountains, already
mentioned. The forcible elevation of Nuit had been effected on
the day of creation by a new god, Shu, who came forth from the
primeval waters. A painting on the mummy case of one Betuhamon,
now in the Turin Museum, illustrates, in the graphic manner so
characteristic of the Egyptians, this act of creation. As
Maspero[2] points out, the struggle of Sibu resulted in
contorted attitudes to which the irregularities of the earth's
surface are to be ascribed.

In contemplating such a scheme of celestial mechanics as that
just outlined, one cannot avoid raising the question as to just
the degree of literalness which the Egyptians themselves put upon
it. We know how essentially eye-minded the Egyptian was, to use a
modern psychological phrase--that is to say, how essential to him
it seemed that all his conceptions should be visualized. The
evidences of this are everywhere: all his gods were made
tangible; he believed in the immortality of the soul, yet he
could not conceive of such immortality except in association with
an immortal body; he must mummify the body of the dead, else, as
he firmly believed, the dissolution of the spirit would take
place along with the dissolution of the body itself. His world
was peopled everywhere with spirits, but they were spirits
associated always with corporeal bodies; his gods found lodgment
in sun and moon and stars; in earth and water; in the bodies of
reptiles and birds and mammals. He worshipped all of these
things: the sun, the moon, water, earth, the spirit of the Nile,
the ibis, the cat, the ram, and apis the bull; but, so far as we
can judge, his imagination did not reach to the idea of an
absolutely incorporeal deity. Similarly his conception of the
mechanism of the heavens must be a tangibly mechanical one. He
must think of the starry firmament as a substantial entity which
could not defy the law of gravitation, and which, therefore, must
have the same manner of support as is required by the roof of a
house or temple. We know that this idea of the materiality of the
firmament found elaborate expression in those later cosmological
guesses which were to dominate the thought of Europe until the
time of Newton. We need not doubt, therefore, that for the
Egyptian this solid vault of the heavens had a very real
existence. If now and then some dreamer conceived the great
bodies of the firmament as floating in a less material
plenum--and such iconoclastic dreamers there are in all ages--no
record of his musings has come down to us, and we must freely
admit that if such thoughts existed they were alien to the
character of the Egyptian mind as a whole.

While the Egyptians conceived the heavenly bodies as the
abiding-place of various of their deities, it does not appear
that they practised astrology in the later acceptance of that
word. This is the more remarkable since the conception of lucky
and unlucky days was carried by the Egyptians to the extremes of
absurdity. "One day was lucky or unlucky," says Erman,[3]
"according as a good or bad mythological incident took place on
that day. For instance, the 1st of Mechir, on which day the sky
was raised, and the 27th of Athyr, when Horus and, Set concluded
peace together and divided the world between them, were lucky
days; on the other hand, the 14th of Tybi, on which Isis and
Nephthys mourned for Osiris, was an unlucky day. With the unlucky
days, which, fortunately, were less in number than the lucky
days, they distinguished different degrees of ill-luck. Some were
very unlucky, others only threatened ill-luck, and many, like the
17th and the 27th Choiakh, were partly good and partly bad
according to the time of day. Lucky days might, as a rule, be
disregarded. At most it might be as well to visit some specially
renowned temple, or to 'celebrate a joyful day at home,' but no
particular precautions were really necessary; and, above all, it
was said, 'what thou also seest on the day is lucky.' It was
quite otherwise with the unlucky and dangerous days, which
imposed so many and such great limitations on people that those
who wished to be prudent were always obliged to bear them in mind
when determining on any course of action. Certain conditions were
easy to carry out. Music and singing were to be avoided on the
14th Tybi, the day of the mourning of Osiris, and no one was
allowed to wash on the 16th Tybi; whilst the name of Set might
not be pronounced on the 24th of Pharmuthi. Fish was forbidden on
certain days; and what was still more difficult in a country so
rich in mice, on the 12th of Tybi no mouse might be seen. The
most tiresome prohibitions, however, were those which occurred
not infrequently, namely, those concerning work and going out:
for instance, four times in Paophi the people had to 'do nothing
at all,' and five times to sit the whole day or half the day in
the house; and the same rule had to be observed each month. It
was impossible to rejoice if a child was born on the 23d of
Thoth; the parents knew it could not live. Those born on the 20th
of Choiakh would become blind, and those born on the 3d of
Choiakh, deaf."


CHARMS AND INCANTATIONS

Where such conceptions as these pertained, it goes without saying
that charms and incantations intended to break the spell of the


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