The religion of ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The religion of ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    38/114 (page 28)
    CHAPTER Y THE GROUPS OF GODS. ANIMAL-HEADED GODS In a country which has been subjected to so many inflows of various peoples as in Egypt, it is to be expected that there would be a great diversity of deities and a complex and inconsistent theology. To discriminate the principal classes of concep¬ tions of gods is the first step toward understand¬ ing the growth of the systems. The broad division of animal gods and human gods is obvious; and the mixed type of human figures with animal heads is clearly an adaptation of the animal gods to the later conceptions of a human god. Another valuable separator lies in the compound names of gods. It is impossible to suppose a people uniting two gods, both of which belonged to them abori¬ ginally ; there would be no reason for two similar gods in a single system, and we never hear in classical mythology of Hermes-Apollo or Pallas- Artemis, while Zeus is compounded with half of the barbarian gods of Asia. So in Egypt, when