that the two are related was only made with the view of helping to explain the fundamentals of the Egyptian religion by means of Sanskrit and other Aryan analogies.  It is quite possible that the word neter means “strength,” “power,” and the like, but these are only some of its derived meanings, and we have to look in the hieroglyphic inscriptions for help in order to determine its most probable meaning.  The eminent French Egyptologist, E. de Rouge, connected the name of God, neter, with the other word neter, “renewal” or “renovation,” and it would, according to his view, seem as if the fundamental idea of God was that of the Being who had the power to renew himself perpetually—­or in other words, “self-existence.”  The late Dr. H. Brugsch partly accepted this view, for he defined neter as being “the active power which produces and creates things in regular recurrence; which bestows new life upon them, and gives back to them their youthful vigour.” [Footnote:  Religion und Mythologie, p. 93.] There seems to be no doubt that, inasmuch as it is impossible to find any one word which will render neter adequately and satisfactorily, “self-existence” and “possessing the power to renew life indefinitely,” may together be taken as the equivalent of neter in our own tongue, M. Maspero combats rightly the attempt to make “strong” the meaning of neter (masc.), or neterit (fem.) in these words:  “In the expressions ’a town neterit ’an arm neteri,’ ... is it certain that ‘a strong city,’ ‘a strong arm,’ give us the primitive sense of neter?  When among ourselves one says ’divine music,’ ‘a piece of divine poetry,’ ‘the divine taste of a peach,’ ’the divine beauty of a woman,’ [the word] divine is a hyperbole, but it would be a mistake to declare that it originally meant ‘exquisite’ because in the phrases which I have imagined one could apply it as ‘exquisite music,’ ‘a piece of exquisite poetry,’ ’the exquisite taste of a peach,’ ‘the exquisite beauty of a woman.’  Similarly, in Egyptian, ’a town neterit is ‘a divine town;’ ‘an arm netsri’ is ’a divine arm,’ and neteri is employed metaphorically in Egyptian as is [the word] ‘divine’ in French, without its being any more necessary to attribute to [the word] neteri the primitive meaning of ‘strong,’ than it is to attribute to [the word] ‘divine’ the primitive meaning of ‘exquisite.’” [Footnote:  La Mythologie Egyptienne, p. 215.] It may be, of course, that neter had another meaning which is now lost, but it seems that the great difference between God and his messengers and created things is that he is the Being who is self-existent and immortal, whilst they are not self-existent and are mortal.