Ten Great Religions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 690 pages of information about Ten Great Religions.

Ten Great Religions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 690 pages of information about Ten Great Religions.
when it set, seemed to him to die; and when it rose the next morning, and tricking its beams flamed once more in the forehead of the sky, it was a perpetual symbol of a future resurrection.  Religion penetrated so deeply into the habits of the land, that it almost made a part of the intellectual and physical organization of its inhabitants.  Habits continued during many generations at last become instincts, and are transmitted with the blood.[154] So religion in Egypt became an instinct.  Unaltered by the dominion of the Persians, the Ptolemies, and Romans, it was, of all polytheisms, the most obstinate in its resistance to Christianity, and retained its devotees down to the sixth century of our era.[155]

There were more festivals in Egypt than among any other ancient people, the Greeks not excepted.  Every month and day was governed by a god.  There were two feasts of the New-Year, twelve of the first days of the months, one of the rising of the dog-star (Sirius, called Sothis), and others to the great gods, to seed-time and harvest, to the rise and fall of the Nile.  The feast of lamps at Sais was in honor of Neith, and was kept throughout Egypt.[156] The feast of the death of Osiris; the feast of his resurrection (when people called out, “We have found him!  Good luck!"); feasts of Isis (one of which lasted four days); the great feast at Bubastis, greatest of all,—­these were festivals belonging to all Egypt.  On one of them as many as seven hundred thousand persons sailed on the Nile with music.  At another, the image of the god was carried to the temple by armed men, who were resisted by armed priests in a battle in which many were often killed.

The history of the gods was embodied in the daily life of the people.  In an old papyrus described by De Rouge,[157] it is said:  “On the twelfth of Chorak no one is to go out of doors, for on that day the transformation of Osiris into the bird Wennu took place; on the fourteenth of Toby no voluptuous songs must be listened to, for Isis and Nepthys bewail Osiris on that day.  On the third of Mechir no one can go on a journey, because Set then began a war.”  On another day no one must go out.  Another was lucky, because on it the gods conquered Set; and a child born on that day was supposed to live to a great age.

Every temple had its own body of priests.  They did not constitute an exclusive caste, though they were continued in families.  Priests might be military commanders, governors of provinces, judges, and architects.  Soldiers had priests for sons, and the daughters of priests married soldiers.  Of three brothers, one was a priest, another a soldier, and a third held a civil employment.[158] Joseph, a stranger, though naturalized in the country, received as a wife the daughter of the High-Priest of On, or Heliopolis.

The priests in Egypt were of various grades, as the chief priests or pontiffs, prophets, judges, scribes, those who examined the victims, keepers of the robes, of the sacred animals, etc.

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Ten Great Religions from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.