Another remarkable fact must be at least alluded to.  Bunsen says, that, according to the whole testimony of the monuments, Isis and Osiris not only have their roots in the second order, but are also themselves the first and the second order.  Isis, Osiris, and Horus comprise all Egyptian mythology, with the exception of Amun and Neph.  Of this fact I have seen no explanation and know of none, unless it be a sign of the purpose of the priests to unite the two systems of spiritualism and nature-worship into one, and to elevate and spiritualize the lower order of gods.

One reason for thinking that the religious system of the priests was a compromise between several different original tendencies is to be found in the local worship of special deities in various places.  In Lower Egypt the highest god was Pthah, whom the Greeks identified with Vulcan; the god of fire or heat, father of the sun.  He was in this region the chief god, corresponding to Ammon in Upper Egypt.  Manetho says that Pthah reigned nine thousand years before the other gods,—­which must mean that this was by far the oldest worship in Egypt.  As Ammon is the head of a cosmogony which proceeds according to emanation from spirit down to matter, so Pthah is at the beginning of a cosmogony which ascends by a process of evolution from matter working up to spirit.  For from Pthah (heat) comes light, from light proceeds life, from life arise gods, men, plants, animals, and all organic existence.  The inscriptions call Pthah, “Father of the Father of the Gods,” “King of both Worlds,” the “God of all Beginnings,” the “Former of Things.”  The egg is one of his symbols, as containing a germ of life.  The scarabaeus, or beetle, which rolls its ball of earth, supposed to contain its egg, is dedicated to Pthah.  His sacred city was Memphis, in Lower Egypt.  His son, Ra, the Sun-God, had his temple at On, near by, which the Greeks called Heliopolis, or City of the Sun.  The cat is sacred to Ra.  As Pthah is the god of all beginnings in Lower Egypt, so Ra is the vitalizing god, the active ruler of the world, holding a sceptre in one hand and the sign of life in the other.

The goddesses of Lower Egypt were Neith at Sais, Leto, the goddess whose temple was at Buto, and Pacht at Babastis.  In Upper Egypt, as we have seen, the chief deity was Amun, or Ammon, the Concealed God, and Kneph, or Knubis.  With them belonged the goddess Mut[193] (the mother) and Khonso.  The two oldest gods were Mentu, the rising sun, and Atmu, the setting sun.

We therefore find traces of the same course of religious thought in Egypt as we shall afterward find in Greece.  The earlier worship is of local deities, who are afterwards united in a Pantheon.  As Zeus was at first worshipped in Dodona and Arcadia, Apollo in Crete and Delos, Aphrodite in Cyprus, Athene at Athens, and afterward these tribal and provincial deities were united in one company as the twelve gods of Olympus, so in Egypt the various early theologies were united in the three orders, of which Ammon was made the head.  But, in both countries, each city and province persevered in the worship of its particular deity.  As Athene continued to be the protector of Athens, and Aphrodite of Cyprus, so, in Egypt, Set continued to be the god of Ombos, Leto of Buto, Horus of Edfu, Khem of Coptos.