to ascribe to him all the acts which the priests of former times had assigned to the Ennead collectively.  “He made earth, silver, gold,—­the true lapis at his good pleasure.—­He brought forth the herbs for the cattle, the plants upon which men live.—­He made to live the fish of the river,—­the birds which hover in the air,—­giving air to those which are in the egg.—­He animates the insects,—­he makes to live the small birds, the reptiles, and the gnats as well.—­He provides food for the rat in his hole,—­supports the bird upon the branch.—­May he be blessed for all this, he who is alone, but with many hands.”  “Men spring from his two eyes,” and quickly do they lose their breath while acclaiming him—­Egyptians and Libyans, Negroes and Asiatics:  “Hail to thee!” they all say; “praise to thee because thou dwellest amongst us!—­Obeisances before thee because thou createst us!”—­“Thou art blessed by every living thing,—­thou hast worshippers in every place,—­in the highest of the heavens, in all the breadth of the earth,—­in the depths of the seas.—­The gods bow before thy Majesty,—­magnifying the souls which form them,—­rejoicing at meeting those who have begotten them,—­they say to thee:  ’Go in peace,—­father of the fathers of all the gods,—­who suspended the heaven, levelled the earth;—­creator of beings, maker of things,—­sovereign king, chief of the gods,—­we adore thy souls, because thou hast made us,—­we lavish offerings upon thee, because thou hast given us birth,—­we shower benedictions upon thee, because thou dwellest among us.’” We have here the same ideas as those which predominate in the hymns addressed to Atonu,* and in the prayers directed to Phtah, the Nile, Shu, and the Sun-god of Heliopolis at the same period.

* Breasted points out the decisive influence exercised by the solar hymns of Amenothes IV. on the development of the solar ideas contained in the hymns to Amon put forth or re- edited in the XXIIIrd dynasty.

The idea of a single god, lord and maker of all things, continued to prevail more and more throughout Egypt—­not, indeed, among the lower classes who persisted in the worship of their genii and their animals, but among the royal family, the priests, the nobles, and people of culture.  The latter believed that the Sun-god had at length absorbed all the various beings who had been manifested in the feudal divinities:  these, in fact, had surrendered their original characteristics in order to become forms of the Sun, Amon as well as the others—­and the new belief displayed itself in magnifying the solar deity, but the solar deity united with the Theban Amon, that is, Amon-Ra.  The omnipotence of this one god did not, however, exclude a belief in the existence of his compeers; the theologians thought all the while that the beings to whom ancient generations had accorded a complete independence in respect of their rivals were nothing more than emanations from one supreme being.  If local pride forced them to apply to this single