=Isolation of the Egyptians.=—­The Egyptians moved but little beyond their borders.  As the sea inspired them with terror, they had no commerce and did not trade with other peoples.  They were not at all a military nation.  Their kings, it is true, often went on expeditions at the head of mercenaries either against the negroes of Ethiopia or against the tribes of Syria.  They gained victories which they had painted on the walls of their palaces, they brought back troops of captives whom they used in building monuments; but they never made great conquests.  Foreigners came more to Egypt than Egyptians went abroad.

=Religion of the Egyptians.=—­“The Egyptians,” said Herodotus, “are the most religious of all men.”  We do not know any people so devout; almost all their paintings represent men in prayer before a god; almost all their manuscripts are religious books.

=Egyptian Gods.=—­The principal deity is a Sun-god, creator, beneficent, “who knows all things, who exists from the beginning.”  This god has a divine wife and son.  All the Egyptians adored this trinity; but not all gave it the same name.  Each region gave a different name to these three gods.  At Memphis they called the father Phtah, the mother Sekhet, the son Imouthes; at Abydos they called them Osiris, Isis, and Horus; at Thebes, Ammon, Mouth, and Chons.  Then, too, the people of one province adopted the gods of other provinces.  Further, they made other gods emanate from each god of the trinity.  Thus the number of gods was increased and religion was complicated.

=Osiris.=—­These gods have their history; it is that of the sun; for the sun appeared to the Egyptians, as to most of the primitive peoples, the mightiest of beings, and consequently a god.  Osiris, the sun, is slain by Set, god of the night; Isis, the moon, his wife, bewails and buries him; Horus, his son, the rising sun, avenges him by killing his murderer.

=Ammon-ra.=—­Ammon-ra, god of Thebes, is represented as traversing heaven each day in a bark ("the good bark of millions of years"); the shades of the dead propel it with long oars; the god stands at the prow to strike the enemy with his lance.  The hymn which they chanted in his honor is as follows:  “Homage to thee; thou watchest favoringly, thou watchest truly, O master of the two horizons....  Thou treadest the heavens on high, thine enemies are laid low.  The heaven is glad, the earth is joyful, the gods unite in festal cheer to render glory to Ra when they see him rising in his bark after he has overwhelmed his enemies.  O Ra, give abounding life to Pharaoh, bestow bread for his hunger (belly), water for his throat, perfumes for his hair.”

=Animal-Headed Gods.=—­The Egyptians often represented their gods with human form, but more frequently under the form of a beast.  Each god has his animal:  Phtah incarnates himself in the beetle, Horus in the hawk, Osiris in the bull.  The two figures often unite in a man with the head of an animal or an animal with the head of a man.  Every god may be figured in four forms:  Horus, for example, as a man, a hawk, as man with the head of a hawk, as a hawk with the head of a man.