Part 9 (2/2)

E. A. W. Budge, _The Mummy_; chapters on Egyptian funeral archaeology, Cambridge, 1893.

E. A. W. Budge, _The Book of the Dead_, English Translation of the Theban Recension, 3 vols., 1910.

Flinders Petrie, _A History of Egypt_.

Flinders Petrie, in _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. i. p. 184, _sqq._

The Histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Maspero, and especially Ed.

Meyer.

Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, 1894.

Maspero, _Manual of Egyptian Archaeology_, Second Edition, 1895.

Renouf's _Hibbert Lectures_.

Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, translated by Ballingal.

Wiedemann, _agyptische Geschichte_, 1884-88; ”Die Religion der alten Aegyptier,” 1890; also ”Egyptian Religion,” in Hastings' _Bible Dictionary_, vol. v.

A. O. Lange, ”Die agypter” in De la Saussaye. _Records of the Past_, First Series (1873-81), vols. ii., iv., vi., viii., x., xii. Second Series, 1888-92, vols. ii.-vi.

Benson and Gourlay, _The Temple of Mut in Asher_, 1899.

Naville, _The Old Egyptian Faith_, translated by Colin Campbell, 1909.

Colin Campbell, _Two Theban Queens_, 1909. A study of the inscriptions in two royal tombs.

PART III THE SEMITIC GROUP

CHAPTER X THE SEMITIC RELIGION

As used by the modern scholar, the term Semites or Semitic races includes the Arabs, the Hebrews, the Canaanites and Phenicians, the Syrians or Arameans, the Babylonians and the a.s.syrians. This enumeration differs from that of the tenth chapter of Genesis, where the children of Shem include Elam, or the dwellers in Susiana, and Lud or the Lydians, while the tribes who dwelt in Canaan before the Hebrews are placed in another and a lower division of the human family. The principle of the enumeration in Genesis is probably that of geographical neighbourhood; the modern principle is that of linguistic affinity. The peoples mentioned above spoke, or still speak, languages which belong to the same family of human speech. The inference from affinity of language to affinity of blood is in this case a strong one, so that the peoples using the Semitic tongues are considered to be of the same race. To the question, where the cradle of the Semitic race is to be sought, most scholars now answer that we must seek it in Arabia. From this isolated land the Semitic dispersion spread in every direction, till Semitic language and customs filled the earth from the south of Arabia to the north of Syria, and from the mountains of Iran to the Mediterranean, and far along the northern sh.o.r.es of Africa; of Babylonia and a.s.syria, where Semitic culture and religion a.s.sumed at the dawn of human history a very special and peculiar form, we have already spoken. We have now to speak of Semitic religion as found in the lands bordering on the eastern Mediterranean in a more original form. The Semitic peoples outside of Babylonia founded no lasting empires, and showed no great apt.i.tude for art or for literary style; but, in point of religion, they communicated to the world impulses of immeasurable force, which will act powerfully on the world as long as the Prophet is named or Christ preached.

It is possible to define to a certain extent the typical religion of the Semites. The Burnett lectures of the late lamented Professor Robertson Smith[1] profess to do this; a book in which great learning and bold speculation are remarkably combined, and which forms one of the most important contributions to the early history, not of Semitic religion only, but of early religion in general. The writer was keenly interested in the study of prehistoric man and of primitive inst.i.tutions, and much of his book refers to an earlier period in the growth of religion than that of the formation of the Semitic type. On the question of the specific character of Semitic as distinguished from other religions, it is one of our princ.i.p.al authorities.

[Footnote 1: _Lectures on the Religion of the Semites_. First Series.

The Fundamental Inst.i.tutions, 1889.]

The Semitic races differ from the Indo-European, with whom alone we need compare them, in their greater intensity of disposition and a corresponding poverty of imagination. The Semite has a smaller range of ideas, but he applies them more practically and more thoroughly.

He has, indeed, an intensely practical turn, and does not touch philosophy except under an irresistible pressure of great practical ideas; while for plastic art he has no native inclination. From this it follows that the religious views he entertains appear to him less as ideas than as facts, which must be reckoned with to their full extent as other common facts of life must, and from which there is no escape. His religious convictions, therefore, are apt to be carried out to their utmost extent, even at the cost of great and painful sacrifices. Religion admits with the Semite of less compromise, and is less affected by fancy, than with the Aryan; it is, in fact, a more practical matter. The result proves to be that the Semitic mind brings religious ideas to bear on life and conduct with the greatest possible force; the substance is more, the form less, than is the case elsewhere.

When we ask for the common type of working Semitic religion, where are we to look for it? Not in Babylonia; the characteristic Babylonian religion is Semitic, but late Semitic; it has received the impress of high civilisation and of empire. Nor need we look for it in the town life of Phenicia. It is in the seclusion of the Arabian peninsula that we find it, in the district, as we saw, now regarded as the cradle of the Semitic race, where life continues to this day little changed from what it was before the days of Abraham. There the type of society still exists with which scholars like Wellhausen and Smith consider the earliest Semitic religion to be connected. It is a society of nomad clans, which own no allegiance to any central authority, which have no king and do not yet form a nation. This is a stage of social growth which in every ancient people precedes the rise of the nation and of monarchy. The Hebrews are rising out of this stage when we first see them. Their neighbours the Moabites and Canaanites have already pa.s.sed beyond it. But all these peoples alike have their root in a state of society when there was no large and orderly community, but only a mult.i.tude of small and restless tribes, when there was no written law, but only custom, and when there was no central authority to execute justice, but it was left to a man's fellow-clansmen to avenge his murder.

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