Читать книгу The dawn of astronomy. A study of the temple-worship and mythology of the ancient Egyptians онлайн

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THE RISING SUN HORUS BETWEEN ISIS AND NEPHTHYS.

It would seem that it was not very long before the Egyptians saw that the paths of the sun and stars above the horizon were extremely unequal: in the case of the sun, at different times of the year; in the case of the stars, depending upon their position near the equator or either pole. In this way, perhaps, we may explain a curious variant of the drawing of the goddess Nu-t, in which she is represented double, a larger one stretching over a smaller one.

Not only the Sun-gods, but the stars, were supposed to travel in boats across the firmament from one horizon to the other. The underworld was the abode of the dead; and daily the sun, and the stars which set, died on passing to the regions of the west, or Amenti, below the western horizon, to be born again on the eastern horizon on the morrow. In this we have the germ of the Egyptian idea of immortality.

THE GODDESS NU-T.

Among other gods which may be mentioned are Chnemu, the "Moulder," who was thought to possess some of the attributes of Rā; and Ptah, the "Opener," who is at times represented with Isis and Nephthys, and then appears as a form of Osiris.