File:The dawn of civilization- Egypt and Chaldaea (1897) (14760393891).jpg

Identifier: dawnofcivilizati01masp (find matches)
Title: The dawn of civilization: Egypt and Chaldaea
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Maspero, G. (Gaston), 1846-1916
Subjects: Civilization
Publisher: London : S.P.C.K.
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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re replaced the hieroglyph ^ of the god Sit, which forms his name, by that of Osiris J* ; it was in order, as Champollion remarked, not to offend the god of the dead by the sight of his enemy, and more particularly perhaps to avoid the contradiction of a kingnamed Sit being styled Osiris, and of calling him the Osiris Seti. The mutilation of the name ofSît upon the monuments does not appear to me to be anterior to the Persian period ; at that time themasters of the country being strangers and of a different religion, the feudal divinities ceased toaspire to the political supremacy, and the only common religion that Egypt possessed was that ofOsiris, the god of the dead. 5 Cf. the battle that Juvenal describes in his fifteenth satire, between the people of Denderah andthose of the town of Ombi, which latter is not the Ombos situated between Assûan and Gebel Silsileh,but Pâ-nûbît, the Pampauis of Roman geographers, the present Negadeh (DCmichen, GeschichteAïgyptens, pp. 125, 126).
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•204 THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT. more confirmed in their veneration for the accursed god ; Christianity aloneovercame their obstinate fidelity to him.1 The history of the world for Egypt was therefore only the history of thestruggle between the adherents of Osiris and the followers of Sit ; an inter-minable warfare in which sometimes one and sometimes the other of the rivalparties obtained a passing advantage, without ever gaining a decisive victorytill the end of time. The divine kings of the second and third Ennead devotedmost of the years of their earthly reign to this end ; they were portrayed underthe form of the great warrior Pharaohs, who, from the eighteenth to the twelfthcentury before our era, extended their rule from the plains of the Euphratesto the marshes of Ethiopia. A few peaceful sovereigns are met with here andthere in this line of conquerors—a few sages or legislators, of whom the mostfamous was styled Thot, the doubly great, ruler of Hermopolis and of theHe

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