DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27180#0029
THE SUN
beams chance to fall on them at a lucky moment, you may
well see Egyptian monuments even in the Berlin Pwp-penallee.
Even among the Eskimos you may feel a breath of this
enchantment. Were it not so, no amount of revelry would
keep a northerner alive here.
There were many gods in Egypt. They adored every
conceivable beast. Babuschka maintains that this passion is
a survival from an earlier age and reappeared only in a time
of decadence, and that in the golden age their use of zoology
was purely symbolic. She may very well be wrong; but ever
since she held her own with Ibrahim in the bazaar episode I
never venture to contradict her. We can no longer make out
where symbolism left off and plain superstition began. In
any case the sun was always the chief god, and the many
secondary gods, the outcome of the instinct to particularize
and of priestly dishonesty, achieved at most a slight clouding
of the Egyptian horizon. . . . One day - it is hardly 3300
years ago — Amenophis iv swept the whole elaborate swindle
aside and allowed the validity of only one god, the Sun. This
king stands very close to us. Everything we know of his acts
and private life shows him in a sympathetic light. He was
interested only in the things of the spirit and hated militarism.
Naturally he fell foul of the rest. In later days he was called
the heretic king; hardly was he dead before they cleared
away all that he had done, and the wicked priests did their
utmost to bring his memory to naught. He had an intelligent
face, and the back of his head was quite well developed. I
daresay he was a shockingly degenerate fellow.
23
beams chance to fall on them at a lucky moment, you may
well see Egyptian monuments even in the Berlin Pwp-penallee.
Even among the Eskimos you may feel a breath of this
enchantment. Were it not so, no amount of revelry would
keep a northerner alive here.
There were many gods in Egypt. They adored every
conceivable beast. Babuschka maintains that this passion is
a survival from an earlier age and reappeared only in a time
of decadence, and that in the golden age their use of zoology
was purely symbolic. She may very well be wrong; but ever
since she held her own with Ibrahim in the bazaar episode I
never venture to contradict her. We can no longer make out
where symbolism left off and plain superstition began. In
any case the sun was always the chief god, and the many
secondary gods, the outcome of the instinct to particularize
and of priestly dishonesty, achieved at most a slight clouding
of the Egyptian horizon. . . . One day - it is hardly 3300
years ago — Amenophis iv swept the whole elaborate swindle
aside and allowed the validity of only one god, the Sun. This
king stands very close to us. Everything we know of his acts
and private life shows him in a sympathetic light. He was
interested only in the things of the spirit and hated militarism.
Naturally he fell foul of the rest. In later days he was called
the heretic king; hardly was he dead before they cleared
away all that he had done, and the wicked priests did their
utmost to bring his memory to naught. He had an intelligent
face, and the back of his head was quite well developed. I
daresay he was a shockingly degenerate fellow.
23