DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0336
300
THE PRESENT TENANTS OE THE TOMBS.
minuter mental processes which, have evolved certain
constituents of ancient systems of religion, have not
been more productive of unimpeachable results than
speculative exercises of metaphysical ingenuity are
wont to he. But irrespective of such suggestions, and
thinking only of a palpable typology readily present to
our cognizance although not necessarily in this form
operative in the minds of the ancient Egyptians, it could
justly be said that if they strove to typify the grand
originating, controlling and beneficent power, by that
which stood in the same relation to their own mate-
rial existence, they chose well in selecting the Nile.*
Their country, its soil being exclusively a sedimentary
deposit, was itself, as Herodotus aptly termed it, a gift
from the sacred river. And the presence of its fertilizing
stream was the one condition on which the life of plants,
of the lower animals, and, consequently, of man himself
depended. To all things animate in the valley along its
banks it was in truth the essence of vitality. Par from
* From the point of view which we necessarily occupy, it is perhaps
quite impossible for us to apprehend the evolution of ideas by which
the actual deification of a river could bo brought about and maintained
among an intelligent people. "We should be apt to accept, as the
explanation, that its apotheosis was merely typical or connected with
the idea of its being the instrument of a god. But an existing worship
in India would show that this might only bo partially right, or wholly
wrong. ¥e are reminded that " in the case of the Ganges, it is the
river itself to whom they [a whole community of many millions] ad-
dress themselves, and not to any deity residing in it or presiding over
it; the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations and
receives their homage."—Sleeman's Rambles and Recollections of an
Indian Official, vol. i. p. 20.
THE PRESENT TENANTS OE THE TOMBS.
minuter mental processes which, have evolved certain
constituents of ancient systems of religion, have not
been more productive of unimpeachable results than
speculative exercises of metaphysical ingenuity are
wont to he. But irrespective of such suggestions, and
thinking only of a palpable typology readily present to
our cognizance although not necessarily in this form
operative in the minds of the ancient Egyptians, it could
justly be said that if they strove to typify the grand
originating, controlling and beneficent power, by that
which stood in the same relation to their own mate-
rial existence, they chose well in selecting the Nile.*
Their country, its soil being exclusively a sedimentary
deposit, was itself, as Herodotus aptly termed it, a gift
from the sacred river. And the presence of its fertilizing
stream was the one condition on which the life of plants,
of the lower animals, and, consequently, of man himself
depended. To all things animate in the valley along its
banks it was in truth the essence of vitality. Par from
* From the point of view which we necessarily occupy, it is perhaps
quite impossible for us to apprehend the evolution of ideas by which
the actual deification of a river could bo brought about and maintained
among an intelligent people. "We should be apt to accept, as the
explanation, that its apotheosis was merely typical or connected with
the idea of its being the instrument of a god. But an existing worship
in India would show that this might only bo partially right, or wholly
wrong. ¥e are reminded that " in the case of the Ganges, it is the
river itself to whom they [a whole community of many millions] ad-
dress themselves, and not to any deity residing in it or presiding over
it; the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations and
receives their homage."—Sleeman's Rambles and Recollections of an
Indian Official, vol. i. p. 20.