DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3720#0027
EARLY RELIGION AND HABITS. 11
Egyptians had already the habits and customs of after-times ;
and I shall have an opportunity of noticing the early date
of some inventions and usages generally ascribed to much
more recent periods.
Whatever their religion may have been in their infancy as a
nation, it had evidently the same general character, as well as
their laws and institutions, from the earliest periods of which
the monuments have left us any record;'and even if any new
law was introduced, it only carried out the system already
framed of old, and was the natural result of experience and the
advancement of society. Nor did some little innovations in
the rights and ceremonies, nor the occasional adoption of a
new, or even of a foreign, god, so conveniently tolerated by
polytheism, make any real alteration in their religion ; and the
prominence given to the mysteries and office of Osiris in the
sixth, and still more in the eighteenth and succeeding dynasties,
were only the fuller development of an old doctrine. What-
ever change was introduced of a contrary tendency was forcibly
introduced by some foreign king; as when Amun was banished
from the Pantheon; and the expulsion of the heterodox
"stranger" was the signal for the restoration of the old and
favourite deity.
In their manners and customs, too, the changes that time
brought about were very trifling; and, as I have already
stated, the fact of the oldest monuments representing a people
already having the customs of their later civilisation, while it
takes us back to an era beyond the reach of all known history,
suggests this obvious question—how long a time must have
elapsed before the Egyptians could have reached that ad-
vanced state in which they are introduced to us by the monu-
ments ?
It is unnecessary to offer any conjectures respecting the few
Egyptians had already the habits and customs of after-times ;
and I shall have an opportunity of noticing the early date
of some inventions and usages generally ascribed to much
more recent periods.
Whatever their religion may have been in their infancy as a
nation, it had evidently the same general character, as well as
their laws and institutions, from the earliest periods of which
the monuments have left us any record;'and even if any new
law was introduced, it only carried out the system already
framed of old, and was the natural result of experience and the
advancement of society. Nor did some little innovations in
the rights and ceremonies, nor the occasional adoption of a
new, or even of a foreign, god, so conveniently tolerated by
polytheism, make any real alteration in their religion ; and the
prominence given to the mysteries and office of Osiris in the
sixth, and still more in the eighteenth and succeeding dynasties,
were only the fuller development of an old doctrine. What-
ever change was introduced of a contrary tendency was forcibly
introduced by some foreign king; as when Amun was banished
from the Pantheon; and the expulsion of the heterodox
"stranger" was the signal for the restoration of the old and
favourite deity.
In their manners and customs, too, the changes that time
brought about were very trifling; and, as I have already
stated, the fact of the oldest monuments representing a people
already having the customs of their later civilisation, while it
takes us back to an era beyond the reach of all known history,
suggests this obvious question—how long a time must have
elapsed before the Egyptians could have reached that ad-
vanced state in which they are introduced to us by the monu-
ments ?
It is unnecessary to offer any conjectures respecting the few