the Book of the Dead ( PDF )

The Gods Of The Book Of The Dead.
millions of years to the deceased. When the great combat took place between Horus, the son of Isis, and
Set, Thoth was present as judge, and he gave to Isis the cow's head in the place of her own which was cut
off by Horus in his rage at her interference; having reference to this fact he is called Ap-rehui, "The judge
of the two combatants." One of the Egyptian names for the ibis was Tekh, and the similarity of the sound
of this word to that of Tehu, the name of the moon as a measurer of time, probably led the Egyptians to
depict the god in the form of an ibis, notwithstanding the fact that the dog-headed ape was generally
considered to be the animal sacred to him. It has been thought that there were two gods called Thoth, one
being a form of Shu; but the attributes belonging to each have not yet been satisfactorily defined. In the
monuments and papyri Thoth appears in the form of a man with the head of an ibis, which is sometimes
surmounted by the crown ###, or ###, or ###, or by disk and horns ###, or ###, and he holds in his left
hand the sceptre ### and in the right {the ankh} ###; sometimes he is depicted holding his ink-jar and
the crescent moon, and sometimes he appears in the form of an ape holding a palette full of
writing-reeds.' Thoth is mentioned in the pyramid texts[2] as the brother of Osiris, but whether he is the
[1. See Lanzone, op. cit., tav. 304, No. 1.
2. Pyramid of Unas, l. 236.]
{p. cxix}
same Thoth who is called the "Lord of Khemennu" and the "Scribe of the gods" is doubtful.
Maat, the wife of Thoth, was the daughter of Ra, and a very ancient goddess; she seems to have assisted
Ptah and Khnemu in carrying out rightly the work of creation ordered by Thoth. There is no one word
which will exactly describe the Egyptian conception of Maat both from a physical and from a moral
point of view; but the fundamental idea of the word is " straight," and from the Egyptian texts it is clear
that maat meant right, true, truth, real, genuine, upright, righteous, just, steadfast, unalterable, etc. Thus
already in the Prisse papyrus it is said, "Great is maat, the mighty and unalterable, and it hath never been
broken since the time of Osiris,"[1] and Ptah-hetep counsels his listener to "make maat, or right and
truth, to germinate."[2] The just, upright, and straight man is maat and in a book of moral precepts it is
said, "God will judge the right (maa)[3] ###[4]. Maat, the goddess of the unalterable laws of heaven, and
the daughter of Ra, is depicted in female form, with the feather emblematic of maat, on her head, or with
the feather alone for a head, and the sceptre in one hand, and {an ankh} in the other.[5] In the judgment
scene two Maat goddesses appear; one probably is the personification of physical law, and the other of
moral rectitude.
Het-heru, or Hathor the "house of Horus," was the goddess of the sky wherein Horus the sun-god rose
and set. Subsequently a great number of goddesses of the same name were developed from her, and these
were identified with Isis, Neith, Iusaset, and many other goddesses whose attributes they absorbed. A
group of seven Hathors is also mentioned, and these appear to have partaken of the nature of good fairies.
In one form Hathor was the goddess of love, beauty,
[1. Page 17, 1. 5, ###.
2 Page 18, l. 1, ###.
3. Amélineau, la Morale, p. 138.
4. The various meanings of maat are illustrated by abundant passages from Egyptian texts by Brugsch, Wörterbuch
(Suppl.), p. 329.
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