ABSTRACT
If we consider for a moment it will at once be apparent from the geographical position of Egypt that her people must have been brought in contact with a large number of foreign gods, and that in certain places a few must have become more or less identified with Egytian gods of similar attributes and characteristics. As a rule Orientals have always been exceedingly tolerant of alien gods, and the Egyptians formed no exception to the rule; there is, moreover, in the Egyptian inscriptions, no evidence that they ever tried to suppress the gods of the races they conquered, though we may assume that they never failed, whenever it was possible, to carry off the images of foreign gods, because in so doing they displayed the superior power of the gods of Egypt, and destroyed the religious and political importance of the cities and towns wherein the shrines of the foreign gods were situated. It is not at present possible to decide which gods were indigenous to the Valley of the Nile, and which were of Libyan origin, but there is no doubt that a number of Libyan gods were adopted by the dwellers in the Western Delta, in predynastic times, and that they had become to all intents and purposes Egyptian gods under the rule of the kings of the Ist Dynasty. Among such deities may be mentioned Net, or Neith, of Saïs, Bast of Bubastis, and it is very probable that Osiris and his cycle of gods, though perhaps under different names, were also of Libyan origin. Under the IVth and Vth Dynasties the cult of Rā, the Sun-god, spread with great rapidity in the Delta and in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis, and his priests, as we have seen, obtained almost kingly influence in the 276country. There is no reason for doubting that the Sun was worshipped in the earliest times in Egypt, but the form of his worship, as approved and promulgated by the priests of Heliopolis, appears to have differed from that which was current in other parts of the country, and it is probable that it possessed something of an Asiatic character. The foreign gods who succeeded in obtaining a place in the affections of the Egyptians were of Libyan and Semitic origin, and there is no evidence that they borrowed any deity, except Bes, from Nubia, or the country still further to the south of Egypt. The goddess Qeṭesh standing on a lion between Min and Reshpu. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203040713/0679aeac-0ac5-4de4-8323-4903ae48a861/content/page276_01.tif"/>
