"Ancient Egypt. The Light of the World"
Gerald Massey (1829 - 1907)
(991 pages - a phenomenal, monumental work)
"Myth-making man did not create the Gods in his own image. The primary divinities of
Egypt, such as Sut, Sebek, and Shu, three of the earliest, were represented in the like-
ness of the Hippopotamus, the Crocodile, and the Lion; whilst Hapi was imaged as an
Ape, Anup as a Jackal, Ptah as a Beetle, Taht as an Ibis, Seb as a Goose. So it was with
the Goddesses. They are the likenesses of powers that were Super-human, not human...
Totemism was formulated by Myth-making man with types that were the very opposite
of human...The idea of Force, for instance, was not derived from the thews and muscles
of a Man. [But] as the Kamite Sign-Language shows...was perceived to be the wind; the
Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters from the beginning. This power was div-
inised in Shu, the God of breathing force, whose zootype is the Lion as a fitting figure of
this panting Power of the Air. The element audible in the howling wind, but dimly ap-
prehended otherwise, was given shape and substance as the roaring Lion in this substi-
tution of similars. The force of the element was equated by the power of the Animal;
and no human thews and sinews could compare with those of the Lion as a figure of
Force. Thus the Lion speaks for itself, in the language of ideographic signs. And, in
this way, the Gods and Goddesses of ancient Egypt were at first portrayed as super-
human Powers by means of living Superhuman types.
...the Powers and Divinities were first represented by...zootypes. The Sun and Moon were not considered 'human in their nature'...Until Har-Ur, the Elder Horus, had been depicted as a Child...there was no human figure personlalized in the Mythology of Egypt. Primitive or Paleolithic Man was too beggarly poor in possessions to dream of shaping the Super-human Powers of Nature in the human likeness...And it is precisely because the Makers of Myths had not the power to animate the universe In their own
likeness that we have the zoomorphic mode of representation as the Sign-Language of
Totemism and Mythology. On every line of research we discover that representation of nature was pre-anthropomorphic at first...Primitive Man would find no human likeness behind the phenomenon of external nature. The powers first perceived in external na-
ture were not only unlike the human; they were very emphatically and distinctly more than human, and therefore couldn't be adequately expressed by features recognizable
as merely human. Primitive men were all too abjectly helpless in the presence of these powers to think of them or conceive them in their own similitude. The one primordial
and most definite fact of the whole matter was the distinct and absolute unlikeness to themselves. Also, they themselves were too little the cause of anything by the work of their own hands to enter into the sphere of causation mentally. They could only appre-
hend the nature forces by their efforts, and try to represent these by means of other
powers that were present in nature, but which were also neccesarily superior to the human, and were not the human faculties indefinitely magnified...
He could not have figured the Thunder-bolt as a Stone-axe in the hands of a destroying
Power until he himself had made and could wield the axe of stone as a weapon of his own power. But he could think of it in the likeness of the Serpent already known to him in external nature as a figure of fatal Force."
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