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familiar "wonder smith" of the Alpine "broad heads" who were distributed along Asiatic and European
mountain ranges from Hindu Kush to Brittany and the British isles and mingled with the archaic Hittites in
Asia Minor. The PhS
nician sailors carried figures of dwarfs in their ships, and worshipped them. They were
called "pataikoi". In the Far East a creation artificer who resembles Ptah is Pan Ku, the first Chinese deity,
who emerged from a cosmic egg.
Like Ra, Ptah was also believed to have first appeared as an egg, which, according to one of the many folk
beliefs of Egypt, was laid by the chaos goose which came to be identified with Seb, the earth god, and
afterwards with the combined deities Amon-Ra. Ptah, as the primeval "artificer god", was credited with
making "the sun egg" and also "the moon egg", and a bas-relief at Philæ shows him actively engaged at the
work, using his potter's wheel.
A higher and later conception of Ptah represents him as a sublime creator god who has power to call into
existence each thing he names. He is the embodiment of mind from which all things emerge, and his ideas
take material shape when he gives them expression. In a philosophic poem a Memphite priest eulogizes the
great deity as "the mind and tongue of the gods", and even as the creator of other gods as well as of "all
people, cattle, and reptiles", the sun, and the habitable world.
Thoth is also credited with similar power, and it is possible that in this connection both these deities were
imparted with the attributes of Ra, the sun god.
According to the tradition perpetuated by Manetho, the first temple in Egypt was erected at Memphis, that
city of great builders, to the god Ptah at the command of King Mena. It is thus suggested that the town and
the god of the ruling caste existed when the Horite sun worshippers moved northward on their campaign of
CHAPTER VI. The City of the Elf God 52
 EGYPTIAN MYTH AND LEGEND
conquest. As has been shown, Mena also gave diplomatic recognition to Neith, the earth goddess of the
Libyans, "the green lady" of Egypt, who resembles somewhat the fairy, and especially the banshee, of the
Iberians and their Celtic conquerors.
The Ptah worshippers were probably not the founders of Memphis. An earlier deity associated with the city is
the dreaded Sokar (Seker). He was a god of the dead, and in the complex mythology of later times his
habitation was located in the fifth hour-division of night. When sun worship became general in the Nile
valley Sokar was identified with the small winter sun, as Horus was with the large sun of summer. But the
winged and three-headed monster god, with serpent body, suffers complete loss of physical identity when
merged with the elfin deity of Memphis. Ptah-Sokar is depicted as a dwarf and one of the Khnûmû. Another
form of Sokar is a hawk, of different aspect to the Horus hawk, which appears perched on the Ra boat at night
with a sun disk upon its head.
Ptah-Sokar was in time merged with the agricultural
Osiris whose spirit passed from Pharaoh to Pharaoh. Ptah-Osiris was depicted as a human-sized mummy,
swathed and mute, holding firmly in his hands before him the Osirian dadu (pillar) symbol. The triad,
Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, gives us a combined deity who is a creator, a judge of the dead, and a traditional king of
Egypt. The influence of the sun cult prevailed when Sokar and Osiris were associated with the worship of Ra.
Memphis, the city of Ptah, ultimately became the capital of United Egypt. It was then at the height of its
glory; a great civilization had evolved. Unfortunately, however, we are unable to trace its progress, because
the records are exceedingly scanty. Fine workmanship in stone, exquisite pottery, &c., indicate the advanced
character of the times, but it is impossible to construct from these alone an orderly historical narrative. We
have also the traditions preserved by Manetho. Much of what he tells us, however, belongs to the domain of
folklore. We learn, for instance, that for nearly a fortnight the Nile ran with honey, and that one of the
Pharaohs, who was a giant about 9 feet high, was "a most dangerous man". It is impossible to confirm
whether a great earthquake occurred in the Delta region, where the ground is said to have yawned and
swallowed many of the people, or whether a famine occurred in the reign of one pharaoh and a great plague
in that of another, and if King Aha really engaged his leisure moments compiling works on anatomy. The
story of a Libyan revolt at a later period may have had foundation in fact, but the explanation that the rebels
broke into flight because the moon suddenly attained enormous dimensions shows how myth and history
were inextricably intertwined.
Yet Manetho's history contains important material.His list of early kings is not imaginative, as was once
supposed, although there may be occasional inaccuracies. The Palermo Stone, so called because it was
carried to the Sicilian town of that name by some unknown curio collector, has inscribed upon it in
hieroglyphics the names of several of the early kings and references to notable events which occurred during
their reigns. It is one of the little registers which were kept in temples. Many of these, no doubt, existed, and
some may yet he brought to light.
Four centuries elapsed after the Conquest ere Memphis became the royal city. We know little, however,
regarding the first three hundred years. Two dynasties of Thinite kings ruled over the land. There was a royal
residence at Memphis, which was the commercial capital of the country the marketplace of the northern and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]