PREHISTORIC EGYPT (as of approx 1900) (12)

(3) There are evidently two distinct and different main strata in the
fabric of Egyptian religion. On the one hand we find a mass of myth and
religious belief of very primitive, almost savage, cast, combining
a worship of the actual dead in their tombs--which were supposed
to communicate and thus form a veritable "underworld," or, rather,
"under-Egypt"--with veneration of magic animals, such as jackals, cats,
hawks, and crocodiles. On the other hand, we have a sun and sky worship
of a more elevated nature, which does not seem to have amalgamated with
the earlier fetishism and corpse-worship until a comparatively late
period. The main seats of the sun-worship were at Heliopolis in the
Delta and at Edfu in Upper Egypt. Heliopolis seems always to have been
a centre of light and leading in Egypt, and it is, as is well known,
the On of the Bible, at whose university the Jewish lawgiver Moses is
related to have been educated "in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." The
philosophical theories of the priests of the Sun-gods, R?-Harmachis and
Turn, at Heliopolis seem to have been the source from which sprang the
monotheistic heresy of the Disk-Worshippers (in the time of the XVIIIth
Dynasty), who, under the guidance of the reforming King Akhunaten,
worshipped only the disk of the sun as the source of all life, the door
in heaven, so to speak, through which the hidden One Deity poured
forth heat and light, the origin of life upon the earth. Very early
in Egyptian history the Heliopolitans gained the upper hand, and the
R?-worship (under the Vth Dynasty, the apogee of the Old Kingdom) came
to the front, and for the first time the kings took the afterwards
time-honoured royal title of "Son of the Sun." It appears then as a
more or less foreign importation into the Nile valley, and bears most
undoubtedly a Semitic impress. Its two chief seats were situated, the
one, Heliopolis, in the North on the eastern edge of the Delta,--just
where an early Semitic settlement from over the desert might be expected
to be found,--the other, Edfu, in the Upper Egyptian territory south
of the Theba?d, Koptos, and the Wadi Ham-mamat, and close to the chief
settlement of the earliest kings and the most ancient capital of Upper
Egypt.

(4) The custom of burying at full length was evidently introduced into
Egypt by the second, or x race. The Neolithic Egyptians buried in the
cramped position. The early Babylonians buried at full length, as far
as we know. On the same "Stele of Vultures," which has already been
mentioned, we see the burying at full length of dead warriors. [* See
illustration.] There is no trace of any _early_ burial in Babylonia in
the cramped position. The tombs at Warka (Erech) with cramped bodies
in pottery coffins are of very late date. A further point arises with
regard to embalming. The Neolithic Egyptians did not embalm the dead.
Usually their cramped bodies are found as skeletons. When they are
mummified, it is merely owing to the preservative action of the salt
in the soil, not to any process of embalming. The second, or x race,
however, evidently introduced the custom of embalming as well as that
of burial at full length and the use of coffins. The Neolithic Egyptian
used no box or coffin, the nearest approach to this being a pot, which
was inverted over the coiled up body. Usually only a mat was put over
the body.