Egyptian religious poetry

38 EGYPTIAN RELIGIOUS POETRY

son of the Sun but the Sun himself. It becomes therefore almost impossible at times to distinguish between the hymns addressed to Osiris, Horus, or the Sun, from those addressed to the King.

The other deities are sparsely represented in the religious literature, and then usually only when the local dynast rose to be Pharaoh and his local city had become of sufficient importance to attract the literary world. Ptah and Bast were the objects of a few hymns when the Delta came into prominence after the New Kingdom, but it is a strange fact that there are hardly any prayers or hymns addressed to the greatest of all the goddesses, Isis. It is not surprising that the worship of the goddess of birth, the hippopotamus Ta-urt, has left no remains, for with few exceptions her worshippers were illiterate, and the prayers addressed to her would not be recorded ; but as Isis was the royal goddess to whom temples were dedicated, it is somewhat surprising to find so few remains of the words of her cult.

Though the functions of the gods varied, the functions of the goddesses were always the same. They were invariably protectresses, never requiring protection themselves. For this reason they are often represented with wings on their arms which they stretch out over the devotee or even the god, whom they protect. The goddess is sometimes fierce against the enemies of the god whom she protects, like Sekhmet and Wazt ; for it is evident that each god had bitter enemies against whom he was powerless unless he received outside help. It is possible that the idea of protecting a god against his foes arose in primitive times when a god was safe only in his own country and surrounded by his worshippers. This would account for the fact that even the great gods, Ré and Amon, had to be aided in their battles. The chief god to be protected was Osiris, for it