," and quickly do they lose
their breath while acclaiming him--Egyptians and Libyans, Negroes and
Asiatics: "Hail to thee!" they all say; "praise to thee because thou
dwellest amongst us!--Obeisances before thee because thou createst
us!"--"Thou art blessed by every living thing,--thou hast worshippers in
every place,--in the highest of the heavens, in all the breadth of
the earth,--in the depths of the seas.--The gods bow before thy
Majesty,--magnifying the souls which form them,--rejoicing at meeting
those who have begotten them,--they say to thee: 'Go in peace,--father
of the fathers of all the gods,--who suspended the heaven, levelled the
earth;--creator of beings, maker of things,--sovereign king, chief of
the gods,--we adore thy souls, because thou hast made us,--we lavish
offerings upon thee, because thou hast given us birth,--we shower
benedictions upon thee, because thou dwellest among us.'" We have here
the same ideas as those which predominate in the hymns addressed to
Atonu,* and in the prayers directed to Phtah, the Nile, Shu, and the
Sun-god of Heliopolis at the same period.

* Breasted points out the decisive influence exercised by
the solar hymns of Amenothes IV. on the development of the
solar ideas contained in the hymns to Amon put forth or re-
edited in the XXIIIrd dynasty.

The idea of a single god, lord and maker of all things, continued to
prevail more and more throughout Egypt--not, indeed, among the lower
classes who persisted in the worship of their genii and their animals,
but among the royal family, the priests, the nobles, and people of
culture. The latter believed that the Sun-god had at length absorbed
all the various beings who had been manifested in the feudal divinities:
these, in fact, had surrendered their original characteristics in order
to become forms of the Sun, Amon as well as the others--and the new
belief displayed itself in magnifying the solar deity, but the solar
deity united with the Theban Amon, that is, Amon-Ra. The omnipotence of
this one god did not, however, exclude a belief in the existence of his
compeers; the theologians thought all the while that the beings to whom
ancient generations had accorded a complete independence in respect of
their rivals were nothing more than emanations from one supreme being.
If local pride forced them to apply to this single deity the designation
customarily used in their city--Phtah at Memphis, Anhuri-Shu at Thin