is belief seems to
have largely given place to others, and it had practically vanished in
the early Christian age.

+Atmu+ (Tum) was the original god of Heliopolis and the Delta side,
round to the gulf of Suez, which formerly reached up to Ismailiyeh.
How far his nature as the setting sun was the result of his being
identified with Ra, is not clear. It may be that he was simply a
creator-god, and that the introduction of Ra led to his being unified
with him. Those who take the view that the names of gods are connected
with tribes, as {54} Set and Suti, Anuke and Anak, might well claim
that Atmu or Atum belonged to the land of Aduma or Etham.

+Khepera+ has no local importance, but is named as the morning sun. He
was worshipped about the time of the nineteenth dynasty.

+Aten+ was a conception of the sun entirely different to Ra. No human
or animal form was ever attached to it; and the adoration of the
physical power and action of the sun was the sole devotion. So far as
we can trace, it was a worship entirely apart, and different from every
other type of religion in Egypt; and the partial information that we
have about it does not, so far, show a single flaw in a purely
scientific conception of the source of all life and power upon earth.
The Aten was the only instance of a 'jealous god' in Egypt, and this
worship was exclusive of all others, and claims universality. There
are traces of it shortly before Amonhotep in. He showed some devotion
to it, and it was his son who took the name of Akhenaten, 'the glory of
the Aten,' and tried to enforce this as the sole worship of Egypt. But
it fell immediately after, and is lost in the next dynasty. The sun is
represented as radiating its beams on all things, and every beam ends
in a hand which imparts life and power to {55} the king and to all
else. In the hymn to the Aten the universal scope of this power is
proclaimed as the source of all life and action, and every land and
people are subject to it, and owe to it their existence and their
allegiance. No such grand theology had ever appeared in the world
before, so far as we know; and it is the forerunner of the later
monotheist religions, while it is even more abstract and impersonal,
and may well rank as a scientific theism.

+Anher+ was the local god of Thinis in Upper Egypt, and Sebennytos in
the Delta, a human sun-god. His name is a mere epithet, 'he who goes
in heaven'; and it may well be that this was on