of all things in the world. Iamblicus says,
"The God who creates with truth is Pthah." He was also connected with the
sun, as having thirty fingers,--the number of days in a month. He is
represented sometimes as a deformed dwarf.

The next god in the series is Khem, the Greek Pan,--the principle of
generation, sometimes holding the ploughshare.

Then come the feminine principles corresponding with these three latter
gods. Amun has naturally no companion. Mut, the mother, is the consort of
Khem the father. Seti,--the Ray or Arrow,--a female figure, with the horns
of a cow, is the companion of Kneph. And Neith, or Net, the goddess of
Sais, belongs to Pthah. The Greek Minerva Athene is thought to be derived
from Neith by an inversion of the letters,[189]--the Greeks writing from
left to right and the Egyptians from right to left. Her name means, "I
came from myself." Clemens says that her great shrine at Sais has an open
roof with the inscription, "I am all that was and is and is to be, and no
mortal has lifted my garment, and the fruit I bore is Helios." This would
seem to identify her with Nature.

For the eighth god of the first order we may take either Helios or Ra or
Phra, the Sun-God; from whence came the name of the Pharaohs, or we may
take Pasht, Bubastis, the equivalent of the Greek Diana. On some accounts
it would seem that Ra was the true termination of this cycle. We should
then have, proceeding from the hidden abyss of pure Spirit, first a
breathing forth, or spirit in motion; then creation, by the word of truth;
then generation, giving life and growth; and then the female qualities of
production, wisdom, and light, completed by the Sun-God, last of the
series. Amn, or Ammon, the Concealed God, is the root, then the creative
power in Kneph, then the generative power in Khem, the Demiurgic power in
Ptah, the feminine creative principle of Nature in Neith, the productive
principle in Mut, or perhaps the nourishing principle, and then the living
stimulus of growth, which carries all forward in Ra.

But we must now remember that two races meet in Egypt,--an Asiatic race,
which brings the ideas of the East; and an Ethiopian, inhabitants of the
land, who were already there. The first race brought the spiritual ideas
which were embodied in the higher order of gods. The Africans were filled
with the instinct of nature-worship. These two tendencies were to be
reconciled in the religion of Egypt. The first order of go