The form of Ra most free from admixture is that of the disk of the sun, sometimes figured between two hills at rising, sometimes between two wings, sometimes in the boat in which it floated on the celestial ocean across the sky. The winged disk has almost always two cobra serpents attached to it, and often two rams' horns; the meaning of the whole combination is that Ra protects and preserves, like the vulture brooding over its young, destroys like the cobra, and creates like the ram. This is seen by the modification where it is placed over a king's head, when the destructive cobra is omitted, and the wings are folded together as embracing and protecting the king.
This disk form is connected with the hawk-god, by being placed over the head of the hawk; and this in turn is connected with the human form by the disc resting on the hawk-headed man, which is one of the most usual types of Ra. The god is but seldom shown as being purely human, except when identified with other gods, such as Atmu, Horus, or Amon.
The worship of Ra outshone all others in the nineteenth dynasty. United to the god of Thebes as Amon Ra, he became 'king of the gods'; and the view that the soul joined Ra in his journey through the hours of the night absorbed all other views, which only became sections of this whole (see chap. xi). By the Greek times this 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.