THE ALL-KNOWING GOD

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MYTHOL06Y
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 THE
ALL-KNOWING GOD

RAFFAELE PETTAZZONI

Authorised Translation by
H. J. ROSE

...

ARNO PRESS
A New York Times Company

New York/ 1978

Editorial Supervision: LESLIE PARR

Reprint Edition 1978 by Arno Press Inc.

Reprinted by permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd.

Reprinted from a copy in

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MYTHOLOGY
ISBN for complete set: 0-405-10529-0
See last pages of this volume for titles.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging In Publication nata

Pettazzoni, Raffaele, 18~3-1959.
The all-knowing God.

(Mythology)
Translation of L'onniscienza du Dio.
Reprint of the 1956 ed. published by Methuen,
London.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. God-Omniscience. 2. Religions. 3. Religion,
Primitive. I. Title. II. Series.
CBL205.P4713 1978J ~91.2 11 1
77-79150
IBBN 0-405-10559-~
~
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ti-IE ALL"KNOWING GOD

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 RAFFAELE PETTAZZONl
Professor of the History of Religions, University of Rome;
Doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Brussels and
Strasbourg; Member of the Accademia Nazionale dci Lincei,
the Accademia delle Scienze dell' istituto di Bologna, the
Accademia Pontaniana, Naples; Foreign Member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy; Member of the German Archae-
ological Institute; Foreign Member of the Royal Society of
Letters, Lund.

*
H.]. ROSE, M.A., F.B.A.
Corresponding Fellow of the Lombard Institute of Sciences
and Letters, Milan; Foreign Member of the Royal Society
of Letters, Lund; Foreign Member of the Royal Netherlands
Academy; Hon. Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford; Emeritus
Professor of Greek, St. Salva tors College, St. Andrews; Hon.
LL.D., St. Andrews.
,
THE
ALL-KNOWING GOD
Researches into
early Religion and Culture
,

by
RAFFAELE PETTAZZONI

Authorised Translation by
H. J. ROSE

ov.\oS' &pij, ov.\oS' OE vod', ov.\oS' OE T 1 aKorflt

XENOPHA:o-.c:s, Fgt. 24 (Diog. Laert. IX, 19)
, ,o.\oS' :'ovS", .CJ>..OS' t/JW,S' TTa;pcf1?v, , , ,
o.\OS' ot/J9a.\p.oS', TTaVTa opwv, TTaVTa aKOVWV tOWS' TTaVTa
1

CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUs, Stromal. VII, 5

totus oculus, totus auris, totus cerebrum, totus brachium . Deus

sapientissimus sentit et intelligit omnia
ISAAC NEWTOX, Philosophiae Natura/is Principia Afalhematica,
Liber III (1687)

METHUEN & CO. LTD, LONDON

36 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2
 First published in I956

...

C.~1"ALOGUE NO, 5720/U

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

The Camelot Press Ltd., London and Southampton
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

T
HIS book originated in a series of lectures on The Omniscience
of God, which I delivered in October I 935 in the University of
Uppsala, by courteous invitation of the Olaus Petri Foundation.
A summary of them will be found in Studi e Materiali di Storia delle
Religioni Vol. XI (1935), pp. 215-17.
But the first beginnings of the work lie further back and the germ of
them is in a very wide scheme of study planned some forty years ago
and achieved only in part with the publication of.my book L'Essere
celeste nelle creden;:.e dei popoli primitivi, which came out in Rome in 1922
as the first section of a tripartite treatise having the title Dro: Forma<.ione
'! sviluppo del monoteismo nella storia delle religioni. The other two sections,
which were to have handled respectively Il Dio supremo nelle religioni
politeistiche and Il Dio unico nelle religioni monoteistiche, never were and
never will be completed in the shape which I then planned.*
As the work progressed, apart from correcting here and there my
views on particular points, I was led to fix my attention more and more
on the attributes of Deity and especially on that of omniscience, to
which I devoted some special studies on various occasions, namely
Ahura Mazda, the knowing Lord, in Indo-Iranian Studies in honour of Dastur
Darab Peshotan Sanjana (London and Leipzig 1925); L'omniscience de
Dieu, in Actes du Ve Congrcs International d'Histoire des Religions (1929),
Lund I 930; Allwissende hochste Wesen bti primitivsten Volkern, in Archiv
fiir Religionswissenschaft x:'{ix (I 93 I).
In the present volume the themes, old and new, of my research
are taken up again, but the research is definitely focussed on the
attribute of Divine omniscience considered as an ideological complex
and as a religious experience. The work has been carried out (like that
on La confessione dei peccati, 3 vols., Bologna I929-36, French translation,
La confession des pecMs, 2 vols., Paris I 93 I -32) on the two distinct
but conjoined planes of phenomenology and of religious history, as
complementary and inseparable factors of the science of religion in its
essential unity (cf. my Aper;u introductifin Numen i, I954, Leiden, E. J.
Brill). The phenomenological interpretation, based on formal typology,
is combined in one with the assignment of the attribute of omniscience
to a definite historical and cultural environment.
* The four titles may be rendered in English: (I) The skygod in the beliefs of
primitive peoples, (2) Goo: the formation and development of monotheism in the history
of religion, (3) T:he supreme God in polytheistic religions, (4) The One God of mono-
theistic religions.
vi . THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
I am not blind to the difficulties and dangers of so wide an under-
taking. The novelty of the theme, the almost entire absence of pre-
liminary studies, have made it necessary again and again, chapter by
chapter, to explore very diverse fields, every one of which would call
for a special competence such as none but specialists can reach. I am
sure that these will be indulgent to my attempt to overstep the bounds
of specialisation.
The work, begun before the second world war, had to be broken off
and resumed several times. The agreement with the publisher dates
from 1938 and has been kept, a comforting example of faithfulness to
contracts in unpropitious days. For reasons of space, some subsidiary
sections and paragraphs have been omitted. It has been found poss-
ible to include these, along with a larger number of notes and some
additional illustrations, in the Italian edition (Turin, Einaudi, 1955),
which is entitled L'Onniscienza di Dio.
My friend Professor H. J. Rose, besides being a translator past
compare, has been a valuable collaborator and my undying gratitude
goes out to him.
To those who have courteously provided me with the material here
reproduced in the illustrations I express my warm thanks, and especi-
ally to my late friend Professor Antonio Minto, Director of the
Archaeological Museum of Florence, to the Directors of the Archaeo-
logical Museum of Turin, of the Louvre, of the Kestner Museum,
Hanover, and of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, and
to Dr. D. Zoncev, Director of the Museum ofPlovdiv.
Useful suggestions and information have reached me from Pro-
fessor F. W. von Bissing, Professor Gavril I. Kazarov of Sofia, and
others mentioned in various chapters; to all of them I once again
express my warmest thanks.
R. PETTAZZONI
Rome, 1954
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

y work, of which the author speaks so warmly, has consisted

,
M of rendering into English what he had written in Italian, doing
my best to prove that in this instance traduttore should not be
synonymous with traditore. I wish here to express my general agreement
with the views set forth in this work, while reserving judgement on
some details.
H. J. RosE

r
 CONTENT~

AUTHOR'S PREFACE v
TRANSLATOR's PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION
I. AFRICA 31
Pygmies 31
Bushmen, Hottentots and Damara 32
Bantu 34
Sudanese 36
Nilotic and Niloto-Hamitic peoples 38
Cushites 40
II. EGYPT 49
Rc 49
Thot 50
Horus 51
Amun 55
Many-eyed deities 58
Summary 63
III. BABYLONIA 77
Anu 77
Enlil 77
Ea 78
Sin 78
Shamash 79
Marduk 79
Other deities 84
IV. PHOENICIANS 8g
The two-faced El B!J
The Punic Janus 91
V. ISRAEL 97
Psalms and \~Visdom literature !J7
Prophets 105
Historical books 106
Antiquity of the idea of divine omniscience 107
The: Chcru him 109
x THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
VI. THE HITTITES I I5
The sun-god I I 5
The weather-god I I 5
The "Gods of the King" I I6

VII. INDIA I I8
Vedism and Brahmanism I I8
Hinduism I 22

Buddhism and J ainism I 25

VIII. IRAN I32

Ahura l\Jazdah I32
Mithra I34
Saosyant 139

IX. GREECE I45

Zeus I45
Argos panoptes I 5I
Boreas, Aer, Aither I 53
Helios and Selene I 55

X. ANCIENT ROME I63

Juppiter I63
Serna Sancus I 63

Janus I64

XI. THE THRACIANS I 78

The "Thracian Rider" as sungod I 78
The Thracian "Hermes" as god of the "kings" I83

XII. THE KELTS 1 g6

The three-headed Gaulish god I g6

The three-headed god on planetary vases 200
The two-faced god 207

XIII. THE TEUTONS 220

\.Yotan-Odin 220

XIV. THE SLAVS 234

Triglav, Svantevit and others 234
 CONTENTS xi
XV. UGRO-FINNS, URALO-ALTAICS, SIBERIANS 256
l\Tordvins 256
Voguls and Ostiaks 257
Sarnoyeds 259
Turko-}v!ongols and related peoples 261
Koryaks 263
General reflections 264
XVI. CHINA 273
Shang-ti and T'ien 273
Shang and Chou 277
Prehistory 281
XVII. ASSAM AND UPPER BURMA 289
Nagas 289
Kachin, Lushei, Lakher 292
XVIII. THE NEGRITOS 301
Andarnan Islands 30 r
Peninsula of Malacca 3 1o
Philippine Islands 318
XIX. INDONESIA 329
Nias 329
Borneo 331
Celebes 332
Flores 333
The Moluccas 334
XX. OCEANIA: MICRONESIA, MELANESIA,
POLYNESIA 341
XXI. AUSTRALIA 350
XXII. NORTH AMERICA 354
The Eskimo 354
The North-West Indians 361
The Californians 364
The Athapascans 371
The Algonkin 3 72
The Iroquois 382
The Sioux 384
xii THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
The Caddo 385
The South-East 387
. The Pueblos and the South-West 39
XXIII. MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 404
XXIV. SOUTH AMERICA 416
EPILOGUE 433
INDEX 457
 ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. Facing page

I, a, b. "Bes Pantheos", bronze, !viusee du Louvre E. I I 554
Photo Giraudon, from the original 54
2. "Bes Pantheos", enamelled pottery figure in Cairo Museum,
G. Daressy, Textes et dessins magiques, Plate X, No. 9429 55
3 ''Bes Pantheos", serpentine, Kestner Museum, Hanover.
From the original 55
4, a, b. The Metternich Stele, front and back views; F. Lexa,
La magie dans l'Egypte antique (Paris 1925), Plates 29 and 30 58
5 Stele from the Turin Museum, from the original 59
6. Babylonian cylinder seal; H. Frankfort, Cylitzder Seals (London
1939), Plate xixa 84
7. Limestone relief, Berlin VA 2890; Miscellanea Orientalia A.
Deimel (Rome 1 935), p. I 5 I 84
8. Terracotta, Constantinople; A Jeremias, Handbuch der alt-
orientalisclzen Geisteskultur (Leipzig 1929), p. 354, Fig. I 84 84
9, a, b, c. Coins from :rvfallos in Kilikia; Svoronos, <,eitschrift fiir
Numismatik xvi (r888), Plate x, Nos. 13, 14, 15 92
IO. Seal from :rviohenjo-Daro; Sir J. Marshall, Mohenjo-Daro
(London I 931), Plate xii, No. I 7 I r2

11. Yogi in the Sl'astikasana position; H. von Glasenapp, Bralllna

zmd Buddha (Berlin I g26), Fig. 15 r 12
12, a, b. Jewelled bronze vase in Gulistan Palace, Teheran;
A S'J.rvey of Persian Art vi, I 3I 4 A. 1 28

13, a, b. Red-figure stamnos from Caere, at Vienna, Masner,

Die Sammlung antiker Vasen und Terrakotten im kk. osterreich-
ischen Museum (Vienna 1892), No. 338 ISO

1 4 Red-figure oinochoe from Curnae, at Naples; Monumenti anti-

chi pubblicati dall' Accademia dei Lincei (Vol. XXII), (Milan
1913), Plate 85 I5I

I 5 Attic black figure amphora from Bornarzo, in British

Museum (B. T6.}); CorpuJ Trasorum: BritiJh Afuseum III
Plate 30 r 51
xiv THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
I 6. Red-figure oxybaphon from Ruvo; A. B. Cook, ,(eus ii
(Cambridge 1925), p. g8o, Fig. 287 154
I7. Bell crater from Chiusi; A. B. Cook, op. cit. p. g8I, Fig. 288,
From Annali dell' Instituto di Corrisponden;:,a Archeologica,
I 86o, Pia tes LM 154
I8, a, b. Aes graue (triens), Central Italy; Haeberlin, Aes Grave
Plate 67, I-2 I6o
19, a, b. Aes graue (uncia); same, Plate 69, 33-34 r6o
20, a, b. Aes graue (semis); same, Plate 69, 44-45 I 6o
2 r. Aes signa tum, Tarquinii; same, Plate 9, 4 I6 r
22. Aes signa tum, Tarquinii, same, Plate 9, 8 I 6I
23. Aes signatum, Tarquinii; same, Plate 9, 2 I6I
24. Stele from Cochlakovo (Cirpan), in Plovdiv Museum;
Gavril J. Kazarov, Die Denkmiiler des thrakischen Reitergottes
in Bulgarien (Budapest I938), No. I 59, Fig. 72 I 76
25. Stele from Izvor (Plovdiv), at Plovdiv Museum; Kazarov
No. 427, Fig. 237 I 76
26. Stele from Komatevo (Plovdiv), in Plovdiv Museum;
Kazarov No. 533, Fig. 272 I 76
27. Stele from Plovdiv, in Plovdiv Museum; Kazarov in
An;:,eiger der Akademie der rVissenschaften in Wien, philos.-
hist. Klasse, 1940, p. I 10, Fig. 2 I 76
28. Stele at Cerven-breg (Lukovit), Kazarov, Denkmiiler, No.
148, Fig. 64 I 77
29. Stele from Cikarlare (Cirpan), in Plovdiv Museum;
Kazarov, No. I 5 I, Fig. 65 I 77
go. Stele from Krivnia (Razgrad), in Razgrad Museum;
Kazarov, No. 557, Fig. 286 I 77
3 I. Cippus from Reims; Esperandieu, Bas-reliefs de Ia Gaule,
No. 3652 I96
32. Cippus from La l\1almaison; Esperandieu, No. 3756 I96
33 Stele in the Musee Carnavalet, Paris; Esperandieu, No. 3I37 I96
34 Stele from Beaune, Cote d'Or; Esperandieu, No. 2083 I96
35 Stele from Dennevy; Esperandieu, No. 2I3I I97
g6. Stone bust from Condat (Dordogne); Esperandieu, No.
1316 197
 ILLUSTRATIONS XV

37 Bronze from Autun, Saone-et-Loire 197

38. Vase in the Cabinet des !vledailles, Paris, AJamws, II (1910).
Pl. III 204
39 Vase from Jupille in Liege Museum; Nfannus ii (1910),
Plate iv 205
40. Vase from Fliegenberg (Troisdorf), in Cologne l\1useum;
Mannus, ibid., Plate ii 205
41. Vase fragment from Mons. Mannus, ibid., p. 206, Fig. 1 208
42. Carved base from Reims; Esperandieu, No. 3666 208
43 Gold horn, now lost, from Gallehus, Denmark; old drawing
from a cast, in The M;thology of All Races ii (Boston 1930),
Plate vi page 226
44 Carved pillar from the river Zbruc, in Cracow; A. A.
Zakharow, Eurasia Septentrionalis Antiqua ix ( 1934), p.
338, Fig. 2 246
45 \Vood carving from Obdorsk, Siberia; K. F. Karjalainen,
Die Religion der Jugra-Volker ii (Helsinki I922), p. 6,
Fig. IO 246
46. The god Tezcatlipoca with the tlachieloni, from a Mexican
codex; Seier, Gesammelte Abhandlungen ii, p. 431 page 407

Between pages 416-417

47 The central figure on the great stone gateway at Tia-
huanaco; E. P. Dieuseldorff, Kunst und Religion der Jl;faya-
volker iii ( 1933), Plate 73, Fig. I 77
48. Painted bowl, Coast Tiahuanaco-A style pottery. Southern
Peru; Handbook of South American Indians ii (\Vashington
I 946)' p. I 26, Fig. I sa
49, a, b. Nazca painted pots; P. Radin, The Story of the American
Indian, plate facing p. 142
50. Nazca painted pottery, Southern Peru; Th. A. Joyce, South
American Archaeolog;Y (London I912), Plate i, 2
51. Diaguite black incised ware from La Aguada (Argentine);
Handbook of South American Indians ii, p. 648, Fig. 63
 INTRODUCTION

T
HE subject of the attributes of Deity was until recent times
reserved for the speculations of theology and philosophy. Omni-
science is attributed to God as early as Xenophanes (sixth century
B.c.), in terms which are re-echoed in the Sibylline oracles and in
Clement of Alexandria, and so down to Newton (see title-page).
Epicurus, who denied Providence, denied Divine omniscience at the
same time. The doctrine of the attributes of God played a large part
in mediaeval theology, both Christian and rviuslim, and was copiously
treated by the schoolmen in connection with the controversy over
universals, with theodicy and with free will. The central problem was
that of the relation between the unity and transcendence of God and
the manifold variety of His attributes. To get rid of all trace of an-
thropomorphism, the individual attributes were resolved into so many
manifestations of the idea of God itself, as an absolute Being or as
infinite Love. The religious presupposition behind all this speculative
activity was the belief in one only God, i.e. monotheism, dogmatised
in accordance with the doctrine of revelation.
Even when the idea of God and of the attributes ofDeity came within
the scope of positive investigation and of historical reflexion, the new
studies were none the less dominated by the idea of monotheism. Thus
the late L. R. Farnell, in his Gifford lectures delivered at St. Andrews
in 1924-25 and published in 1925 at Oxford under the title of The
Attributes of God, a work conceived in the spirit of comparative religion
and guided by the concept of evolution, persists in the idea that the
notion of a deity having true and proper attributes is to be found only
in a quite advanced stage of religious development, being conditioned
in its origins by the development of anthropomorphism, such as
characterises the polytheistic cults, and then fully realised only with
the attribution to God of moral qualities, in the monotheistic religions.
As to omniscience in particular, Farnell supposes that a kind of know-
ledge or wisdom is ascribed to deity even "in the lower stages of cul-
ture", "but it may be long before a clear conception of omniscience is
reached as an essential faculty and attribute of high divinity. In some
of the polytheisms of the cultured peoples we by no means find omni-
science or even a high degree of wisdom attributed to each deity alike."
He adds (I quote from p. 214 sqq. of the book just mentioned), that
even at the top of the ascent "omniscience is not a concept that the
sacred texts of the monotheistic religions tend to emphasise".
Yet, before the last century was over, there had been noticed among
B
2 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
savage peoples, indeed among some of the most primitive, the concept
of a Supreme Being endowed with omniscience and the other chief
attributes; and this idea had also been exploited by Andrew Lang in
the direction of monotheism, although from the opposite point of view
from Farnell's, that is, the anti-evolutionary. It is true that Lang,
interested as he was mostly in criticising the classical theory of religious
evolution framed by E. B. Tylor, had spoken of the omniscience,
eternity and omnipotence of these Supreme Beings rather as a piece
of literary skirmishing, or polemical underlining, than in any strictly
scientific sense, as he himself to some extent admitted, after a notable
controversy with E. S. Hartland, 1 in the preface to the second edition
of his book, The Making of Religion (London 1900; the first edition
came out in 1898, the third in 1910). But if Lang's monotheism was
rather a matter of words than of substance, the idea was soon to be
given a precise and systematic shape in the theory of "primitive
monotheism" put forward by Father W. Schmidt,la which aimed at
giving positive proof of a primaeval belief in a God infinitely good and
sovranly just, which was alleged to be the oldest form of religion
attainable by our knowledge. Thus the theological speculations
concerning Deity and' its attributes appeared reconcilable with the
data of anthropology, and the doctrine of revelation found support on
the domain of science. ,
The theory of primitive monotheism is founded on an equivocation
and on an error. The equivocation consists in calling by the name of
monotheism wliat is nothing of the kind, in mistaking for true mono-
theism the savage peoples' idea of Supreme Beings. The error consists
in supposing that to be primitive which is not so, in transferring to the
most archaic religious culture the idea of God which properly belongs
to our Western civilisation, that which found its way from the Old
Testament int~ the New and was then elaborated by Christianity.
Monotheism, in its concrete historical reality, is belief in a single God
and the denial of all other gods. As such, it presupposes polytheism,
and consequently cannot be the earliest form of religion. This is not to
say that monotheism is derived from polytheism by a gradual and
inevitable development, as the evolutionist theory would have it. It
derives from it, if at all, by revolution, by a radical religious upheaval,
the work of some great personality, the herald of a new word. This
theory of the formation of monotheism I have set forth and developed
on various occasions, 2 most recently in a lecture given at the University
of Brussels in 1949 and published under the title "La formation du
monotheisme" in the Revue de l' Universite de Bruxelles for 1 950 (an
English version appears in Essays on the History of Religions, Leiden 1954).
What the supporters of the theory of primitive monotheism allege
to be the primitive form of religion is not concrete monotheism as it
 INTRODUCTION 3
is found in the great. monotheistic religions of history, but an abstract
monotheism with the attributes which inhere in it according to
theological speculation. The Supreme Being of s~vage peoples is but
an approximation to the ideal monotheism. There is a divergence, a
difference of less and more, between what is postulated and what the
data furnish, and all the efforts of the anthropologi'Cal arguments to
explain this difference as the result of a seconda!)' degeneration or
obscuration of the ideal presuppose the existence from the beginning of
what does not take shape till later times and under particular historical
circumstances. The whole theory springs from a compromise between
historical investigation and theology.2a For the former, the attributes of
Deity are not contained a priori in the monotheistic conception of God,
for this conception is itself a formation, and the divine attributes
likewise are formations, sharing in the development of the conception.
One of these attributes, that of omniscience, is the specific object of
our present research. It is examined independently of all prejudged
monotheistic influence, examined as an ideological complex, a religious
structure and a historical growth.
To begin with, it is well to state precisely what is really understood
here by "Divine omniscience". Omniscience does not belong to man,
although there are men who have remarkable powers of knowledge;
but these are unusual men, of a different condition from the generality,
such as were in antiquity the diviners like Kale has the oionopolos of the
Iliad (i, 70), or the shamans and medicine-men of the lower cultures of
today, for instance the piay or conjurors of the Carib Arowak, who
"know everything", the Dakota medicine-men who see everything
even when they are asleep, so that one cannot go near them without
being perceived, or the sorcerers of the Lushei Kuki in Northern
Burma, who are called puitlziam, that is "great knowers", as their
colleagues among the lVIordvins go. by a native name signifying "he
(she) who knows".a
The dead also, that is to say their spirits, know everything. Among
the Teton Dakota the ghosts know all things, they know "when the
wind will blow, and when there will be rain or heavy thunder clouds".
The Nisenan or southern Maidu of north central California believe
that the dead have the power to see everything:"
Certain at least of the lower animals also, especially those with the
power of flight, "know everything"; they know what is being done and
said, what the weather will be and how matters will turn out, as Pliny
already remarks in his Natural History (viii, 28). As R. Karsten explains
it in his work The Origins of Religion (London, 1935), p. 76: ''The obvious
power of many insects, birds and other animals to foretell the weather
may be one of the reasons why primitive peoples generally ascribe to
them a prophetic clear-sightedness in other respects." According to the
4 THE ALL-KNO\'\TING GOD
Ekoi of the Cameroons, some birds, and for that matter some people,
have "four eyes" and possess the ability to see things invisible to the
ordinary man. In a story told by the Edo of the Ora tribe, it is birds
who help a lad named Ilefo (i.e. "I know everything"). The Huichol
of New Mexico hold that birds, especially eagles and hawks, hear
everything, and it is by means of them that the shamans know all that is
said, no matter where, even under the earth. The serpent likewise, which
lives underground and is often the incarnation of a dead man's spirit,
"knows all secrets, is the fountain of wisdom and foresees the future" ,o
In all these cases we have to do with a magical or oracular wisdom.
In China, and elsewhere, all magical knowledge comes from the
serpent. The spirits of the dead also possess knowledge of this sort. The
ghost of Samuel is called up by the "witch" of Endor, at the request of
Saul, to give knowledge of the future (1 Sam. xxviii. 8 sq.). 6 Such
knowledge, call it magical, oracular or divinatory, is ascribed also to
divine beings. The wisdom of Odin, "father of magic", is a magical
wisdom; the Egyptian Thot possesses all wisdom, it being inherent in
his quality as the "great magician", or "lord of magic". In Japanese
Shinto, the god Omohikane, "the thinker", "he who unites in himself
the power of thought (of several gods)", is the one to whom the deities
resort at the most critical moments, for instance when the world is to
be freed from the darkness caused by the goddess Amaterasu going
into the cave (i.e. an eclipse of the sun), or to overcome the powers
which oppose the establishment of a descendant of Amaterasu in the
lordship of the Land of the Rising Sun. 7 This Omohikane, then, who
knows from time to time how to advise the rest what to do, and thus is
master of a superior ability, inherent in thought as a magical force,
may well be considered an idealisation of the conjuror in primitive
societies. Oracular wisdom is especially characteristic of certain deities
either aquatic or in some way connected with water, like the Baby-
lonian Ea, "him who understands everything", "the magician of the
gods", who is god of the waters of the depths that flow in the bowels of
the earth and possess a secret healing power, made active by the
appropriate formulae of conjuration and exorcism. Among the Greeks
it js particularly the Muses, the Sirens, Proteus and his daughter
Eidothea, all more or less connected with the element of water, who
know all that happens, ever has happened or ever will happen on earth.s

This magical and oracular knowledge has but a secondary and com-
plementary interest for our enquiry. Alongside of it there is another kind
of omniscience which we may call visual, inasmuch as it is based essenti-
ally on the power of sight, a knowing \vhich comes from seeing, an
l8evat (to know) which is intimately connected with rtidere (to see).
\Vhile magical omniscience is ascribed to beasts, to exceptional men,
 INTRODUCTION 5
and to sundry spirits, rather than to divine beings, visual omniscience
is the specific attribute of deities. Divine omniscience, which is the
proper object of our present enquiry, is a visual onu1iscience. It shows
characteristics of its own which are intimately conjoined one with
another, so much so as to form a clearly defined ideological complex.
\Ve are in a position to sketch this complex on the basis of a morpho-
logical investigation of the data we have colleCted, which we will now
pass rapidly in review. 9
Our investigation must first enquire into the subject of Divine
omniscience. Of what sort are omniscient deities? It is natural to think
in the first place of the great gods of the historical monotheisms.
Omniscience is an attribute of Yahweh (see Chapter V), as it is of
Allah, see the Quran, suras vi, sg-6o, xxiv, 35, lvii, 4, lix, 22, lxvii,
13-14. But it is predicated also ofVaruna in the Atharva-Vecla (iv, 16):
"If one stands or goes, or that which two persons seated say to each
other, king Varuna is the third and knows it." \Vith Varuna we are in
the midst of polytheism, he is an all-knowing god belonging to a poly-
theistic religion. But savage peoples also have Supreme Beings, some
of whom (not all, see p. 24) are all-knowing, such as Puluga, Karei
and many more. Thus Divine omniscience proves not to be attached
to any particular religious environment, monotheistic, polytheistic or
other. Nor can we say that it is in any way a prerogative of Supreme
Beings as such, for, e.g., in Greece Helios is omniscient, and he cer-
tainly is not one of the chief gods. On the other hand, Demeter, \Vho
is one of the greater deities, is not omniscient, for she does not know
where to find her ravished daughter; nor is Kybele, still judging by
the evidence we have, nor any other form of the Great Mother who is
the supreme deity of the ancient Mediterranean religion (see further,
p. 13). The attribute of omniscience is therefore not inherent in the
monotheistic idea of God, nor in that of a Supreme Being, nor again
in that of deity in general. It remains to see if it is to be found rather in
the peculiar nature of certain definite deities.
The plain fact is that according to the evidence it is mostly sky-gods
and astral gods, or gods somehow connected with the heavenly realms
of light, to whom omniscience is ascribed. This is not to be wondered
at, if we remember that, as already mentioned, Divine omniscience is
a visual omniscience, which naturally depends upon light (Puluga for
instance can see only so long as it is day, p. 301). The connection in
thought between seeing and knowing, which is familiar to students of
the classical tongues (olSa and uideo,) is linguistically proved also out-
side the Indo-European sphere. In the Hamite languages of the Cushite
branch, the words which mean eye, sun, light, know, all come from
the same root (see pp. 41-42).
Among omniscient deities the first place is taken by sky-gods. The
6 THE ALL-KNOvVING GOD
Vedic Dyaus, the Greek Zeus, the Latin juppiter are the best-known
instances and the most obvious,. because their very names mean "Sky",
"Father Sky". But also \Vaqa the Supreme Being of the Galla, with
his transparent alternation of colour between Black Waqa and vVhite,
or Red Waqa, the Sidama deity Yero and other similar figures of the
Cushite world, are no other than the sky itself. Similarly, among the
Nilotic Hamites, Tororut among the Suk and Ngai among the :rviasai;
among the blacks of the Gui~ea Coast and of Nigeria, the Ashanti
Nyame, the Ewe 1-Iawu, the Nupe Soko and their like are at one and
the same time "God" and "sky". So likewise N urn among the Sa-
moyeds, Tengri among the people of the Altai, the Chinese Tien and
the Eskimo Sila, and others again, are "sky".
All these sky-gods are omniscient. To them we must add a great
many more who, if their names are not so transparent, still are as-
suredly proved by various indications to be sky-gods likewise, and
"likewise possessed of all knowledge. One of the most significant traits
in which this omniscience of sky-gods expresses itself (we have already
mentioned that it is a visual omniscience, in other words a universal
vision) is that they are equipped with eyes which are the stars, or else
the sun and moon. The notion of the stars being eyes is quite widely
spread. Often they are thought of as the eyes of the dead, in other
words of souls which have gone their ways to heaven. According to the
Babinza of the Belgian Congo, when anyone dies, one of his eyes flies
up to heaven, and the stars as dead men's eyes are heard of also among
the mountain Damara and among the Bantu of the upper Zambesi.
The same notion is found again in South America in the beliefs and
legends of the Uitoto of Columbia, who inhabit the western basin of
the Amazon, and among the Bororo of eastern Brazil. In l\1icronesia
likewise we find it among the natives of the Pelew Islands. To the
Tarahumare of northern Mexico, the stars are the dead themselves,
who by virtue of their marvellous powers of sight warn their brethren
here below when their houses are likely to be visited by thieves. For
the Pawnee of the North American prairies the stars are celestial beings
which can see only by night and not by day.1o
But the stars, besides being supposed the eyes of the dead, or of
particular sky-gods, are also thought of as eyes of the sky itself. This also
is a quite wide-spread notion. Among the ancient Mexicans it even
found expression in art, in the so-called Codices of their picture-
writing, which include some representations of the heavens as dotted
with eyes. It still survives among the present-day inhabitants of
Mexico, as the Cora and Huichol. Among the Wiyot or Wishosk of
central California the stars are also called "sky eyes". Among the
Alacaluf of Tierra del Fuego they are the eyes of Cholas, their Supreme
Being. Likewise among the Cashinawa (Western Amazon Basin), the
 INTRODUCTION 7
stars are the eyes of a sky-god. Sometimes it is certain particular stars
which are his eyes. Thus, among the eastern Porno in California the
stars in general are supposed to be eyes, but the polestar is the eye of
Marumda, the Supreme Being. In ancient Peru the seven Pleiades
were the eyes ofViracocha. At Elata in the Carolines, east of Yap, the
Sun, Eluelap, who is one-eyed, gave the star Altair the highest position
in the heavens, so that from there he could see everything. In the central
district of the island of Flores the stars are the eyes of Dua Nggae, the
Supreme Being, who is thought of as being the pair Heaven anQ.
Earth. Among the Masai, who are Nilotic Hamites, the stars are the
eyes of Ngai, the chief sky-god, and a falling star is one of his eyes
which is coming nearer the earth in order to see better.u
But besides the stars the heavens have other eyes. The stars serve
to see by night, but not by day. According to the Masai, Ngai sees with
them at night, but in the daytime the sun is his eye. !viore commonly
the daily and nightly vision are divided between the two great eyes of
heaven, i.e. the two larger luminaries, the sun by day and the moon by
night. For the Tlinkit on the north-west Pacific coast of North America,
S\In and moon are "the eyes of the sky", and the same idea is found in
the Polynesian mythology, sun and moon being thought of as the eyes
either of the sky (New Zealand) or of a supreme sky-god. The Samoyed
sky-god Num has the sun and moon for eyes, the sun being his good
and the moon his bad eye. Among the Batek (Semang of Pahang on the
peninsula of Malacca), the sun is the right and the moon the left eye
of the sky-god Keto. The idea is already found in ancient Egypt, where
the old sky-god Horus has the sun and moon for eyes and Amun, god of
the weather-sky, has the sun for his right, the moon for his left. eye,
while the wind is the breath issuing from his nostrils. In the Japanese
cosmogonic myth ofizanangi and Izamimi, who are the ancient cosmic
pair, Father Sky and Mother Earth, the water with which lzanagi
washes his left eye gives birth to Amaterasu the sun-goddess, and that
in which he washes his right eye to Tsuki-Yomi, god of the moon, while
that in which he washes his nose produces Susanowo, god of the storm-
wind. The same motif is found again in the Chinese inyth of P'anku,
whose eyes become the sun and moon (left and right eye respectively).
Such also is the Vedic Purusha, from whose eye the sun is born, from
his mind the moon, from his breath the Wind (Vayu) and 'so on
(Rg-Veda x, go, 13), also Brahman in the Atharva-Veda (v, 10, 7; 33)
and Prajapati in the Satapatha-Brahmana (vii, 1, 2, 7), whose eyes
are the sun and moon. Such likewise is Sihai, the primordial Being of
the Nias islanders, who begot the winds, also Pun tan in the Marianas,
and others. In Orphism also we find the idea, which is not of Greek
origin, of the sun and moon being the eyes of Zeus, that is of the
universe, of which the sky is the head. 12
8 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
But even separately and independently of one another the sun and
the moon are often all-seeing and all-knowing deities on their own
account or on behalf of others, for example of the Supreme Being, each
as a single eye or a single person. In the central district of the island of
Flores, the moon is thought of as Mata rica, i.e. "great eye". Jn a
legend of the Creur-d' Alene, a Salish-speaking tribe in northern Idaho,
in the beginning Coyote carried the moon and so was able to see what
happened between man and wife at night, which he then went about
telling in a loud voice and shouting the names of the people concerned.
The Gaboon Pygmies believe in a. spirit which every now and then
removes to the moon in order to see what men are doing, examining
their hearts and penetrating into their most hidden thoughts; he then
informs the Supreme Being. In Indonesia and Polynes~a and on the
Malacca peninsula we find the notion of an Old Woman in the moon,
who knows everything, "searching the heart and reins" of everyone,
and none can escape her notice. Selene the moon-goddess is for the
Greeks the eye of evening (Pindar), or of night (Aeschylus), and is at
the same time a personal, all-seeing goddess. The Egyptian Thot has,
besides an omniscience of the magical kind, a visual omniscience
inherent in his charac~er of a lunar god, "the bull of the heavens",
"the bull among the stars". In Mesopotamia the moon-god Sin
(Nanna in Sumerian) knows all,ta
In an analogous and far commoner manner, the sun is thought of as
all-seeing and all-knowing, whether he is regarded as an eye or a
personal being. The sun is itself an eye, Senq, among the Bellacoola
Indians; the solar rays are his eyelashes. To the Mayoruna of Brazil he ~
is the "spirit in the sky", and his very name, Pioki, means precisely
"eye". Otherwise the sun is the eye of heaven, or of the sky-god (Wa'a
among the Hadiya), or of the Supreme Being (the Great Spirit of the
Choctaw, Pue-mpalaburu among the Toradja of Celebes). Or, the
sun is thought of as a personal being of universal powers of sight (Wi
among the Teton Dakota, Shamash in Babylonia, Surya in the Vedas,
Helios in Homer). Sometimes he i,s provided with a remarkable eye,
as the one-eyed Eluelap on Elato in the Carolines, the eternal eye of
Helios in the Orphic hymns (viii, 1; cf. xxxiv, 8); in Apuleius, Metam.
ii, 22, and elsewhere, we hear of the eye, or the eyes, of the Sun.a
Occasionally the sungod and the sky-god are identical, even in name.
Thus, among the Galla, Waqa is the Sky but also the Sun, Waqa of
the thirty rays. Asista (from asis, light) is among the Nandi the name
not only of the sun but also of the sky; R~wa among the Djagga and
their neighbours is the sun, but the ilameis usedofthesky likewise. Much
the same can be proved for Olorun among the Yoruba, Wende among
the Mossi and others, while among the Chokossi of north Togoland
the same name is used to designate the sungod and the sky-god. ts
 INTRODUCTION 9
Some beings of universal vision and therefore knowledge have a
character which is not specifically solar but celestial, with special
reference to the bright aspect "Of the day sky. For instance, \Vonekau in
New Guinea, Torem and Num among the Ugro-Finns and the Sam-
oyeds, the North American Supreme Beings of the Salish, the Chey-
enne, the Lenape, the Apache, and the Natchez and related tribes,
likewise Itzamna among the Maya of Yucatan, Viracocha among the
peoples of the Andes, and others, and we may add the Egyptian Horus,
the Persian l\1i thra .and perhaps also the Chinese Tien. 1s
But often the sun, regarded simply as a heavenly body, or as the god
thereof, is inclined rather to be differentiated from the sky-god. He
may rise to the dignity of chief god (he is the Supreme Being_ among
some central Algonkin peoples, the Chitimacha and other tribes of
south-eastern North America, the principal god in the Peruvian religion
under the Incas, and similarly with the religious reforms brought about
by Amenophis iv [Ikhnaton] in Egypt, Elagabalus and Aurelian in
Rome, and so on). Or, as more commonly happens, he remains in a
subordinate position, as do Helios, Shamash, and the Hittite sun-
goddess. In some cases where sun and sky combine, apparently the
sun itself as a heavenly body is not in question, but rather the daylight,
thought of as something independent of the sun, an entity in itself.
This conception is common both to the ancient Mexicans and their
present-day successors the Cora, Huichol and others, and also to the
Greeks, according to Hesiod, in whom Aither and Day are earlier than
the Sun, and to the Israelites, as we see from the Book of Genesis,
where the light is created in i. 3-5, the sun not till verses 14-19. This
last tradition merely projects to the beginning of the world the daily
fact of the first appearance of light in the morning twilight coming
before the rising of the sun, and of the persistence of light after his
setting. Hence it is that among the Wintu of central California it is to
daylight that universal sight and knowledge are actually attributed,
rather than to the Sun.11
Sky and sun, moon and stars, deities especially luminous, are also
deities especially endowed with omniscience. This is but natural,
seeing that without light vision is impossible, and on that the omni-
science which comes from universal vision depends. It is true that
omniscience is attributed also to other deities of various kinds. In the
Babylonian pantheon, the epithet of "all-seeing" (miidu kalama, mudu
mimma shumshu) is given not only to Enlil, Marduk, or Shamash, but
also to Nabu, Nergal and other divinities. Similarly, in the Vedic
pantheon, the epithet of uifvavedas, or all-knowing, is indeed the especial
property of Dyaus, Varuna, Mitra-Varuna and Surya, but it is
bestowed no less on many other gods. It would however be unsafe to
infer from this that the attribute of omniscience is implicit in the
IO THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
notion of divinity itself, and so may be predicated of every divine being.
We must take into account at least the possibility that this attribute
was generalised by extension from its original sphere, that of the deities
of light, to others of different nature. In certain instances the generalisa-
tion is patent. Thus the Adityas become collectively vi1vavedas, because
the two principal ones, Mitra and Varuna, are individually so. The all-
knowing deities are essentially the deua, daeua, dii, etc., that is to say the
"bright ones"; then as deua became the term for "god" in general, so
omniscience came to be predicated of many other divine beings as well,ts
With fire we are still in the world of light. The organic connection
between universal vision and brightness, which holds good also for
fire in its diverse manifestations, cosmic and earthly, helps us to com-
prehend the omniscience of the Vedic Agni ui1vavedas, in his connec-
tions with the sun and with the thunderbolt,l9 and analogously that of
Fire as the principal representative of the Sun and his newsbearer
among the Choctaw, also ~ertain aspects common to the Mexican
fire-god Xiuhtecutli and the all-seeing Tezcatlipoca, maker of fire and
thunder and god of the starry night sky, since the stars likewise are of
fiery nature and often thought of as sparks.2o
The wind also is credited with omniscience. The Egyptian Amun,
the Babylonian Enlil are all-knowing gods; as wind-gods they are
invisible, like Kot among the Nuer, Dyuok among the Luo, and others,
also the breath or spirit (rilach) of Yahweh and the pneuma in the Gospel
of St.John, of which "thou hearest the sound, but canst not tell whence
it cometh, and whither it goeth" (John iii. 8). vVind does not properly
share in the nature of light, but being a weather-phenomenon it
belongs to the precincts of the sky, and thus its omniscience is of the
same kind as that of the sky-gods. Indeed, the omniscience of the wind
again depends upon sight. According to the Ngadha of Flores the
winds have eyes to see and ears to hear. Vayu in the Vedas has a
thousand eyes,. like Agni and Varuna. The'four cherubim which, in
Ezekiel's vision, carry the flaming throne of Yahweh across the
heavens have their bodies and wings full of eyes, which perhaps is not
without relation to their nature as weather-powers; may they be the
four winds? Such omniscience is of like kind with a sky-god's. Omni-
science was attributed to Air by Diogenes of Apollonia and to Aither by
another Greek philosopher who was the butt of Kratinos in a comedy
entitled Panoptcti, whose chorus was made up of disciples of that master,
thought of as panoptai and masked accordingly, i.e. as "all-seers", after
the fashion of Argos Panoptes, with his hundred or ten thousand eyes
and his two heads looking different ways (Boreas, the north wind, was
also thought of as two-faced). It will be said that here we have to do
with speculative thought; but the omniscience of Air is not a reflex
of the divine idea of the arch!, or first principle, identified with
 INTRODUCTION II

air by the philosopher Anaximenes, but of .the all-seeing powers of

Zeus as god of the weather-sky, as will be explained in its proper place
in Chapter IX.
It is interesting to cast an eye on the relatioJ;lS of the winds with the
Supreme Being in the various forms which they take in myths. Some-
times the sky-god himself is no other than thewind.Juok, the omniscient
sky-god of the Nilotic Shilluk and Lango, is the wind, air in motion.
Muri Kraeng among the natives of West Flores is "like the wind".
Lungkitsumba among the Ao Naga is "like a man, but behaves like
a wind". More frequently, the wind is a manifestation of the supreme
sky-god; of Lowalangi among the islanders of Nias, of Pue-mpalaburu
among the Toradja of Celebes. For the Masai, it is the breath ofNgai;
to the Mordvins, it is Skaj sighing, and to the Pawnee, the breath of
Tirawa. The Tsimshian suppose it to be the breath of Semagid laxha
(the Chief up above). Elsewhere, it is the breath from the nostrils of
some immense being, whose eyes are the sun and moon. Such a one is
Sihai at Nias, Amun in ancient Egypt, and their like. In Gen. i. 2, it
is the breath (rilach) of God moving upon the face of the waters. To the
Naskapi of Labrador, a stormy wind which bends the treetops is as it
were a comb with which the Great Spirit is combing them as one does
to children. In and with the wind Sky fertilises Earth, hence the typical
pair, Earth and Heaven, is sometimes replaced by Earth and \Vind.
Indeed, among the Alfures of M'inahassa, Lumimuut (Earth) is fertilized
by the west wind (the N.W. monsoon), which is a manifestation of
Kalangi, the Heavenly One; while on the northern coast of New
Guinea, women are got with child by Wonekau by means of the wind,
and in New Zealand the breath oflho could make sterile women fertile
as it did to the first woman, born of Earth at the beginning ofthings.21
Furthermore, the wind may be the instrument which the sky-god us~
to expose the wrong-doings of mankind; among the Ao Naga, if the
wind strips off the straw thatch of the hut of anyone who has taken an
oath, it is a sign that he has sworn falsely. 2 2
When thought of as a person, the wind is a son of the Sky. Enlil is
the son of Anu, the starry sky.2 3 Among the offspring of Rangi and
Papa who forced apart their parents, locked in a cosmic embrace,
there was one who followed Father Sky to his dwelling above, and that
was Tawhiri Matea, god of the wind. As a person, the wind is also the
sky's messenger (on Chinese divining-bones, the wind is the messenger
of Ti); he is the sky-god's newsman, who, passing everywhere, sees
and hears all that goes on and brings him word of it. "Since I am
everywhere present,"says Air in a fragment of Philemon, "I must needs
know all things." Among the White Mountain Apache, certain winds
are the spies of the Supreme Being. According to the Ngadha of Flores,
the wind is an instrument ofhis omniscience. The Bachama of northern
12 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Nigeria hold that all that occurs is reported to Nzeanzo by the wind.
A saying current among the Akan in the hinterland of the Ivory Coast
:uns, "If you want to say anything to God (literally, 'to the sky'), tell
It to the wind."24 Thus the omniscience of the wind, belonging as it
does to its ubiquity and being in the service of the sky-god, proves to be
simply the omniscience of the Sky itself, which manifests itself in the
wind and therefore is present everywhere although unseen. This is
predicated of many African Supreme Beings, Gamab, Nsambi, Owase,
Rivimbi, Leza, Nguruhi, Wele (or Were), !mana, Jwok and vVende,
and in like manner of the Mordvin Skaj, the Tungus Boa, the Chinese
Tien, Lowalangi on Nias, Dua Nggae on Flores, Tezcatlipoca, Amun,
Aer-Zeus, and many more.

The theory here put forward, that the attribute of omniscience is not
originally implicit in the idea of deity generally, but organically con-
nected with the peculiar nature of all-knowing gods, who are all-
knO\ying because all-seeing and all-seeing because they are luminous,
as being in the first place sky- and astral gods-this theory, I say, gets
considerable support from the fact that omniscience is not attributed
to sundry other deities whose nature is not oflight, chiefly the divinities
of the earth and the underworld. For the earth is dark and shadowy,
and in its obscure depths the creatures of the earliest days grope about
until the moment when the appearance of light puts an end to chaos
and begins the cosmos. The omniscience of Earth, when it occurs at
al1, is of magic or oracular kind; like that of the waters which flow in
the depths, or that of the dead whose home is the underworld, or of
the vapours exhaling from beneath the ground, which in Hellenistic
speculations inspired the Pythia to give oracular replies in the ancient
shrine ofGe-Themis at Delphoi. 2 s An oath by the earth, such as occurs
for instance in Africa from Guinea to the Congo, is essentially a piece
of magic, in which as in the ordeal by water, fire and other means, the
earth is not so much a deity who can, like the Sun, guarantee the truth
of the swearer because she knows everything and is acquainted even
with the innermost thoughts, but rather the instrument of a punitive
sanction to which the false swear~r exposes himself. Thus, he may be
swallowed up in the earth, or may see it gape at his feet. So also in the
Homeric oaths, Earth is not named by herself but only in combination
with Zeus and Helios (~o Iliad, iii, 278, xix, 259), or else with the Sky
(Uranos), as in Iliad, xv, 36 sq. She is not on a par with these bright,
and therefore all-seeing deities, but rather with those powers of the
unde'rworld or of water who are named in the same oaths, such as the
Erinyes, the river Styx, or riyers in general (cf. p. 156 n. 5). In the oath
by Earth and Zeus in Euripides (Elect., 1177 sq.) or by "Zeus Horkios
and the earth we tread upon" (Hippol., 1025), Earth merely shares in the
 INTRODUCTION
omniscience which really belongs to Zeus, or to the sky, exactly as, in
those Supreme Beings of the type which I call "one and two", and who
represent the unity of the universe arising from the duality of sky and
earth (such as Gawang, "earth-sky", among the Konyak Naga,
Apna-Apha, "our-father-our-mother" at Oirata in the island of Kisar,
and the like), it is the Sky who is the bearer of the omniscience, which
reverts from him to the other member of the pair, Earth. 26 If the earth
sees, it does not see by virtue of its own powers but by the sun, per quem
uidet omnia tellus (Ovid, Met., iv, 227). The sun is the eye of the world,
not the eye of the earth itself. If once in a way we find the sun the
earth's eye in a cosmogonic myth of the Yoruba, this holds good only
for the period of chaos, according to the rudimentary logic of a primi-
tive thinker who generally conceives of the present world as the world
of the beginning turned upside-down, of chaos as the direct opposite
of cosmos, with the sky where the earth now is and vice versa, the sun
where the moon is and the moon where the sun is, and so, in the case
of the Yoruba myth, the sun as the eye of the earth (Odudua), but only
at the beginning, before it was plucked out by Obatala, the Sky, when
they separated from each other, thus giving rise to the world as we see
it now. 27
If then the omniscience of earth turns out to be insufficiently attested,
there is no reason to apply to her the thesis that divine attributes are
inherent in the notion of deity itself. "The concepts of God's universal
vision, knowledge and power," says a recent writer, 28 "do not belong to
Nature, nor to sky or earth. Earth and heaven present them with all
their infinite possibilities of expression and development, but do not
create them. They have their origin in the idea of God which is within
us, in the deepest depths of our soul, closer to us than we are to our-
selves." These are fine words, but words only. Although general in
expression, they have refere~ce particularly to Mother Earth as the
supreme deity of the ancient Mediterranean religion. But even for
that deity we have no evidence at all that she is all-knowing. \Ve are
not told that omniscience was attributed tp the Anatolian Kybele, the
Cretan Rhea nor the Greek Demeter. The last is so far from knowing
everything that she does not even know where to find her kidnapped
daughter, and to learn this must apply to the Sun, exactly as, in a myth
of the Achomawi, the Sun is appealed to in order to learn where a
person is who has been carried off (see Chapter XXII, p. 366). There
is an instance indeed of Mother Earth having the attribute of omni-
science. I mean Paabothkwe, the 11other Earth of the Shawnee, who
are Algonkins of Oklahoma. But this instance proves nothing to the
purpose, indeed it proves the opposite. For this goddess does not
originally belong to Shawnee religion, but to that of the Iroquois,
by whom she is not looked upon as all-knowing. Her omniscience
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
among the Shawnee has a secondary origin; it i~ the reflexion of or
inheritance from an old Algonkin sky-god, whose place Paabothkwe
usurped when the Shawnee in traduced her from the Iroquois (seep. 38 I).

The importance of this polar opposition, positive and negative, of

the attribute of omniscience with regard to deities of sky and earth
respectively will become clear especially in our concluding synthesis,
in which we shall endeavour to understand from a historical standpoint
the data which we are now grouping merely by means of extrinsic
and formal criteria. We must now proceed with our morphological
examination, passing from the morphology of the subject, that is of
the all-knowing deities, to that of the object of Divine omniscience.
What is it that these all-knowing beings know? Here again we shall
find that theory is one thing, reality another. To one who looks at the
subject, it may seem that every deity must be omniscient, but, as we
have found, that is not so; and similarly, when we look at the object,
an all-knowing deity ought theoretically to know everything, but in
fact, as we shall see, it is not so. As the attribute of omniscience is
peculiar, in concrete fact, to certain specific deities, and not common
to all, so in concrete fact Divine omniscience has its own precise and
characteristic object.
E. S. Hartland was quite right when, in opposition to the exaltation,
in words at least, of the "high gods af low races" by their "discoverer"
Andrew Lang, he reduced their attributes, including omniscience, to
the limits imposed by primitive and rudimentary thought.29 In
consequence, he was right in denying that Baiame is omniscient, since
Baiame could, for example, be deceived by Daramulun. Logically,
omniscience cannot but be total and absolute; partial, relative omnisci-
ence is a contradiction in terms, and this is as true for primitive
thought as for ours. Yet there is a difference between omniscience as
we conceive it and the omniscience which primitive thought conceives.
Only, this difference is not one of quantity but of kind. For the primi-
tive thinker, omniscience is quantitatively neither relative nor absolute,
for that question does not occur to him.ao It is qualitatively relative
by virtue of its visual nature, which of necessity subordinates it to
visibility and so to the presence of light (thus, Puluga is all-knowing
only by day; lightning is a lighted string thrown by Karei, to enable
him to see at night also, and so on). Divine omniscience is relative
in its object especially, for that is not all that can be known, but a
particular, well-defined object. Baiame, as Lang writes,31 is not
supposed to know the nature of Roentgen rays (nor, we may add,
the structure of the atom). The especial object of Divine omniscience
is man and his conduct, man and his activities.
Throughout the Old Testament, but particularly in the Psalms and
,.
INTRODUCTION 15
in the Wisdom literature, the omniscience of Yahweh is exalted, not
so much the knowledge he possesses as Creator, as the God who knmvs
the world because He made it, as His knowledge of all that men do.
The Lord beholds from the sky the good and bad actions of mankind
(Hos. vii. 2). Not for an instant can man avoid the sight of Yahweh,
and there is no place where he can hide from Him. All his life, day by
day, lies open to the eyes of the Lord. Only the impious do not believe
in God's omniscience, and only the wicked deludes himself with the
hope of escaping His all-seeing regard. Similar ideas and like motifs
occur among many other peoples. 32 In the course of our investigation
evidence of this will be found on every page. Knowledge of what
human beings do is predicated of Amun, of Shamash, of Varuna and
Mitra-Varuna, Zeus and Helios, Juppiter, Tien and Shang-ti, of Iho,
Lowalangi, Upu Lanito, Wonekau, Puluga, Karei, Manitou, Oki,
Tezcatlipoca and others.
Most frequently, it is bad actio~s which are the object of Divine
omniscience. Sometimes they are specifically mentioned. Nyalich,
the Dinka Supreme Being, sees murderers and robbers. The ill-usage
of beasts is strictly checked by the Chief Up Above among the Tsim-
shian, and by Sila-Pinga among the Eskimo, and similarly, the needless
slaughtering or tormenting of game by the Cree and the Montagnais
Supreme Beings. Puluga in the Andamans is angry when he sees
anyone quarter a boar badly or uproot tubers at the wrong season.
Often it is sexual offences which are the particular object of Divine
omniscience; adultery, not only in the Book of Job and the Wisdom of
ben Sirach, but also among the Bahau of Borneo, the Flores islanders
(along with theft), and others; incest among the natives of Nias, the
Toradja of Celebes, the Ngadha of Flores, the Goajiro of Columbia,
the Cuna of Panama, the Mundurucu of Brasil; bestiality among the
Toradja and others.
But not only what men do but what they say is an object of Divine
omniscience. To hear all that is said is an obvious complement of seeing
r all that is done. Universal hearing joins universal vision to make up a
complete omniscience. This is not to weaken the essentially visual
character of omniscience, because universal hearing is merely a.
secondary amplification of it, the fruit of a reflexion which distin-
guishes and reasons. Yahweh hears everything; as the Wisdom of
Solomon has it (i. 10), "the ear of jealousy heareth all things; and the
noise of murmurings is not hid." Ptah hears and sees everything; Ea
is Lord of the Ear, as the vehicle of understanding. Universal hearing is
attributed to Temaukel among the Ona-Selknam, and to the Sun
among the Dakota and the Tarascos ("our Father Sun" hears when
anyone tells a lie), to Thunder as the Supreme Being of the Nisenan
and Ponka, toNe Nanatch among the Gros Ventres, and to Yuttoere
16 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
among the Carrier Indians (who tell an unruly child that "Yuttoere is
listening to you").
Frequently, in savage beliefs, we find universal sight and hearing
together as associated attributes of the Supreme Being, whether sky-
god or sungod. Among the Chipewyans, who are eastern Dene, Yed;..
dariye sees and hears from the height of heaven all that is done or said
on ear.th. Among the Iroquois, the great Oki in the sky does the same.
Among the Hupa, the Sun sees and hears all. In China it is Shang-ti
who observes and hears, and Tien, thanks to his sight and hearing, is
aware of all that happens on earth. Among the Konyak Naga, Gawang
("Earth-Sky") is all-seeing and all-hearing, and the same holds good
for Lowalangi on Nias, \Vonekau in northern New Guinea, and
Kasiwa on the island of Nukumanu. The Pygmies of Ituri hold that
Tore "sees us all who are sitting here and hears what we say", and
much the same is true of Gamab, according to the Damara. A saying
of the \Va-Nyika runs, "Almost before you raise your voice, Mulungu
hears you, and even if you hide iq. a cave, l.Yfulungu sees you." In like
manner, among the Shambala, Mulungu sees and hears everything,
while the Tshi of the Gold Coast believe the same concerning Nyan-
kupon. In Homer it is Helios who "observes all and hears all" (Iliad,
iii, 277). The Greek philosophers customarily add universal under-
standing to universal sight and hearing as an attribute of deity. This
triple omniscience is attributed to his God by Xenophanes (see the
title-page), by Kritias the sophist to his daimon, by Sokrates, Plato and
Xenophon to the gods generally, by Hippokrates to the ether and by
the Orphics still to the ether, but as an organ of Zeus.
The Chitimacha hold that the Great Spirit sees, understands and
knows everything, but yet has neither eyes nor ears. Generally, however,
universal vision and sight are ascribed to omniscient beings in a con-
crete form, as due to the eyes and ears which are assigned to them. 33
Naturally, these are no common eyes or ears. According to the \Visdom
of ben Sirach, "the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter
than the sun" (Eccles. xxiii. rg). Elsewhere they are of extraordinary
size; such are the "great eyes" of Skaj among the Mordvins, the eyes
"as large as lakes" or "as large as the river Ob" with which the
Finnish-Ugrian Torem sees everything, and the ears "as big as water-
lily pads" wherewith he hears everything. Leza has very long ears,
with which he can hear even talk that is murmured in secret; while the
ears of the Samoyed Num are the stars.
More commonly the abnormality is a matter of quantity, the eyes
and ears being more numerous than is usual, and divided among the
suitably large number of heads, or scattered all over the body. Amon-
Re is said to have many pairs of eyes, and the Sun, as Lord of millions
and millions of years, has seventy-seven eyes and seventy-seven ears
 INTRODUCTION 17

(seep. 62). Osiris has many eyes according to the etymology of his name
by Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch, and Isis also is r.o'Auoc/JOa'Ap.os in
an Oxyrhynchos papyrus.aaa Th~ figure commonly called Bes pantheos
has the body sprinkled witli eyes, while certain stelae at Memphis and
Thebes, dedicated to Ptah and other Egyptian deities, show ears in
great profusion (as many as 42,110 and 376) and eyes numbering four
as a rule. The Erzuma elish states that Marduk (and before him perhaps
the Sumerian Enlil, as later the Assyrian Assur) had four ey.es and four
ears, while a deity with two faces and accordingly furnis~ed with four
eyes is often shown on seals and on some Babylonian statuettes. Varuna
has "a thousand eyes", Indra, Agni and Purusha are sahasrak~a; Indra's
eyes are dotted about his body. Varuna is also caturanika in the Rg-
Veda, that is four-faced. As early as Mohenjo-Daro we find on a seal
a god with three, if not four, faces, and many heads are an outstanding
character-istic of the cult-images of Hinduism, Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu,
and of those of Buddhism (Avalokitesvara and others). With this goes
a third eye on the forehead of the numerous heads-there may be
three or four, five, ten, twenty-five heads or more. The Avesta ascribes
a thousand, or ten thousand, eyes to Mithra, and six (probably con-
tained in three heads) to Saosyant. The sun has three pairs of eyes
according to a Hittite text of the second millennium B.c., and t~ree
faces on a bronze vase from Ramadan, dating from the twelfth century
of our era. We hear in Philon of.Byblos, as cited by Eusebios, that the
Phoenician god El, rendered in Greek by Kronos, had four eyes, two
in front and two behind, which opened and shut by turns; and this
finds confirmation from art in some coins of Mallos which show a
winged figure with two-faced head. The cherubim in the vision of
Ezekiel had their bodies and wings covered with eyes; Satan in the
Talmud and_the Son of Man in the Nahassenian tradition have eyes in
their bodies. In an amatory epigram attributed to Plato, we hear of
the many eyes of Uranos, i.e. heaven. Argos Panoptes had "many"
or "a hundred", or "ten thousand" eyes, ,or according to the Aigimios,
r four, presumably .distributed between two faces, for we actually find
him two-faced on some vases. In one he has in addition eyes all over
his body, and that was how Kratinos conceived of his panoptai, that is
the followers of a philosophic school of which he was making fun in
..' the comedy with that title. Boreas, the nort~ wind, is shown two-faced
on a red-figure vase. Pherekydes says Argos had three eyes, the third
being on the nape of the neck, and a xoanon or archaic statue of Zeus
with three eyes, the third being on the forehead, is said by Pausanias
to have been kept on the acropolis of Argos. We hear also of a Zeus and
an Apollo. tetraotos, i.e. four-eared. Janus has two or sometimes four
faces. A Gaulish god with three heads or faces is shown on many
votive stelae and the so-called planetary vases. The Rider of the
a
 18 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Thracian votive stelae has sometimes two or three heads. A three-
headed god is depicted on one of the golden trumpets from Gallehus
in Denmark. The pagan Slavs of the Baltic had many-headed figures,
Triglav at Stettin with three, Svantevit with four at Arkona, and
Rugievit, Porenut, Porevit (at Arkona) with four, five or seven heads.
Among the Samoyeds, idols of W eesakko with three or seven heads
are found.
Tortali, the Sun, is many-eyed in a story from the island of Pentecost
in the New Hebrides. At Nauru in the Gilberts Damamak has eyes in
the forehead, on his temples and on the back of his head. Mata-walu
or Maka-walu, both meaning "eight-eyed", is an epithet shared by
various figures of Polynesian myth, Maui among the Maori of New
Zealand, Kamapua and Pea-pea in Hawaii, and we may add the
Fijian Mataiwalu on the island of Somo-Somo, and Mata-rau, "he of
the two hundred eyes" as a name ofTonga-iti, one of the sons ofVatea
and Papa in the Cook Islands. Wonekau, a solar Supreme Being on the
north coast of New Guinea, carries a two-faced figurine on his head.
A deity of the Kamilaroi in Australia has countless eyes and ears.
Among the Cora of New Mexico, Tetewan, goddess of the night sky
and the lower world, has many "sights" looking every way, and the
same is said of Hatsikan, the Morning Star. The Pijao, a Chibcha-
speaking tribe of northern Columbia, had a monumental figure of a
god called Lulumoy with three heads, six arms and six legs. A typical
figure of the Tiahuanaco culture is at times shown on pottery of the
Nazca style with several hea~s. A Nenechen with two faces is recorded
among the Araucanian Mapuche. Thunder, as a representative of the
god of the weather-sky, has one face in front and another behind among
the H uchnom or inland Yuki.
If we find that plurality of eyes or heads is often enough an expression in
words or in art of a general idea, wholly without arithmetical exactness, of the
extraordinary and limitless powers of sight and hearing and the consequent
.omniscience of certain deities, this does not mean that it is always so. To have
many heads or eyes is not an exclusive characteristic of omniscient beings nor
consequently a mark of the celestial character (or solar, or both), on which
their omniscience depends. Often enough, on the contrary, the multiplicity of
heads or eyes, like that of any other parts of the body (cf. the Hekatoncheires,
the hundred-handed giants, in Hesiod, Typhon in Ovid, Met., iii, 303, and so
forth), means no more than monstrosity, or non-human nature, and is not
properly speaking divine but rather demoniacal. We need mention only the
two- or three-headed Kerberos, the Hydra with her seven heads, Kerberos
again with fifty heads, the Hekatoncheires also with fifty, Echidna's and
Typhoeus' hundred heads (Hesiod, Thtog., 312, 151, 825), the three heads of
Tval:l~ra-Visvariipa in the IJ.g- Veda (x, 8, 8 sqq., gg, 6) and of Dahaka in the
Avesta (rasna, ix, 8, raJt v, 29). 3 4 In China, the so-called Emperor of the
Heavens has nine, ten, eleven or thirteen heads, to say nothing of other
:
INTRODUCTION 19
creatures of dragon kind.35 In the Bantu folklore of central Africa we find
spirits, ogres and giants with nvo, three, four, five, six, twenty or a hundred
heads; so among the Basonga, Bapende, Bena Lulua and others. In thl! Yuma
cosmogonic myth, the great serpent slain by the hero Kumastamho has four
heads. 36
For all that, the fact remains that to have many eyes, or heads, or both, as
an expression of universal vision, is a strong indication, if supported by others,
of the celestial or solar nature of beings so equipped.

Divine omniscience has another field of activity; besides the deeds

and besides the words of mankind, it examines even their inmost
thoughts and secret intents. In the prophecies of Jeremiah, we are
told that the Lord tries "the reins and the heart" (Jer. xi. 20). The
same thought is found among many other peoples, savage and civilised.
Karai Kasang, the Kachin Supreme Being, "sees" even what men
think. The Haida say that everything we think is known to Sins
sganagwa. The Great Manitu of the Arikara knows everything, in-
cluding the most secret thoughts. Tezcatlipoca knows men's hearts;
Temaukel, the Supreme Being of the Ona-Selknam, knows even our
thoughts and most private intentions. In Babylonia, the god Enlil
knows the hearts of gods and men, and Shamash sees to the bottom of
the human heart. Zeus likewise knows every man's thought and soul.
Owing to the knowledge they have of all that is said by men and all
that they secretly think, whether or not that fits what they say, omni-
scient beings are particularly well qualified to be witnesses to any oaths
that are taken, and to guarantee agreements that are concluded. In the
lengthy lists of deities invoked when concluding any agreement
according to the fashion of the ancient peoples of the Near East, we
find, for instance, Mitra and Varuna mentioned as first among the
Mitanni, and the sungod and sky-god among the Hittites.3 7 In
Babylonia the sun-god Shamash was invoked in oaths, and treaties
concluded and boundaries fixed 'ln the name of Enlil, god of the
we~ther-sky. Yahweh is called upon as a witness in the Old Testament.
In the Vedas, Varuna is invoked in oaths, and so Helios in Homer. In
the Homeric oaths, Zeus holds the first place. when he is called upon
together with other deities, as Iliad, iii, 276, xix, 258. At Olympia ther~
stood an image of Zeus Horkios, Zeus of the oath, before which oaths
J were taken. In Rome the omniscience of Juppiter was applied par-
ticularly to oath-taking, the conclusion of treaties and the guardianship
of them when they had been concluded; the temple of Dius Fidius on
the Quirinal had an opening in the roof, for oaths by that god must be
taken under the open sky. In China Tien, that is Heaven, and Shang-ti
are invoked in agreements and oaths. The Altaic peoples swear by
Tengri, the Sky. In Africa the Ba-lla and Ba-Kaonde swear by Lesa
or Leza, the A-Lunda by Nzambi. Efile-mokulu among the Luba,
 20 THE ALL-KNO,VING GOD
Waqa among the Galla, Pue-mpalaburu among the Toradja of Celebes,
"Deva" among the Ngadha of Flores, Upu Langi on Ceram, Upu
Lanito at Amboin, are invoked when taking an oath. Among the
Iroquois, the great Oki of the sky watched over oaths and agreements;
the Sun was also invoked for the former.
These and other deities who govern oaths are usually deities of the
sky and sun, and as such omniscient. as Deities of the moon are rarer.
On the islands of Kei and Aru, the pair Sun and Moon are invoked in
oaths; the Tarascos swear by "our father Sun" in the daytime, but by
"our mother Moon" at night, and, like the Tarahumare, they will
enter upon no agreement after sunset. The Kiowa swear by the Sun.
Among the Crow Indians, the Sun is called upon to verify the truth of
certain assertions. The Sun was the divine judge par excellence among
the Egyptians, Babylonians and Hittites. 3 9 The Bithynians judged
cases at law sitting with their faces to the sun, "as if the god was
watching them"; and oaths by the Sun survived to the very end of
paganism, for instance in Julian the Apostate, along with the ancient
idea of the Sun as a judge and avenger, which finally passed into
Christianity.-to

More than this, these omniscient beings do not confine themselves

to simply looking at human actions as mere spectators, taking a passive
part. They generally exercise a sanction, which should mean rewarding
or punishing according to the nature of the actions themselves; but in
fact the stress is much oftener laid on punishment, reward being heard
of only in a very few cases (Nsambi and perhaps Sila reward the good).
Hence the sanction exercised by all-knowing deities is generally puni-
tive. Ill-treatment of beasts, waste of food, incest and other sexual
offences, perjury and in general the violation of the tribal rules are
among the deeds likeliest to draw down punishment from the gods. As
a general rule, the punishment is not sent at random, but fits the
nature of the omniscient beings (celestial, or solar, or bo~h) on which
their drnniscience depends. Indeed, their vengeance is generally
wreaked by means of the weather. The punishment sent by Zeus upon
men who, gathering in assemblies, judge crooked dooms, is no other
than a violent storm, Iliad, xvi, 384 sqq. The statue of Zeus Horkios at
Olympia held a thunderbolt in either hand to smite false swearers
(p. 145). At Rome, Juppiter's vengeance was sent by means of thunder.
Solemn oaths were taken in the name of Iuppiter Lapis, and the lapis
in question was a thunder-stone, so that swearing by that god amounted
to exposing oneself, if the oath was not kept, to the penalty of being
thunderstruck. Among the Altaic tribes, Tengri, the Sky, punishes
men's misdoings with bad weather. In China also Tien (again the
Sky) uses means furnished by the weather, thunderbolts, thunder,
 INTRODUCTION 21

deluges of rain and consequent floods and famines. On the Andamans,

Puluga punishes with thunder and lightning, bad weather and storm.
Lowalangi sends torrential rains to chastise .incest. The same means
are used to set their punitive sanctions in action by Petara and Nanju
in Borneo, "Deva" on Flores, Wonekau on the north coast of New
Guinea. The Eskimo Sila sends bad weather as a punishment. The
Tsimshian's "Chief up above" sends snowstorms. The Supreme Being
of the Apache likewise uses meteorological means, and the Iroquois
say that the Oki of the sky lays waste their crops with storms and floods.
Among the Ponka it is Thunder himself who interposes his vengeance,
and the Aztec Tezcatlipoca is closely connected with the thunderbolt,
as his Maya equivalent Hunrakan is with storms. Viracocha also
punishes with thunderbolts and deluges, Mareigua among the Goajiro
wields the thunderbolt against the incestuous, and rain and thunder
mark the wrath of ~faret Khmakniam, the Supreme Being of the
Botocudos. The Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego believed in a Supreme
Being who punished misdoings with bad weather.
This is what we may call the rule, but the punishment is not always of a
meteorological kind. Sometimes it consists of or includes calamities of another
nature, such as floods (Tien), deluges (\\'onekau and Aluelap), earthquakes
(l\1uri Kraeng), ill success in hunting (Gawang, Sila, and the Supreme Being
of the Cree-Montagnais), bad harvests and famine (Gawang, Tien, Tamei
Tinggei), disease and deaths (Gawang, the Apache Supreme Being, Tezcat-
lipoca, and Temaukel and Cholas in Tierra del Fuego), or the death of cattle
(so among the Suk). But here we must not forget that floods and deluges mostly
result from rains, that hunting turns out badly when the weather is bad (see
the Epilogue), and crops are scanty after too much rain or prolonged drought.
All these plagues therefore are meteooological in their nature, and some forms
of death and disease have the same source, for instance the deaths due to rain
by will of the Supreme Being among the north-western Bushmen, as recorded
by Lebzelter in Festschrift Pater W. Schmidt, Vienna 1928, 409, or the sharp
stabbing pains which the Jahai Semang of the 1\tlalacca peninsula say are
caused by a splinter of thunderbolt lodged in the chest, as Schcbesta informs
us in Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft, xxviii ( 1 g26), 22 1.

It is of course especially deities of the sky who can make use in order
.
4
to punish of violent weather phenomena, such as thunder and lightning,
tempests and so forth. But the sun also does not confine itself to simply
looking on from heaven at what happens on earth. The Sun too inflicts
punishment, not only indirectly, insofar as he regulates time andso
must sooner or later bring all misdoings to light, however well hidden
they are, and so procure the first condition of their chastisement,u but
also directly, since it is on the sun that the changes of the seasons
depend, and therefore the periods of rain and dryness, and therefore
he is thought of as bestower of rain or maker of drought, with the
22 THE ALL-KNO\VING GOD
helpful or ruinous consequences springing therefrom. According to
the Natchez of Louisiana, the Sun directly inflicts punishment by
sending a stmm (sec p. 388), and among other peoples of the south-east
part of North America the idea is widespread that there is a real
connection between sun and fire, including cosmic fire, that is to say
lightning (pp. 388-g). In some Babylonian hymns and mythological
texts their sungod, Shamash, "tears the evil-doer like a strip of hide"
and punishes the false swearer, whom he catches in his net. The intimate
connection must also be noted between Shamash, who represents the
bright, clear sky, and Hadad, who is as it were his divine complement,
being deity of the weather-sky with its storms, a connection which
holds good not only for Babylonia but also for Syria, and even Delos. 4 :!

We now find that we have a clear picture of the original ideological

complex of Divine omniscience. Its subject is not primarily deity in
general, but a determinate category of divine beings. Its object is not
the whole range of knowledge, but man and his doings. The manner
in which Divine omniscience comes about is quite definite, for it is
founded upon a power of universal vision, completed on occasion by
similar powers of hearing, by omnipresence and the like. This Divine
omniscience is not merely passive and contemplative, but gives rise to
a sanction, generally punitive, which in its turn is not of any and every
kind, for usually its instrument is the weather. These elements which
make up the complex of Divine omniscience, subject and object,
purpose and method, conditions and effects, have an organic connec-
tion with one another. An internal logic joins the luminous nature of
the omniscient beings with the powers of sight on whi_ch their universal
knowledge depends, the visibility (from above) of human actions (also
the audibility of human speech and so on), and the meteorological
nature of the sanction which is attached. By virtue of this internal
correlation and interdependence of its component parts, the complex
of ideas concerning Divine omniscience is really a complex, that is to
say an organic whole, well defined.
This ideological complex was not the result of reasoning upon the
abstract notion of deity, but the immediate, concrete expression of a
manner of thinking which conceives of the divine in terms.of anthropo-
morphism, and also of divine transcendence in the form of a more or
less monstrous m\lltiplicity of shape. In this spontaneity, originality
and simplicity we clearly see the proper nature of imaginative thought,
that is mythical thought, the "poetical metaphysics" which Vico in
the eighteenth century ascribed to primaeval man. To his "most
corporeal imagination", as. Vico supposed, the more violent weather-
phenomena suggested the first notion of divinity, when, alarmed by the
thunder and lightning, for which he could find no reason, "he lifted
 INTRODUCTION 23
his eyes and perceived the heavens; and since in such a case the nature
of the human mind tends to ascribe its own nature to what occurs ...
men imagined that the sky was a vast animate body, which by reason
of this appearance they called Jove .. who by the hiss of the lightning
and the roar of the thunder was 'trying to say something to them." 43
It was Vico's fate to be overlooked. His ingenious discernment of the
true nature of myth did not prevent either G. F. Creuzer's symbolism
from being grafted, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, on to
the ancient trunk of allegorical interpretation of myths, or the anti-
mythical spirit which passed from Greek philosophic speculation to
Christian apologetics from being reincarnated, in our time, in the
theory of primitive monotheism, and applied to the Divine attributes,
omniscience included. Omniscience, according to Father vVilhelm
Schmidt, 44 belongs, together with the other attributes, to the "monothe-
istic" idea of God, which originally had nothing at all to do with
mythical thought, but was the pure conception of a ratiocination
looking for a cause. Anthropomorphic forms and aspects he supposes
to be secondary, a mere obscuration of the concept. So the idea of the
sun and moon being eyes with which the Supreme Being sees by day
and night respectively represent, according to him, a materialisation,
and therefore a diminution of the primitive concept of Divine. omni-
science, while a further materialisation is to be found in the belief that
the stars are the eyes of the night sky. Analogously, the fundamental
part which the sky and the weather are already recognised by Vico to
have played in the earliest notions of God, and which is so important
a feature of the idea of omniscience, in that these phenomena are the
instruments of punitive sanction, is for Father Schmidt but another
deterioration of the pure monotheistic ideal. Thunder, \Vind, Light-
ning he supposes to be no more than specialised forms of the skygod,
and the identification of the skygod with the sky itself again a secondary
phenomenon, the sky having been originally no more than the abode
of the Supreme Being, who was not identical with the sky, the sun or
the moon, or nature in general, but essentially different from them and
from the world, which was his work, he being the Creator and it the
creature.4:> This, then, he supposes to have been the origin of the idea
of God: according to faith, on the basis of the traditional doctrine of
revelation; according to reason, as stated by the rationalistic Deism of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and according to science, as
represented by what has been styled "the greatest discovery of the
twentieth century," 4 o i.e. the discovery of Supreme Beings among the
primitive peoples. To describe these Beings no term has been found
more adequate and better suited to their nature than Andrew Lang's
"allfathers", or N. Soderblom's Urheber, or Schmidt's own word
Urschiijifer. Yes: but the attribute of creative activity is itself not
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
independent of myth. So far from belonging to the sphere of transcen-
dent, we might perhaps say meta-mythical, thought, purely logical and
causal, these creative Beings are in the very thick of a myth of the
beginnings of things. The characteristic of such myths is that they give,
not an intellectualist explanation of lhe universe and its formation,
but the ideal reason for the existence of the world and its order, for the
structure and permanence of social life. Creation-myths are a particular
form of myths of beginnings. As such, they share in the essential nature
of such myths, in their character and their existential value. Creative
activity as an attribute of Supreme Beings (though not of them all) is
a mythical datum,47
The attribute of creative power already implies that of omnipotence,
for creation itself is the work and the sign of a boundless capacity.
Connected with it is also the attribute of eternity, which guarantees
that the world when created will endure in time. And as it is important
that the world should endure as it was originally created, without
change or alteration, the Creatoris often credited with inactivity, as
an expr.ession of his sovran impassivity and indifference. 48 To this
central attribute of creative activity Lang wished also to refer that of
omniscience; 4 9 but this knowledge, which is really a knowledge of how
to act and in the last analysis the power to act, is characteristic, as we
already know (pp. 4-5), of magical omniscience, not visual. Visual
omniscience, on the other hand, is to be grouped with wakeful benevo-
lence and just retribution, with absolute equity and morality, a com-
plex essentially different from creativity with its conjoint attributes of
omnipotence, eternity, imperturbability (or inactivity).
The difference is most pronounced between the "inactive" character
of certain Creators, who having finished their creation retire to an
inaccessibly far region, and the highly dynamic nature of those all-
seeing deities who, keeping a check on everything that men do,
intervene to smite sinners with the weapons of the weather, deluges
or what not. (Such a dualism has a certain distant resemblance to
schoolmen's classification of the attributes of God into positive and
negative, whereof the former sprang from potentialising to the highest
degree the capacities and virtues of man, as understanding, goodness,
truth, the latter from a thorough-going negation of human limitations,
and so included uncreated eternity, infinity, immutability, invisibility
and ineffability). This dualism, then, between the two gr.oups of Divine
attributes thus differentiated, has its positive and concrete raison d'etre
in a different polarisation resulting from two religious tendencies. On
the one hand, we have the world and the origin of the world, which is
the specific object of those attributes which lead up to creative activity;
on the other, man and his behaviour, which are the specific object or
omniscience and all the attributes which go with it. On the one hand,
 INTRODUCTION
the creation of the world-order and its preservation in statu quo is the
primary condition, the guarantee, of the existence of the universe, its
duration and stability; on the other, we have the foundations of the
social order and its repair when it has been violated by men and their
misdoings. To violation of the rules of tribal life, conceived as a suspen-
sion of human order and a temporary relapse into the chaos of
primaeval barbarism, corresponds a suspension of the cosmic order, a
relapse into primaeval chaos through the unchaining of the elements
of violence contained in atmospheric phenomena and the cataclysms
which follow. These two religious tendencies may now and then con-
verge, and the attributes of the two corresponding groups be concen-
trated in the person of a single Supreme Being who is the eternal and
impassible Creator and at the same time omniscient, watchful, and
avenging. Thus Yahweh, who created the world, also sends the Deluge.
But in other cases the tendencies are felt and satisfied separately, and
so we get Creators who are not omniscient, such as Mother Earth
(above, p. I 2f.), nor good (Coyote, p. 36gff.), and so on, or on the
other hand omniscient Beings who avenge but are not creators, such
as Zeus, Juppiter, Helios and others.
Corresponding to this specific character of the attribute of omni-
sci~nce, \vhich is inherent in its particular object, human activities,
there is a specific religious experience. This is different from the
experience which gives rise to the attribute of creativity; it is not, or
not merely, the elemental, existential anxiety which finds expression
in myths of the beginnings and of creation, but a different experience,
in which, together with the feeling of the incertitude of the condition
of mankind, there floats the shadow of another anxiety, the disquiet of
the moral conscience, so the sense of a diffused, immanent presence which
broods over man in every place and at every instant, without inter-
mission, without hope of escape, of refuge, of evasion, the presence of
a watchfulness which none can avoid, from which no one can get
away, of a mystery which surrounds man, blinds him, imprisons him,
and from time to time suddenly breaks out in the imposing violence of
meteorological phenomena. This is the experience which for instance,
among the Apache, causes anyone with a troubled conscience to feel
a vague disquiet at the approach of the rainy season and the frequent
thunder-storms which it brings with it. It is the experience which has
given the Ewe the idea that "God is wherever the sky is", the experi-
ence of the. boundless, horizonless expanse of whiteness which among
the Eskimo finds concrete expression in the figure of Sila (see
p. 355f.), and of the Australian desert, which can still so impress a
European explorer as to move him to declare that the sky nowhere
else seems so close, especially at night, when it appears to come down
till on~ can almost touch iV.t Anton Chckov had that feeling wh~n he
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
wrote his fascinating description of the steppe. "When, for a long time,
without turning your gaze aside, you fix your eyes on the depths of the
heavens, it comes about that the mind and soul melt in a feeling of
loneliness. You begin to feel irreparably alone. . . . The stars which
have looked down from the sky for so many thousands of years, the sky
itself, which is so incomprehensible, and the mist, all alike heedless of
man's short life; when you remain face to face with them and strain to
penetrate their meaning, they crush your soul with their silence, and
your mind is faced with that loneliness which awaits everyone of us in
the grave, while life in its very being seems to you hopeless and hor-
rible."52 The contemplation of the heavens had already moved Pascal
to the cry "Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie", and even
Kant, in the Conclusion of his Critique of Practical Reason, puts the
starry sky and the moral law together ("the starry sky above me and
the moral law within me"), as the two things which "fill the mind with
admiration and veneration ever new and increasing the oftener and
the longer we make them the objects of our reflexion."sa
Thus given its proper character as a specific religious experience,
face to face with the other attributes of Deity, the ideological com-
plex of Divine omniscience stands forth as a whole well defined in its
integral structure.
In our Epilogue we will endeavour to define this complex from the
historical point of view also, that is to discover what relation, if any, it
has to some specific form of culture, or historical and cultural environ-
ment. But to reach such a conclusion, it is proper for the complex idea
of Divine omniscience first to be examined part by part in the multi-
plicity of its formulations and articulations among particular peoples
in various countries. This will be done in due order, chapter by
chapter; the chapters will succeed in a roughly geographical series,
following a line which, not without breaks and deviations, describes
approximately a great curve starting from south central Africa and
crossing the near East and Europe to the main part of Asia and ending
at the extremity of South America.

NOTES

1. E. S. Hartland, "The 'high gods' of Australia," in Folk-Lore, 1898, 290-

329; A. Lang, "Australian gods, a reply", ibid., 1899, 1-46; Hartland, ibid.,
46-57
1 a. P. W. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, i: Historisch-kritischer Teil,
Munster i.\V. 1912 (ed. 2, 1926); earlier partial publication (French and
German) in Anthropos iii-v (1908-10).
2. R. Pettazzoni, Dio: Forma~ione e sviluppo del monoteismo nella storia delle
re/igioni. Vol. I (all published): L'essere celeste nelle creden~e dei popoli fJTimitivi,
 INTRODUCTION
Rome I922. Laformation du monotheisme, in Rev. de l'hist. des Religions,I923, tome
88, pp. I93-229. Alonotheismus und Po(ytheismus, in Die Religion in Geschichte zmd
Gegenwart, iv (Tubingen I930), pp. 185-91. "Allwissende hochste \Vcsen bci
primitivsten Volkern", in A(rclziv fiir) R(eligions) W(issensclzaft) xxix (I931),
pp. 108-29, 209-43. "Monoteismo e 'Urmonotheismus' ",in S(tudi e) M(ateriali
r.
di) S(toria delle) R(eligioni), xix-xx ( I943-46), pp. I 70-7.
2a. See W. E. Miihlmann, "Das Problem des Urmonotheismus", in Theo-
logische Litera fur ;:.eitzmg, I953, 705- I 8.
3 See W. E. Roth, "An inquiry into the animism and folk-lore of the
I
Guiana Indians", in Thirtieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology
" (Washington, I9I5), 343; Father C. van Call, "Contes et legendes des Indiens
du Surinam", in Anthropos ii (I907), 686, cf. A. B. Alexander, Latin Americim
A1ythology (Vol. xi of The Mythology of all Races, Boston, I 920), Plate xxxix~ 2 ;
W. D. \Vallis, "The Canadian Dakota", in Anthropological Papers of the Am.
Museum of Nat. Hist. xli, I (New York I947), 8I; Col. J. Shakespear, The
Lushei Kuki Clans (London rg I 2), 8o; H. Paasonen, in Hastings, E(nC)'clopaedia of)
R(eligion and) E(thics) viii, pp. 847. Among the Samoyeds, shamans hear when
people are talking of them even a long way off, G. A. Starzew, Samojedy
(Leningrad 1930), p. I22 sqq.
4 G. Bushotter and Rev. J. 0. Dorsey, in Joumal of Am. Folk-Lore i (1888),
72; R. L. Beals, "Ethnology of the Nisenan", in Univ. ofCalifomia Pub. in Am.
Archaeol. and Ethnol., xxxi, 6 (Berkeley, 1933), 381.
5 SeeR. H. Lowie, Primitive Religion (New York, 1924), p. 35 N. W. Thomas
in Folk-Lore, xxxi (I 920), p. 222; C. Lumholtz, Symbolism of the Huichol Indians,
p. 2 I 2; M. Eliade, Traite d' histoire des religions (Paris, I 949), 153.
6. Some think that the ;id'onim in the Old Testament arc the ghosts them-
selves, in their capacity as knowers (from the rooty.d.', "to know"). Others,
however, hold that the phrase means some kind of special magical instruments,
set going to evoke the ghosts.
7 K. Florenz, Die historischen Que/len der Shinto-Religion (Gottingen, rgrg),
pp. 38, 6I, 65 (Kojiki), 154, 157 (Nihongi), 419 (Kogoshui).
8. The Eskimo goddess Sedna, who lives at the bottom of the sea, has
magical knowledge in that she knows every violation of tabus perpetrated by
men, by means of the fluid which comes from the material of the broken tabu.
g. For documentation the reader is referred to the relevant chapters, where
the evidence will easily be found, even without explicit references, with the
help of the Index. Here and in the epilogue, only those sources are cited which
are not given in the notes to the chapters.
IO. Babinza, see G. C. Ishmael in Man, Igro, No. 68. The Damara, H.
Vedder, Die Bergdama (Hamburg I 923), i, p. 1oo; J acottet, Etudes sur les langues
du Haut-,(,ambese, Textes Soubiya (Paris r8gg), p. 150. Uitoto, Preuss, Religion
und Mythologie der Uitoto (Gottingen I 92 I), p. 8g. '\Viyot, Kroeber, in J.A.F.L.
Igo8, 39 Pelew Islands, K. Semper, Die Palau-Inseln (1873), in Frazer,
Anthologia Anthropologica i, p. I 56. Tarahumare, C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico
(New York Igo2), i, p. 295 Pawnee, Dangel, in SMSR v (Ig2g), 210,
quoting G. A. Dorsey, Traditions of the Skidi Pawnee (Boston and New York,
I904), 52
I I. Mexican pictographs, H. Kunike in Internationales Archiu fiir Ethnographie
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
XX \"Ill (I 927), 128, and Zeitsclzrift f. Ethnol., I 9 I I' p. 923, Figs. 3, sG, 89
Cashinawa, see Handbook of South American Indians, iii, 684.
12. 1\-Iasai, H. Baumann, Schiipfung tmd Ur.:cit (Berlin, I 936), 25~'t Tlinkit,
F. Boas in Zeitschr.f. Ethnol., xxvii (1895), 23I. Polynesians, Waitz-Gerland,
Anthropologie der NaturvO!ker, vi, 242; Williamson, Religious and cosmic beliefs of
Central Pol;'nesia (Cambridge, 1933), i, pp. I2, Irs, I I7. Japanese, Numazawa,
Die Weltanfiinge in der japanischen .Nfythologie (Paris and Lucerne, 1946), 277.
Chinese, A. Kuhn, Berichte iiber den Weltanfang bei den Indochinesen (Leipzig I935),
pp. 37 sqq., 127 sqq., cf. W. Staudacher, Die Trennung von Himmel tmd Erde
(Tiibingen, I942), p. 59 India; in Mahayanic Buddhism a tear fallen from the
right eye of Avalokitdvara became the white Tara, one from the left the green.
In a Tibetan picture the sun is coming from the right, the moon from the left eye
of Padmapani; see Chap. VII, n. 127. Indonesia, etc., Frazer, Anthol. Anthrop.,
i, p. 140, from Louis de Freycinet, Vqyage autour du monde (Paris I829-39), ii,
p. 381. On Nikunau in the Gilberts the sky is lifted by two brothers and the
eyes of a third are thrown up and become the sun and moon, G. Turner,
Samoa (London 1844), p. 297. Orphism, fig. I68, I6 Kern, cf. 16g,7.
13. Coyote, J. A. Teit and others, "Folktales of Salishan and Sahaptian
Tribes" (Memoirs Am. Folk-Lore Soc., xi, I917), 123. Pygmies, H. Trilles, Les
P;'gmles de la Foret equatoriale (Paris, 1933), I26. Indonesia, etc., the reference is
to the Toba Batak of Sumatra and the Mantrajakudn ofl\-Ialacca, cf. the Sakai
Ja Puteu, Chap. xviii, p. 314.
14. The Serna Naga name Tsukinhye (the Sun) apparently means "eye of
the house of heaven", see Hutton, The Serna Nagas (London rq21), p. 250.
Among the l\1aya of Yucatan the sungod Kinich Ahau is Lord of the Eye of
the sun.
15. B. Gutmann, "Die Gottesidee der Wadschagga am Kilimandjaro", in ....
Globus, xcvi (1gog-ii), p. 101 sq. I
16. Horus, H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, p. 38. Tien; on his solar
aspects sec B. Schindler, "The developQJent of the Chinese conception of
Supreme Beings", in Hirth Anniversary Volume (1923), p. 298 sqq.
I 7 Heqo, the Kaffa Supreme Being, is also called "sun" but is not the
sun, see F. J. Bieber, Kaffa, ii (1vfiinster 1923), p. 387.-Not only light but
darkness is sometimes thought of as an entity in itself, e.g. in a cosmogonic
legend of the so-called semi-Bantu between the Cameroon arid Cross River,
mentioned by A. Mansfeld, Urwald-Dokumente (Berlin 1908), 234, No. 31,
where the triad Sun, Moon and Darkness, the sons of Obasi the sky-god, arc
opposed ~o the triad Sun, Moon and Light. Mexico, Preuss, Die Religion der
Cora-lndianer (Leipzig, I912), pp. xxiii sq. Morning twilight, see R. Dangel,
"Tagesanbruch u. Weltentstehung", in S.l\-I.S.R., xiv (I938), p. 65 sqq,.;
G. A. 'Vainwright, The Sky-religion in Eg;pt (Cambridge 1938), p. 94; cf. W.
Staudacher, op. cit. (n. 12), 46.
r8. In the Avesta, daeva means a demon, precisely because it was originally
the name of the polytheistic gods before Zarathustra, in whose system they
were of necessity degraded to devils.
19. Agni, see H. Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda (ed. 3-4, Stuttgart and
Berlin 1923), pp. roB, I I r.
20. With the Mexican deities (a parallel is Hunrakan in the Popol Vuh),
 INTRODUCTION
cf. Diolcle among the Cuna, Mareigua among the Goajiro and Tupan among
the Tupi. For the stars, cf. Preuss, op. cit. (n. 17), p. xxiii. Stars as sparks,
among the Hopi Pueblos, Cushing in Journ. Am. Folk-Lore, xx.xvi . ( 1923),
p. I 63, and the Californian Wintu and Porno, also the Tsimshian of the Pacific
Coast, and, in Africa, the Akposo, see Pettazzoni in A.R. W. xxix (I 93 I), p.
233, n. I.
2 I. See S. Moscati, "The wind in Biblical and Phoenician cosmogony", in
Journ. of Biblical Lit., lxvi (1947), p. 305; F. G. Speck, Naskapi, the savage
hunters of the Labrador Peninsula (Norman I 935), p. 39
22. Mills, The Lhota Nagas (London, I922), p. 103.
23. In the Enuma clish, i, p. I 05, we hear of the "fourfold wind which begat
Anu".
24. :Meek in Africa, I930, 323; Westermann, ibid. I928, pp. 2og-4.
25. A. P. Oppe, "The chasm at Delphi", in].H.S. xxiv (1904), pp. 2I4 rqq.,
cf. P. Amandry, La mantique apollinienne aDelphes (Paris I95o).
26. Ordeal, etc., seeR. M. Meyer in A.R. W., xv (19I2), pp. 342 sq. ("water
is probably the oldest accompaniment of oaths"); Oldenberg, op. cit. (n. 19),
p. 519, n. 1 ("tothis day an Indian will take an oath holding Ganges water in
his hand"). Earth, cf. kissing the earth when confessing a fault in Dostoyevski,
Crime and Punishmerzt; cf. F. Lot, "Le baiser ala terre", in Melanges H. Gregoire, i
(Brussels 1949), pp. 435 sqq. Greek oaths, Nilsson, Geschichte d. griechischen
Religion, i (Munich 1941), pp. 130 sqq.; E. Benveniste, "L'expression du
serment dans la Grece ancienne", in Rev. hist. rel., cxxxiv (1947-48), p. 81 sqq.
27. L. Frobenius, Im Zeitalter des Sonnengottes (Berlin, I904), p. 269.
28. U. Pestalozza, Gli Esseri supremi delle religioni primitive, in Rendiconti dell'
Istituto Iombardo di Scierz;:.e e Lettere, lxxxii (Milan, I949), p. I07.
29. E. S. Hartland in Folk-Lore, 1899, pp. go4, gr4. For other instances of
relative omniscience see my article in A.R.W. xxix (1931), pp. 109, 230
(Puluga and Olelbis).
go. In the Andamanese language, no distinction is made between "all"
and "many (much)", so that the same phrase can mean "Puluga knows much"
and "Puluga knows everything" (A. R. Brown, The Andaman Islanders, Cam-
bridge, I922, p. I59)
gr. Lang in Folk-Lore, I8gg, p. 7
g2. The theme of the sinner who imagines he is not seen is found again, for
instance, among the Akan, in Ashanti, also elsewhere.
g3. The winds too have ears to hear and eyes to sec, according to the
Ngadha on the island of Flores.
33a. Grenfell-Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus papyri, x, No. I 380, I. I 29.
34 H. Gi.intert, Der arische Weltkiinig u. Heiland (Halle 1923), p. 29 sqq.;
,V, Kirfel, Die dreikiipfige Gottheit (Bonn 1948), p. gr sqq.; G. Dumczil, Deux
traits du monstre tricephale indo-iranien, in Rev. hist. rel. cxx (I 939), p. 5 sqq.
35 P. Pelliot, "Les plaques de l'Empereur du Ciel", in Bull. of Far Eastem
Antiquities, iv (I932), p. I I4 sqq.
3G. Frobenius, Atlantis, xii, p. 3+ sqq.; Pettazzoni, .N!iti e Leggende, i, Nos.
27, 109, I 1 I; Baumann, Sclzopfimg u. Ur::.eit, 77; J. P. Harrington, "A Yuma
account of origins", in ]own. Am. Folk-Lore, xxi (1908), 341.
g7. l\1itanni, treaty between their king 1\t!attiwaza and the Hittite king
30 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Shuppiluliumash. Hittites, see Furlani, La religione degli Hittiti (Bologna,
1936), P 47
38. For oaths by the Earth, sec above, pp. 12-13.
39 J. Spiegel, "Der Sonnengott in der Barke als Richter", in Afitt. d.
Deutschen Institutes f. iig;pt. Altertumskunde in Kairo, viii (1939), p. 20I sqq.
G. Furlani, "La sentenza del Dio nella religione babilonese-assira", in Afemorie
dell' Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di Scien;:.e Morali, Ser. viii, Vol. ii, 5 (Rome,
1950), p. 278. Same, La religione degli Hittiti, p. 38 sq.
40. Arrian, fgt. 25 Roos (Vol. ii, p. 206) =Frag. Hist. Graec., iii, p. 592,
fgt. 33 F.]. Dolger, Die Sonne der Gerechtigkeit (Munster i.fW 19I8), p. 83 sqq.
4 I. Sec Cumont, quoted in Chap. ix, n. 55; add Pcttazzoni, "Kronos in
Egitto", in Scritti in onore di Ippolito Rosellini, i (Pisa I949), 292 sqq.
42. For Shamash see Cumont, l. cit., and Gressmann, Altorientalische Texte
;:.urn A/ten Testament (AOT), cd. 2, pp. 235 sqq., 245 For Hadad, R. Dussaud,
"Hadad et le Solcil", in Syria I930, p. 365 sqq., cf. the aspects of the Phoeni-
cian Ba 'al-samem as god of both weather and sun, also in Syria and at Palmyra,
Nilsson in A.R. W., xxx (I933), p. I62 sqq., and the double aspect as sun- and
weather-god of the Gallo-Roman 'juppiter" with his wheel, J. Toutain, Les
cultes pai'ens dans /'empire romain iii (Paris, 1920), p. 198 sqq., H. Gaidoz, "Le
dieu gaulois du soleil et le symbolisme de la roue", in Rev. Arch., iv-v (1884-85).
43 G. B. Vico, La Scien;:.a Nuova, Bk. ii, sect. I, chap. 1 (i, p. 147 in F.
Nicolini's ed., Bari Ig28).
44 Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee (hereinafter quoted as Ursprung) vi,
p. 87, cf. pp. 254sqq., 394, 402; especially for the Cheyenne, II, 767, v, figs sqq.
For identification of sky and sky-god, Pettazzoni in A.R. W., xxLx (I 93 I), p. 235
sqq. For Thunder, or the Thunders, see especially ~Iichelson in Bull..99 of the
Bureau of American Ethnolog;, Smithsonian Institution (Ig3o), p. 50 sqq.
45 On the other hand, as Lang argues in his famous controversy with
Tylor, the Supreme Being is not a spirit among primitive peoples. Since then
he is neither Nature nor a spirit, what is he? Pure action? the Logos?
46. By W. Koppers in Der Urmensch und sein Weltbild (Vienna I949), p. 24I.
47 See my paper, "~Iythes des origines et mythes de Ia creation", in Pro-
ceedings of the ;th Congress for the History of Religions, Amsterdam 4th-gth September,
1950, pp. 67-78, and in Essays on the History of Religions (Leiden I 954), p. 24ff.
48. See the paper cited in the last note.
49 "Power may take the form of all-seeing", Lang in Folk-Lore, I 8gg, p. r o.
so. The feeling that daylight is a moral factor, especially in matters of sex,
is faund also in the Greek sphere, see Euripides, fgt. 524, cf. Plat. Phileb.,
p. 66 Aj Plut. qu. Rom. 40, p. 274 E.
5 I. J. Spieth, Die Religion der Eweer in Siid- Togo, p. 5, Die Ewe-Stiimme, p.
423; ]. W. Gregory, The dead heart of Australia (London 1906), p. 159 sq.
52. La steppa, in Racconti, Vol. ii (A. Villa, Turin, 1950), p. 66. Not being
acquainted with Russian, the translator has contented himself with turning
Villa's Italian version of the original into English.
53 Pascal, Pensles, p. 206 (in L. Brunschwigg's edition). E. Lahse, "Der
bestirnte Himmel iiber uns und in uns", in Geisteskultur, Monatshifte der
Comeniusgese/lschaft fiir Geisteskultur und Volksbildung, xxxvii (I 928), p. 62 foil.
 Chapter I

AFRICA

(a) THE PYGMIES

HOSE African Pygmies whose religion is best known are the

T Bambuti of the great equatorial forest of I turi in the Belgian

Congo. This is due to the researches of Father Schebesta, the
results of which have now been set forth, after sundry partial publi-
cations, in a ... large monograph running into several volumes; one of
these is occupied with their religion. 1
In the religion of these Ituri Pygmies, whom Schesbesta thinks the
only true Pygmies, the most characteristic figure, the only one who
receives actual worship, is the deity of the forest, called by various
names, the commonest being Tore, among the Efe. Tore is the lord of
the forest and of the lower animals, 2 and thus indirectly of men also,
because man, in the most archaic phase of his culture, to which the
Pygmies belong, that of hunting and food-gathering, depends for his
subsistence on the harvest of the wild fruit .of certain trees and the
capture of certain beasts which belong to Tore. He is indeed the
arbiter of the good or ill success of hunting. It is he who sends good or
bad weather, since wind, lightning and storm arc in his power. 3 He is
thought of likewise as Creator, and, among other attributes, is credited
with the powerofknowing what men do. 4 Tore spies on men and nothing
escapes his notice; he sees everything, "even all of us who are sitting
here, and hears what we say".s Furthermore, Tore exercises a punitive
control over human actions, killing evil-doers by magical means or
by the thunderbolt.
Epilipili is another name of this deity, in use particularly among the
south-eastern Efe. He sees and hears everything, both by day and by
night. Nothing is hidden from him, not even an act of adultery per-
petrated in the thickest of the bush. The wrong-doer will meet with
Epilipili's punishment, for he controls rain and wind-storms, lightning
and thunder, the latter being his voice and the former the opening of
his mouth and eyes.6
Schcbesta is of opinion that Tore is a hypostatisation of a trans-
cendental Supreme Being in earthly form, parallel to a celestial form
represented by the moon. 7 Here the influence of the theory of primitive
monotheism is manifest; it is .Father Schmidt's theory, 8 from which
Schebesta has partly, but only partly, got free. 9 The real nature of
Tore's omniscience and of his connection with the punitive sanction
 THE ALL-K.l~OWING GOD
he exercises by means of the weather will be shown more clearly as
our discussion proceeds.
As to the other African Pygmies, what is to be found among the
westward ones, of Gabun, is merely the idea of a spirit which turns
into the moon for a while and sees what men are doing, examining
their hearts and piercing through to their most secret thoughts, to
report them afterwards to the Supreme Being.1 o As to the so-called
Pygmies of Lake Kivu, the Batwa, who are not real Pygmies at all but
pygmoids, and so much influenced, in body as in culture, by the
Negroes that they have quitted both the forest and the nomadic way
oflife, to take up at length a rudimentary sort of agriculture, their all-
seeing and all-knowing Supreme Beings, !mana, Rurema and Nyamu-
zinda,n are not original but derived in name and in other respects
from the local Negroes. The Boni also, who are isolated pygmoids
near the east coast of Africa, call their Supreme Being Waka, this
being the all-knowing and all-seeing high god of their neighbours the
Galla. 12

(b) BUSHMEN, HOTTENTOTS AND DAMARA

The divine name Tore is found elsewhere in various forms, not only
among the Pygmy Babinga 13 of the middle Congo (Thole, the Spider),
but also among the Sudanese Banda (Tere), Zande, Banziri (Tule) and
others,14 It is also to be found, it would seem,l4a among the Bushmen
in the form Thora, lo used among the north-eastern Bushmen of the
Kalahari (the Tati or Masarwa) to signify the Supreme Being who
sends rain and thunder, good or bad weather, and gives plenty or
famfne,l6 Another Bushman high god who resembles Thora is Kaang11
(or Kaggen, as the Kham Bushmen of Cape Colony style him, Cagn
among the Maluti Bushmen). Cagn knows what men do at the second
hand, for certain.birds inform him,1s All-seeing omniscience is attested
only for the Supreme Being of the north-western Bushmen, Khu,
Khuva or Huve, who punishes by means of the weather, and especi-
ally for Erob, among the Otjimpolo-Khun, who "knows everything",19
Thora has an opponent called Khauna. This name recurs among
the Hottentots in the form Gauna-b, where also he is the opponent of
Tsuni-Goam, their Supreme Being. Tsuni-Goam, or Tsui Goab, who
also is referred to vaguely as Khub, i.e. "c}lief" or "lord" (Hahn,
p. I27), is an "avenger who sees everything" (Hahn, p. I49), and his
all-seeing omniscience is directed to human conduct. "0 Tsu Goa, thou
alone knowest that I am without guilt"; "Do what you think, but you
will know (i.e. find out) Tsui-goab (that he will see your doings, that
he will punish you)" (Hahn, p. 62). On the other hand, Tsui-goab is
a sky-god; he lives in the red sky, whereas Gaunab lives in the black sky
(Hahn, p. 6 I, cf. pp. I 24, I 26). Thus we have here a particular instance
 AFRICA 33
of the well-known organic connection between divine omniscience and
the celestial nature of the deity.
Now the Hottentots, who, unlike the Bushmen, do not live by
hunting and food-gathering, but are pastoral, show some distant con-
nection with the pastoral peoples of N.-E. Africa, from the mass of
whom it would seem that an ancient nucleus of pre-Hottentots (Proto-
Hamites ?) were finally cut off by Bantu intrusion and, crossing with
the Bushmen, originated the Hottentots. Certainly it is especially
among the Hamites and Hamitoids (also the Hamite-infl'uenced
Bantu) of N.-E. Africa that we find recurring the typical crualism of
skygods, between the red, or white, sky and the black sky (see further,
pp. 39, 41.), as among the Hottentots.
Thus the question arises if the conception among the Bushmen of a
Supreme Being who knows everything and uses the weather to punish
the evil doings of mankind be not due to the influence of these "Hotten-
tots", who brought with them a sky-religion.zo The original idea
among the Bushmen (and Pygmies)-original, because rooted in the
very makeup of their culture, founded as that is upon hunting and
food-gathering2I-would be on the other hand that of a Lord of
Beasts, thought of as having the form of a beast himself (see the
Epilogue). This notion here and there survives and takes on a celestial
colouring; sometimes, however, it tends to centre around the figure
of the opponent of the supreme skygod.22
Something of much the same kind is to be found among the Dama
(or Damara) of south-west Africa. Being in touch with the Herero,
those of them who live in the plains have become goat-breeders, but
in the hills the so-called Bergdama have better preserved their own
original archaic civilisation and remain hunters, although they feel
the influence of the Hottentots (the Nama), whose language they have
also adopted. In the religion of these mountain Dama, Gamab is the
principal figure. Gamab is the singular of gamagu, feminine gamati,
meaning spirits of dead adults, respectively of men and of women,
who live with Gamab in the sky. Gamab is omniscient; he is above all
and knows all, sees what men do and hears what they ~ay. 2 a He is lord
of life and death. It is he who "opens the hunter's eyes to let him see
the game" and "shows a woman where the fruit-trees are".z" But it
is equally he who when he wishes smites the man with an arrow,
whereupon the person struck immediately begins to waste away and
perish, because the gamagu and gamati suck at his flesh until he dies,
and then devour his remains,2li all but the eyes, which, being the seat
of the soul, go to heaven and become stars, the ornaments of Gamab's
house. The idea that "the stars are the souls of the deceased" is found
among the Hottentots also. 2s Now, since the Hottentots are the car-
riers, as we have already said, of a sky-religion culminating in the
D
34 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
dualism of the two skygods who are each other's opponents, it is
highly probable that the original conception of the Dama high god
has taken on a celestial colour through Hottentot influence, and that
that is the origin of Gamab's power to see everything.21

(c) THE BANTU

The idea of a Supreme Being who sees and knows everything is
common to the generality of the miscellaneous populations of Negro
Africa, be they hunters, tillers of the soil or herdsmen, patrilineal or
matrilineal, totemists or animists, Bantu, Sudanese, Nilotics or
Kushites. Omniscience is usually attributed to a celestial Being who
is the author of weather-phenomena and uses them to exercise a
punitive sanction over men and their doings.
Among the Bantu,2s it is sometimes the case that the solar aspects in
the figure of their Supreme Being prevail over the characteristics of a
weather-god. For instance, among the Nilotic Bantu of N.E. Africa
that is so, while among the Zulu and other Bantu of the south, his
celestial character is overshadowed by animistic and ghostly aspects
due to crossing with the figure of the primal ancestor or primaeval
man (Unkulukulu among the Zulu, Hubeane among the Basuto and
so on). But in every instance omniscience, varyingly associated with
universal vision or hearing or with omnipresence, is the attribute of a
supreme skygod (or sungod, or both), and it is directed to the beha-
viour of men.
Among the Amakhosa Zulu, Qamata "sees everything". Among
the Ba-Ronga of Delagoa Bay, Rivimbi or Luvimba (or Raluwhimba,
as the Ba-Venda call him), is "gifted with omnipresence and omnisci-
ence". "If anyone steals a partridge from a snare set by someone else,
they say 'Luwimbi who is standing there over that tree sees you.' "
Among the Basuto, Modimo sees everywhere. 29 For the A-Vemba of
northern Rhodesia, west of Lake Nyassa, Leza is "the all-knowing".
The Subiya of the Upper Zambesi, when they see a falling star, raise a
cry, saying. that it is Leza coming to look at his sons. According to the
Ba-lla, Leza sends the rain; in their language, Lu:.a wataba translates
tqe Latin Iuppiter pluit. He also makes wind, lightning, thunder, cold
and heat and so forth; the rainbow is the bow of Leza, thunder is his
voice, lightning is his mouth opening, and a hurricane is his descent
to the earth; he is everywhere always, and he "has long ears", i.e. he
hears even words secretly whispered. He is described as Muninde, i.e.
Guardian, and invoked in taking oaths. Among the Konde or Ngonde
at the northern end of Lake Nyassa, Leza is the master of the rain,
lightning is Leza coming down in a rage, while the people stand silent
or speak low, so as not to be heard and struck; sometimes he moves
among men in the form of a lion or a snake, to see what they are
 AFRICA 35
doing, "anyone who overreaches any orphan had better look out, for
God sees him" .3o
Although it has animistic implications, Mulungu is the name of the
Supreme Being among the Asena of the Lower Zambesi and ot;ller
Bantu peoples of East Africa. The Wa-Nyika of Nyasaland say
"wherever you go, Mulungu is there", and "as soon as you raise your
voice, Mulungu hears you", and again "even if you go into a hole to
hide, Mulungu can see you". According to the Shambala of the
hinterland of the east coast, "you cannot speak evil of your neighbour
without God (Mulungu) seeing you" .31
The \Va-Hehe of Lake Rukwa hold that their Supreme Being,
Nguluwi, is everywhere and sees everything; "if we do anything wrong,
He sees". To the Safwa, Nguruwi is.like the wind, but he is also the
same as the sun, because the sun is everywhere and is like an eye
which sees everything.az The solar aspect is especially marked in the
Supreme Beings of the Bantu and Nilotic Bantu peoples of Lakes
Tanganyika, Victoria and so on. Among the Nyamwesi the Supreme
Being, who is otherwise known as Mulungu, is Likuwe or Likube, i.e.
the Sun. "Go where you will, He is there"; "in your neighbour's belly
it is as dark as in a forest, but God sees clearly there." For the Kulia,
east of Victoria Nyanza, God (Riuba, the Sun) "knows everything";
and among the Chagga of Kilmanjaro, Ruwa is the all-seeing high
god, "if anyone does ill, even at night, Ruwa sees him." 33
Among the Bantu of Ruanda and Urundi, between Victoria Nyanza
and Lake Kivu, the Supreme Being, !mana, is all-knowing and all-
seeing, and nothing is hidden from him. This is plain from numerous
proverbs, turns of speech and formulae of divination, asseveration and
swearing, as "!mana sees me", "!mana watches over me", "May
!mana see and punish you", "Imana sees to-morrow's affairs". It is
clear also from the very names given to I mana, as "He who sees",
"He who looks at me", "He who watches",. and from personal names
compounded of that of the god, e.g. "!mana sees", "I mana knows
it", "I mana sees everything" and so forth. a'
The Supreme Being is known as Kalunga in a large area of central
\Vest Africa, reaching from the interior to the Atlantic coast.a6 Among
the Aandonga Ovambo of Southern Angola, one of the most primitive
Bantu peoples, Kalunga sees and hears everything, knows everything,
nothing escapes him, no one can deceive him. He sees if anyone steals,
or if a girl is with child. "Kalunga has long ears, and his eyes can see
even in the dark."a&
Along the West Coast and extending far into the interior, even to
the Barotse of the Transvaal, the prevailing name of the Supreme
Being is Nsambi (also Nyambi, Nyame and other' forms). Among the
Ba-Fioti, Ba-Vili and other Bantus of Loango in the French Congo, in
 THE ALL-KNOvVING GOD
the Kvilu basin, Nsambi, who lives in the sky, gives rain and drought,
sends blessings and punishments, especially punishments for fraud and
perjury, and is omnipresent and omniscient, knows not only the deeds
but even the thoughts of men. Day and night, whether they wake or
sleep, whether they are in the open or inside their huts, he always sees
them, and no deaths or disasters can occur on earth without his
knowledge. a1
Still further north, in the Cameroons, among the Ba-Kwiri, the
Supreme Being Owase, who gives rain, has among other attributes that
of omnipresence and also of omniscience. "Owase knows everything",
because from his dwelling in the sky he can let his eyes wander over
everyplace and behold everything.a7a

(d) THE SUDANESE

Among the Yoruba of the Guinea Coast, Olorun is the Supreme
Being, the chief of the numerous spirits (orisha) or gods, 401 in all,
small and great, who give the Yoruba religion its definitely polytheistic
character. The name Olorun means "Lord of heaven", orurz being both
the bright sky and the sun. He is often pictured "as being composed
of myriads of eyes", which we must not understand, as Talbot appar-
ently does, to mean that he contains "all the orishas within himself",
but as signifying that he "sees everything". 38 If Olorun is "the Zeus of
the Yoruba pantheon", as Frazer says, the same is true of Uwolowu,
the sky god of the Akposo, a Yoruba-speaking tribe in Togoland, and
also of Buku among the Ana of Atakpame.asa
1\!Iawu, the Supreme Being of the Ewe of Togoland on the Slave
Coast, is even more transparently a sky-god. Ellis defines him as "the
indwelling spirit of the firmament, the deified canopy of the heavens"
The material sky is called d;:;ingbe, but the name of l\'!awu himself also
is used indifferently to mean "God" or "the sky". "vVherever the sky
is there is God; for the sky is God." The light which floods the sky is
com:eived as the oil with which l\1awu anoints his gigantic body; the
blue colour of the sky is the veil behind which he hides his face; and
the variou~ formations of the clouds are the robes and ornaments
which he puts on from time to time. In the worship ad<;lressed every
week and every month to Mawu the worshipper brings him his offering
saying "0 great God, who seest my thoughts, here I bring thee ... "
"Dzingbe (the sky) sees you" is a common exclamation among the
Ewe. Anyone who has been wronged is accustomed to curse his
wronger by saying, "God will find you", or "Vve will give an account
to Him who sees us of what you have done".a 9
Again, among the tribes of the Gold Coast, the supreme Being
Nyongmo among the Gii-, Nyankuponamong the Ts/zi-speaking peoples,
(0) Nyame among the Ashanti is none other than the Sky-God. The
 AFRICA 37
Gas and Tshissay "Nyongmo" or "Nyankupon knocks"= "it is thunder-
ing", "N. has come", ="it is raining'', and so on, in just the same way as
the ancient Greeks ascribed these phenomena to Zeus, who snowed,
rained, hailed, gathered clouds, and thundered. Christaller, in his
Dictionary of the Ashante and Fante Language (Basel 1881, p. 342), takes
the name to mean "the Shining One", from a root nyam-correspond-
ing in sense to the Indo-European diu-. Ellis on the other hand thinks
that it signifies "the Omniscient". There is no doubt that the Tshi
sky-god is indeed credited with universal vision and omniscience.
Nyankupon knows and hears everything; people who die by being
struck with lightning are supposed to be the victims of his chastisement
for having spoken disrespectfully of him."'o Among the Ashanti also,
Nyame or Onyame, the Supreme Being who has the same name as the
sky, is omnipresent and omniscient and knows everything, even our
thoughts:n One of their proverbs says: "If you wish to tell anything
to the Supreme Being, tell it to the wind." 42 In a hymn of the Akan
(Ashanti) the omniscience of God, Onyame, is celebrated in the
following terms:
The sun shines and burns brightly down on us,
The moon rises in her splendour.
The rain falls and the sun shines again,
But the eye of God excels all these things,
Nothing is hidden from it.
You may be in the house, you may be in the water,
Or in the thick shade of the trees,
It is over you in every place.
You think you are more cunning than an orphan child,
You plot to take his goods and you cheat him,
And you think "No one can see me."
Consider, you are before the eye of God,
He will give you your reward sometime,
Not to-day, not to-day, not to-day.43

In the interior of the Sudanese region Wende is the Supreme Being

among the Mossi of Yatenga in the French Sudan. Lightning strikes
men as the instrument of Wende's chastisement, and may also strike
a stolen or otherwise ill-gotten beast. \Vende is omnipresent and
nothing is hidden from him; he knows everything and is called upon to
witness assertions: "Dieu connait mon interieur et il sait qu'il n'y a
rien dedans." Another saying is "Even if a crime is committed at night,
God knows it." Among the Ba-Chama of the upper Benue and other
peoples of the Adamaua, Nzeanzo, a prominently solar being, "is
called the 'all-seer', 'the power that overshadows all', 'the hollow of the
tree' (i.e. the place of refuge) .... Everything that happens is carried
to his car by the wind; he is likened to the house-lizard, for he beholds
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
all that takes place; and to the small black ant, for just as this ant
scents out food, so Nzeanzo discerns your innermost thoughts."H
Among the Azandc or Nyam-Nyam of the upper Uelle, thttSupreme
Being is called Mboli, and prayers are addressed. to him in time of
drought. Also, "the lightning is there where Mboli is, as if his dog".
Among the personal theophoric names compounded of his is Mbolin-
abilo, which means "Mboli sees you". Mboli punishes evildoers with
diseases and death, and since the thunderbolt is one of the punitive
means which he uses to enforce his commands, when a thunderstorm
comes on the natives declare their innocence, accompanying their
protestations (e.g. "I have not stolen things of any man") with a spirt
of water from their mouths;t5

(e) NILOTIC AND NILOTO-HAMITIC PEOPLES

The Nilotic peoples in the proper sense include, from north to south,
the Shilluk, Nuer, Dinka, Luo, Acholi, Lango, and others. Among the
Shilluk of the White Nile, the Supreme Being is Jwok, who lives far
above and sends rain. He is yomo, that is wind or spirit, and like the air
is able to be present everywhere, consequently he can see everything,
searching even into the depths of men's hearts.4 6 Among the Nuer, the
Supreme Being, Kot, sees and knows everything; nothing, not even the
mysteries of the human heart, is hidden from him. He is a sky-god (kot
means "rain" in one of the Nilotic languages), and is styled also diom,
i.e. "wind". Like the wind, Kot is invisible and is also the author of
thunderstorms, lightning and thunder being signs of his anger, while
if a man is struck by lightning, it is said that Kot has taken him.
Among the Dinka, the idea of a Supreme Being oscillates between Njalic,
which means "up above", and Dengdit, which means "great rain".
Both Njalic and Dengdit are credited with universal knowledge
arising from universal vision; Njalic sees everything, by night and day,
beholds and punishes (with the thunderbolt) those who murder or
rob, and is called upon in disputes to witness the truthfulness of the
parties. Dengdit sees everything from the sky, and oaths are taken in his
name. 47 Other Supreme Beings of the Sf.ime character are: Kot among
the Nuer, also styled diom, i.e. "wind", who sends lightning and
thunderstorms as his chastisements; Djuok among the Luo or Djur,
who sees everything: Lubanga among the Acholi (Uganda), who sends
rain and punishes human actions, particularly manslaying and
adultery and knows even the innermost thoughts; Jok among the
Lango, and others. 4s As for the Niloto-Hamites, we find in the northern
group among the Lotuko a Supreme Being, Ajok the Creator, who is
lord of rain, is everywhere, although invisible; he sees and knows
everything. Similarly, among the Didinga, their high god Katkuyen,
"the Most High", or Tamukuyen, "he who is above the rain", is
 AFRICA 39
everywhere, invisible, all-seeing and all-knowing. The Suk believe in
49

an omnipotent, omniscient being. His name is Tororut, i.e. "the sky".

He lives above; Seta, his wife, is the constellation of the Pleiades, Asis,
the sun, is his younger brother, the stars are his sons, the moon (Arawa)
his first-born son and the Evening Star his firstborn daughter. Rain
(1Iat) is also a son ofTororut. They say that Tororut is human in form,
but having wings-huge wings, the flash of which causes the lightning,
and the whirring thereof is the thunder. He "knows all the secrets;
all cattle diseases and calamities are sent by him as punishment to
men for their sins",5o "The Nandi believe in a god of the bright
sky whose name is Asista, from asis" ("light", also "day"). "An alter-
native word for 'god', used by the Nandi, is cheptalil, which was ex-
plained as meaning 'the sun, because he has one round trye'. Etymo-
logically, it seems to mean 'the thing that always (still) gleams or
shines' "; cf. Chepkeliensokol, an epithet of Asis, meaning "the thing
of nine legs or rays", also Chepkelienpokol, "the thing of a hundred
rays." 51
The Masai of Kenya, the most southerly of the Niloto-Hamites, are
culturally the most like the Hamites proper. Their Supreme Being
Ngai, or Engai (the name means "sky", also "rain"),li 2 .is a genuinely
celestial being with especial stress on his functions as weather-god.lia
Ngai lives in the sky; the wind is the breath ofNgai, who "has nostrils";
the lightning is the dreadful glance of Engai's eye; the thunder is his
cry of joy at what he has seen. During the long rainy season, when the
cattle grow sleek, the raindrops are the tears of joy which Ngai sheds
at s.ight of the fat beeves; and during the short rainy season, when the
cattle pine for lack of pasture, the raindrops are his tears of sorrow at
the melancholy spectacle. A characteristic of Ngai is his polychrome
appearance, expressed in the varying colours of the heavens. The
?\1asai indeed distinguish a black and a white Ngai, a grey and a red.
But these different forms reduce to the two which are complementary
and antithetical, the black and the red Ngai, respectively the good god
(because the "black", that is to say clouded, sky brings rain) and the
bad one (because the red or hot sky brings drought). In myths we
actually get the red god contrasted with the black one; the latter wants
to give men water, the former to withhold it. Besides, the Masai, like
the Nandi, according to Hollis, distinguish two kinds of thunder. That
which breaks out loudly and close at hand belongs to the red god,
wlule that which is heard rumbling in the distance is the black god's
thunder. "When one hears the thunder crashing in the heavens it is
the red god who is trying to come to the earth to kill human beings;
and when one hears the distant rumbling, it is the black god who is
saying, 'Leave them alone, do not kill them'." Ngai is all-knowing;
"Ngai knows" is a common saying in the mouths of the !vfasai. His
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
universal knowledge is based on universal vision and the organs of this
vision are the sun by day and the stars by night, the former his great
daytime eye, the latter his numerous night-time eyes. With them he
beholds what men are doing, a falling star is one of the eyes of Ngai
coming closer to the earth to see better. The Milky Way is the road on
which the sons of Ngai, i.e. the brighter stars, walk and from which
they behold the doings of men and report on them to God. The smallest
stars, the stellar dust which forms the Milky \..Yay, are his cattle, being
led to water at two lakes (the nubes maior and the nubes minor).

(j) CUSHITES
The idea of a Supreme Being who is all-seeing and all-knowing is
common to the Hamites of East Africa or Cushites, both those of the
Ethiopian plateau (the Highland or Northern Cushites) and those of
the region sloping away to the Red Sea coast (the Lowland Cushites).
If may therefore go back to the primitive Hamite religion, or at least
to its proto-Cushite form, although we must not leave out of count the
overlaying by foreign elements, especially among those peoples who
have been converted to Christianity (the Ethiopians or Abyssinians) or
Islam (the Somali, Dankali and Begja).
Among the Galla or Oromo, who are still pagan, and are of the
Lowland Cushites, the Supreme Being is known as Waqa (Waq,
vVaqayo, Uaga, Wuaka).o 3 Waqa sees all and knows all; he is invoked
by the Ittu Galla as omniscient, while the Arussi Galla regard him as
knowing all the secrets of nature and man, as one "dont le savoir n'est
pas emprunte", "dont Ia science ne connait pas de limites". "If I
know one or two people", they say, "I know them because I have seen
them with my eye; thou (Waqa), even if thou hast not seen them with
thine eye, knowest them with thy heart". 5 4 One of the most usual forms
of asseveration, in oaths and elsewhere, is "\Vaqa knows" or "\Vaqa
sees me", or again "Do not say, 'Waqa does not see me', he will have
the last word"; or "The evil which lurks at the bottom of a man's
entrails is as night for men's eyes, but is as day for the eyes of God",
or "The eye of vVaqa can see through walls" . 66 Among the \Vollega,
or wesfern Galla, Waqa or Waqayo "sees all and knows all", and is
invoked in oath-taking.ss
On the other hand, Waqa is likewise the name of the (personified)
sky, so much so that we hear of a black and a white Waqa, or even of
a black-and-white one. The first of these, it is generally said, refers to
the blue sky, as the same word, gural, means in the Galla language
both blue and black 57 The second term would refer consequently to the
cloudy sky, i.e. covered with white clouds. But I believe that the opposite
is the truth, i.e. that the "black" Waqa is the darkened sky, whether
nocturnal or hidden behind the stormy clouds which presage rain, and
 AFRICA
that the white Waqa, corresponding to the red sky among the Masai
and Hottentots (above, p. 39) and also, as we shall soon see, among
the Hadiya, is the daytime or light sky in which the sun shines. Indeed
Waqa is not only the sky (the rainbow being his "scarf") but also and
in particular the sun, "Waqa of the thirty rays". 58 Among the Hadiya
or Gt;tdiella, who are highland Cushi tes and belong to the Sidama
family (eastern Sidama) the Supreme Being is called Wa'a. These
people are nominally Muslims, but in reality still cling to their ancient
paganism. 59 Wa'a indeed means "sky" as well (Cerulli; p. 641). Thus
Wa'a likewise is the sky as god, and is prayed "not to stop the rain"
or "not to deny the rain" (to the rain-makers). He, like Waqa, is
thought of and addressed as "black" (hiemdc Wa'a) or "red" (kaldr
fVa'a), and here the "black" Wa'a (hiemdcca or yiimdcca) is the night-sky
(himo means "night") or the darkened sky, covered with clouds, in
antithesis to the "red" vVa'a who is the sky by day, bright and lit up
by the sun. We may compare the parallel prayers to him, "Make the
day pass prosperously" and "make the night pass prosperously". "Red"
is also the colour of the sun, kalara ellnco, while "black" is likewise the
colour of dawn, hiemdc dara (Cerulli, pp. 621, 622, 624, 635). It is from
this celestial or solar nature of Wa'a that his omniscience comes,
according to the well-known association. This is made clearer than
ever by the valuable evidence collected by Cerulli. He deals with a
number of turns of phrase relating to Wa'a, as "Sight belongs to thee",
"Knowledge belongs to thee", "Make us see well", "Know us and
we shall know", "Man knows when thou hast made him know",
"When thou hast known, we also know", which Cerulli explains as
meaning, "when you, the sky-god, have looked with your eye (the sun)
and therefore enlightened us, then and not till then we men are able
to see with our bodily eyes." Thus the sight of human eyes is dependent
upon the vision of the eye of God, that is to say the sunlight. This
religious idea is often repeated in Hadiya songs and gives the true
explanation of the semantic group eye-sun-light-knowledge, all which
words, in the Cushite speech, come from one and the same root
(Cerulli, p. 621, note 2). "The chief attribute of the sky-god," he says
on p. 6o4, "is sight, represented as light, the sun being his eye, where-
fore he is prayed to 'look with an eye of favour', to 'make us see well',
'knowing and making to know'. In this connection he is the 'red
god' ."Go
Among the Giangero or northern Sidama, whose old pagan religion
survives despite their "conversion" to Christianity as a result of their
conquest by the Abyssinians in r8g4, the Supreme- Being is Ha'o the
sky-god, whose eye is the sun. The king of the Giangero never went out
by day, lest his glance should meet "the light, the glance of the sky-
god's sun-eye". 6 1
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Among the Kaffa, or western Sidama, Heqo or Yero corresponds to
Ha'o. His name, before it was used to signify the Christian God, was
"the old name of the skygod, the vault of the sky" deified among the
heathen Cushites" 62 ; Heqo is invisible, lives in the sky, from which he
now and then comes down to the earth, "sees all, knows all".aJ Among
the Nao al!d other tribes of the Ghimira group the Supreme Being is
known as Yero. For them as for other Sidama tribes "sky and God are
blended in one word". 64 The Omo Sidama or Ometi are nominally
Monophysites, like the Walamo, but nevertheless they keep up very
old Cushite beliefs and religious practices, although blended with
foreign (probably Negro) elements. Their Supreme Being, Tuossa
among the Walamo, Tsossa for the Zala, Tsuossa among the Gofa
and Tsose among the Budditu, has a different name from that of the
sky, which the Walamo call srya, ~e Zala salua and the Gofa buolla. He
nevertheless shows various indications of his celestial character,
especially in his power to see everything, which is closely connected
with the old Cushite idea of the sun being an eye, i.e. that of the
heavens ("sun" is awa, "eye" is afye, from the same root ib or if,
meaning "light, sun, eye", cf. note 6o).a~>
The Cunama, who, like the Baria, show wide differences from the
Hamites both in speech and culture, yet believe in a Supreme Being
called Anna, who is all-seeing and all-knowing. He may derive
ultimately from the Hamites, always supposing that he is not simply a
reflex of the Muslim Allah.ae

NOTES

1. Paul Schebesta, Die Bambuti-Pygmiierz vom Ituri: Ergebnisse ;:,weier For-

sclzungsreism ;:,u den ;:,entralafrikanischen P;gmiien, ii Band, 3 Teil: Die Religion
(Brussels 1950). Among his earlier publications, the two volumes entitled
Bambuti, tlie Zwerge vom Kongo (Leipzig 1932) and Der Urwald ruft wieder
(Salzburg and Leipzig 1936) may be mentioned. .
2. cr. Schebesta, "Tore, le dieu forestier des Bambuti", in Zai"re, i (I947),
p. I8I, part of a controversy with B.]. Costermans ("Tore, God en Geesten
bij de Mamv~ en hun dwergen", in Congo, I938, i, p. 532 sqq.).
3 Schebesta, Die Religion, pp. 208 sq., 2 I 9 sqq.
4 Ibid., p. 223.
5 Scnebesta, "Religiose Idccn und Kulte der Ituri-Pygmaen", in A.R. JV.
30 (1933), p. 128; Bambuti, p. 22I.
6. Same, Die Religion, pp. 58, 69.
7 Ibid., pp. I55, I67, 2I6 sqq.
8. cr. Schmidt, Ursprung, iv (1\Hinster ifW I 933)' p. 266 sq.
g. Schebcsta has at length decidedly admitted the importance of myth and
magic in the Pygmy religion ("Gott ist dcr grusste .Magier", Die Reli~ion, p.
 AFRICA 43
226; "Die Magic ist der Bambuti-Religion wesentlich", ibid., p. 235 sqq.).
He writes (,Zai're 3, I949, p. 483): "Jc dois a Ia verite de reconnaitl'c que mcs
publications sur Ia religion des Bambuti ont revetujusqu' a cejour un caractcre
provisoire.... Personnellement je n'ai jamais doute du caractcre hypothctique
de mes informations sur Ia religion des Bambuti." And, in Reli'gion, p. 227, he
warns us that "nur Bruchstiicke der Bambuti-Religion waren W. Schmidt
bekannt, und seit Veroffentlichung meines Forschungsmaterial ist die Situa-
tion cine andere gcworden." Schebesta also abandons Schmidt's thesis that
there is a cultural connection between the African Pygmies and those of Asia
(Bambuti-Pygmiien II, 2 :. Das so;;iale Leben, Brussels I 948, p. 30 I, cf. Anthropos
I940-4I (pub. I944), pp. 1090-98; I942-45, 877-79).
Io. Father H. Trilles, Les Pygmies de la Foret equatoriale (Paris I933}, I26.
Hence (see Trillcs, ibid.) the precaution of not exposing oneself to the moon-
light, cf. the Cape Bushmen (Bleek-Lloyd, Sjucimerzs of Bushman Folk-lore,
London I9I I, p. 67) and the Kalahari Bushmen (Dornan in J.R.A.l. I9I7,
p. 8o).
I I. Father Schumacher in Schmidt Festschrift (Vienna I 928), 677 sqq.; same,
Die Kiwu-Pygmiien, (Brussels I950).
I2. :Mgr. Le Roy, Les P;gmees, ed. 2, I8o; Pettazzoni, Miti e Leggende i
(Turin I 948), 329 sqq.
I 3 M. L. Douet, Les Babingas ou Yadingas, peuple nain de Ia Foret equatoriale,
in L'Ethnographie 19I4, 27; Pettazzoni, op. cit., p. 393
14. Baumann, Schiipfung u. Ur;;eit, pp. 121, 123.
140. See Schebesta, Die Religion, p. 228.
15. This form was already known to Leibnitz (Collectanea Etymologica,
Hanoverae, 1717, p. 377}, according to Th. Hahn, Tsuni Goam, the Supreme
Being of the Khoi-Khoi (London 1881), p. 130. Facts and testimonies regarding
the Bushmen are assembled in my article, "Allwissende hochstc \Vesen", in
A.R. W. x:cix, pp. I 26-29.
16. Dornan in E.R.E., xii, p. 207, ].R.A.I., I9I 7, p. 52.
17. "Kaang fait vivre et il fait mourir; il donne ou refuse Ia pluie" (Arbous-
set I842).
18. Orpen, A Glimpse into the .~.li;thology of the A-faluti Bushmen (I874).
19. Lebzelter in Schmidt Festschrift, 412; W. Schmidt in Africa, 1929, 297, n. I.
20. The praying man'tis also, which stands in the foreground of Bushman
beliefs (sec \V. H. I. Bleck, The Mantis and his Friends, Cape Town 1923) as chief
or creator, and is called Kaggen among the Cape Colony Bushmen, is paralleled
not only among the Hottentots, who call himgauna-b (Hahn, p. 42) in the sense
of "spirit" or "supernatural being" in general and get good omens from him,
but also among the Sandawe of Tanganyika (see Father M. van Kimmenade
in Anthropos 1936, p. 41 I} and in N.-E. Africa in the Ethiopian sphere. Indeed,
in Begamder and in Scioa the mantis "annonce des rccoltes abondantcs
specialement pour celui sur lequel elle s'est posee" (M. Griaule in Joum.
Asiatique, I928, i, 55). Among the Galla of Harar, on the other hand, it is
unlucky (Chambard in Rev. d' ethnographic et des traditions populaires, vii, I926,
I 23 sqq.). On the Sandawe as backward representatives (like the Kindiga) of
the palaeo-African substratum to which the Bushmen and Hottentots belong,
44 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
with overlying strata of Bantu and Hamite origin, sec 0. Dcmpwolff, Die
Sandaue (Hamburg, 1916); C. TasteYin in Anlhropos, 1936, 395i H. Baumann
in Volkerkwzde vo11 Afrika (Essen, 1940), 202 sq.
21. For the question of the original cultural unity of the Bushmen and
Pygmies sec H. Baumann, Die afrikanischen Kulturkreise, in Africa, vii (1934),
129, and in :(eitsclzr.f. Etlmol.lxx (1938), 2I8; W. Hirschberg, ibid., lxv (1933),
119; same, :(ur Geschichte der afrikanischen Kulturkreise in Recke-Festschrifl (~'lunich,
1939); same, The Problem qf Relationship between P;gmies a11d Bushmen in Africa,
vii, 444; Schcbcsta, Die Religion (1950), p. 229.
22. For instance, the gigantic elephant Gor or Goru among the Gabun
Pygmies of the French Congo, who possibly is the rudimentary form of their
high god Khmvum; sec Trilles, op. cit. sup. (n. 10), 78 sqq., and for interesting
parallels in thought and-culture among the so-called Batwa Pygmies of Lake
Kiwu, cf. Father Schumacher, cited in Schmidt, Ursprung iv, p. 393 sqq., also
Baumann in :(eitschr.f. Eth. hoc, 220. Gor, the Lord of Elephants, who when an
elephant is killed by a hunter is honoured with a sacrifice of the fat from about
its right car, speaks in the thunder and sends wing-storms. Another manifesta-
tion of Khmvum is the rainbow, to which is offered the first fish caught or the
first fruit gathered. Among the Bakango Pygmies we get ~1ungu, the Supreme
Being, assimilated to or identified with the rainbow which presages ill luck,
and likewise among the Ituri (Schebesta, Die Religion, pp. 16, 205). Among
the Hottentots the rainbow is the work of Gaunab, to make men die (Hahn,
Tsuni Goam, p. 74).
23. H. Vedder, Die Bergdama (Hamburg I923), i, 78; cf. my article in
A.R. W. xxix ( 1931 ), I 22, and Miti e Leggende i, p. 40 sqq.
24. Vedder in Africa 1930, I 86.
25. Among the Cape Colony Bushmen "some sorcerers arc said to cat the
flesh of the dead", Miss L. C. Lloyd, A short account qffurther Bushman material
collected (London 1889), 22.
26. Elsewhere too, for instanoe among the Subiya (Bantu of the Upper
Zambesi), "on dit que les etoiles sont les yeux des gens qui sont morts il y a tres
longtemps", Jacottet, Etudes sur les langues du Haut-:(ambese ii (Textes Soubi;a),
Paris 1899, 150. Among the Babinza or Babinja of the Belgian Congo "on
the death of anybody one of his eyes is said to leave the body and go to 1Humbo",
the skygod; G. C. Ishmael in A1an 1910, No. 68. Cf. H. Kunike, "Sternenmy-
thologie aufethnologischer Grundlage", in H1elt u. A1ensclz, i-ii Vicrteljahrsbcilage
~u Die Sterne vii (Leipzig 1927).
27. Among the Heikom Bushmen Gamab, chief of the spirits, sometimes kills
a man by flinging a star at him (Lebzelter in Schmidt Festschrift, p. 410). Among
the Masai, where celestial dualism is highly developed, a falling star is one of
the many eyes of Ngai the Supreme Being coming closer to the earth in order
to see better, cf. p. 40.
28. Cf. C. Meinhof, "Der Gottesbegriff dcr Bantu," in Allgemei11e Alissions-
:(eitsclzr. I ( 1923); same, Die Religionen der Afrikaner i11 ilzrem :(usammmlzang mit
dem Wirtschaflsleberz (Oslo 1926); Fassmann, "Die Gottesvcrehrung bei den
Bantu-Ncgern", in Anthropos 1909, pp. 574-89; Rev. W. Wagner, "The Ntu
God-Names," in Supplementa Afticana ii (Innsbruck 1927).
29. C. McCall Theal, The yellow- and dark-skinned People qf Africa south qf
 AFRICA 45
the ,Zambesi (London I9IO), I89; Wagner, op. cit., P 565; H. A. Junod, The
Life of a South African Tribe (Neuchatel 1912-13), ii, 350; C. Hoffmann, "Sotho-
Texte aus dern Holzbusch-Gebirge in Transvaal", in ,Zeitschr. f. Eingeborerz-
ensprachen xix (I928-29), 269, 275
30. Jacottet, op. cit., pp. 105-6 (on the Subiya); Rev. W. Smith and Capt.
A. M. Dale, The /!a-speaking Peoples of Northem Rhodesia (London 1920), ii,
I 97-212; i, 355; C. Goulds bury and H. Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northem
Rhodesia (London 1911), p. 8o. D. R. Mackenzie, The spirit-ridden Konde
(London 1925), pp. 179-81.
31. P. Schebesta, "Religi6se A~chauungen der Asena", in Bibliotheca
Africana iii, I (I929), pp. 1-1 I. Stigand, Notes on the Natives of Nyassaland, N.E.
Rhodesia, and Portuguese ,Zambn:.ia, in J.R.A.I. xxxvii (I 907), pp. I 19 sqq., I 30; cf.
also Baumann, Schopf. u. Ur;;., 39 l\fgr. A. Le Roy, La religion des primitifs
(Paris I925), I84, quoting Krapf-Rebmann, Nyika-English Dictionary (1887).
E. Johanssen and P. Doring, "Das Leben der Schambala bcleuchtet durch
ihre Sprichworter"' in ,Zeitschr. f. Kolonialsprachen v (I 914- Is)' p. 3 I 6.
32. 0. Dempwolff, "Beitdige zur Volksbeschreibung der Hehe", in Biissler-
Archiv iv, 3 (I9I3), r61. Kootz-Kretschrner, Die Safwa (Berlin I926-29) i,
234 sqq.
33 Fritz Spellig, "Die Wanjamwesi", in ,Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. I927, p. 225;
W. Blohm, Die Nyamwe;;i (Hamburg I933), I91; F. Bosch, Les Warryamwesi
(Munster if\V I930), p. 34 0. Dempwolff, "Beitdige zur Kenntnis der Spra-
chen in Deutsch-Ostafrika", in Zeitschr.J. Kolonialsprachen v (I9f4-IS), p. I32
(on the Kulia). Ch. Dundas, Kilimanjaro and its People (London 1924), pp. I21-
22; B. Gutmann, "Die Gottesidee der Wadschagga am Kilimandscharo", in
Globus xcvi (1909-11), 100 sq., 128 sq. J. Raum, "Die Religion der Landschaft
Moschi am Kilimandjaro", in A.R. W. xiv (I9I I), p. 192 sq. Rev. N. Starn in
Anthropos xiv-xv (1919-20), 973; G. Wagner, "Die Religion der Bantu von
Kavirondo", in :(,eitschr.J. Ethnol, lxxi (1939), 213 sqq.
34 .father AI. Arnoux in Anthropos vii (1912), p. 284 sq.; Father G. Pages,
ibid. xiv-xv (19I9-2o), p. 957; Father B. Zuure, "Irnmana, le Dieu des Barun-
di", ibid. 1926, pp. 739 sqq., 746, 75 I, 768; Rev. L. Classe, "The Supreme
Being among the Banyaruanda", in Primitive Jv/an ii (1929), p. 57
35 On the 'matriarchal' facies of this area see Baumann, "Vaterrecht u.
Mutterrecht in Afrika", in :(,eitschr.f. Eth.lviii (I 926), pp. 62- I 62; A. I. Richards,
"lVIother-right among the Central Bantu", in EJSays presented to C. G. Seligman
(London 1934), p. 267. The type of a celestial supreme being is however
represented there by Efile Mokulu among the Basonge and other Luba (E.
Torday and T. A. Joyce, Notes ethnographiques sur des populations habitant les
bassins du Kasai et du Kwango Oriental (Brussels I922), 25 sqq.), ~faweze or
~fauesse among the Bapende in the Kasai basin (Father Delaere in Anthropos,
I942, 628: "Maweze nous voit toujours et partout"), and others.
36. A. Pettinen, "Sagen u. Mythen d. Aandonga", in :(,eitsclzr.J. Eingebor-
enenspracherz xvii (1926-27), pp. 115 sqq. For the primitive traits, animistic and
manistic, of Kalunga, see Baumann, SchOpf. u. Ur;;., p. 89 and elsewhere.
37 Frazer, The ~VorshijJ of Nature, 170; Baumann, SchOpf. u. Ur;:.cit, 107.
E. Pcchucl-Loesche, Die Loango-Expedition iii, 2 (Stuttgart I 907), p. 266 sqq.,
cf. E. Torday, "Nzarnbi Mpungu", in Man 1930, No.3
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
37a. J. Ittmann, "Von der Gottesvorstellung der Bakwiri", in Africa viii
(I935), 355 sqq.
38. Talbot, In the Shadow of the B~h (London I9I2) ii, p. 29. Cf. Baumann,
op. cit., p. I 33
38a. Franz Muller, "Die Verehrung des hochsten Wesens in Atakpame", in
Anthropos i (I9o6), p. 509; "Die Verehr1.:1ng des Uwolowu bei den Akposo",
"ibid. ii (I907), p. 209.
39 A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa
(London I89o), p. 3I. J. Spieth, Die Ewe-Stiimme (Berlin I9o6), pp. 423, 436;
same, Die Religion der Eweer in Sud-Togo (Berlin I9I I), pp. 5, IS, 46; D. Wester-
mann, "Gottesvorstellungen in Oberguinea", in Africa I928, pp. 20I sqq., 204;
E. Funke, "Der Gottesnamen in den Togo-Sprachen", in Arclzivf. Antlzropologie,
XV (I9I6-I7), I6I sqq.

40. A. W. Cardinali, "The state of our present ethnographical knowledge

of the Gold Coast Peoples", in Africa ii (I929), p. 408. Ellis, The Tslzi-speaking
peoples of the Gold Coast of West. Africa (London I887), 24 sqq., cf. The Tontba-
speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast (London I894), 35 sqq.
'41. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvolker ii (r86o), r68 sqq.
42. R. S. Rattray, Ashanti (Oxford I923), p. 142.
43 Westermann, in Africa i (1928), 204.
44 Father E. Mangin, "Les Mossi", in Anthropos xi (I9IS-I6), r88 sqq.;
Baumann, op. cit., 148. C. K. Meek in Africa, 1930, pp. 327, 330; cf. his
Tribal Studies in Northern Nigeria (London 193 I,) i, 25 sqq.; Baumann, op. cit.,
I8o.
45 Mgr. C. P. Lagae, Les A;:.ande ou Niam-Niam (Brussels 1926), 67 sqq.
Cf. T. Philipps, "Some Aspects of Spiritual Religion of the Azande", in
Anthropos I946-49, I93 sqq. Also Gindri, the Supreme Being of the Lendu (west
of Albert Nyanza) "sees everything" (Baumann, op. cit., p. 126, quoting V.
Bosch in Congo 1932, i, pp. 368 sqq.); also Adronga (Adroa) among-the Lugwari
or Logbara, Northern Uganda (R. E. McConnell, in J.R.A.I. lv (I925),
46 I ; Father Egidio Ramponi, "Religion and Divination of the Logbara
Tribe," in Anthropos 1937, 869).
46. P. W .. Hofmayr, "Die Religion der Schilluk" in Anthropos vi (19I I),
121 sqq.; id., Die Schilluk, Modling-Wien 1925; Seligman, The Cult of
Nyakang and the Divine Kings of the Shilluk, London I 9 I I ; id., in Hastings,
E.R.E. XI (1920), p. 458 sqq.; F. Crazzolara, in Anthropos 1932, p. 188; P. P.
Howell and W. P. G. Thomson, "The Death of a Reth of the Shilluk and the
installation of his successor", in Sudan Notes and Records xxvii (1946) (also in
Africa '1948, p. 56).
47 G. Beltrame, Il Senaar e lo Sciangalla, Verotla I879, p. 241; C. G.
Seligman, in Hastings, E.R.E., IV, p. 704 sqq.; id., "The Religion of the
Pagan Tribes of the White Nile", in Africa I 93 I, p. 5; id., Pagan Tribes of the
Nilotic Sudan, London I932, passim; G. Willis, "The cult of Deng", in Sudan
Notes and Records xi (Ig28), pp. I95 sqq.; W. Schmidt, op. cit., viii (I949), pp.
wg, I22, I27.
48. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, "Some features of the Nuer Religion", inJ.R.A.I.
lxxxi {I95I), I sqq. W. Schmidt, Urspr. viii (1949), pp. 13, 39, 89, 266; R.
Boccassino, "La figura e le caratteristiche dell' Essere Supremo degli Acioli dell'
 AFRICA 47
Uganda", in Atti del }{/X Congresso internazionale degli Orientalisti ( 1935), Roma
1938, 162 sqq.; ibid., "La mitologia degli Acioli dell' Uganda", in AntlzrofJos
1938, p. 59 sqq.;J. H. Driberg, The Lango, London 1923, pp. 216-25.
49 Father L. Molinaro, "Appunti circa gli usi, costumi e idee religiose
dei Lotuko", in Anthropos 1940-41, p. 179; same, "I Didinga", ibid. 1935, p.
428.
50. N!. W. H. Beech, The Suk: their Language and Folklore (Oxford 1911),
19 sqq.
51. A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford Igog), pp. xix, 41 sqq., gg; Frazer, The
Worship of Nature, p. 281 sqq.; Hollis, "The Religion of the Nandi", in Trans.
of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions (Oxford 1go8) i,
p. 87; G. W. B. Huntingford, "Miscellaneous Records relating to the Nandi
and Kony Tribes", inJ.R.A.I.lvii (1927), p. 418; same, in Man 1928, No. 138;
same, in Man 1930, No. 79
52. 0. Baumann, Durch Masailand zur Nilquelle (Berlin 1894), p. 163 sqq.;
Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate (London 1902) ii, p. 83o; same, in
Hastings, E.R.E. viii, p. 481; A. C. Hollis, The Masai (Oxford 1905), p. 264,
and in Transactions i, p. 91; A. Merker, Di Masai, ed. 2 (Berlin 1910), p. 205
sqq.; A. Fokken, "Gottesanschauungen u. religiose Ueberlieferungen der
Masai", in Archiv f. Anthropologie 1917, p. 242 sqq.; D. St. Fox, "Further
Notes on the Masai", J.R.A.I. lx (1930), p. 461; Schmidt, Ursprung vii (1940),
334 sqq. The proper term is Ai, with the feminine article eng- prefixed, thus
giving the name an affectionate and caressing tone (Schmidt, Ursprung vii,
p. 403). Also eng-olong, "the Sun", is grammatically feminine, although thought
of as the husband of ol-apa, the moon (Huntingford, in J.R.A.I. lvii, 1927, p.
418). Ngai is called "my sister" in a woman's prayer (Fokken, cf. Schmidt
vii, 360), Waka also, among the Galla (see further, p. 40), is inv-.~ked sometimes
; as father and sometimes as mother (Schmidt, ibid., p. 30 and in Annali Lateranensi
i, 1937, p. 92).
53 Cf. F. Zanon, "Riti, costumi e credenze delle popolazioni Borana", in
Rivista delle Colonie, i (1936), P~ 188, n. I; A. Giaccardi, "Le popolazioni del
Borana e del Sidamo", ibid. 1937, pp. 1552 sq., 1556.
54 Father Martial de Salviae, Un Peuple antique au Pa;s de .i\1inllik: les Galla
(Paris ?Igoi), p. 121 sqq., 127; Father F. Aza1s, "Etude sur Ia religion du
peuple Galla," in Rev. d'Ethnographie et des traditions populaires vi (1925), p. 113;
Maria v. Tilling, "Gottesvorstellungen der heidnischen Galla," in Orientalistische
Literaturzeitung 1926, p. 947 sqq.; Schmidt, "Die Religion der Galla", in Armali
Lateranensi i (1937), pp. 83-152.
55 De Salviac, loc. cit.; Schmidt, loc. cit. and Ursprung vii, p. 76; Paulitschke,
Ethnographic Nordost-Afrikas, ii (Berlin I8g6), pp. 19 sq., 5Isqq.
56. D. Wassmann, Das Oromovolk auf unserm abessinisclzen Missionsfeld (Herr-
manns burg 1935), p. 53
57 A. '\Verner, in Man, 1913, p. go sq.
58. Paulitschke, op. cit., ii. 20 sq.
59 E. Cerulli, "Note su alcune popolazioni Sidama dell' Abissinia merid-
ionale", in Rivista degli studi orientali x, 4 (1925), pp. 597-692, who says (p.
6o6), "Islam, as formerly adopted by them, has been gradually absorbed
into their old heathendom, which assuredly was latent in the lowest classes of
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
the population"; even after the Islamic revival of the last half-century, the
Hadiya to-day pray equally to the old pagan sky-god (ibid., p. 610).
6o. ElUnto, "sun", and ille, "eye", alike come from the root if; which is
common to the northern and the lowland Cushites, while another root, ib,
has also the fundamental meaning of light, sun or eye (Cerulli, foe. cit., p. 637).
Seep. 42.
6I. Cerulli, Etiopia Occidentale ii (Rome I933), pp. I5, 20.
62. Same, ibid. i (Rome 1929), p. 2I5.
63. F. J. Bieber, Kaffa, ein altkuscitisches Volkstum in Inner-Afrika, ii (Vienna
I923), P 389.
64. Cerulli, op. cit., i, 240 sqq., ii, 53 sqq.; cf. G. :tvfontandon, Au Pays
Ghimirra (Paris and Neuchatel I9I3), 214 sq.
65. Cerulli, in Rivista degli Studi Orientali, xii, I (I 929), pp. I -6g. The Go fa
were afraid of meeting the king's eye and avoided coming face to face with him,
Cerulli, p. 46.
66. A. Pollera, I Baria e i Cunama (Rome 19I3), pp. go, 93; Littmann, in
Hastings, E.R.E., i, p. 56.

....
"

Chapter Il

EGYPT
....
(a) RE THE SUNGOD*

T
HERE is a god who knows all that men do, the Sungod Re.
In the Instructions for King Meri-ka-re, which have come down to
us in a papyrus of the eighteenth dynasty, but were probably
composed at an earlier date, I we read:

God knoweth the froward, and requiteth his sins in blood (line 49-50).
God knoweth him who worketh for him (line 67).
God, who discerneth characters (line 124).
God is cognisant of the (man) who worketh for him (line 130).
God knows every name (line I 38) .
..
Certain indications show that this God is the Sungod:

He arises in heaven at their desire (line 132); he maketh the dawn at their
desire, he sails by ( ?) in order to see them (men) (line 134).

The sun, indeed, sees everything; he is all-knowing essentially

because he is all-seeing. Above all, he sees and knows the actions of
men, and if they do ill he punishes them. We read in the same piece
of Wisdom-literature that "God slew his enemies and destroyed his
own children, because of their plots in making rebellion" (lines
133-34). The allusion is to the myth of the destruction of mankind,
willed by n~ other than Re, a further proof that the God of the Instruc-
tions is the Sun. This myth is found embodied in a magical text against
serpents, written on the walls of a chamber in the tomb of Sethos I
,.. (about 1310-1290 B.c.), at Thebes, and again in the tomb of Ramses
III (about 1 1g8-1 167 B.c.), likewise at Thebes. 2 There we read:

Men contrived a plot; His Majesty (i.e. the god Re) was then old; his bones
9 were of silver, his flesh golden, his hairs of pure lapis-lazuli. Now when His
Majesty was aware ofwhat was (contrived against) him by men, he said thus
unto his attendants: "Call mine eye to me."

Nothing, then, is hidden from Re, not even the secret contrivances of
men. The ~'eye" of Re is here the goddess Hat-hor, who receives
instructions from Re to exterminate the rebels.
The omniscience of the god is reflected in that of the king, in so far
E
so THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
as the king, being his son, shares in the solar nature. In the Instructions
for Meri-ka-re, 2 already quoted, the Pharaoh is "one who knows ...
wise from the instant he first saw the light" ,3 In the Teaching of Sehetep-
ib-re;' it is said that the king (Amenemhet III, 1844-1797 n.c.)
is the insight which is in men's hearts, and his eyes see through every body.
He is Re, by whose beams we see.

In a poem addressed to the king, dating from the New Kingdom, we

read:

When thou restest in thy palace, thou art told how it is in every land;
thou hearest the words of all lands, thou hast millions of ears.
Thine eye shines brighter than the stars of the sky, and thou canst see better
than the sun; though one speak with his mouth in a hole of the earth, yet it
comes to thine ear. If one do what is hidden, yet will thine eye perceive it,6

This all-seeing and all-knowing capacity of the king has for its prototype
that of Re, the Sun.
In a potsherd (ostracon) in the British Museum 6 are contained the
following words, addressed to the great Sungod of Thebes, Amon-Re:
"Thou findest out him that sinneth against thee." And in a demotic
papyrus, apparently somewhat later than the beginning of the Christian
era, 7 the divine omniscience is still celebrated in these words, among
others, "when the multitude raise their hands (in taking an oath), he
knows it." 8 This godwho "knows the perverse one planning evil", "is
aware of the pious who guards in his heart veneration for the deity",
"exalts the poor beggar because h~ knows his heart", and "even before
the tongue is questioned, knows its words", is also a god who makes
light and darkness, days, months and years, summer and winter,
vegetation and life, in short, probably a solar deity, and thus all his
omniscience reduces to that of the Sun.

(b) TROT
AQ.other god who is credited with omniscience is Thot.9 Thot, as the
inventor of writing and language, to the patron of scribes and himself
the scribe ofRen and of Osiris in the judgement of the dead, 12 possesses
all knowledge, even the most mysterious, in his capacity of "the
magician", "the great magician", "lord of magic (bike)", "great in
magic", "he who writes magic books",I 3 "mighty in his formulae",
and creator, that is to say giver of form, by means. of thought and
word.u But alongside of this knowledge which belongs to him as
magician, maker, constructor or demiurge Thot has an omniscience
of his own which is essentially intellectual; he is "the seeing and hear-
ing one", 1 s "whose heart is not ignorant".ta Especially, he knows the
 EGYPT
innermost thoughts of men and examines their hearts, he is "the know-
ing one who doth search out the hidden things of. the body", "he that
looketh through bodies and testeth hearts" .11 The king, too, is omnis-
cient in this sense,1 8 his omniscience being, as we have seen (above,
p. 50), a reflexion of RC's, of whom the Pharaoh is so to speak the
earthly image; but also his omniscience is in so many words assimi-
lated to Thot's; Pharaoh is "knowing like Thot", 19 "prudent of heart
like the Lord of Hermupolis", i.e. Thot.2o "Lo, his Majesty was one
who knew what happened; there was nothing of which he was ignorant;
he was Thot in everything.... " 21 Indeed, in one of the Pyramid texts
the king is assimilated now toRe and now to Thot. 22
This essentially intellectual omniscience of the god Thot is not,
though perhaps it might be thought to be so, a particular aspect of
his magical omniscience. Whatever Thot's original nature may have
been,2 3 there is no doubt that even at a very early date he was a god
of the moon.2-1 "Lord of heaven", also "bull of heaven" 25 is one of his
commonest epithets from the time of the New Kingdom, 26 but as early
.,
as the Pyramid texts Thot is the "bull among the stars", 27 "the chief
of Nut", 28 i.e. of the sky. All these epithets mark Thot as a moon-god.
The moon is an eye, as is the sun, the eye which sees in the night, as
the sun is the eye which sees by day. Indeed, the moon is thought of
as the "silver sun",2o or nocturnal sun, as "Re that shines in the
night" ,3o the sun's nightly substitute or lieutenant, to whom the sun
intrusts the task of taking his role at night, while he himself departs
for the sky of the lower regions, to lighten the country of the dead.31
As the Sun (Re) knows all because he sees all (cf. above, p. 49), so
the Moon (Thot) is all-knowing fundamentally because all-seeing. If
Thot's omniscience as magician and creator comes, as it may, from
original nature, whatever that was, this other omniscience, of the
seeing and knowing type, is in all probability to be connected with his
very ancient character as a lunar deity. Thot, indeed, "knows all that
happens in heaven". 32 But also, as we have seen, he knows all that is
done and thought by men on earth. In a confessional inscription fliQUl
Thebes, of the nineteenth dynasty, 33 Thot, god of the moon, is invoked
by one who had sworn falsely by his name. 34

(c) J"IORUS (HOR)

The sun is an eye, the moon is an eye; the moon, as an eye, is in
Egyptian mythology especially the eye of Horus (Hor), which was
torn out by Set, recovered by Horus and healed by Thot, according
to the myth.3s The sun as an eye is especially the Eye of Re, fur.ther
identified with a female deity, 36 Sa tis or Uto; who stands on the fore-
head of Rc in the shape of a serpent or, as Tefnut or Hat-hor, is sent
by him to destroy his enemies. 37 On die other hand the sun and moon
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
as eyes are together the two eyes of a single divine person, the Eyes of
Horus, as Plutarch calls them (De !side et Osiride 52, p. 372h), or the
Eyes ofRe. More precisely, the sun is the right, the moon the left eye. as
Seeing that Re is himself the sun, the idea of the sun and moon as his
eyes, i.e. of the sun or the moon as the eye of the sun, cannot be
original, but results merely from the identification of Re with Horus,
as Re-Harachte or the like; hence the sun and moon, the Eyes of
Horus, became the Eyes of Re. 39 We have now to see whether the sun
and moon were originally the Eyes of Horus or rather belonged at
first to some other deity, from whom they passed to Horus in the same
way, by identification.
Among the many figures of Horus4o we find one (Hr-mrtj, or
Hr-irtj, i.e. "Horus with the two eyes", ir-tj being the dual of the
feminine substantive ir-t, an eye),.n which was worshipped at Setennu,
otherwise Pharbaithos, the capital of the eleventh or Pharbaithite
nome of Lower Egypt. 42 This god is sometimes shown with a symbolic
eye on each hand. 43 A god, IJntj-irtj or MQ.ntj-irtj (the latter seems
to be the more archaic form), 44 that is "the god with two eyes in front"
(in his face or forehead), 4 5 is found to have been worshipped at Letopolis,
the capital of the second nome of Lower Egypt, 46 appearing as early
as the Pyramid texts as a local form of Horus, or more exactly of
Hr-wr, i.e. "Horus the Elder" (see below). IJntj-irtj was, more-
over, worshipped in Upper Egypt as well, particularly in Kus (Apollon-
opolis parua, in the fifth nome) and at Ombos (now Kom Ombo, in the
first nome),47 At Ombos he is called "Hntj-irtj, mighty in his two
eyes", and again, "His right eye is the sun by day, his left eye is the
moon by night, he lightens this land in the morning and in the evening,
and all eyes see because of his light." 48 At Ombos, again, it is especially
Hr-wrwho appears as 1Jntj-irtj.49 Furthermore, ina hymn from Ombos,
of the later Imperial epoch, Hr-wr is "he of the two eyes in his
forehead . the lord of the two u;:,at eyes; in his face are the sun
and the moon, his right (and left) eye are the solar disk and Atum,
his two divine eyes shine in the morning and in the evening.... "oo
But a god who has the sun and moon for eyes is likely to be a god
of the sky. Horus indeed is styled also "lord of the sky", 51 but this
epithet is common to many deities, and Horus may have got it, for
instance, by identification with Re the Sun.s 2 Horus, son of Osiris and
Isis (Harsiese), Horus the Child (Harpokrates) assuredly is not the
great sky-god whose eyes are the sun and moon, but Hr-wr might be, 5 3
who is a quite different Horus, the Horus of Plutarch (see de !side et
Osiride 12, p. 355 a), the son of "Rhea" and "Kronos", that is to say
of Nut and Geb 5 4 and therefore brother, not son, of Osiris, not Horus
the Child, but, as Plutarch gives his name, 'ApovYJpt~, 55 i.e. the
7TpEa{3vTpn~ ''!Jpo~, 'Horus the Elder' lfr-wr.ao
 EGYPT 53
Besides Hr-wr, there is another form of Horus, the double or the
prototype of him, that is Hr smsw, Horus the Eldest,6 7 who in some
texts of the Herakleopolite era (eleventh dynasty) shows especial rela-
tions with the sky,6 8 particularly with the starry night sky,r. 9 besides
the sunlit sky of the day.
If Horus "the elder" or "the eldest" had these celestial aspects, it is
not astonishing that he was thought of at Letopolis and elsewhere as
(m)bntj-irtj, that is as having the sun and moon for eyes, as is charac-
teristic of a sky-god. Instead of (m)bntj-irtj, "he who has the two eyes in
his face", as the name of the god of. Letopolis, we sometimes find, as
early as the Pyramid texts and more and more often later, from the
time of the Middle Kingdom on, the name (m)bntj-n-irtj as well. This
means literally "he who is without the two eyes in his face".eo In a
text relating to the enthronement of the new monarch, Sesostris I,
occurs a passag~in which Horus says to MQ.ntj-n-irtj, "Take my two
eyes in your face, to see". These words go with the presentation of the
"two eyes of Horus", in the form of a loaf of bt:ead and a mug of beer,
by the priest to "him who has no eyes" in Letopolis.e1 In the accom-
panying vignette, the god to whom the offering is made is represented
by a faceless figure who is none other than MQ.ntj-n-irtj.sz MQ.ntj-n-irtj
is simply M}_lntj-irtj in a negative provisional phase, which is ended by
the offering of the "two eyes of Horus". (Similarly the single "eye of
Horus" is temporarily seized by Set in the combat between Horus and
him and aftenvards given back.) 63 It would seem, therefore, that the
god of Letopolis, J:Intj-}Jm, was a sky-god in his various aspects, not
only as the bright and clear sky, (M)Q.ntj-irtj, but also as the dark
heaven, when the sun and JllOOn are not shining as its eyes, (M)}Jntj-
n-irtj. The verbal contradiction between a god "with two eyes in his
forehead" and one "without the two eyes in his forehead" thus turns
out to be no more than a duality of aspects of one and the same god,
according as he is in a position to make; effective use of his "eyes" or
is for the time being disabled from doing so.
Horus was, to begin with, a hawk-god, and as such he probably
started, in prehistoric times, as a local divinity, the deity of a small
district, of a small state and its rulers. The hawk, which likes to hover
high in the air, was a very natural symbol to be chosen to designate
... the sky; 64 the very name of Horus, br, if it means literally "the remote",
"the far-away", n:; is well adapted to signify the lofty vault of heaven.
An ivory comb from Abydos, dating from the first dynasty, about
3100 B.c., already shows 66 two great hawk-wings, opened as if to pro-
tect the cartouche underneath, which bears the name of the king,
Uenephes. The curve of the extended wings seems to anticipate that
\yhich is occasionally found in the hieroglyph for the vault of heaven,
and also that common in the .figure of Nut, the sky-goddess, as she
54 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
bends over the earth. 67 Five-pointed stars are often shown on the
body ofNut, 68 or that of the cow Hat-hor, whose name means House of
Horus; she also represents the sky. 69 They likewise cover the two great
pinions of the winged sun-disk on a much later monument (about
300 n.c.), 10 as if to prove that the two hawk-wings were originally a
symbol of the night sky, before they were combined with the solar
disk. 71
But it can hardly be that in the primitive Horus-hawk there were
present all the celestial aspects which can be found in the various
figures of Horus as a sky-god, especially in Hr-wr, Hr-sm.Sw and their
like. Horus the hawk-god, who became identified with Re the sungod
(as Re-Harachte at Heliopolis), 72 was in all probability a god of the
bright sky of the daytime, whereas the stellar associations of Hr-smsw
(see above) and, at Letopolis, of Hr-wr himself, 73 seem rather to point
to the aspect of the sky at night. 74 Thus, behind the primitive hawk-
god Horus, we catch a glimpse, at the very dawn of Egyptian religion,
of the great figure of a sky-god, 75 who is already of a universal, not
merely a local character. There came a time when the hawk-god
Horus was identified with this sky-god, as later he became identified
with the sungod Re. The political factor made for this identification.
The growth of that state whose local deity Horus originally was
(whether it lay in Lower76 or, as some would have it, in Upper Egypt)
gave Horus an outward supremacy to which an inward one must
correspond; and just such supremacy was the proper possession of the
great god of the heavens.
The blending of the hawk-god with the sky-god is nowhere more
obvious than in the HorusofLetopolis. In Hr-wr, P1utarch's (H)arueris,
and his parallel Hr-smsw, the features going back to the ancient sky-
god are particularly salient. It is probable that (M)ljntj-irtj, "he
who has the two eyes in his face" was also, at Letopolis, originally a
name of the great celestial deity; in other words, that the sun and
moon, before they were the Eyes of Horus, and afterwards the Eyes of
Re (see above, p. 52), were the eyes of a supreme celestial being.
All this is of particular importance for our subject. The sun and
moon, thought of as eyes, already present a first notion of divine
omniscience, in its elementary form of the power to see everything.
The sun, as an eye, sees in the daytime, the moon, again as an eye, sees
at night. Therefore a being whose eyes are the sun and the moon sees
both by day and night, in other words always, except when he is
"without eyes", because the sun and moon are not there. A being of
this kind must be a skygod, whether thought of as a great Hawk, with
its wings spread out from one side to the other of the vault of the
heavens, to protect the earth (that is to say, the North.and the South,
Lower and Upper Egypt), or as an enormous body, in which, as the
...
FIG. 2.-"Bcs Pantheos", enamelled
pottery figure, Cairo Museum; G.
Daressy, Textes et dessins magiques,
plate x, no. 9429

FIG. 3.-"Bes Pantheos", serpen-

tine. Kestner Museum, Hanover.
From the original
 EGYPT 55
sun and moon are the eyes, the breath of the mouth and nostrils is
77

the wind, the sweat the waters, and so on. 78 It is true that there was in
Egypt another conception of the sky; it was thought of as a woman, in
the form of the goddess Nut, from whom the sun is born every morning.
But in her case also the notion of the sun and moon being eyes applies.79
These vestiges of the primitive celestial beingso are all the more
important because we do not know him in his proper form, but only
across the figures of those deities who, as supreme gods of the Egyptian
religion, took to themselves the attributes of his greatness and grandeur.
Among these is the attribute of universal vision, expressed by the figure
of the two heavenly bodies as eyes. In this rudimentary shape, there-
fore, the idea of omniscience appears, at the very beginnings of Egyp-
tian culture, essentially rooted in -the nature of a sky-god.

(d) AMUN
In the New Empire, the god A.rnun was identified, at Thebes, with
the old Heliopolitan Sun-god Re or Re-Harakhte, in which solar-
ised form he became, as Amun-Re, the chief god of Egypt, even after
the sun of The ban supremacy had set. He is "king of the gods", "lord
of the gods", "chief of all gods". Thus the acquired solar character of
Amun succeeded in obscuring his original nature, but never quite
blotted it out. Vv. Spiegelberg found in him a god of air and \vind,sl
and K. Sethe brought forward abundant material to support this
theory.s 2 It is a fact that "creator of the wind" is a stock epithet of
Amun, at Thebes and elsewhere.sa At Hermopolis, within the divine
ogdoad, or group of eight deities, who, taken together, stand for the
powers of the chaos which was before the present order of the world
began, Amun is the air blowing on the primaeval water, Nun-Naunet,sl
while his partner Amaunet is the north wind. 85 If, in course of time,
Amun came to be thought of as a soul ("the great soul", "the exalted
primaeval soul" and so on)ss and took an increasingly pantheistic
characters? as the principle of universal life, the spirit which quickens
all things, it is likely that even this spiritual sublimation of Amun goes
back in the last resort to his original nature as god of the air, on which
life depends. Compare Lat. animus, "soul", apparently the same word
as Greek aVEJ.lO~, "wind"' and the history of the Greek words 1TVVJ.lU
and 1/;vx~ .
For the Egyptians, and not for them only wind and sky are insepar-
able. "The sky comes in (or 'with') the wind", says an ancient text
handed down to us in a copy made late in the New Kingdom. 88 In
art, the body of Amun is shown as blue, 89 the colour of air90 and the
colour of the sky. This is likewise the colour of the god Su, 91 who is the
clear space between sky and earth, the "void", but a void which is in
fact full of air. Amun indeed was identified with Su, 92 but Su is properly
 :

THE ALL-KNOWING GOD

the atmosphere, whereas Amun is air in motion. Su, having raised the
sky and divided it from the earth,asKronos divided Uranos and Gaia, 113
supports it everlastingly on his uplifted arms,o4 and so has an unchang-
ingly static function, whereas Amun, being god of air in motion, i.e.
of wind, is also the god of the stormy wind or hurricane, which rages
over the earth or the sea, 96 and so finally of the sky as the place of the
weather, in one of its most impressive aspects. The Greeks too under-
stood Amun as TTVEVJ1-a, but they identified him with their Zeus, who,
although the supreme deity of the heavens, is not a wind-god.oa
The name Amun meant to the Egyptians "the concealed or in-
visible one".o7 Thus, we read in a hymn, "One is Amun, concealing
('imn) himself from them (men), hiding himself from the gods: his
complexion is not known." 08 Amun is "he whose name is hidden",
"creator of the wind, whose form is hidden, who hides himself from his
sons"; "neither his form nor his colour (i.e. his essence) is known",
"the number of his hues is not known", he is "the hidden soul".oo
Often the audibility of his voice is contrasted with the invisibility of
his form: "his voice is heard, but he is not seen",1oo Amun-Rc is "the
strong-voiced one who is not seen."1o1 Here we may well compare him
with a Babylonian god, En-lil; he too is invisible:
His word, which is firmly founded, like a storm, its inner parts cannot
be perceived;
... his word has no seer, no foreteller .
. . . the Lord's word is as a rising stormy flood which darkens the face.
. . . His word is a storm .
. . ~ En-lil's word storms along, yet the eye sees it not.toz

All this helps us to understand the nature of Amun; he too is a god

of the air and the wind. He is "the hidden one", because no one can
see the air; his voice which is heard is the howl of the raging wind,1oa
or perhaps the sound of the thunder. 104 Here again we catch a glimpse
of the background of sky and weather from which Amun, as a wind-god,
cannot be separated. In the opinion of Sethe,I0 5 the characteristic
formula "his voice is heard, but he is not seen" may be extremely old,
coined originally, not for Amun, but for some other god, for instance
Su (as 'Sethc supposes), or perhaps rather, in my opinion, that ancient
sky-god who survives, as we have seen, in a particular form of Horus, too
as "Hor the elder" (Hr-wr, Harueris), "Hor the eldest" (Hr sm5w),
"Hor with the eyes in his forehead" (Hr Q.n~-irti). It is a fact that at
Ombos Harueris (-Su) is the invisible one whose voice is heard.1o1
The two cosmic eyes, too, the sun as the right and the ~oon as the
left eye (cf. p. 52), which, as we saw, characterised that ancient
Egyptian sky-god, are accredited to Amun. In the great hymn to
Amun which is written on the wall of the temple at Hibeh, in the
 EGYPT 57
great oasis of El-Kargeh (it dates from the Persian epoch, but the text
of the hymn may go back to the New Kingdom), the sun is his right
eye and the moon his left.lO 8 So they are also in the decree of Amun to
Pinodhem his high priest at Thebes,1o9 while again a hymn which
forms part of the ritual of Amun at Thebes says, no "When thou
openest thy two eyes to see, behold it is light for all; when the shadow
is over thy two eyes (i.e. when thou dost close them), behold, the day-
light disappears."Hl The same idea is found expressed on a sarco-
phagus as early as the Herakleopolitan era (the transition from the Old
to the New Kingdom), with reference to Horus the Elder, a form of
the old sky-god,H 2 and it may be that it passed from Horus to Amun
through his identification with Re-Harakhte.
In some texts of the Ptolemaic period, of pantheistic tone, the idea
that the sun and moon are the eyes of Amun is combined with the
notion that the wind comes from his nose.na
His sweat is the Nile,n4 his eyes are the light, his nose is the wind (Thebes).
His sweat is the Nile, the two luminaries are his eyes, the gentle breeze
comes from his nostrils (Deir e1 Bahari).
From whose nose the wind comes, and the Nile from his sweat; his eyes is
the solar disk (Thebes).

In the hymn from Hibeh, also, the four winds of heavenH 6 come
forth from the mouth of Amun.l1 6 The concepts are correlative; the
sun and moon are the eyes in the same face from whose nostrils and
mouth the wind issues, the face, therefore, of the sky, thought of as a
personal, celestial Being.111
Like the other gods who have the sun and moon for their eyes (cf.
p. 7ff.), Amun can see everything by virtue of these extraordinary
visual organs. But under another aspect as well, Amun is in a position
to know everything which happens, simply because he is a wind-god.
Amun is "he who abides in all things", 118 for no other reason than that
he is the air, which pervades everything, and the wind which makes its
way everywhere. Being everywhere, Amun can see all that is done and
hear all that is said (cf. Aer, p. 154). In some Theban inscriptions of
J;>tolemaic age this omnipresence of Amun is associated with his power
of seeing everything; thus Amun says to the king, "I give thee every
place which I see, through which I go as the wind", while the king
says to him, "what thou seest as light, what thou goest through as
wind." 119 Universal vision and omnipresenc~ together provide Amun
with complete omniscience, which, like that of skygods generally, is
applied especially to the doings of mankind. And in the same manner
as skygods usually employ meteoric phenomena as a sanction and a
means of punishment (which once again proclaims their celestial
r.haracter), so Amun, in a text of the twenty-second dynasty, threatens
 THE ALL-KNO,VING GOD
to blow up the fire which is to burn the evil-doer, a very appropriate
action for the wind.12o
Since, as a wind-god, he was an invisible god, Amun was destined
by nature to embody a lofty idea of deity. That is the statement of
Sethe, who ventures, not only to establish a paralleJizt between the
idea of Amun and that of Yahweh as a wind-god, and with the Spirit
of God (rziab 'elohim) which developed into the Third Person of the
Christian Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, but also a genetic connection;
he supposes, that is, that Yahweh probably is of Egyptian origin,
having regard to the Biblical narrative of the Exodus.12z It seems to
me, however, that this wonderful destiny of Amun is still more intel-
ligible if we keep in mind (as perhaps we should do for Yahweh also,
cf. p. I o8) the celestial background against which we see his figure,
and to which he, as a wind-god, clings inseparably. Amun is the wind,
it is true, but he is the wind thought of as the breath of the sky, that
is of Heaven, in other words of a celestial Being whose enormous face
is the sky, the sun and moon being the organs of sight in that face,
while the nose and mouth are the organs which produce the wind.
Thus we see that this very ancient Egyptian idea of a Supreme
Being who lives in the sky, an idea most important for the history of
religion, comes down to us not only in the various shapes of Horus as
a sky-being ("Horus the old", "Horus with the eyes in his forehead"
and so on, seep. 53), but also in that of Amun. The former correspond
to the sky in its luminous aspect, the latter rather to the sky as the home
of the atmosphere and of storms. Owing to the prevalence of the
Heliopolitan theology, Horus the skygod became assimilated to the
great sungod Re as Re-Harakhte. Amun in his turn, although at
Hermupolis he was one of the eight parent-deities ("fathers and
mothers") ~f the Sun, 123 when brought to Thebes for political reasons,
was likewise assimilated to Re. Thus falling heir to the ancient deities
of the sky and sun, the new Theban god Amun-Re was the highest
expression of the idea of God in Egypt, a synthesis of the "invisible"
god and of the god visible everywhere. The invisibility of Amun, the
invisibility of wind or spirit, enriched him with a virtually spiritual
power which made his victory over the solar naturalism ("Atenism"),
(re)established by Amen-hotep IV (Ikhnaton), a certainty, and set him
on his way towards a pantheistic universalism.

(e) MANYE'YED (AND MANY-EARED) DEITIES

Certain peculiar figures of Bes have eyes scattered all over their
body.12' The chief of these is the bronze statuette1 26 reproduced, by
courteous permission of the Directors of the Musee du Louvre, in our
Fig. Ia, h. We learn from the inscription on its base that it be-
longed to a certain Pakher, son of 'Ankh-pe-khroty, who lived in the
FIG. 4 a, b.-The Metternich Stele, front and back views;
F. Lexa, La magie dans l' Egypte antique (Paris, 1925),
plates 29, 30
FIG. s.-Stcle from the Turin Museum, from the original
 EGYPT 59
days of Psammetikos I (the Saitic era).1 This and other like figures
26

which have the face of Bes and the body besprinkled with eyes (they
include another bronze statuette in the Louvre, 127 one in the Cairo
Museum,I!!B a little stele of glazed earthenware in the same museum
(Fig. 2), 120 a small pottery tablet,I3o a serpentine plaque in the Kestner
Museum, Hanover (Fig. 3) andothers), 131 all belongtoamorenumerous
class of monuments which for the most part date from the period
corresponding to dynasties 26 to 30, and bear Bes-figures of the same
type, naked, but without eyes on the body.I 32 These figures with the
face of Bes (see alsq Fig. 4b) are naked, often ithyphallic, with four
extended wings and four hands, which hold, besides various emblems,
such as the sceptre, scourge and crux ansata, different living things, as
serpents, scorpions, lions and gazelles. The head is crowned with a
more or less complex diadem, having a discus, a kalathos or ritual basket,
two large feathers and other accessories, and resting on a pair, or
two pairs, of twisting ram's horns. A characteristic feature is the
accumulation of animal elements. On both sides of the broad face of
Bes project small heads, or protomes, of various beasts, generally
eight, i.e. four on each side of the face. These include bulls, lions,
crocodiles, baboons, rams and others not so certainly identified. The
sexual organ sometimes ends in a lion's head (Fig. 3); the knees are
shaped as lions' heads (same fig.); the feet end in the heads of jackals
(Figs. 2, 3, 4b), and heads of uraeus-snakes often spring from the feet
and knees (Figs. 1, 4b). The back is that of a hawk with the wings
folded and crossing the tail, which reaches to the ground. Sometimes
a crocodile's tail is added (Fig. 3). On the horizontal plane of the
pedestal or else on its frontal plane is a serpent biting its tail, and
within the circle thus traced are sundry figures of living creatures, as
the scorpion, the snake, the tortoise, the wolf, the lion, the hyaena,
the jackal and the crocodile.
The name Pantheos, generally given to this type of Bes, was
prompted by the many anima] elements combined in the one figure,
especially the heads which flank the face, considered each as a symbol
of another deity,I33 in accordance with the characteristic Egyptian
conception of deity as theriomorphic. But an example of '"Bes Pantheos"
which is inscribed (a bronze statuette formerly in the Hilton Prince
collection, now at Copenhagen),134 bears the name, not of Bes, but of
Harmerti (it runs, "May Harmerti grant life and health"), that is to
say of Horus of the (two) eyes, the god of Pharbaithos in the eleventh
nome of Lower Egypt, who, as we have seen (p. 52), is one of the
forms of the celestial Horus, and therefore parallel to Horus the Old,
Hr-wr, the ancient skygod, w~ose two eyes are the sun and moon. It
is not for nothing that the image of "Bes Pantheos" has the back of a
hawk, the non-human form of Horus.
6o THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
On the other hand, the representations of "Bes Pantheos" show
a decided analogy to another class of monuments, mostly of the same
age, namely with the many small pillars, slabs and the like, which
show Horus mounted on crocodiles; a child Horus, with the charac-
teristic curl on his forehead, standing on two crocodiles. He is no such
hybrid as "Bes Pantheos", nor so overgrown with animal elements;
and yet the pose is the same, with the arms (he has but two) spread
out in the same gesture, while the hands hold the same animal forms
(serpents, scorpions, lions, gazelles). The pedestal has the same
uroboros, or serpent with its tail in its mouth, and other creatures.1aa
These are usually the same as on the figures of Bes Pantheos, namely
harmful animals. These figures of "Horus on the crocodiles" were the
most powerful means of protection against the bite of the creatures
shown and of all others. The notion is old, traces of it appearing ac;
early as the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid texts. 136 The slabs and
pillars acted by the magical potency belonging to the figure shown on
them. 13 i To have such a stone in one's house was sufficient to keep
reptiles and other harmful creatures at a distance. Some statuettes, for
instance one in basalt, now at the Louvre, which shows a man stand-
ing, holding in both hands a slab with Horus on the crocodiles, 138 or
that of Zedher, at Cairo, a seated man with a similar slab held before
him on his knees,1a9 and others,uo are entirely covered with figures and
inscriptions, the latter containing formulae efficacious against the bite
of reptiles. The figures contributed to the same end. It was enough to
wash them to impregnate the water with their magical power, and it
might be collected in a hollow made for the purpose in the base of the
figure, and then used for medical purposes. 141 Among the figures carved
on the statuette of Zed her "the saviour" (that is the attribute affixed
to his name) is one of "Bes Pantheos", witl:l an extraordinary number
of animals on either side of his face, seven on one and six on the other.
On the Metternich stele (time ofNektanebos II, about 358-340 B.c.),
~hich is the principal example of this class, 142 the figure of Horus on
the crocodiles on the obverse of the slab (Fig. 4a) has above its head a
large, mask-like face of Bes. On the reverse (Fig. 4b) we find on high a
figure of "Bes Pantheos", that is, as we have learned, of Harmerti,
Horus of the Eyes, flanked by two adoring uzat-eyes, which the accom-
panying inscription explains as the "right eye" and "left eye", in other
words the sun and moon, the two cosmic eyes of Harmerti as
skygod. 143
Another vanatwn of the same type is found in certain bronze
statuettes.tH These show, standing on a pedestal decorated with the
uroboros-snake, a figure mounted on two crocodiles, like Horus the
Child, and laden with animal motifs, like Bes Pantheos (hawk's back,
two or three pairs of open wings, sexual organ and knees with lions'
 EGYPT 61
heads, serpents coming out of the knees), but with this difference: the
animal element is further increased by a large scarabaeus on the belly
of the figure, and the head is not that of Bes, but is bestial, composed
indeed of two beasts, for it has two faces, one that of a jackal, the other
(generally the one in front, the principal face) that of a ram, above
which is the solar disk. The ram, often associated with the solar disk,
is the symbol of the night sun,Ho as the scarabaeus is that of the day
sun. According to Daressy (1. cit.) .it is Amun-Re who is thus shown
as "Pantheos", but in a particular function, as protector from reptiles,
crocodiles and other harmful creatures. Such a function belongs
peculiarly to Amun-Re, not so much by reason of his pantheistic
character, although it is a fact that he did in the end combine in him-
self the attributes of all the other deities, but on account of his solar
nature, because the sun scatters the darkness, and it is especially in
darkness that poisonous creatures, snakes and scorpions, lie in wait, as
particularly at night that there is danger from ferocious animals such
as lions or crocodiles. As early as the hymn of Amen-hotep IV (Ikhna-
ton, about 1350 n.c.) to Aton, the solar disk, we find the words:
"\Vhen thou settest in the western sky, the earth is darkened ...
every lion comes forth from his den and all creeping things hi te.'' 1 "'7
On the obverse of the Metternich stele (Fig. 4a), the solar disk is shown
on high, and in the disk Amun-Re is seated, having a fourfold ram's
head. On the reverse (Fig. 4b) we find, above the "Bes Panthcos" and
between two long, twisting rams' horns, a small figure of the "god of
millions. of years'', i.e. of the Sun as Lord of Eternity, while the half-
circle of flames surrounding the scenet4s likewise signifies the Sun,
who is "Lord of flame against his enemies". 149
Now we are able to understand in its innermost significance the
curious detail from which we set out, that is the numerous eyes scat-
tered all over the body of some figures of "Bes Pantheos". \Ve must
not forget that "Bes Pantheos" is not Bes at aU, but Harmerti, "Horus
with the eyes". He has the face, or the mask, of Bes, but nothing else,
and that is merely a secondary motif, one of the many heaped upon
this figure to increase its apotropaic powers to the highest degree. It is
the shell about the kernel, the mask over the face.too The kernel or
substratum is the luminous nature of the sun, in which not only
Amun-Re shares, but also Harmerti and Horus the Child as foes of
darkness and victors over the creatures of the dark. The eyes on the
body do not properly belong to Bes, any more than the hawk's back
does. They arc an essential trait of these figures, as a natural part of
their solar character. As the "two eyes" (u;cat) which flank some figures
of'Bcs Pantheos", as on the :Nfetternich stele (Fig. 4b), are probably the
two eyes of Harmerti, in other words the sun and moon, so the many
 THE ALL-KNO\NING GOD
eyes which bespangle the body of other figures of the same deity are
the rays of the sun; both alike are instruments of the all-seeing power
of the god, applied here to a particular purpose, that of dispersing the
darkness and with it the monsters which lurk therein, and so have, by
extension, a general apotrapaic function. Diodorus Siculus tells us in
so many words that the Egyptians thought of the sun's rays as eyes
(1, I I, 2; he is discussing an etymology, mentioned also by Plut., De
Is. et Osir. IO, p. 355a, according to which the name Osiris means
"many-eyed", 7To'Av6cflJa'Ap.o~), 151 because Osiris, as Lord of the
Dead, was identified with the sun (the night sun, which during the
night lights up the realm of the dead). Diodorus says that according
to the Egyptians, the sun sends out his rays in all directions and these
rays are like so many eyes,1 52 with which he beholds all the earth and
all the sea, exactly like the Greek Helios, who, according to Homer,
"seeth and heareth all things".153 (Cf. p. 155.)
But the idea is older than Diodorus, older than Hekataios, on whom
Diodorus possibly draws. In the Harris magical papyrus, just in a
charm against crocodiles and other animals, occurs an invocation of
"the god of millions and millions of years", i.e. of the Sun as Lord of
Eternity. "Whoever knows his divine name shall be like him, having
seventy-seven eyes and seventy-seven ears" (VII, 5-6).161 In a panegy-
ric on Amun-Re, prefixed to the decree or oracle given to Pinodhem
the high priest (eleventh century n.c.), and comprising, according to
Ed. Meyer, a sort of creed or sumrn,ary of the elaborate theological
ideas current in priestly circles at the end of the New Kingdom,
Amun-Re, although so spiritualised as to incorporate the loftiest con-
ception of deity, yet is styled "the Eternal One ... with many pairs of
eyes, with numerous pairs of eyes" (there is also an allusion to his two
cosmic "eyes", the sun and the moon). 15 5 In the great hymn pre-
served on a papyrus of the I 8th dynasty, about I450 :B.c., the sungod
Amun-Re is invoked as "the one and only with the many arms (or
'hands')" ; 15 6 these are again the rays of the sun, which are especially
to be seen on the monuments of Amen-hotep IV (Ikhnaton), running
out from Aton, the solar disk, and ending in hands. 157

There are many votive slabs in Egypt on which are to be found representations
of eyes, and a hove all of ears (Fig. 5). Those with ears come chiefly from Memphis
and Thebes. The Memphian specimensl58 belong for the most part to a ruined
temple of Ptah which dates from the 18th dynasty. All are dedicated to
Ptah, save one, which is dedicated to the goddess Hathor. 1 59 Some include
a short prayer to Ptah, asking him to hear the dedicator. The ears occupy the
whole field by themselves, or are inserted in one way or another into the scenes
represented. We find slabs with a single ear, others with two, three, four, five,
six, ten, forty-two, a hundred and ten, or even three hundred and seventy-six.
All these numbers, like the seventy-seven eyes and cars of the Harris papyrus,
 EGYPT
have no more than the general meaning of "many" or "very many''.Ioo The
supposition that the ears here shown allude to the votary, 161 i.e. to some disease
of the ears from which he suffered or of which he had been cured, may hold
good for those cases where only one ear, or a pair of cars, is shown. When the
ears are numerous or, if there are but one or two, their size is uncommon, it
must be held that they refer to the god, and are not so much a piece of pictorial
magic, intended to incline or move him to hear the prayers addressed to him,I62
as an emblem of his remarkable powers of hearing, meant to assure the dedi-
cator that his petition will indeed be heard, and favourably heard.
The universal power of hearing amounts, in the case of Ptah, to a sort of
omniscience, which however is limited to the individual situations of the
dedicators. The like is attributed to other deities also, in the group of Theban
stelae of the New Kingdom which comes from the great burial ground of
el-Medineh. 1 63 These also show two, four or six ears arranged in pairs, or
again six ears separately, and are dedicated, some to Ptah, others to Hat-hor,
Amon-Re,I64 Horus (Haroeris),I65 Thot, Chons, and lastly to a deified queen.
Some of these Theban stelae show, besides the various number of ears, eyes as
well, generally four in number. 166 And here again, rather than supposing a
reference to the dedicator's entreaty that the god will preserve him the use of
his organs of sight in the other world,I67 the eyes probably refer to the god
himself, as we saw was the case with the ears, and their plurality signifies a
superior faculty of vision in him, and so a greater ability to perceive the
sufferings of the dedicator and come to his aid.
Be this- as it may, this universal power of seeing and hearing, applied to the
individual condition of particular dedicators, in accordance with the spirit of
popular religion which belongs to these stelae, cannot stand for a true and
proper omniscience, rooted in the very nature of Ptah and the other deities
adored on these many-eyed and many-eared stelae. This is not to say, however,
that omniscience of a more general kind is not accredited to Ptah and the other
deities, whether by extension of tbeir universal powers of seeing and hearing
specially applied to helping their worshippers, or by a secondary reflexion
from the conception of the supreme god who, as such, is supplied with all the
most exalted attributes.tos Thus, on one of the aforesaid Theban stelae, dating
from the nineteenth dynasty, on which are sho~n four eyes and four ears, it is
said that Ptah had punished the dedicator with blindness on hearing him swear
falsely by his name.I69 And a group carved in wood, from the same place, has
on its pedestal a dedication to Ptah in which it is stated that "nothing happens
without his knowing it".t7o Clement of Alexandria, speaking of the Egyptian
custom of dedicating to the gods in their temples figures of eyes and ears in
costly materials,t71 adds that this custom shadows forth the concept that "the
deity sees and hears everything" ,172

(f) SUMMARY
The notion of divine omniscience is thus expressed primitively in
Egypt as a by-form of universal vision, regarded as an attribute of a
supreme skygod, whose eyes are the sun and moon (right and left eyes
respectively). Such a god is Horus, the hawk with immense wings
which fill the vault of heaven, the ~eity with "eyes in his forehead", in
 THE ALL-KNO\-VING GOD
other words god of the clear sky, the antithesis of the "eyeless" god,
that is the god of the dark sky. In a more complete form, the idea of
the ancient skygod is represented by Amun, having not only the sun
and moon for eyes, but also the wind for breath, which comes from his
nostrils, and perhaps also the thunder for his voice (above, p. 56).
Another symbol of the divine power of seeing everything is plurality
of eyes (often associated with the complementary symbol of numerous
ears, signifiying that the god hears everything); this originally is an
attribute of the sungod, it being precisely the sun's rays which are
thought of as eyes.
These two symbols belong to the same class of ideas, so it is not
remarkable if we find the two astral eyes, which originally belonged
to a skygod (Horus), attributed to a sungod (Re), and the many eyes
of the sungod given to the skygod. Both the symbol of the two astral
eyes and that of the many eyes of the sun passed then from one divine
figure to another, of those which, in the course of the thousands of
years ot Egypt's religious history and in relation to her political
changes, rose to the rank of chief god, as A tum, Ptah, Amun, Osiris and
others, and so were passed down to the latest times of paganism.
Plurality of eyes is still attributed to Osiris by Diodoros and Plutarch
(above, p. 62). The two astral eyes are still to be found in Eusebios,
i.e. in his Egyptian source, as a prerogative of the Supreme Being
(ro 1rpwrov ov 8et6rarov), represented by Kneph-Agathos Daimon in
the shape of a hawk-headed serpent. 1 73 The form in which the id~a is
expressed, that when the Supreme Being, Kneph, opens his eyes the
universe is flooded with light and when he closes them the world is
plunged in darkness, is definitely Egyptian, being found used both of
Amun, in a liturgy of that god which has come down to us on a
hieratic papyrus, 174. and of the Sun, in the inscriptions on the back of
the Metternich stele.176
The notion of a skygod who has the sun for his eye we have already
found in N.-E. Africa among the Kushites both of the highlands and
lowlands (Hadiya and Galla) and furthermore among some Niloto-
Hamites, such as the Nandi and Masai (pp. 38, 40). The idea of a
many-eyed sungod, the eyes being his rays, closely suggests the "thirty-
rayed" god Waqa among the Galla and the god Asis with his nine, or
hundred, rays of the Nandi (above, p. 39). Also, the idea of a skygod
whose breath is the wind, which finds its Egyptian representative in
Amun, is to be found again among the Masai in the person of their
skygod Ngai. Again, the contrast between a god "with eyes" (Hr
irti, or Hr l)entj. irtj) and one "without eyes" (Ml)ntj. n. irtj) corres-
ponding, the one to the clear sky, the other to the dark sky, reminds
us of the dualism between the two colours of the sky among the Galla,
White Waqa and Black Waqa, also the Red Wa'a and Black Wa'a of
 EGYPT 6s
the Hadiya and the Red Ngai and Black Ngai of the Masai (above,
p. 41).
The Kushites are Hamites, the Nandi and 1\1asai are Nilotic, but
with strong Hamite influence. It is thus in the Hamite world and that
of the Niloto-Hamites in N.E. Africa that we find the most marked
parallels to the Egyptian ideological complex of the sky- or sungod
who sees everything. This by no means implies that this complex was
handed on to the Kushite and Niloto-Hamite peoples from ancient
Egypt. A Hamite element is to be found in Egypt from the remotest
times, and it played a large part in forming the Egyptian people,l76
"Hamitic" is an ambiguous term except in the linguistic sphere.
Ancient Egyptian is a Hamitic tongue, sprung from the original proto-
Semitic or Semitico-Hamitic stock. 177 But the linguistic unity of the
Hamites is not accompanied by a corresponding cultural unity. ::fhe
Hamites of N.E. Africa are a stock-raising people, whereas those of the
north and west (the Libyco-Berbers) are agriculturalists. In Egypt
itself, as far back as the predynastic epoch, there existed a complex
culture, in which both agriculture and the breeding of cattle were
practised. This composite prehistoric culture, which was the cradle of
the great cultural destinies of Egypt in historical times, arose from the
meeting of stock-breeders from the interior of the continent with
Mediterranean peoples who were the carriers of an agricultural
civilisation. Descending from the high plateaux of the interior into the
valley of the Nile, these primitive Hamito-Kushites must needs change
from wandering herdsmen to settled tillers of the soil, and underwent
the cultural influences coming from the north.
G. A. 'Vainwright in his book The Sky-Religion in Egypt (Cambridge
1 938) has pointed out the existence, even in predynastic times, of a
sky-cult, that is the worship of a skygod who gave rain and therefore
the fertility of the soil. This therefore, he claims, is the oldest religion
of Egypt, "even inore ancient than Egypt itself" (p. 7), and prior to
the sun-cult, as the first traces of Re are of the Second Dynasty, and to
the worship of Osiris, which begins in the Sixth. I too believe that the
skygod is very ancient in Egypt; I also believ'e that it is precisely the
skygod who represents that primaeval notion of a supreme God which
the older Egyptologists, Brugsch, Pierret, Le Page Renouf, found
lodged in turn in the various chief gods of later periods, and which
H. Junker, among modern authors, has brought into fashion again in
a form inspired by the theory of "primitive monotheism''.11a I am not
of that opinion, nor am I fully in agreement with Wainwright, for I
believe that the proto-Egyptian religion of the skygod belonged
originally not so much to the west, as he supposes, i.e. to the Medi-
terranean and Libya, "the ancient cradle of Egypt's sky-gods" (Wain-
wright, p. 84), or in other words to the agricultural component of
F
66 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Egyptian culture, but rather to the eastern African Hamites, that is to
the pastoral clement belonging to N.E. Africa.li9 :tvioving to the Nile
valley, where vegetation and tillage do not depend upon rainfall but
on the waters of the river which at regular intervals flood and fertilise
the soil, the ancient African Hamite skygod, giver of rain, lost his
importance, and gave place to the idea of a female sky, in the person
of Nut, mother of the sun, i.e. of Horus, identified with Hat-hor, the
mother (literally "the house") of Horus again.

NOTES

* In this chapter, Egyptian names are transliterated as exactly as possible,

save for a few~ such as Osiris and Horus, which have generally accepted forms,
derived from Greek or Latin writers, in modern speech. This often involves
writing them with consonants only, the Egyptian vowels being unkown or
uncertain. In such cases, it is usual, when reading them aloud, to insert
a short e wherever necessary to make a pronounceable syllable, wr for
instance being rendered wer. This is merely a convention and implies no
judgement as to how an Egyptian would vocalise them.
I. Meri-ka-rc was one of the Herakleopolite kings of the transitional period
between the Old and Middle Kingdoms, in the second half of the third
millennium B.C. cr. A. H. Gardiner in J(ournal of) E(gyptian) A(rchaeology) i
(I9I4), p. 20 foil.; A. Erman, (.f!ie) Lit(eratur der) Aeg(ypter), Leipzig 1923,
pp. 109-I I9; H. Ranke in A(lt) D(rientalische) T(exte zum Alien Testament), ed. 2
Berlin and Leipzig, I 926, pp. 34-36.
2. Ed. Naville, La destruction des hommes par les dieux, in Transactions of the
Sociel)a of Biblical Archaeology iv (I875), pp. r-I9; G. Roeder, Urkunden zur
Religion des allen Aegypten, J en a I 923, p. I 42 foil.; A. Erman, Lit.Aeg., p. 77
foil.; H. Ranke, A.D. T., ed. !:l, p. 3 foil.
3 Gardiner, in].E.A. I (I9I4), p. 33; Erman, Litt. Aeg., p. I I7.
4 Erman, op. cit., p. 120.
5 Erman, op. cit., p. 348 (the Anastasi papyrus).
6. Erman, op. cit., p. 382. This must be a little later than the religious re-
forms qf Amen-hotep IV (Ikhnaton), for it contains traces of his Aten-heresy,
see Erman in Aegyptische Zeitschrift xlii (I905), pp. I06-9. In Amen-hotep
IV's famous "hymn to the Sun", moreover, the following expressions are used
of Aten: "Thou hast created the distant heaven to shine therein, to behold all
that thou hast created", see A.D. T., ed. 2, p. I 7, Erman, (Die) Rel(igion der)
Aeg(ypter) (I934), p. I I3.
7 See Boeser, "Ein demotischer Papyrus moralischen Inhalts im Leidener
Altertumsmuseum", in Acta Drientalia i (I 923), pp. I 55 foil.
8. See Boeser, op. cit.
g. SeeP. Boylan, Thot, the Hermes of Egypt (Oxford I922), especially Chap.
xi (Thot the all-knowing), pp. g8-Io6. In this work, at the pages mentioned
in the following notes, the author gives references to most of the passages from
 EGYPT
ancient documents which are used here. See also the art. "Thot", by Roeder
in Roscher's Lexikon, Vol. V, col. 861.
10. "Lord of writing", "lord of books", "Thot of the house of books",
Boylan, op. cit., pp. gg foil., r8g, 1g4, cf. Diodorus Siculus, I, 16, 1. Thot is
often associated with Seshat, the "writer" of "lady of books", the Egyptian
Clio, see Erman, &l. Aeg., Plate 2 and p. 57
I I. Boylan, op. cit., pp. 26, I g4.
I 2. cr. the "Instructions for Meri-ka-re"' Erman, Lit. Aeg., P I 12.

13. See Boylan, op. cit., pp. 124 foil., 184, r8g, 1g2, and for bike, "magic",
ibid., pp. I 25 foil. There is also a deity Hike, ibid., p. 125.
14. Boylan, op. cit., pp. 107 foil., rg8.
15. Boylan, op. cit., p. 104, note I.
16. Boylan, p. I 24.
17. Boylan, p. 101.
18. Boylan, p. IOI, note 2.
I g. A. Gayet, Le temple de Louxor, in Mbnoires de Ia Mission archiologique
Fran;aise au Caire XV (Paris r8g4), pp. IO-I I' line 3 cr. Roeder's article cited
above, note g.
20. Boylan, op. cit., p. 102.
21. J. H. Breasted, in .ifgyptische <,eitschrift, rgor, p. 61 (Rekhmara).
22. "The king circles the sky like Re, the king hastens through the heavens
like Thot", see H. Ranke in .ifgyptische <,eitschrift, I g33, p. I 04 foil.
23. Cf. K. Sethe, Urgeschichte und iilteste Religion der Aegypter (Leipzig rgso),
pp. 10, so, I rg.
24. Boylan, op. cit., pp. 62 foil.
25. Brugsch, Thesaurus inscript. Ae!J)'jJt. I, 37, line 27.
26. Boylan, op. cit., pp. 65, 188, 1g8.
27. Erman, Rel. Aeg., p. 22.
28. Boylan, pp. 6s, rg2.
2g. Boylan, p. 65.
30. Boylan, p. I go.
3 I. Cf. the text concerning the enthronement of the moon, A.D. T., ed. 2,
p. 5; Roeder, op. cit., cols. 843 foil.
32. Boylan, op. cit., p. 214.
33 R. Pettazzoni, La confessione dei peccati, ii (Bologna rg35), p. 24 foil.
34 No. 284, Turin. See Erman in Sitzungsberichte d. Berliner Akademie (rgi I),
p. 1102 foil.; Gunn in J.E.A. iii (rgr6), p. 8g; Suys, in Orientalia (rg33),
p: 180; Pettazzoni, Conf. dei peccati, ii, pp. 26, 28.
35 Hearst Papyrus I4J 5-7, see Wreszinski, Der Londoner medi;:.inische Papyrus
und der Papyrus Hearst (Leipzig rgr2), No. 214, p. 121.
g6. The word ir-t, "eye", is feminine.
37 See, for the further developments in legend and folklore, H. Junker
"Auszug der Hathor-Tefnut aus Nubien", in Anhang zu den Abhandlungen d.
Berliner Akademie, rgr I; K. Sethe, <,ur altiigyptischen Sage vom Sonnenauge das in
der Fremde war (Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde .ifg;'jJtens V, 3),
Leipzig rgr2; W. Spiegelberg, "Der agyptische Mythus vom Sonnenauge in
einem demotisch<'n Papyrus der romischen Kaiserzeit," in Sitzungsberichte der
68 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Berlin. Akad., 1915, 876; Junker, "Die Onurislegende", in Denkschriften ~Vierz.
Akad. (Vienna 1917), lix, I-2.
38. Pyramid text 1231 (Kees, Totenglauben und Jenseitsvorstellungen der a/ten
.A'gypter, Leipzig 1926, p. I 05; Sethe, Sonnenauge, p. 7) ; Book of the Dead, 17, 17
(Roeder, Urkunden z;.ur Religion des a/ten Agypten, J ena, 1923, p. 242; H. Grapow,
Das 17. Kapitel des agyptischen Totenbuches u. seine religionsgeschichtliche Bedeutung,
dissert., Berlin 191 2).
39 Sethe, op. cit., pp. 4-6.
40. R_oeder, art. "Horus", in Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Realencyklopadie VIII,
cols. 2434 sqq.
41. Brugsch, Rel. u. Mythol. d. allen Agypter, ed. 2 (Leipzig 189 I), p. 533;
Wiedemann, Die Religion d. a/ten .A'gypter (Munster ifYV 18go), p. 16; Lefebure,
Sphinx, vii (1903), p. 26; A. Erman, Die Rei. d.A'gypter, Berlin 1934, p. 21;
Roeder, Horus, col. 2437
42. J. de Rouge, Geographic ancienne de Ia Basse-Egypte, Paris 1891, p. 66 foil.;
Roeder, in .A'gyptische Zeitschrift (1926), p. 57; G. A. Wainwright in Journ.
Egypt. Arch. v (1918), p. 245
43 De Rouge, op. cit., p. 74
44 As old as the Pyramid texts. See Junker, Onurislegende, 40, 135; Sethe,
Dramatische Texte z;.u altagypt. Mysterienspielen, Untersuchungen X (Leipzig 1928)
pp. I 62 foil., 250 foll., 262 foil.
45 H. Junker, "Der sehende und blinde Gott", in Sitz;.ungsberichte d. ba;er-
ischen Akad. d. Wissenschaften, Philos.-hist. Abteil., 1942, 7 (Munich 1942).
46. We find "Ijntj-irtj of Letopolis" in a litany in one of the Pyramid texts,
see Sethe, Urgeschichte u. a/teste Religion der .A'gypter, Leipzig, 1930, p. 148. Hr
ij.ntj mrtj occurs, as god of Letopolis, in the Book of the Dead, Chap. I8
(Roeder, Urkunden, pp. 249-250). For the relations of ljntj-irtj to another
ancient god of Letopolis, I:Jrtj, see R. \Veill, "Le dieu ljrtj", in 1\Jiscellanea
Gregoriana (Rome I 941), pp. 38 1-91.
4 7. Sethe, Urgeschichte, p. I 17 foil.
48. Junker, Onurislegende, p. 135
49 Ibid., p. 27. .
50. Junker in .A'gyptische Zeitschrift lxvii ( 1931), p. 53
51. E. Lefebure, Le 17!Ythe osirien, I: Les ;eux d'Horus (Paris, 1874), p. 97
foil.; G. Maspero, Etudes de mythologie et d' archlologie !gyptiennes, II (Paris 1893),
P 329.
52. Cf. H. Junker, Giz;.a II (Vienna and Leipzig, 1934), p. 47 foil.
53 Brugsch, Rei. u. M;th., ed. 2, pp. 529 foll.; \Viedemann, op. cit., p. 16;
Lange, in Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch d. Religionsgeschichte, ed. 4, I,
p. 454; Roeder in Realencyl. VIII, col. 2434; Sethe, Urgeschichte, pp. 37, 117.
Junker, Der sehende u. blinde Gott, p. 33
54 Cf. Junker, Onurislegende, p. 42,
55 cr. 'Apo~pH BeeP p.eycV.cp 'A1ToAAWVL, C.I.G. 4859
56. Hr-wr is found, at Letopolis, Kus and Ombos, identified with Su, see
Sethe, Urgeschichte, pp. 37, 155, Junker, Onurislegende, pp. 59 foil., Der sehende
u. blinde Gott, p. 27. Su is the Void, a personification of the atmosphere which
fills up the space between earth and sky, and as such is usually shown holding
 EGYPT 6g
up Nut, the vault of the sky, after separating her from Geb, the earth-god
(Erman, Ref. d. .ifg)'/Jl., pp. I5, 62).
57 H. Kees, "Der alteste Horus", in .ifgypt. .(eitschr. lxiv (1929), pp. 104
foll., cf. his Totenglauben u. Jenseitsvorstellungen d. alten .ifgypter (Leipzig I926),
p. 445 foil.
58. "Herr in ailer Himmel"; "er lebt von dem, der nicht versteht zu
diesem Himmel des altesten Horus zu gehen", Kees, foe. cit.
59 "Angesichts deiner Bahn, altester Horus, inmitten der oberen Sterne
gegeniiber den Irdischen", Kees, ibid.
6o. See K. Sethe, Der dramatische Ramesseumpapyrus (Untersuchungen ;:;ur
Geschichte u. Altertumskunde .ifgyptens x, 2, Leipzig Ig28), pp. I62 foil., 250 foil.,
cf. his Urgesclzichte, pp. Io, I I 7 "Horus, der Herr des nicht-Sehens" (xent-
nen-ma; it should be xent-nen-irtj, see Lefebure, Sphinx vii (1903), p. 26),
'Wiedemann, Ref. d. alt. A'gypt., p. I 6. "Horus the Prince of the City of Blind-
ness", Le Page Renouf, The Book of the Dead (The Life- Work, Vol. IV), p. 38.
cr. Wainwright,.. The Sky-Religion in Eg;'jJt (Cambridge I938), pp. IO, 76;
Junker, Der sehende u. blinde Gott, pp. 7 foil.
6 I. Sethe, loc. cit., p. I 62 foil.
62. The sort of ellipse with two dots in the middle which takes the place of
a head in the figure of the god (Sethe, op. cit., fig. I I, plates 5 and I6) might
be, in his opinion (op. cit., p. 251 ), the hieroglyph for Hierakonpolis, but "eine
direkte Gleichsetzung des Gottes von Hierakonpolis mit dem gesichtslosen
Gott von Letopolis M}J.ntj-n-irtj .. ist m. W. sonst nirgends bezeugt."
63. The shrewmouse (p.vya>-.m, who according to Plutarch (quaes. conuiu.
67ob) was adored by the Egyptians "because it is blind", was thought to be
sacred to "Leto", i.e. to the goddess of Letopolis, Antoninus Liberalis 28, 3
According to Aelian, De nat. anim., x, 47, the sacred beast of "Leto" was the
ichneumon, which also appears on Roman coins of Letopolis of the age of
J:Iadrian, see Dattari, Nummj Augg. Alexandrini (Cairo Igoi), Plate xxxv,.
No. 6286, p. 4I I). Cf. Wainwright in J.E.A. xxi (I935), p. I52 foil. (id.
"Letopolis," ibid., xviii (I932), pp. I59 foil.; Sky-Religion, pp. 76 foil., go).
64. Cf. N. Soderblom, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, ed. 2 (Leipzig Ig26),
p. I42 foil.
65. Erman, Religion, p. I8; Sethe, .(ur altiig. Sage vom Sonnenauge, p. 25 foil.
66. Schaefer, Weltgebiiude der alten Aegypter, in Die Antike iii (I927), p. I2I
foil.; Engelbach in Agypt. .(eitsch.lxv (I930), p. I I5 foil., Plate viii; H. Frankfort,
Kingship and the Gods. Chicago I948, Fig. I7
67. Erman, op. cit., p. 62 and fig. 42.
68. See Bilderatlas ;:;ur Religionsgeschichte, Agyptische Religion, Nos. 2 and 3,
and cf. Frankfort-de Buck-Gunn, The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos (London
1933), II, Plate 8I.
6g. Ibid., No. I.
70. Schaefer, op. cit., p. 94, Fig. 2, p. I26, Fig. 46.
7 I. cr. von Bissing, "Die alteste Darstellung der gefliigelten Sonnenscheibc"'
in Ag. .(eitsclzr. lxiv (I 929), p. I I 2; lxiv (I 93 I), p. 6g.
72. Sethe, Urgeschichte, p. I 3 I.
73 G. Wainwright, in].E.A. (I932), p. I63 foil.
74 Cf.Junker, Der s~hende u. blinae Gott, p. 8I foil.
70 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
75 Wainwright, Sky-religion; cf. G. Foucart, Histoire des religions et methode
compraa.tive (Paris 1912), pp. 72, 322; Roeder, in Realmc. VIII, col. 2456;
Lange, in Chantepie de la Saussaye I, p. 454
76. In the western part of the Delta, in the third nome, according to Sethe,
Urgeschichte, p. 54 .
77 "Heaven perhaps as a great face, with sun and moon as its two eyes",
Boylan, Thot, p. 29.
78. "Deine heiden 'Lebenden' (Augen) erleuchten das Dunkel, deine Nase
isf der 'Nest' des Windes ... dein Leib ist mit dir, es ist der Himmel, der mit
seinen Sternen versehen ist" (text from Edfu, quoted by Junker, Giza II,
P so).
79 "Nut, aus deren Kopf zwei Augen getreten sind" (Pyramid text cited
by A. Rusch, "Die Entwicklung der Himmelsgottin Nut zu einer Totengott-
heit", in Mitteilungen d. vorderasiatisch-iigyptischen Gesellschaft, xxvii, r (Leipzig
I922), p. 7). Cf. Kees, Totenglauben, p. 144, Erman, Rel. d. A'gypt., p. 441.
So. For representations of the sky as a male figure, see Schaefer, Die Antike
(rg27), p. I I4 foil.
8I. W. Spiegelberg, "Amon als Gott der Luft oder des Windes", in Ag_vpt.
:(,eitschr. xlix ( rgr 1), p. I 27 foil.
82. K. Sethe, "Amun und die acht Urgotter von Hermopolis", in Abhand.
Berlin. Akad. (Ig2g), No.4
83. Sethe, op. cit., pp. 8g, Ioo.
84. Sethe, op. cit., pp. 61 foil., 87.
85. Sethe, op. cit., pp. 32, 34, 78.
86. Sethe, op. cit., p. I I o foll.
87. In a hymn dating from the New Kingdom, cited by Sethe, op. cit.,
p. g6: "Du bist der Himmel, du bist die Erde, du bist die Unterwelt, du bist
das Wasser, du bist die Luft zwischen ihnen."
88. Sethe, op. cit., pp. 100, 1os.
8g. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians (ed. 2, revised by
Birch, London, 1878), Vol. III, p. ro; A. Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten
A'gypter, p. 68; Sethe, op. cit., pp. I8, IOI.
go. Diodorus Siculus, I, I2, 8, TOV cUpa -ri]v 7Tpoaot/Jtv. exnv eyyAaUKOV.
cr. note g2.
gr. Sethe, op. cit., p. I o I.
92. Amun as upholder of the sky, Sethe, op. cit., pp. g3-g5. Chons also, who
is the son of Amun, is identified with Su, son of Re, Sethe, op. cit., pp. 31, g4.
Kees, Gotterglaube, p. 350 foil., thinks Su at Hermupolis was a prototype of
Amun.
93 In the Maori mythology also Rangi (the sky) and Papa (the Earth) are
separated by their sons, of whom only the wind-god, Tawhiri Matea, follows
his father and retires with him to the upper regions (seep. 345).
g4. Erman, Rei. d. Agypt. (rg34), pp. I5, Figs. 2 and 3, 62, Fig. 42.
g5. Sethe, op. cit., pp. g3, 97 foil. Ibid., p. 93 foil., Amun is invoked by those
in danger at sea.
g6. Diod. Sic., I, 12, 2, To p.f.v ovv 7TVEvjta Llta 7TpoaayopEuaat. Plut., De
Is. et Osir., 36 (p. 365d), Llta p.f.v yap Alyu7TTtot To 7TVEiip.a KaAovatv, cf.
ibid., g, p. 354c. Eusebios, praep. euang. III, 2, 6, Llta p.f.v To Ota 7TClVTwv
 EGYPT
xwpovv 7TVEVf.La. Spiegelberg, foe. cit. Sethe, op. cit., p. go foil. Thebes, the
"city of Amun" is Lluh 7To..\ts (~ f.LEYclA7J) The d~p which, according to Dio-
dorus (I, I2, 7) is "called Athena if the name is translated" into Greek, was
Amaunet, the north wind, sec above, p. 55, identified with the goddess
Neith (in turn identified with Athena) in the Delta, sometimes thought of
as daughter of Amun as Athena was daughter of Zeus; cf. Sethe, op. cit.,
p. IOI.
97 Scthc, op. cit., p. 87 foil. This meaning was put forward by Manetho
(Plut., De Is. et Osir., 9, p. 354c = !\.fanetho fgt. 75 :Muller, 77 \Vaddell, To
KEKPVf.Lf.LEvov Kat ~v Kpurfnv) on which depends Herakleitos of Abdera's ex-
planation (ws d.cpavij Kat KeKpVp.f.Levov ovTa, Plut, ibid.).
98. Papyr. Leid., I, 350, IV, I 7, see Gardiner, "Hymns to Amon from a
Leidcn Papyrus", in ifgyjJ/. Z,eitschr. xlii (I905), p. 34
99 Scthe, op. cit., pp. 88 foil.
100. Hymn to Amun in the temple at Hibeh, sec Brugsch, Reise nach der
grossen Oase El Kargelz (Leipzig, I878), xvi, line 38 (p. 51); Sethe, op. cit.,
p. 97
101. Theban inscription of Ptolemaic date, see Sethe, op. cit., p. 97
102. G. Reisner, Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen nach Thontafeln grieschischer
Z,eit (Berlin, I896), No. 1, pp. 130 foil.; Meissner, Bab)'lonierz u. Assyrierz ii,
p. 158 foil.
I03. Cf. John 3, 8, compared by Sethe, op. cit., p. 96: TO 7TVEVf.La o7ToV
{)~et. 7T~E r Kat ~v cpw~v aUTOV a.KOUEtS", d..\,\'. OUK 0 l8as 7To0ev epxeTat Kat
7TOV V7Tayet.
104. Wen-Amon 2, 19: "Siehe, Amon donnert im Himmel" (A.O.T., ed. 2,
p. 74); Pyramid-text 1120, "wcnn der Himmel redct, zittert die Erde."
105. Sethe, op. cit., p. 99, who says it is "uralt".
10~. For Horus conceived of as the air, see Plut., De Is. et Osir. 38 (pp.
366a), EU'TL 8' TQpos ~ 7TCIV'Ta ac.[J,ovua Kat Tpecpovua TOV 7TEPtEXOVTOS" wpa
Kat Kpaats d.epos. Cf. ibid., 40 (p. 367b).
107. Sethe, op. cit., p. 99 Besides, Harueris, like Amun, has on his head the
two tall feathers which apparently are characteristic of deities of wind (Sethe,
op. cit., p. 1o I); and, as Amun the wind-god is "he who abides in everything",
so Harueris (see Sethe, op. cit., p. I02 foil.) is, at Ombos, "the breeze which
abides under the vault of heaven" (Sethe, ibid., p. 106 foil.), etc. We also find
an Amonoeris (imn-wr) corresponding to Haroeris (Hr-wr, cf. Ptah-wr), sec
Junker, Giitterlehre von AJemphis, p. 3 I foil., cf. .ii'g)jJt, Z,eitschr. lxvii ( 193,),
p. 52
108. H. Brugsch, op. cit., (see note 100), xv-xvi, lines 1-4, 29-30, 33-34
(pp. 49-5 I).
109. G. Daressy, Le dlcret d'Amon m.faveur du grand pre/re Pinozem, in Recueil
de TravaiL-.: xxxii (1910), p. 177, line 16.
110. A. Moret, Le rituel du culte divin joumalier en Eg;'jJte (Paris, 1902), p.
129 foil.
I I I . cr. Eusebios, praepar. euang. I, 10, 49: TO 7TpWTOV ov Ow)TaTOV ocpt)
EU'TLV UpaKOS" exwv f.LOpcp~v OS EL d.va{3..\rpete, cpwTOS" TO 7TaV E7TA~pov v
TTJ 7TpWTOYOV<fJ XWPCf auTov, EL 8 Kaf.Lf.LUUEtE, (JKOTOS" y{veTO. See Sethe, in
Berlin.fJ/zilolol. fVoch. (1896), p. 1529. So, in Fiji, when Ndengei closes his eyes
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
to go to sleep, it becomes dark, but when he opens them again in the early
morning, daylight comes; R. Pettazzoni, Dio (Bologna 1922), p. 157.
I I2. Kees in .ifgypt. ,Zeitschr. (I929), p. I07.
I I3. Sethe, op. cit., p. IOI.
I I4. cr. Preisendanz, Pap. Graecae mag., v, lines 152-3 (Vol. I, p. I86):
eyw (the Headless God is speaking, see Preisendanz, Akephalos, I926) lp.t ov
EO'TLV 0 l8pws op.{3pos ETTt1TL7T'TWV br~ rT)v yfjv, iva OXUrJ.
I I5. Compare the four winds created by Anu in the Creation Epic, i, 105.
I I6. Brugsch, op. cit., Plate xvi, line 35, p. 51; Sethe, op. cit., p. 97 Amun-
Re is shown with four rams' heads (H. Prinz, Altorientalische Symbolik, Berlin
19I5, p. 38, note 5; A. Moret in Rev. de l'hist. des relig. I9I5, Vol. lxxii,
p. 2I8), corresponding to the four winds. Cf. the four-headed he-goat of
Mendes, Burchhardt in .ilgypt. ,Zeitschr. xlvii (I 9 I o), p. 11 I foil., and
Bilderatlas zur Religionsgeschichte, .ifgypt. Relig. (H. Bonnet), Fig. 163.
I I 7 (H)arsaphes also (sec Plut., De Is. et Osir. 37, p. 365e), the great ram-
headed god of Herakleopolis (cf. Amun's ram's horns) is glorified on the
Naples stele (era of the Greek conquest) as "lord of the gods, light that lightens
the world, whose right eye is the sun, his left eye the moon, from whose nose
the air comes", see Sethe, Hierogl;phische Urkurzden der griechisclz-romisclzerz ,Zeit
I (Leipzig, I904), pp. 2, 3; Sonnenauge, p. 5; Erman, Ref. d. Ji'gypt. (1934), p. 44
I I8. Sethe, Amurz, p. I02.
119. Sethe, ibid., p. 96.
I20. Stele from Karnak, see .ifgypt. ,Zeitschr. xxxv (I897), p. I6; Sethe,
op. cit., p. 93, I 2 I. Sethe, op. cit., pp. I I 9-22, cf. 96-7.
121. Sethe, Amun. pp. I I9-I22, cf. pp. 96-97.
I22. Yahweh also is himself invisible, only his voice being heard,. see E.
Fascher, Deus inuisibilis (Marburger theologische Studien, I), Gotha, I931,
p. 55
I 23. Sethe, op. cit., p. 62.
124. Cf. my article "Le corps parseme d'yeux", in the periodical ,Zalmoxis
(Paris and Bucharest), i (I938), p. 6.
I 25. I have already examined this statuette in relation to the Chronos-type
in Mithraic iconography, see "La figura mostruosa del Tempo nella religione
mitriaca", in L'Antiquite classique xviii (I949), also In memoria di Franz Cumont,
Accad. Na;; .. dei Lincei, Quaderno I 5 (Rome I 950).
I26. I owe these data to the politeness of Professor Jacques Vandier,
Conservator of the Louvre, and of Miss Eva J elinkova, who is preparing this
monument for publication.
I27. Lanzone, in Dizionario di mitologia egizia, p. 2 I 2 foil., plate 8o, 3, cf.
Micali, lvfonumenti inediti (Florence I944), plate ii, p. 30 foil., Gressmann,
Altorientalische Bilder ;;um Allen Testament ("AOB"), ed. 2, fig. 567, p. I62,
C. Desroches-Noblccourt, "Les religions egyptiennes", in Hist. gerzlrale des
religions (Paris, A. Quillet), i (I948), p. 285.
128. Cairo, No. 38846; G. Daressy, Statues de divinitls (Cairo I9o6), Plate
xliii, p. 2 I o.
I29. Cairo No. 9429; G. Daressy, Tex,tes et dessins mag~ques (Cairo I903),
Plate x, p. 36.
 EGYPT 73
I30. Von Bissing, Die Kultur des allen ;i'gyptens, ed. 2 (Leipzig Igig), p. 82,
fig. 55; The Mythology of all Races (Boston I g I 8), p. 223, fig. 2 I 4
I3I W. Pleyte, Chapitres suppUmentaires du Livre des Morts (Leiden 1881),
pp. 128 foll.; Th. Hopfner, Grieschisch-iigyptische 0./Jenbarungs;:.auber, i (Leipzig
1921), p. 2I3. Cf. the figure called vvEap,oprpos ("nine-shaped", possibly as
having 1+8 heads), to be drawn, according to the directions on the Leiden
magical papyrus (xiii, lines 419 foil., Vol. ii, p. 108 of Preisendanz, Pap. graec.
magic.), standing on the back of the crocodile with a hawk's face, inside the
circle formed by a snake, which is presumably biting its own tail.
132. Golt~nischeff, Die Metternichstele (Leipzig 1877), plate iii, fig. ix, plate
v, fig. xxi; Pleyte, op. cit., p. I25 foil.; Lanzone, op. cit., pp. 202-21; Roscher's
Ltxikon i, cols. 2880 foil.; Cat. glnhal des antiquitls du Afusle du Caire: G. Daressy,
Statues, P 2 I 0 foil.; Textes, p. 36. Glyptotheque Ny Carlsberg, sect. La
collection lg_yptienne (~1. Mogensen, Copenhagen 1930), plate 34, A I8o. Cf.
]. Krall, "Ueber den agyptischen Gott Bes", in]ahrb. d. allerhiichsten Kaiserhauses,
ix (188g), p. go; Fr. Ballod, Prolegomena ;:.ur Geschichte der ;:.werghaften Goller in
.A'g)'/Jten (Moscow I9I3), p. 58.
I 33 Plcyte, ojJ. cit., pp. 128, I 3 I.
I 34 Cat. of the Collection of . .. the late Hilton-Price (Sotheby, London Ig I 1),
p. 40, plate i.x, No. 297 See F. W. von Bissing, "Zur Deutung der 'panthe-
istischen Besfiguren' ", in ./fgypt. Zeitschr. lxxv (I 939), pp. I 30-32. Von .Bissing
informs me that the Copenhagen statuette with the Hamerti inscription to
which he refers is the same as that in the Hilton-Price catalogue.
I35 Darcssy, Textes, plates i, 940I, v, 9405, vii, 9407-8, 94IO, 94I2,
9415, 94I7-8, 9424, viii, 94I92I; W. Deanna, "Ouroboros", in Artibus Asiae
XV (I952), pp. I63-70.
I 36. A. Moret, "Horus Sauveur"' in Rev. hist. rei. I 9 I 5-ii, p. 2 I 3 foil.
I37 Cf. S. Eitrem, "Der Skorpion in Mythologie u. Religionsgeschichte",
in Symholae Osloenses vii (I 928), p. 69 foil.
I38. Ch. Boreux, Afus. des Ant. egypt. Guide-catalogue sommaire (Paris I932),
ii, plate 43, p. 522.
I39 G. Daressy, "Statue de Zedher le sauvcur", in Ann. du service des
Antiquit!s egypt. xviii (I 918), pp. I I 3 foil.
I40. Keith C. Scele, "Horus on the Crocodiles", in Journ. of Near Eastem
Studies vi (1947), pp. 43-52, plates i, ii.
I4I Lacau, "Lcs statues 'guerisseuses' dans l'ancicnnc Egypte", in Monuments
et Mimoires E. Piot, xxv (I92I-22), pp. 189 foll., plate xv; G. Lefebure, "La
statue 'guerisseuse' du Musee du Louvre", in Bu. lnst. franc. d'Arch. orient.
XXX (1930-31), p. 89 foll.
I42. Golenischeff, op. cit. (seen. I32); A. !vforet, op. cit.; F. Lexa, La magie
dans l' Egypte antique (Paris I 925), plates xxix-xxx; G. Steindorff, Cat. of the
Egyptian Sculpture in the J1'alters Art Gallery (Baltimore I946). The stele, formerly
on an estate belonging to the Metternich family at Konigswart ncar Maricn-
bad, has now been placed in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, see Nora
E. Scott, The Mettemich Stela, in Bull. Metr. us.qf Art, New series, ix, 8 (195I),
pp. 201-17.
I43 The figure ofHarmerti, in other words of "Bes Pantheos", is explained
by Moret in Rev. hist. rei. I932, ii, p. 254, as being Su, god of the atmosphere
 74 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
or the celestial space. Su was indeed identified, cf. p. 56, with Horus the Old
(Hr-wr).
144. Daressy, Statues, plate 37, Nos. 386g6 foil.
145 Sethe, in Sit;:.zmgsber. Berlin. Akad. 1928, p. 28I; Frankfort, Kingship,
p. 384, n. 46.
146. In a papyrus of the end of the New Kingdom, the myth of Re and Isis
is worked .?ver into a charm against serpents, see Roeder, Urkunden ;:.ur Religion
des allen Agypten (Jena 1923), pp. 138 foil. A document from Tell-el-Amarna
says, "All serpents creep upon the earth while they (men) are smitten with
blindness ( ?) at night", Roeder, op. cit., p. 8I; cf. ibid. 84, where among the
inscriptions on the Metternich stele is one for a cat bitten by a snake, "Come
(0 Re) .. verily it (poison) is (not) hidden from thee."
147 Cf. Roeder, op. cit., p. 63; A. Erman, Die Literatur d. .ifgyjJ/er (Leipzig
1923), p. 358; Ranke, A.O.T., ed. 2 (1926), p. 16.
148. See the British :Museum papyrus already quoted (see p. 59), B.M.
1834, Sams 41, Pleyte, op. cit. (see note 131), p. 128 foil.
149. Hymn to Amun on a papyrus of the 18th dynasty, sec Ed. Meyer in
Sit;:,. d. Berlin. Akad. ( 1928), p. 504 foil.
150. Cf. M. Verbrouck, Les multiples formes du dieu Bes, in Bulletin des Musces
Royaux, 1939, pp. 78-82.
I 51. Plutarch is quite definite that iri means "eye" and os is "many-",
adding that the hieroglyphic for Osiris is an eye plus a sceptre. So also Macro-
bius, Saturn. I, 21, 12. Cf. Th. Deveria, "Le nom d'Osiris rapporte par Plu-
tarque" in Memoires et fragments I (Paris I 8g6), p. I 6o; E. Lefebure, Le mythe
osirien II (Paris I875), p. I3o; E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian
Resurrection I (19I I), p. 24. The name Osiris (Usire) really means "seat of the
eye" (ir, "to see", irt, "eye"), in the complimentary sense "delight of the eye'',
see Sethe, Urgeschichte u. iilteste Relig. d.A"gypt. (Leipzig Ig3o), p. 79; A. Jacoby,
in Arch. f Religionswiss. x.xii ( 1923-24), p. 262.
152 Diodorus Siculus, I, I I' 2, 1TaVTaxfi yap e1TL{U.AAoJ-'Ta TUS' aKTLVaS' WU1Tp
orp8a.Ap.o iS' 1roAAo iS' {JAe1TtV
I 53 Macrobius also (loc. cit., see note 151) says that for the Egyptians Osiris
was the Sun, and that by the hieroglyphic sign for his name, a sceptre associ-
ated with an eye, they meant to imply hunc deum so/em esse regalique potestate
sublimem cuncta despicere.
154. No.' sox, Brit. Mus., No. I0042. The writing is hieratic, of the second
period of the 19th dynasty; see E. A. Wallis Budge, Facsimiles of Egyptian
hieratic papyri in the British Museum (London Igio), plate xxvi. Cf. Sethe,
Von ~_ahlen u. Zahlworlen bei den allen .ifgypter (Strassburg I g I 6), p. 36. In magic
texts the sungod Re is credited with as many as 777 ears, see Erman, Rel. d.
.ifgypt. (I934), p. 97 (note); Kees, Gotterglaube, p. I59
I55 G. Daressy in Recueil de traz:aux, xxxii (Igio), p. I77; Ed. Meyer in
Sit;:.. d. Berlin. Akad. (Ig28), p. 506.
I56. Erman, Literatur, p. 355; Roeder, Urkwzden, p. 7; Ranke, AOT., ed.
2, P I4.
I57 Gressmann, AOB, ed. 2, Nos. 67, 7I, 72, 73, 8o, 82.
I58. (Sir) W. M. Flinders Petrie, Memphis I (London 1909), pp. 7, Ig,
plates ix-xiii. Cf. G{rptotheque N;-Carlsberg (V. Schmidt, Choix de monuments
 EGYPT 75
egyptiens) II, p. 29, figs. 31, 32; ~1og~nscn, op. cit. (cf. note 132), plate 105;
stele with five ears and another with twenty-two ( ?) .
159 For other Egyptian instances of "77" meaning "a great number",
see A. jacoby, in A.R.W. xxii (I923-24), p. 260.
I 6o. Petrie, Memphis, I, plate xxviii, 2 I. cr. Erman, Religion, p. I 44 (the
goddess Sekhmet of Sahure).
I61. See Wilkinson, Manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians (ed. 2, revised
by Birch, London I878, Vol. II, p. 357); he would compare with repref5enta-
tions of parts of the body set up as ex-votos in Catholic and Muslim ritual, as
at the tombs of sheiks in modern Egypt. For an ancient Greek parallel, see
Greek votive qfferings (Cambridge I 902), p. 2 I I and note.
162. Petrie, op. cit., p. 7 Cf. H. P. Blok, Remarques sur quelques steles dites '"'tl
oreilles", in Kemi, i (I928), p. 123 foil.
16g. B. Bruyere~ Quelques steles trouvles a Deir el Jvlldineh, in Annates du service
des antiquitls de l' Egypte, xxv (I 925), p. 76 foil.
I64. Cf. Erman, Religion, p. 145, fig. 53
165. Bilderatlas zur Religionsgeschichte: H. Bonnet, Jt'gyptische Religion, No. I03
(two ears and four eyes); cf. Deveria, Mimoires et fragments, I, p. I 52; G.
Maspero, in Recueil de travaux ii (I 88o), pp. 108 fall., I I 8 fall.
I 66. Th. Deveria, Des oreilles et des yeu:-< dans le symbolisme de l' Ancienne Egypte,
in Mlmoires etfragments I (Paris, I8g6), pp. I47-57
I67. Bruyere, op. cit., (see note I6g).
I 68. Among other aspects which Ptah assumes, by reflexion from other
gods with whom he was identified as supreme deity, is that of sky-god, whose
eyes are the sun and moon, his breath the wind, and so forth. This dates from
the New Kingdom; see Mrs. M. Sandman Holmberg, The God Ptah (Lund
and Copenhagen I946), p. I05 sqq.
I6g. British Museum, No. 589, see A. Erman, "Denksteine aus der theb-
anischen Graberstadt.", in Sitz. Berl. Akad. (I 91 I), pp. I I oo foil.; Religion,
p. I4I; B. Gunn, "The religion of the poor in Ancient Egypt", in J.E.A. iii
(I 9 I 6), pp. 88-g; Roeder, Urkunden, p. 58 foil.; Pettazzoni, Corif. d. pecc. II,
p. 27 fall.
I 70. Berlin 69I0, see Ji'gyptische lrzschriflerz aus den staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
II (Leipzig I 924), pp. 63-71 ; Roeder, Urkunden, p. 54 foil.
I 7 I. For votive eyes and ears, see Perdrizet, Bronzes grecs d' Egypte de !a
Collection Fouquet (Paris I9I I), No. 85, pp. 50-51; Wilkinson-Birch II, p. 358,
fig. 460.
172. Clem. Alex., Strom. v, 7, 42, p. 354 Stahlin:. Ta T JJTa Ka~ Tous
ocp8a>.p.ous ol 07]p.tovpyovvns g VATJS Ttp.las Ka8tpovt7LV TO is 80 is
>
aV~T~
8'Ev;S 1 \ I - ~~ l I t
LS TOVS VWS 1 TOVTO OTJ1TOV aLVLGGOp.VOL WS 1TaVTa
I 8OS
\ t
Oplf
~

Kat aKOVL
I73 Eusebios, Praeparat. euang. I, 10, 48-49. The god in question is not
Knuphis (Knubis,. the god Khnum, see Ahmad Mohammed Badawi, Der
Gott Chnum, diss. Berlin, Gli.ickstadt 1937), but Khmef or Kamef, that is
Kamutef-Min, the god of Koptos, identified with Amun, see Sethe in Realenc.
III, col. 2352, cf. XI, 9IO.
174. Berlin Papyrus 3055, xvi, 2 sqq. see Sethe, in Berlin. Phil. Wochenschr.
(1896), 1529.
 THE ALL-KNO\VING GOD
175. Roeder, Urkundcn ;:ur Religion des allm Aeg;'}Jien, p. go; Lexa~ La magie
dans l'Eg)1'1e anciome II, p. 74
q6. C. G. Seligman, Eg;pt and .Negro Africa (London I934). Gertr. Thausing,
"AlHigyptisches religioses Gedankengut im heutigen Mrika", in Wiener Beitriige
zur Kulturgeschichte u. Linguistik v (I943), p. 92. AI. Scharff, "Die Friihkulturen
Aegyptens und Mesopotamiens", in Der Alte Orient, Vol. 4I (Leipzig 194I);
Fahrenfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago 1948), pp. 16, 348.
I 77 E. Zyhlarz, "Ursprung u. Sprachcharacter des Altagyptischen", in
.(.eilschr. f. Eingeborenen-Sprachen xxiii (I 932-33); "Das geschichtliche Funda-
ment der hamitischen Sprachen", in Africa, ix (I936), p. 433 sqq.
I 78. Junker, Giza II (Vienna and Leipzig 1934), 48 sqq.
I 79 AI. Scharff, Grundziige der iigyptischen Vorgeschichte (Leipzig 1927);
H. A. Winkler, Volker u. VO!ktrbewegungen im torgeschichtlichen Oberiigypten im
Lichte neuer Felsbilderfunde (Stuttgart 1937); cf. VV. Holscher, Lib)'tr u. Aeg;pte~
(Gliickstadt 1937); also \V. Vycichl, Iusch, der berberische Himmelsgott, in Orient
alistische Literaturzeitung ( 1939), p. 72 I sqq; same, ':Eine vorhamitische Sprach-
schicht im Altagyptischen", in .(.eitsch. d. Deutsch. TlWrgenl. Gesellsch., 195I,
p. 67 sqq.
 Chapter III

BABYLONIA

(a) ANU
N a Sumerian hymn in honour of the deified king Lipit-IStar,

I fifth monarch of the first !sin dynasty, the god Anu is hailed as one
"from whom none escapes" . 1 This possibly has to do with the
nature of Anu as god of the starry sky; the sky lies over the earth and so
a god of the sky is in a position to see and know everything that occurs
here below, without anything or anyone escaping him.

(b) ENLIL
Enlil likewise is a god whom none can escape. "From thy vision
who escapes?" says a Sumerian liturgical text. 2 The net of Enlil covers
heaven and e(\rth, it is stretched out over all the lands. 3 The power of
Enlil's .eyes is especially emphasised; "thy seeing eyes weary not" says
the text already quoted.4 In a hymn to the Bel ofNippur, i.e. to Enlil, 5
we read,

0 father Bel, how long shall thine eyes, which see (everything), not rest?8

One of the seven usual titles 7 of Enlil is idedu nitena, which means
"seeing of himself", signifying an especial, extraordinary power of
sight, practically all-sight. a Enlil "knoweth the heart of the gods" ;9
he knows in like manner the heart of man, for in his name peace is
made, agreements concluded, boundaries fixed, and his vengeance is
invoked on breakers of treaties. This was done as early as the third
millennium B.c. by the ancient kings of Sumer Eannatum and
;. Entemena.to
The name En-lil means in Sumerian "Lord of wind" .u From his
union with Ninlil, the "Lady of wind", the rain falls. 12 Enlil is also
king of the hurricane, 13 author of the deluge, u. bestower of .violent
:; rainstorms but also of beneficial rain.1s Enlil is therefore essentially a
god of the atmosphere and of atmospheric phenomena, especially
stormy, "meteoric" phenomena. Enlil, as air-god, thus approximates
to Anu, the skygod par excellence; he is son of Anu and like him is
"father of the gods",.ta father of Adad,t7 himself a god of hurricanes,
wind, thunderbolts, thunder and rain. 1s
Enlil's omniscience is related to his fundamental nature as a wind-
god and, by extension, of the weather-sky in its violent manifestations.
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Indeed the wind, since it blows in all directions, has a kind of omni-
presence, as it goes everywhere, and therefore it is in a position to
know everything. 1o We have alr~ady pointed out (Chap. II, p. 56)
the resemblance between Enlil and the Egyptian Amun. Among the
Greeks also, Aer, that is to say the wind personified, knows everything
(Chap. IX, p. 153); Boreas, the North Wind, sees everything (ibid.).

(c) EA
Ea is god of the element of water, or more exactly, of fresh running
water on the surface of the earth, and in the abyss which lies beneath
it. As such, in other words as god of that mighty and mysterious
element which bursts forth from the deep and unexplored bowels of
the earth and is miraculously potent in exorcisms of demons and sick-
nesses, Ea is god of wisdom. The wisdom which properly belongs to
Ea is therefore above all else the possession of inaccessible secrets,
knowledge of formulae arid of conjurations, power of magical thought
and action, boundless ability to comprehend and understand, and
therefore also supreme sapience, enlightened counsel, and technical
skill. This may be gathered from the commonest and most frequent
names and attributes of Ea. He is "lord of sapience" (bil nimeqi),
"king of sapience" (Jar nimeqi), bestower of sapience upon earthly
kings.2o He is "the wizard of the gods"/1 "the expert among the
lgigi" ; 22 he is "the lord of sapience and deliberation"; "the sagacious
one" (basisu), "lord of the cunning" (bil hasisi), "he who understands
everything" (basis mimma). 23 The natural seat of understanding is the
organ of hearing; consequently, Ea is "lord of the ear" (bel uzni), or
"he of the wide ear", "of the open ear". 2"' U znu, the Ear, and Ijasisu,
the "understanding", are actually personified as attendants of Ea and
of his wife Damkina. 2 o Ea also is knowing (muda), even all knowing
(mudii. mimma Jum!u), as is Enlil, 2s but the knowledge, or omniscience,
of Ea is essentially different from tl1at of Enlil, or Sin or Shamash. It
does not essentially depend on vision. This essential difference is
marked almost by a special sign, the difference of the particular . :;
organs in one and the other. That which is particularly exalted in
Enlil is (see p. 77) his power of vision, his all-embracing glance, while
with Ea it is the acuteness of his hearing. In a hymn to Ninurta, in
which the various parts of that god's body are found identified with :.
various deities, it is the eyes of Ninurta which are equated with Enlil
and Ninlil, while his ears are Ea and Damkina. 27

(d) SIN
Alongside the first triad of cosmic deities, Anu, Bel and Ea, or
Enki, there was a second triad of astral deities, consisting of Sin
(Nannar), god of the moon, Shamash (Utu), god of the sun, and Ishtar
 BABYLONIA 79
(Inanna), goddess of the planet Venus. These three deities, but
especially Sin, a_nd above all Shamash, 28 are credited with omniscience,
an omniscience depending on sight, such as is attributed to deities who
look down, like eyes, from the sky upon the earth.
The omniscience of Sin is shown in certain proper names, such as
Sin-ka-la-ma-i-di, "Sin knows everything", or in a shortened form
Sin-i-di, "Sin knows (everything)". 2 9 He is all-knowing because all-
seeing. Sundry personal names mean "Sin sees" ao; another name is
Sin-i-na-rna-tim, "Sin is the eye of the land",31 Indeed, the moon is an
eye, the night eye of the heavens.a 2 The omniscience of Sin, therefore,
is essentially a power of seeing all. Sin is "king of the sky", 33 "the Anu
of the sky" .a-t From the sky Sin beholds all things. as Sin also, like
other skygods, is guardian of boundaries, and is invoked against any
who remove landmarks.as

(e) SHAMASH
Shamash likewise is omniscient; in a seal-inscription he is hailed as
one who "Jtnows all things" (miidii mimma Jum!u).s1 The personal name
Samal-miidi me~ns "Shamash knows (all)", or is (omni)scient. 38 The
omniscience of Shamash again resolves itself into a power of seeing
everything. Shamash is indeed the sungod, and the sun is an eye open
upon the universe, the daytime eye of heaven. "Shamash is my eye",
"Shamash is his eye", "Shamash is the eye of the lands" are personal
names. 3 9 As such, namely as eye of the heavens, Shamash beholds the
earth. All creatures of plain and mountain, sea and rivers, are under
his eye. l\1en are above all the objects of his attention, men and their
works.
Thou watchest over the people of all the lands. -to
Of countries, (even) those different in language,
All lands, whatsoever their tongues,
Thou knowest their plan, thou art observant of their course.41

The snares of the impious and malicious, the unjust acts which harm
the wretched, false oaths, all are known to him; no one can escape his
net. 4 2 In fine, he sees into the hearts of men, sees and punishes. There-
fore he is invoked in oaths, agreements and contracts; oath-breakers
fall under his punishment.4 3 He is the judging god par excellence, the
"lord of judgement" ;44 he is an unerring judge, father of Kettu
(Justice) and Mcsaru (Righteousness). 45

(j) MARDUK
lVIarduk, god of Babylon, the great deity of all Babylonia, has in the
texts the epithets of "understanding", "wise", "wise among the wise",
Bo THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
''lord of wisdom'', ''creator of wisdom'', ''he who knows all wisdom'',
"of wide understanding", "the expert among the gods", "the expert
among the Igigi", "the one expert in all", "the one expert in every-
thing that is in heaven and earth."4s These attributes and thege terms
he shares to some extent with Ea (Enki).47 Because Marduk is the son
of Ea, it is not extraordinary that he has, so to speak, inherited his
character as a god of "wisdom", this "wisdom" being chiefly a magical
lore, a lore of exorcism, miracle-working and divination. 48
On the other hand, Marduk is "all-knowing" (miidu kaliima). 4 9 He
is the god who "knows the hearts of the gods"oo as Enlil "knows the
hearts of all the lgigi". In the prayer recited by the urigallu the second
day of the akitu at Babylon, occur the words "Bel (meaning Marduk),
with thine eyes thou dost behold all things". 61 Marduk therefore
possesses not only omniscience of a magical kind but also that of the
visual order. The most significant evidence of this omniscience of
Marduk being of a visual type is contained in the so-called Creation
Epic, the Eniima eliJ.r.z There, when the birth of Marduk is narrated
(Tablet i) and a description given of the remarkable abilities and
faculties of the god, it is said that his eyes "see everything" (line g8).
More than this, these "all-seeing" eyes of Marduk are said, in the same
context (line 95) to be four in number, and his ears also are four
(ibid.),6a whence it appears that Marduk is possessed of no common
powers of sight and hearing, a universal vision and a universal hearing
which together make up perfect omniscience.
It is well known that the myth of creation as told in the Erziima eli!
is based upon an older myth, in which the chief role belonged, not to
Marduk,.but to Enlil. 64 Marduk was to begin with the obscure divinity
of an obscure town, for such Babylon was originally and such it con-
tinued to be in the third millennium B.C.; only when the city, under
the dynasty of Amurru, became mistress of all Babylonia did Marduk
its god become in fact the supreme deity. The creation-myth took
shape at a period earlier than the rise of Babylon's and Iviarduk's for-
tunes. It goes back to a time in which there coexisted various inde-
pendent city states in Babylonia, among which Nip,pur was one of the
most important, and so consequently Enlil, the god of Nippur, w~s a
leading god. When Marduk became the 'Supreme deity, he also replaced
Enlil as the chief figure of the creation-myth, as, when political
supremacy passed later to Assyria, its national god Assur took Marduk's
place in the Assyrian version of the same myth, taking over, with
much else, his four eyes and four ears.o6
There is no lack of indications in the Eniima eli! of Marduk having
replaced Enlil. The arms which Marduk employs in his combat with
the primaeval monster Tiamat, namely the thunderbolt, storm, tem-
pest and above all the winds (four in iv, 42, seven in iv, 45-47) are
 BABYLONIA 81
precisely those of a god of the atmosphere and of weather-phenomena,
such as Enlil was.66 The tablets of destiny which are taken from
Qingu (iv, 12 I sqq.) and give the victorious Marduk the sovranty
over the gods were originally in Enlil's possession. 57 The fifty names
which the gods bestow on Marduk (vi, I22 sq.) and of which the
sixth and seventh tablets of the Enuma eli! give a list, were perhaps
originally names of Enlil,6S whose symbolic number is fifty. Enlil'him-
self transfers to Marduk (vii, I I 7) his own name of bel matati (Lord
of the Lands), 5 9 and Marduk is actually styled "the Enlil of the
gods".oo One might suppose that the four eyes and four ears were also
passed on to Marduk by his predecessor Enlil, but we lack evidence of
Enlil ever being four-eared or four-eyed.
We have indeed in the religious iconography of Babylonia some
figures of supernatural beings with two heads or two faces, and there-
fore implicitly with four eyes and ears.n These representations are
found especially on Babylonian seals of the third millennium B.C., 62
also on some Syro-Hittite monuments which depend upon Mesopo-
tamian art. 63 Some are figures of monsters, with two heads clearly
distinguished, each on its own neck, both generally turned the same way;
sometimes they are heads of beasts. 64 Apart from such cases, in which
the possession of two heads signifies no more than that we have to
do with a monster (the same is true for other many-headed figures,
as in ancient Greece, and elsewhere, see the Introduction, p. I 8f.),
there is a divine figure, bearded, wearing a horned tiara, which on
some seals has one head but two faces looking opposite ways (Fig.
6), like that of the two-faced Janus (cf. Chap. X). This figure is shown
generallyo6 in the act of introducing a sacrificer or other personage
(sometimes a mythological figure in the form of a bird-man) into the
presence of a god, who is shown, by the two streams of water which
gush from his body, or by a small vessel which he holds in his hand, to
be Enki-Ea, the god of fresh water (above, p. 78). The antiquated
but not completely obsolete theory of Menant was that this figure has
'!. no mythological nor ideological essence and is nothing but the con-
ventional solution of the artistic problem how to show someone looking
at once in two opposite directions, i.e. towards the god and also
towards the person to be ushered into his presence. 60 It is more pro-
bable that the two-faced personage on the seals really does stand for a
definite divine figure, however hard it may be to identify him. Some
are of opinion that he is no other than Marduk, and that the scene
represents a situation often described in the texts of exorcism; Marduk
is in the act of coming before his father Ea to consult him concerning
a sick man. 6 7 But another interpretation is better founded. In a text
dealing with omens to be taken from portentous births we read: "If
a woman brings forth u.su.mi.a, the king's government will change." 88
0
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
In a comment on this text it is said6 9 that u.su.mi.a signifies sa.2 pa.nu.su,
i.e. "two-faced". o On the other hand, we know of Usmu, or Isimud,
as a servant of Ea-Enki. 71 It is thus likely that the two-faced personage
on the seals, shown in the act of bringing someone into the presence of
Ea, is no other than this servant Usmii 72 in his subordinate function
of usher or porter. 7 a
But the two-faced figure is not found only in glyptics. He is seen
also, isolated, on a fragmentary limestone relief, now in Berlin (Fig. 7),
of the time of Gudea (about 2430 B.c.), 74 and again on a terracotta
from Sippar (Fig. 8), now in Istanbul, which is of later date.75
Furlani is of opinion that in these cases also Usmu is presumably the
subject. Certain texts from which it might be djrectly or indirectly made
out that the god Enlil, the god Ninurta and the primaeval monster
Tiamat were all likewise two-headed are, it would seem, to be inter-
preted differently. 76 Thus, if we leave out of account the two-headed
demons mentioned above, the result would be that the only real two-
faced personage in Babylonia is Usmu, the servant of Ea.
Are we then to suppose that the two-faced Usmu is the forerunner,
in thought and in art, of a two-faced Marduk who as such is provided
with four eyes and four ears? But Marduk's two faces are nothing but
an inference. vVe are not told, in the Enflma elis or anywhere else,
that Marduk had two heads, but only that he had four eyes and four
ears and that his four eyes saw everything. This is not to say that
Marduk was really thought of ns two-headed. 77 The expression means
simply that Marduk was gifted with remarkable powers of sight (and
of hearing); it is an emphatic, poetical expression closely related to
the particular situation described in the text and having to do with
the unusual nature of the baby Marduk, the precocious wonder-child
on whom his father Ea conferred "twofold deity" from his birth, in
other words a nature superior to that of the other gods, and conse-
q\lently also keener sight, sharper hearing and so on. That the represen-
tations in art ofUsmu and other two-faced beings helped to suggest the
most obvious arrangement of Marduk's four eyes and four ears, namely
on two heads or two faces, is probable enough, but Marduk's quad-
ruple eyes in the Enflma eli! do not result directly from the two faces of
Usmu on the seals, nor vice versa. The evidence from art of Usmu's two
faces and that from literature of Marduk's four eyes are two equivalent
formulae which, each in its own idiom, set forth one and the same
concept, that is to say omniscience.
Here we must take note of a temple of the "proto-historic" epoch, the oldest
strata of which go back to the Uruk culture as it is called, which was found by
the English archaeological expedition at Brak in the valley of the K.habur in
northern Syria (M. E. L. Mallowan, "Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar",
in Iraq ix, 1947). It is conventionally known as the Eye-Temple, by reason of
 BABYLONIA
the enormous number of little idols found there, thousands of flat figurines of
alabaster or stone, from four to six centimetres long and three to eight milli-
metres thick, which reproduce sketchily the shape of the human body, with
two great eyes cut into the face, hence the name "eye-idols" given to them.
Some examples have two heads, one beside the other and each with its own neck
(Mallowan, Plate 26, No. 13, Plate 51, No. 19). Other examples have but one
neck and one head but nevertheless four eyes, or again three or even six (ibid.,
Plate 51, Nos. 22, 42, p. 198 foil.). Moreover, there is a special group of small
idols, some of them in terracotta, of rather larger size, in which the two eyes
are bored right through; these have been named "spectacle idols".
Mallowan, rejecting the idea of W. Andrae, that these figurines are sche-
matic representations of a house or hut, and recognising that the eye-idols and
the spectacle-idols are but two varieties of the same fundamental type, one
earlier and the other later (the eye-idols are later, and, being found only at
Brak, they seem to be a local type, developed out of the older spectacle-idols,
which are found also at Ur, Uruk and elsewhere), attacks the problem of
interpretation of these little idols, but does not solve it, for on the one hand he
seems inclined to suppose (p. 44) that they are images of the devotee himself,
either alone or grouped with some member of his family (hence the examples
with more than one head or pair of eyes), and on the other hand he sees in
them the representation, reproduced endlessly for the use of the worshippers,
of the deity himself who was worshipped at Brak (and elsewhere), i.e. of the
cult-statue in the temple (pp. 151, 155).
The identification of the deity is equally uncertain, the name being unknown.
Ivlallowan thinks that we may have to do with a great goddess, the Mother
Goddess (p. 116), but does not reject the possibility that the eyed god of Brak
was a sungod, the belief in the divine potency of the eyes in relation to the sky'
being very widely spread (p. 209 foll.). It might again be a divinity uniting in
himself the male and female principle (p. 157).
Here it is natural to think of the "four eyes" of Marduk in the Eniima eli1
(above, p. 8o). The little idols of Brak with their four, or three or six eyes give
us a glimpse of the existence of an art-tradition to which Marduk's four eyes
might also be attached without implying two heads. In this connection we may
cite another case in which extraordinary powers of sight are expressed by
doubling each eye, i.e. putting two pairs of eyes in the same head. Certain
bronze statuettes found in Sardinia and belonging to the archaic or proto-
Sardinian period show warriors with two pairs of eyes because they were thought
of as having "second sight" or, as I ventured to conjecture many years ago,
the favourable outcome of the ordeal through which they had passed (the
water-test) had not only spared them the loss of their sight but had given them
keener vision. See R. Pettazzoni, La religione primitiva in Sardegna (Piacenza
1912), p. 40 foil., Figs. 7 foil., cf. A.R.W. xvi (1913), p. 323.
Another parallel worth pointing out is the following. According to ~1allowan,
p. 205, the "spectacle" type of figurine, that is with two large eyes bored right
through, may have been thought of as a sort of screen through which the god
could look at his ministers and adorers and see them without their seeing him.
In ancient Mexico the god Tezcatlipoca, who punishes sins, being a sort of
Enlil with some features of Yahweh, is sometimes shown holding in his hand a
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
kind of monocle, the tlachieloni ("instrument for seeing", rendered in Spanish
by miradero or mirador). It is described by Sahagun as a "golden disk" with a
hole in the c~ntre, which enabled the user to see better by concentrating his
power of sight on a single object. Corresponding exactly to this is the nierika
of the present-day Huichol, which is an attribute of the gods generally, but
especially of the Sun, the Morning Star and other astral deities; see Chap.
XXIII, p. 410, and fig. 46, p. 407.

(g) OTHER DEITIES

This process of handing on the attribute of omniscience, be it of the
magical or the visual type, from deities who are by nature all-knowing
to others which are not essentially of that kind is brought about also
through the divine titles signifying omniscience. Assur did not only
inherit from Marduk his four eyes and four ears when he took his place
as the chief figure in the creation-myth (above, p. 8o), but also took
over the epithet o( "all-knowing" (mildil kalama), 78 and the other
related characteristics of. protector of agreements and oaths and
guardian of boundaries, which probably originate with Enlil. 79 Nabu,
son of Marduk, or otherwise, and perhaps originally, of Ea, the scribe
of the gods and the god of writers, also of craftsmen and the like,
besides being called Nabu the "wise", "the expert", "of wide under-
standing", "keen-eyed" and so forth, is also known. as mfldil kalama, or
all-knowing, or mfldil mimma lum!u, "he who knows everything".so
Nergal, god of the underworld, son of Enlil or by another account of
Anu, or Ea, is praised in a hymn as being
of ~de understanding, knower of all things, omniscient,
ofpenetrating intelligence, very intelligent.s1
The god Ninsubur also, who is the sukkallu, i.e. the servant, of Anu, is
all-knowing (mildfl mimma Ium!u).s2 Again, the goddess Ninsun, mother
of Gilgamesh, knows everything (mudat kalama idi).sa

NOTES

I. H. Zimmern, Konig Lipit-l!tars Vergottlichung, ein altsumerisches Lied, Berichte

d. sachs. Ges. d. Wiss., philol.-hist. KI. 68.5 (Leipzig I916), p. 16 (col. i, line
16).
2. Langdon, Sumerian liturgical texts (Philadelphia 1917), p. 171, line 15;
ibid., p. 168, line I.
3 F. Notscher, Ellil in Sumer und Akkad (Hanover 1927), p. 46 with note 8;
cf. the Stele of the Vultures (infra, n. 10).
4 Langdon, Sum. lit. texts, p. I 68, line I.
5 A. T. Clay, "Ellil, the god ofNippur", in Am. ]own. Sem. Lang. and Lit.
23 (1907), p. 269 sqq.
6. Reisner, Sumerisch-babylonische Hpnnen (Berlin 1B9G)~ r\o. i (p. 130 sqq.),
r

FIG. 6.___:Babylonian cylinder seal;

H. Frankfort, c.ylinder Seals (London, I 939), plate xix a

FIG.7.-Limestone relief, Berlin, FIG. 8.-Terracotta. Constantin-

VA 28go; Miscellanea Orientalia A. oplc; A. Jeremias, Handhuch der
Deimel (Rome, I 935), p. I 5 I altorientalisclzen Geisteskultur (Leip-
zig, I929), p. 354, fig. 184
 BABYLONIA Bs
lines 46 sq.; l\1. Jas trow, Die Religion Bab)'loniens und AsS)Tiuzs, ii, I (Giessen
tgt!:?), p. 16; cf. I\otscher, op. cit., p. 48.
7 Notscher, op. cit., p. I6 sq.
8. "Scharfblickender von selbst", H. Zimmern, JJer Alte Orient, xiii, I, p. 8;
"the only all-seeing one", F. A. Vanderburgh, Sumerian hymns in the British
Museum (New York 1go8), No. i, pp. 20-21; "whose omniscience is self-created",
Langdon, Sum. and Bah. psalms, p. 277; "der a us sich selbst Gesichte hat",
Notscher, op. cit., p. I7.
g. Beitriige zur Assyriologie 5 (I9o6), p. 5g9, No. I7, verso, line IO (Tallqvist,
Der assyrische Gott, p. 34).
10. Stele of the vultures, in Thureau-Dangin, Die sumerischen und akkadischen
Konigsinschriften (Leipzig Ig07), pp. I4-I7i flint of Entemena, ibid., p. 36. cr.
Paffrath, Z,ur Gotterlehre in den altbab;lonischen Konigsinschriften (Paderborn Igi3),
p. 20 sq.
I I, Notscher, op. cit., p. 3 sqq.; cf. the Sumerian hymn in Lutz, Selected
Sumerian and Babylonian texts (Philadelphia Igig), No. I I4 (p. 53 sqq.), verso,
lines g- I o; Ed. Dhorme, Les religions de Babylonie et d' Assyrie, 2d. ed., Paris I 949,
P 27.
I 2. Deimel, Pantheon, p. 2I4 sq. For the myth of Enlil and Ninlil, see
Pinches, in]ourn. R. Asiat. Soc. (I9I9), pp. I85 sqq.
I 3 Luga! amaru: Gudea, cylinder A I 0.2; 23.I4, 10, in Thureau-Dangin,
op. cit., pp. I oo, I I4.
I4. Gilgamesh epic, tablet xi, lines I6g sqq., I83 sqq., AQT2, p. I7g sqq.
(Notscher, op. cit., p. 57); Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. by J. B. Pritchard
(Princet~n Igso), p. gsa.
15. Entemena, see Thureau-Dangin, op. cit., p. 34, g, 2. 2. Gudea, ibid.,
p. 88, m, i. 6. g.
I6. Entemena, Thureau-Dangin, op. cit., p. 36, n, i. 3; Tallqvist, Der asSJr.
Gott, P 37
I7. For the association of Anu and Adad in cult, see w. Andrae, Der
Anu-Adad Tempel in Assur (Leipzi~ Ig I I).
I8. Furlani, La religione babilonese e assira i (Bologna Ig28), p. 23I sq.; Kn.
Tallqvist, Akkadische Gotterepitheta, (Helsinki Ig38), p. 247
Ig. "As the air thou art all-pervading" says another hymn to Enlil, Lang-
don, Sumer. and Bah. Psalms, No. xiii, line 6 (p. Igg).
20, B. Meissner and P. Rost in Beitrlige zm Assyriologie iii ( I8g8), p. 235;
Dhorme, Les religions, ed. 2 (I94g), p. 50.
2 I. MaJmai iltini, Maqh1 vii, p. I 04.
22. Apkal igigi (Tallqvist, pp. 28g sq., cf. Der assyrische Gott, p. 32).
23. Enuma elis, i, p. 6o.
24. Tallqvist, locc. citt.
25. H. Zimmern, in Berichte d. sikhs. Akad. lxiii (Igii), p. I 13; Deimel,
op. cit., p. I35, No. I 395; Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien ii, p. I5.
26. Tallqvist, pp. 86, 28g sq.; Codex of Hammurabi, AOT2, p. 4og;
Deimel, Codex Hammurabi (Rome 1g3t), p. 41; F. E. Peiser, in Mitteilungen der
vorderas. Ges. (I8g8-g6), p. I6.
27. Ebeling, K.A.R. iii, No. I02; Qpellen zur Kenntnis der babylonischen Religion
i (in Mitt. d. vorderas. Ges., 23.I, Leipzig I g I 8), p. 4 7 sqq., lines I I, 2 I.
86 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
28. As to Ishtar, she says of herself (Langdon, Sumerian and Babylonian Psalms,
No. i, lines 5 sqq.), "\Vhois before me? who behind me? From my view who
escapes?!'
29. H. Ranke, Early Babylonian personal names (Philadelphia I905), pp. I6o,
235
30. E. Combe, Histoire du culte de Sin en Babylonie et en Assyrie (Paris I go8),
P I47
3I. Ranke, op. cit., p. I59i Combe, op. cit., p. I4I; ]. ]. Stamm, Die akkad-
ische Namengebung (Leipzig I939), p. 227.
32. Tallqvist, Akkad. Gotterep., p. 445 In the hymn to Ninurta already
quoted (note 27), Sin is the iris of the eyes of Ninurta, while Enlil and Ninlil
are the eyes themselves.
33 Code of Hammurabi, xxvii, recto, line 41.
34 E. G. Perry, f{ymnen und Gebete an Sin (Leipziger Semitistische Studien,
ii, 4, Leipzig 1907), No. 2 (p. I2 sqq.), line g.
35 Bollenri.icher, Gebete u. Hymnen an Nergal No. I, line 8. Ningal, wife of
Sin, is advisoress ofsovrans, cf. Langdon, "The Eyes ofNingal", in Rev. d'Ass;r.
20 {I923), p. g sqq.
36. Combe, op. cit., p. 36.
37 De Clercq collection, cat. no. 267; Langdon, "Inscriptions on Cassite
seals", in Rev. d'Assyr. I6 {Igig), p. 79 No. 23, lines; Scheil, ibid., I3, p. I7i
Tallqvist, Akkad. Goiter., p. 459
s8. Ranke, op. cit., P I46; cf. SamaJ-ki-nam-i-di, "Samas knows the faithful
one", Ranke, p. I45i Stamm, op. cit., pp. Ig8, 240.
39 Ranke, op. cit., pp. 109, I45
40. Cp. AOT2 , p. 247, f, line 3
4I. See the great hymn to Samas in C. D. Gray, The SamaJ religious texts
(Chicago Igoi), No. I; Schollmeyer, Sumerisch-babylonische Hymnen und Gebete
an Samas (Paderborn I912), No. I6, p. 8o; AQTz, p. 244, e, col. I, line 21,
Ancient Near Eastern Texts, ed. by J. B. Pritchard, pp. 387ff.
42. Ibid., Pritchard, ANET, /oc. cit. (p. 388); AOT2 , p. 335 f. (myth of
Etana). The net of Samas, Jastrow, Die Religion Babyloniens u. Assyr. i, 430;
of Enlil, Langdon, Proc. Soc. Bib!. Arch. (I 9 I 2)' p. I s6 f.; of Ninurta, Maynard,
Amer. Journ. of Semitic Lang. {I9I7), p. 39; of Tammuz, Zimmern, Babylon.
Hymnen u. Gebete, 2e Ausw., I g I I, p. I 2 I ; cf. the net of Varuna, Atharva- V. vii.
83, 3; of Yahweh, Hos. vii. I 2; Ezek. xii. I 3, xxxii. 3; Job xix. I 6. See K.
Frank, Bilder u. Symbole babyl.-assyr. Goiter (Leipzig 1906), pp. 10, 15, 25, 27;
I. Scheftelowitz, Schlingen- und Net;:.motiv (Giessen I912), p. 3 ff.
43 Cf. Mercer, The oath in Babylonian and Assyrian literature (Paris 1912).
44 bel dini, Tallqvist, Akkadische Gotterepith., p. 456; Furlani, "La sentenza del
dio nella religione babilonese e assira", Memorie dell' Accad. dei Lincei, Cl. diSc.
morali (Ser. viii), II, 5 (Roma 1950), p. 2.78.
45 Cp. H. Ringgren, Word and Wisdom (Lund I947), p. 53; Dhorme,
Religions de Baby/., 2e ed., pp. 67, 8g.
46. ljosisu, cf. Marduk-l:J.a-si-is, "Marduk is wise", Ranke, op. cit., p. I 2 I,
Stamm, op. cit., p. 220; li'iiti, Enuma elis, i, 8o; miidii gimri u;:.nu, ibid. ii,
I I 6; apkal ildni, ibid. i, p. 8o; Tallqvist, p. 37 I.
4 7. Tallqvist, p. 28g.
 BABYLONIA
48. Bel iisipiiti, "lord of exorcism", Maqlu i, 62 etc.; Tallqvist, p. 369.
49 Tailqvist, p. 86.
so. Miidii nhbi ilani, Tailqvist, p. 37 I' cf. Eniima eli! vii, 35
5 I. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels accadiens (Paris I 921), p. I 29 sq., line I 9;
Zimmern, "Das babylonische Neujahrsfest", in Der alte Orient xxv. 3 (Leipzig
1926), p. 4; AOT2, p. 2g6.
52. S. Langdon, The Bab;lonian Epic of Creation (Oxford I923); G. Furlani,
II Poema della creazione (Bologna I934); R. Labat, Le poeme babylonim de Ia
creation (Paris 1935).
53 cr. i, 97, "four eyes grew (in him)".
54 F. Notscher, Ellil, pp. 54, s6, 66; Labat, op. cit., p. 38.
55 Tallqvist, Der assyrische Colt (Helsinki I 932), pp. 13 foll.
s6. Notscher, op. cit., pp. I I' s6.
57 The myth of the bird Zu, AOTz, p. I4I foil.
58. F. M. Th. Bohl, "Die fiinfzig Namen des Marduk", in Arch. f Orient-
forschung, xi, 4 (Ig36), p. Igi foil.
59 Kotscher, op. cit., pp. 54, 57
6o. Emima clis vii, I30 (I49 Labat), cf. Notscher, op. cit., p. 64.
6I. G. Furlani, "Dei e demoni bifronti e bicefali dell' Asia occidentale
antica", in Analecta Orientalia xii (Miscellanea A.Deimel, Rome I93S), pp. 136-62.
62. H. Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London 1939), Plate xix a, pp. ro6, I23 foil.;
E. van Buren, The flowing vase and the god with streams (Berlin I 933), Fig. 6,
pp. I I etc.
63. G. Contenau, La gl.;ptique syro-hittite (Paris I 922)' figs. 309-.I 2; Furlani,
foe. cit., p. 149; Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 245 sqq., 254; the Tyskiewicz cylinder
shows a two-headed figure, see van Buren, op. cit., p. I30 and fig. 75
64. Furlani, foe. cit., p. I 53 sqq. Cf. the human-shaped monsters with a
twofold animal head on the ivory tablet from Megiddo, Bossert, Altsyrien
(Tiibingen I9SI), p. 328, ~o. I I IS (Melanges syriens R. Dussaud, Paris I939,
PP ss7-s8).
65. Frankfort, op. cit., plates xxi c, xxiii d, f, xxx i, pp. I 23, I 33
66. ]: Menant, Recherches sur la glyptique orientale, i (Paris I 883), p. I I 8 sq.;
H. Ward, The cylinder seals of western Asia (Washington Igio), p. 102 sq.;
0. '\Veber, "Altorientalische Siegelbilder", in Der alte Orient I 7- I 8 (Leipzig
I920), p. I ISi Ch.-F. Jean, La religion sumbienne (Paris I93I), p. 28, note 7
67. Sidney Smith, "The relation of Marduk, Ashur and Osiris", in Journ.
Eg;pt. Arch. viii (1922), pp. 4I sqq., 208 sq.; Gadd, in Rev. d'As-9riofogie xxiii
(rg26), p. 138 sq.; cf. van Buren, op. cit., p. I I.
68. L. Dennefeld, Bab;lonisch-as-9rische Geburtsomina (Leipzig I 9 1 4), pia te i f.,
line s, p. 36.
6g. E. F. Weidner, "Yokabular-Studien", in Am. Journ. Sem. Lang. xxxviii
(I92I-22), p. Ig8; cf. H. Ehelolf and B. Meissner, in ,Zeitschr. f As-9riologie
xxxiv (I922), p. 26.
70. Cf. Dennefeld, loc. cit., tablet ii b verso, line 2 I sq., p. 47: "Wenn eine
Frau gebiert und sein Gesicht doppelt ist "
7I. Furlani, Religione ii, p. 35 sq.; Deimel, Pantheon, 242, No. 2979;
Kramer, Sumerian Mytholog;, pp. 32, 57, 65, 67.
88 THE ALL-KNO\VING GOD
72. A. Ungnad, "Der babylonische Janus", in Arch. f. Orientforsclmng v
{I929), p. 185.
73 Cf. Ara (SA) =Usmu, in Weidner, Arch.f. Orientf. ii {I924-25), p. 14
For Usmu as son of Bel, i.e. Enlil, seeJastrow, Religion i, p. 327, note 4
74 B. Meissner, Babylonien und As.ryrien ii, fig. I 5; Furlani, Dei e demoni,
p. I 5 I, fig. I 5
75 Jeremias, Handbuch der altorientalischen Geisteskultur (I929), p. 354, fig.
I84; Meissner, op. cit., fig. I6.
76. Furlani, Dei e demoni bifronti e bicefali etc., p. I59 sq. As to Tiamat and
her two faces, one male and the other female, it would seem that a constellation
of that name is meant, cf. Labat, op. cit. (Note 52), p. 27 note 30, p. 30 note
43i cp. however the text K 307 in Ebeling, Tod und Leben I {I93I), pp. 32
and 35, where it is said: "Der Tigris sind ihre (i.e. Tiamat's) heiden rechten
Augen, der Euphrat ihre heiden linken Augen".
77 See Furlani, Az:eva J\1arduk due teste?, in SMSR vii {I93I), p. 97
78. In the hymn to Ashur in Craig, As.ryrian and Bab;lonian Religious Texts i
(Leipzig I895), plate 32. Cf. Jastrqw, Religion i, p. 520; K. D. Macmillan, in
Beitriige z;ur As-Driologie v (I 906), No. xxi, p. 597; Radau, Bel, the Christ of
ancient times (Chicago I908), 6; 1\feissner, op. cit., ii, p. I59
79 K. Tallqvist, Der as.ryrische Gott (Helsinki I932), p. 66 sq., cf. Real-
lexikon d. As.ryriologie i (I932), p. I97 Other epithets, such as "great mountain,"
'.'lord of the lands", arc passed on to Ashur directly from Enlil. Ashur's temple
was known as E-kur, like that of Enlil at Nippur; Ninlil, the consort of Enlil,
became the wife of Ashur, and all Enlil's family passed into Ashur's. Ashur
takes the place of Enlil between the other two members of the cosmic triad.
8o. Tallqvist, pp. 86, 382.
8 I. Ibid., pp. 86, 395
82. Ibid., pp. 86, 4I8; Deimel, Pantheon, p. 220, No. 2729.
83. Tallqvist, pp. 87, 4I7
 Chapter IV

THE PHOENICIANS

(a) THE TWO-FACED EL

CORDING to the fragments of the work of Philon of Byblos

preserved to us by Eusebius, which deal with Phoenician
/ \ antiquities and are derived (so he alleges) from ancient Phoeni-
cian sources, Sanchuniathon and Thabion, 1 the god El, rendered in
Greek by Kronos, was credited with having four eyes, two before
and two behind (of.Lf.LaTa -reaaapa K -rwv fLTrpoa8{wv 'Kal. oTrLa8{wv
fLEpwv), which were the mark of his sovranty (1Tapaa7Jp.a f3aat;\{as).
Two of these were open and two shut in turn, to indicate that the god
"saw when sleeping and slept v,ratching". He also had four wings on
his shoulders, two open and two folded, indicating that he "watched
while resting and rested flying". The other gods had but two wings
each, because, although they too could fly, it was only in the train of
El, as being his subordinates and satellites.2
El had moreover "two wings on top of his head, one for the supreme
ruling mind, the other for perception" .a These two wings "on" his
head, of which we are not told, as we are for the others, that they
were used to fly with, remind us of the two tall feathers which are so
typical a part of the costume of certain Egyptian deities. Indeed,
according to Philon, all the imagery of El and the other Phoenician
divinities was the work of Tauth (or Taaut, or Thouth), in other
words, apparently, the Egyptian Thot, the supreme artificer (Chapter
II, P so).3a The analogy of the images ofBes Pantheos (Fig. I) suggests
itself, with their four or more wings, some open and others closed, and
the many eyes on their bodies. But El's four eyes, "two before and two
behind" find a more exact parallel in the "four eyes" of Marduk and
the two-faced figures of Babylonian religious iconography (Chapter III,
p. 8xf.).
That at any rate we have not to-do with a merely imaginary idea
in Philon is proved by certain coins of Byblos which show a winged
male figure,4. and still more by other coins of Mallos in Kilikia, 5 with
male and female figures, both alike winged and in the "kneeling run-
ning" posture, that is to say in the act of flight. They generally (Fig.
g a. b. c) hold in both hands a disk with rays inside it, i.e. a star, 6 and.
thus are characterised as astral deities, perhaps planetary. These coins
of Mallos go back to the pre-Greek period (about 435-383 B.c.), at
which time the dominant influence was Semitic ("Syro-Phoenician"),
go THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
before Greek culture made its way thither.. Among the winged figures
of the coinage of Mallos which carry stars, there is one which stands
out from the rest. This (Fig. g b) has four expanded wings, not
two, and a double-faced head, both faces being bearded, 7 exactly as
we would picture Philon's EJ, with his "four eyes, two before and two
behind". Phil on was a Euhemerist. With the exception of Beelsamen,
"the Lord of the sky" (see below), who is a god by nature and existed
before the human race, all the other divinities of the Phoenician
religion (and also the religions of Egypt, Greece and so on) are for him
ancient human figures deified after their deaths. El when he died
became KroJ).os, the god of the planet Saturn. 8 The two-faced winged
figure on the coinage of Mallos might be no other than El-Kronos, i.e.
the god of.the planet Saturn shown in the act of carrying the planet
itself and flying across the sky with it.
But why should Saturn in particular, i.e. the god of that planet,
and he alone of all the planets and the other stars, be credited with two
faces, as on the figure of the Mallian coinage, and four eyes, such as
El-Kronos has in Philon? Plurality of heads and of eyes, as a naive
expression in art of the power to see (or to know) everything, is an
attribute, as we have already seen and shall see again, of a sungod.
The planet Saturn, the most remote from the earth and the one with
the largest orbit, was thought of as the first and mightiest planet9 and,
perhaps owing to this preeminent position, was assimilated to the Sun
as a kind of night-sun)o Behind this assimilation of Saturn to the Sun
there lies something more than a mere transliteration of El as Helios 11
or a mistaken confusion of Kronos with Chronos, Time, as being, like the
Sun, the punisher of sins, inasmuch as sins sooner or later, i.e. in time,
come to light.I 2 That Saturn was so assimilated is proved from Phoeni-
cian cult itself, as well as from that of Babylon, 13 ancl that not by late
evidence only,a but also directly from cuneiform texts.1s
It is natural to ask if the winged two-faced figure on the Mallian
coinage, or Philon's four-eyed El, really is the planet Saturn-Kronos,
and not rather the sungod in the act of flying across the heavens with
the disk of the sun. And indeed in the mythological texts from Ras-
Shanira, on the coast of Syria, on the site of the ancient U garit, which
are written in cuneiform characters and go back to the fourteenth
century B.C.~1a we find among the many gods one called El, king
and lord of the land, "father of mankind" ('b 'dm), supremely wise
and a judge.I 7 He is thought of as aged and bearded,1s and is
known as "father of years" ('b !nm), 19 which gives him the character
of a sungod seen. l9a. This is not to say that El is precisely the god of
the solar disk, which at Ras Shamra has its own representative in
the person of a female deity, S-p-s. It is more exact to say that
he is god of the bright daytime sky, and as such distinct from the
 PHOENICIANS
weather-sky, which in its turn is represented at Ras Shamra by Ba'al,
the god who hurls the thunderbolt and sends rain, and whose voice
(i.e. thunder) can be heard among the clouds. He is shown in the act
of hurling his lightning-spear.2o Elsewhere, again, we find the Can-
aanite and Phoenician (but not Ugaritic) Ba'alsamem, or in the
Aramaic form Be'elSamen, the Lord of the Sky, who however has not
only the aspect of the weather-sky but also of the sky when it is
bright and sunlit, and, unlike the Ugaritic Ba'al, who in their hier-
archy is inferior to the chief god El, generally appears himself as the
supreme god, taking the first place among the divine groups, as for
instance when he makes a third with the Sun and Moon.:n

(b) THE PUNIC JANUS

Carthage was founded from Tyre in the ninth century B.c. It there-
fore is not to be wondered at if we find at Carthage 22 and in her
colonies 23 the cult of that Ba'alSamem, "Lord of Heaven" who was
worshipped from time immemorial in Phoenicia (at Byblos ih the
twelfth century B.c., see above, n. 2 I) and also at Tyre itself, as we
see from tne treaty between Asarhaddon and Ba'al king of Tyre
(seventh century B.c.). 24 As stated above, this Ba'alSamem is chiefly
a god of the weather-sky, and Philon of Byblos makes him correspond
to Zeus. It is probable that in the text transmitted by Polybios (vii, g)
of the treaty between Hannibal, representing Carthage, and Philip V
on behalf of Macedonia, the "Zeus" who heads the list of the Carth-
aginian gods26 protecting and sanctioning the agreement is no other
than the Punic and Phoenician Ba 'alSamem under a Greek name.
As for Ba'al-IJ.amman, a god who, to judge by the great number of
votive inscriptions dedicated to him, 2 s was the most devoutly wor-
shipped of all the Carthaginian divinities, the fact that he is repre-
sented in Latin by Satumus 27 reminds us of the Phoenician El, who in
Philon is El-Kronos (=Saturnus), god of the sun, and therefore very
likely the giver of crops and of vegetation, as the Mrican "Saturn" is
significantly called frugifer 2 s for the most part. Also the Saeculum
frugifenmz on coins of Mrican emperors, such as Septimius Severus of
Leptis Magna and Albin us of Hadrumetum, 29 which corresponds to
Saturnus Frugifer, recalls, by way of Ch(onos-Kronos, the ancient
"father of the years"3o in the Ras-Shamra texts.
In Africa there have also been found certain inscriptions of Roman
date dedicated to Janus (Janus Pater, Janus Pater Augustus). 31 The
analogy of Saturn us, of the Virgo Caelestis and of Herakles (-Melqart)
suggest that janus also has a Punic deity lurking behind his name. The
dedicators are not in all cases Romans, some being Africans. 32 One
statue of Janus is dedicated by a Roman citizen who had been Sacerdos
publicus of the Dea Caelestis and of Aesculapius, 33 in other words of
 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
the Punic goddess Tanit and the Punico-Phoenician Esmun (Hcllenised
into Iolaos). In one dedication, Janus pater is associated with the
M(agna) M(ater),34 a connection which has no counterpart in Roman
religion.35 It should be added that the number of the African dedica-
tions to Janus, and the fact that they come from such different places,
alike bear witness to the wide distribution of his cult, contrasting with
the almost complete absence of inscriptions dedicated to Janus in
Rome itself and elsewhere in Italy; 36 while in Dalmatia and other
places parallels are to be found, resulting, in. all probability, from ana-
logous phenomena either of syncretism or of interpretatio Romana. 37
The equations between gods of the interpretatio Romana were inevit-
ably rough and approximate, and hence the same foreign god could
be identified with various Roman deities. It may be that Janus is
merely another Roman translation of the same Punic god who was
more usually translated by Saturnus. 38 The connections of Janus with
Saturnus were familiar in Roman mythology, 3!l and probably had their
religious basis in the nearness in time and the interaction in cult of the
festivals respectively of the Saturnalia (December I 7) and the New
Year (January 1).-1o But this could hardly be enough to explain the
competition between Janus and Saturnus in the interpretatio Romana of
the same Punic deity, without some special reason to aid it. The
Phoenician god El-Kronos was, like Janus, two-faced, according to the
combined evidence of Philon-Sanchuniathon and the coins of Mallos
(see above). Now if, as we have said, Ba'al-lJamman-Saturnus is, at
Carthage, a form of El-Kronos, it seems not unlikely that, alongside of
the aspects of his nature which governed his approximation to Saturn us,
he had kept also traces of that two-faced form which might for its part
suggest assimilation to Janus.

NOTES

1. Cf. C. Clemen, Die phiinikische Religion nach Philo von Byblos (Leipzig 1939).
2. Phil. Byb., frag. 2. 26 (F.H.G. III, p. 569), in Eusebios, praepar. tuangel.
i, 1 o,. 36 sq.
3 Phil. Byb. in Euseb., foe. cit.: brl. rijs KEcPa.A:~s 1TTEpa ovo, v e1rl. -rou
~yEp.ovtKwTCJ.-rov voii Kal. v e1rl. rijs ala8~aEws.
3a. Cf. 0. Eissfeldt, Taautos rmd Sanchunjaton, in Sit;:.. Berlin. Akad. 1952, 1.
4 Imhoof-Blumer, Choix de monnaies grecques (Winterthur 1871), plate vii,
No. 224; J. Rouvier, "Numismatique des villes de la Phenicie", in Journal
international d'archlologie numismatique, iv (1901), p. 42 sqq., Nos. 651-61. Cf.
the incised stone in Clcrmont-Garneau, Recueil d'archiologie orientale iv (Paris
1901), p. 158.
!i Head, Historia Numorum (Oxford 191 1), p. 723; Imhoof-Blumcr, "Mallos,
FIG. g a, b, c.-Coins from Mallos in Kilikia; Svoronos,
Zeitschrift Jar .Numismatik, xvi (I 888), pia te x, nos. 13,
q, 15
 PHOENICIANS 93
~Iegarsos, Antioche du Pyramos", in Annuaire de Ia Societe franfaise de numis-
malique et d'archlologie (Paris r883), pp. IO sqq., 16 sqq.; Svoronos, "Sternbilder
als Miinztypen", in Zeilschr.f. Numismatik xvi (1888), Plate x, 15.
6. cr. the central figure (full-faced, bust only) holding on both hands a large
disk with internal rays ("rosacea I2petales"), and so probably a sungod, on
the relief in the museum at Sueida (Dionysias in Batanea) in Dunand, Le
Mustfc de Souei"da (Paris 1934), No. 36, plate xiii; Dussaud in Syria, 1923, p.
I 70, n. 2; Seyrig, Antiquites syriemzes ii, p. 21, cf. i, p. 22; Rostovtzeff, in Rom .
Hitteif. {I934), p. I93 cr. also the {3aLTVAOS 8tel. TOV depa KLVOVp.vos, in the
shape of a stone globe, at first incandescent and afterwards alive and giving
oracles, of the god Gcnnaios at Hierapolis, in Damaskios, Vit. Isid. 203. This
Gennaios can be identified with the 0os Tvvlas 7TaTpifJOs shown as a
horseman-god in a relief in the Louvre, see Heuzey in C.R. de l'Acad. d~s Inscr.,
rgo2, p. rgo sqq.; Clermont-Ganncau, Recueif, V, I54; Cumont in Rcal-Enc.
vii, p. 1174; H. Seyl'ig and J. Starcky, "Genneas", in S;ria, I949, p. 230 sqq.
7 Imhoof-Blumer, \/alios, p. I6, !\os. 20-21, Plate v, 14-15; Svoronos,
foe. cit., Plate x, I 4 According to S\;oronos, the figure is meant for Boreas, who
has two faces on some Greek vasepaintings, see Chap. IX, Fig~ 17, and was
known as Pagreus at Mallos {ps.-Arist. de uentis 973a, p. 16 I, I Apelt), be-
cause he blew from the mountains called Pagrika, a name which recalls the
Pahri of the Phoenician inscription from Karatepe, see further, n. I 9a.
8. Eusebios, praep. euang. i, I o, 44
g. Tacitus, Hist. v, 4: seu quod de septem sideribus quis mortales reguntur
altissimo orbe et praecipua potentia stella Saturni feratur, cf. Seneca, Nat.
quaesi. vii. 4, 2.
ro. Jastrow, "Sun and Saturn", in Rev. d'Assyriologie vii (Igw), p. 163 sqq.
11, Cumont in Real-Enc. v, p. 2217.
12. Cf. Pettazzoni, "Kronos in Egitto", in Scritti in onore di I. Rosellini, i
(Pisa 1949), p. 29I.
13. Phoenician, Kp6vov H>.tov {3wp.6s at Beyrut, Dussaud, in Rev. arch.
1903-i, p. 138; Babylonian, see F. Boll, "Kronos-Hclios", in A.R. W. xix
(rgr6-I9), pp. 342-46.
I4 Servius on ACil. i, 729, apud Assyrios autem Bel dicitur ... ct Saturnus
ct Sol, cf. i, 642.
I5 J as trow, foe. cit.; Boll, in A.R. W. xix, p. 343; Furlani, La refigione
babifonese e assira, i, p. r68.
r6. J. A. Montgomery and Z. S. Harris, "The Ras Shamara mythological
texts", in A1emoirs Am. Philos. Soc. iv (Philadelphia 1935); H. Bauer, "Die
alphabetischen Keilinschriften von Ras Schamra", in Lietzmann's Kleine
Texte r68 (Berlin 1936); C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Handbook i-iii (Rome 1947);
translation in T. H. Gaster, Thespis (New York 1950); H. L. Ginsberg in J. B.
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament (Princeton
I95o), PP I29-55
17 Ch. Virolleaud, in Syria (193I), p. 131; same, La Ugende de Keret {Paris
I936), p. I3; same, "Le dieu El dans les pocmes de Ras Shamra", in Actes du
XX Cougres internal. des Orientalistes, Bruxelles 1938 (Louvain I940), p. 258; R.
Dussaud, Les decouvertes de Ras Shamra et l'Anr.ien Testament (eel. 2, Paris I9P),
p. Gr sq.
94 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
18. Cf. the seated bearded god, who perhaps is El, in the stele from Ras
Shamra pub. in Syria, 1937, plate xvii.
19. Virolleaud in Syria I93I, I95; ibid., I932, I3I; H. Bauer, "Die Gott-
heiten von Ras Schamra"' in z.A. T.lV. I 933, 84; Dussaud, in C.R. Acad. des
Inscr. (I 938), p. 539; same, in Syria, I 950, p. 332 sq.; C. Eissfeldt, El im ugarit-
ischen Pantheon, in Berichte d. Sachs. Akad. 98. 4 (I05I). That ab Jnm can mean
"father of years" has been questioned, because the plural of Jt, a year, ought
regularly to be Jnt. Professor Th. H. Gaster, to whom I am indebted for this
information, obligingly adds that in Biblical Hebrew and in Nabataean both
forms, Jnt and Jnm, are found; Jnm, meaning "years", might be an archaic form
handed down in a traditional epithet ofEl. Cf. Yahweh as 'el 'olam in Gen. xxi,
33, cf. Ps. cii, 25, and the Ancient of Days in Dan. vii. 9- I 4; J. A. Montgomery,
in Joum. Am. Orient. Soc. (I933), pp. I02, I I I, and in Harv. Theol. Rev. (I938),
p. I46 sq.
I~a. cr. the god Sam.S 'olam (Sol Aeternus) in the Phoenician inscription
from Karatepe, G. Levi della Vida, "Osservazioni all' iscrizione fenicia di
Karatepe", in Rendiconti dell' Accad. dei Lincei, Cl. diSc. Mor. iv (1949), p. 286
sq.; R. T. O'Callaghan, "An approach to some religious problems of Kara-
tepe", in Arclziv Orientdlni xviii (I950), p. 354 sqq. In the Biblical El 'elyon,
"Creator (or more properly 'master', qonih) of heaven and earth", in Gen.
xiv, I8-22, cf. Deut. xxxii. 8, who naturally, like El Shaddai, El ro'i, El 'olam
and similar figures, is incorporated in Yahweh (cf. H. S. Nyberg, in A.R. W.
I938, pp. 35I, 36o, 366, U. Cassuto in S.M.S.R. I932, p. I37), A. R.
Johnson in The Lab)'rinth (ed. S. H. Hooke, London I935), pp. 83, 96, thinks
we may still discern his original solar character. El and 'Elyon appear as
distinct deities in a triad whose third member is Samem, the Sky, in the Aramaic
inscription from Sujin-Sepire (date about 750 B.c., H. Bauer, in Arch. f.
Orientforschung viii (I932), pp. I sqq.).
20. Virolleaud, in Syria, I932, pp. 13I, I53, 212; ibid., 1935, p. 247 sqq. For
figures of him see the stele in Syria (1933), Plate xvi, and Monuments Piot,
xxxiv (I 934), Plate i, also the statuette in Syria, I 936, p. I 45, Fig. 25, Plate
xxi; A. S. Kapelrud, Baal in the Ras Shamra texts (Copenhagen I952).
2 I. The Phoenician "Baal" of Mt. Carmel in I Kings xviii. 20 sqq, is prob-
bably Ba'alSamem. In Philon (Euseb., Praep. euang. i, IO, 7), Beelsamen-Zeus
is actually the sun, invoked in drought by the first human beings, Genos and
Genea, the sons of Aion. Ba'al as chief god is found in the oldest Phoenician
and Aramaic epigraphic evidence, from the inscription' of Ye}J.imilk king of
Byblos, in the twelfth or eleventh century B.c., the treaty between Ba 'al king
ofTyre and Asarhaddon of Assyria, in the seventh, and the Aramaic inscription
of Zakir, in the eighth, down to the fifth-century rock inscription between
Mersina and Nemrun in Kilikia (see Lidzbarski, Ephemeris, I, 242 sqq.; 0.
E~feldt, "Ba'alsamem u.Jahwe", in Z.A.T.W. I939, pp. I-3o; H. Seyrig, "Le
culte de Bel et de Baalshamin a Palmyre", in Antiquitls S)'riemzes i, p. 87 sqq.),
to which must be added the Phoenician inscription, already cited, from Karatepe
in eastern Kilikia, perhaps of the eighth century B.c. (O'Callaghan, in Orientalia
(I 949), p. I 73 sqq.), in which we find a triad consisting of Ba 'alsamem, El qonc
ars and Sam5 'olam, with the second of these as earth-god (G. Levi Della Vida,
in Joum. Bib. Lit. lxiii (I944), p. I sqq.; J. Morgenstern, "The divine triad
 PHOENICIANS 95
in Biblical mythology", ibid. lxiv, I945, p. I5 sqq.; Della Vida, in Rivista
degli Studi Orientali, I946, p. 247; Rendiconti Accad. Lincei, I949, p. 289). This is
possibly related to Philon's Epigeios or Autochthon, "afterwards called Uranos",
who is father of Eland son of Elyun (Hypsistos), Euseb., ibid.
22. C(orpus) l(nscriptionum) S(emiticarum) i, 379 (a priest ofB.' .U. m. m.
Eissfeldt, .(.A. T.lV., I939, p. 6). Ba/samem is invoked in Plautus' Poenulus,
I027 (gunebelbalsameniyrasa, interpreted by Movers as "per magnitudinem dei
qui caeli deus est, ego ilium taciturn reddam"). Cf. August. Quaest. in Hepta-
teuchum vii, I6 (Vol. iii, p. 599 of the Benedictine ed., xxxiv, p. 797 Migne):
Baalsamen quasi dominum caeli Punici intelleguntur dicere.
23. C.I.S.i, I39 (Cagliari), third century B.C.
24. E. F. Weidner, in Archivf. Orientforschung viii (I932-33), pp. 29-34.
25. "Zeus", "Hera", "Apollo", etc., are not the Greek deities, for the
Graeco-Macedonian gods are mentioned later, not by name but collectively,
evav-rlov 8Ewv 7TClV7'WV oao MaK8ovlav Ka' rf}v clM7]V .EMa8a Ka-rlxovaLV.
Cf. L. F. Benedetto, "Le divinita del giuramento annibalico", in Riv. indo-
greco-italica iii (I9I9), pp. IOI sqq., I I I-I2; E. J. Bickerman, "An oath of
Hannibal", in T.P.A.P.A. bod (I949), p. 87 sqq. "Hera" is probably the
Carthaginian (Iuno) Caelestis of the African inscriptions, cf. the Aphrodite
Ovpa~l17 of Herodotos i, 105, 2, the "Astarte of the Ba'al of the heavens" of
the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar king of Sidon (C.I.S.i, 3, line I8) and, much
earlier, '.!.t.r.t J.m b.'.l in the Ras Shamra texts, R.H.R. (I932), i, p. 277.
26. C.I.S.i, I 8o sqq.
27. Dessau, Inscript. Latinae sel. ii, Nos. 4439 sqq. Cf. Toutain, De Saturni dei
in Africa Romana cultu (Paris I895); Les cites romaines de Ia Tunisie (Paris I896),
p. 2 I3 sqq.; S. Gsell, Histoire anciemze de ['Afrique du Nord IV, (Paris 1924),
p. 288.
28. C.I.L.viii, 2666, Frugifer Saturnus Augustus; 4581, deus frugum
Saturn us frugifer Augustus; also simply Frugifer, ibid. 8826, I 5520, I 7 I 65,
I7i20, 203I8, 207I I; Annie ipigraphique I898, No. 45
29. H. Cohen, Description historique des munnaies frappees sous /'empire romain, 2
iii, p. 42 I sqq., Nos. 65 sqq. (Albinus); iv, p. 67, No. 637 (Septimius Severus);
vi, p. 52, Nos. 333 sq. (Postumus), and cf. also iii, p. 396, No. 54 (Pertinax),
and, for Albin us, Realenc. iv, 69, vii, 2 I 79
30. Cf. the Mithraic Chronos, i.e. Aion, in Africa, who bears the name of
Frugifer; Arnob., adv. nat., vi, 10, p. 3I8 Marchesi, 222 Reifferscheid; Cumont,
Textes et J'Jonuments relatifs au culte de Mithra, ii, p. 58 sq.
3I. C.I.L., viii, 2608 (from Lambaesis), 4576 (Diana), I I 797, 15577; Annie
epigraph., I893, No.8, I8g8, No. 45 (Mactar), 1901, No. 194 (Timgad).
32. Cf. J. Toutain, Les, cultts parens dans /'Empire Romain i (Paris 1907),
p. 245 sqq.
33 C.I.L., viii, 164I7.
34 Ibid., I I797, M(atri) M(atutae), according to Wissowa, Rel. u. Kultus2,
p. I Io, note 3
35 H. Graillot, in Rev. archiol. 1{)04, i, p. 344
36. None from Rome, one only from Assisi (C.I.L., xi, 5374).
37 G. Wissowa, "Interpretatio romana", in Arch.f. Relig. xix, p. 29.
38. He was also assimilated to Pluto (Pluto Augustus frugifer deus, C.I.L :
g6 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
viii, 840 = I 2362; cf. Dis alongside of the corniger Iuppiter Hammon, ibid., go I 8 =
BUcheler, CarmitJa latina epigraphica, No. 253).
39 Wissowa, Rel. u. Kult:~, p. 107.
40. Wissowa in Roscher's Lexikon iv, col. 440; Nilsson in Arch. f. Relig. xix,
p. 55 sqq., 61, Bg. The two-faced Janus who "according to ancient custom"
still surviving in the days of Justinian (Lydus, de mens. iv, 2, p. 65, I I sqq.
Wuensch) used to appear in a procession in Philadelphia on the Kalends of
January, was also called Kronos, i.e. Saturnus. So here again the assimilation
of the two has its base in the cult-tradition of the Kalends, as celebrated in
Asia Minor in the Imperial epoch, whether they had in mind the Roman
procession of gods in the Circus at the Ludi (Compitales), incorporated in the
Kalcnds themselves (so Nilsson, Zoe. cit.), or, as we find at Amaseia on the
Pontos according to Asterios (M.P.G.xl, 221), the setting up of a "king of the
Saturnalia", which was of Oriental (Syrian) origin, see Weber in A.R. W. xix,
p. 3 I 6 sqq., and may ultimately go back to the ancient cult of El-Kronos, to
which consequently the two faces of the Philadelphian "Janus" might in that
case be referred.
 Chapter V

ISRAEL

(a) THE PSALMS AND THE WISDOM LITERATURE*

N the hundred and thirty-ninth Psalm we have a magnificent and

I lofty hymn to the omniscience of Yahweh.

I.
2.
0 LoRD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising,
Thou understandest my thought afar off.
3 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down,
And art acquainted with all my ways.
4 For there is not a word on my tongue,
But, lo, 0 LoRD, thou knowest it altogether.
5 Thou hast beset me behind and before,
And laid thine hand upon me.
6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain unto it.
7. Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
8. If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there.
g. If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
I o. Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.
I I. If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me,
And the light about me shall be night;
I 2. Even the darkness hideth not from thee,
But the night shineth as the day:
The darkness and the light are both alike to thee,

I 5 My frame was not hidden from thee,

When I was made in secret,
And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
I 6. Thine eyes did see mine unperfect substance,
And i~ thy book were all my members written,
Which day by day were fashioned,
When as yet there was none of them.

23. Search me, 0 God, and know my heart:

Try me, and know my thoughts:
24. And see if there be any way of wickedness in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
H
g8 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Yahweh knows man (verse I), and all that he does, his standing and
his going (vv. 2, 3; cf. p. 105), all that he says (v. 4), and all that he
thinks in the depths of his heart (vv. 2, 23). Yahweh sees (v. I6),
examines and judges (vv. I, 3, 23). Man cannot hide from Yahweh
for a moment (v. 5), nor in any place (vv. 7-Io), whether in the sky
(v. 8), or under the earth (v. 8), in the uttermost parts of the sea
(v. g), or even in the thickest darkness (v. I I). All his life, day by day,
is revealed before the eyes of Yahweh (vv. Is- I 6). This divine omnis-
science, which is also omnipresence (vv. 5, 7 sq.), and can see clearly
even in the dark (v. I2), is past man's understanding (v. 6); he has
no resource but to propitiate it so as to have its aid to obtain salvation
(vv. 23-24). Man is therefore the principal object of divine omnisci-
ence; man in all his doings and thoughts, in all his conduct. This
omniscience is not merely passive; on the knowledge follows a sanction,
especially one of a punitive kind.
Ideas of this sort are to be heard throughout the Psalte~. The
thought that Yahweh knows all that men do recurs again and again.
"The LORD knoweth the ways of the righteous", Ps. i, 6; "The
LORD knoweth the days of the upright", Ps. xxxvii, I 8, God knows
good actions (Ps. xvii, 3,) and bad:

0 God, thou knowest my foolishness;

And my sins are not hid from the~. (Ps. lxix. 5)
Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,
Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. (Ps. xc. 8)

He is cognisant not only of deeds (Ps. xxxiii. IS), but also of the most
secret thoughts ("The LORD knoweth the thoughts of men", Ps. xciv.
I I), the deepest mysteries of the heart ("For he knoweth the secrets of
the heart", Ps. xliv. 2I, cf. xxxi. 8), he examines the heart and reins
("For the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins", Ps. vii. g). Only
the impious doubt his omniscience:

And they say, How doth God know?

And is there knowledge in the Most High? (Ps. lxxiii. I I)
And they say, The Lo~o shall not see,
Neither shall the God of Jacob consider. (Ps. xciv. 7)
He saith in his heart, God hath forgotten:
He hideth his face; he will never see it. (Ps. x. I I ; cf. Ps. xxxvi. 2-3, lxiv. 6-7;
Isa., xxix. IS, and, further, on p. 100.)

Indeed the knowledge of Yahweh is, above all else, seeing; the verb
y.d.' means both "know" apd "see", and often, when it has the former
sense, it is associated or alternated with r.'.h "to see".1 "Thou hast
seen it, 0 LoRD" (Ps. xxxv. 22); "Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest
 ISRAEL 99
mischief and spite, to take it into thy hand" (Ps. x. 14). The eye of
Yahweh is upon all men: "His eyes observe the nations" (Ps. lxvi. 7);
"Behold, the eye of the LoRD is upon them that fear him" (Ps. xxxiii.
1 8). His eyes never close in slumber,

He that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Behold, he that keepeth Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep. {Ps. cxxi. 3-4)

To his seeing is added hearing (Ps. v. 2 sqq., cf. Mal. iii. 16); eyes and
ears are often mentioned together, with reference particularly to the
conditions of men and to their prayers:

The eyes of the LoRD are toward the righteous,

And his ears are open unto their cry. (Ps. xxxiv. 15 cf. 17)
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?
He that formed the eye, shall he not see?
He that chastiseth the nations, shall not he correct,
Even he that teacheth man knowledge? (Ps. xciv, g-10, cf. cvi. 44)

Yahweh's vision, his power of seeing all, upon which his power of
knowing all depends, is associated in the Psalms with his dwelling in
heaven; he sees from far away and on high (cf. Isa. lvii. 15), that is
from the skies, which are his abode (Ps. cxv. 3), from which he looks
down on the earth and on the deep.

For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary;

From heaven did the LoRD behold the earth. (Ps. cii. 19)
Who is like unto the LoRD our God,
That hath his seat on high,
That humbleth himself to behold
The things that are in heaven and in the earth? (Ps. cxiii. 5-6)

Compare Ps. lxxx. 15; Lam. iii. 50. From thence Yahweh sees and
examines men.

For though the LoRD be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly:
But the haughty he knoweth from afar. (Ps. cxxxviii. 6.)
The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men
To see if there were any that did understand,
That did seek after God. (Ps. xiv. 2=liii., 2.)
The LoRD is in his holy temple,
The LoRD, his throne is in heaven;
His eyes behold, his eyelids try, the .children of men.
(Ps. xi. 4)
 (
1 t

IOO THE ALL-KNOWING GOD

The LoRD looketh from heaven;
He beholdeth all the sons of men;
From the place of his habitation he looketh forth
Upon all the inhabitants of the earth;
He that fashioneth the hearts of them all,
That considereth all their works ..
Behold, the eye of the LoRD is upon them that fear him,
Upon them that hope in his mercy. (Ps. xxxiii, 13-15, 18)

Similar ideas about the omniscience of Yahweh appear continually

~nthe Wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Yahweh knows "the
ways", in other words the conduct, of men, of all men.
For the ways of man are before the eyes of the LoRD,
And he watches2 all his paths. (Prov. v. 2 I)
For his eyes are upon the ways of a man,
And he seeth all his goings.
There is no darkness, nor shadow of death,
Wherein the workers of iniquity may hide themselves ...
Therefore he taketh knowledge of their works;
And he overturneth them in the night, so that they are destroyed. (Job xxxiv.
21-22, 25; cf. xxxi. 4, xiv. 16)

If I sin, thou markest me,

And thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity. (ibid., x. 14: cf. xxiii. 10,
xi. II)
Their ways are ever before him,
They shall not be hid from his eyes. . .
Their iniquities are not hid from him,
And all their sins are before the LoRD. (Sir. xvii. 13, 16)
And his eyes are upon them that fear him,
And he will take knowledge of every work of man. (ibid., xv. 19)

Only the impious (as in the Psalms, cf. p. g8) deceive themselves into
thinking that their ill-doings are unknown to Yahweh, especially
adulterers:
The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight,
Saying, No eye shall see me:
And he disguiseth his face. (Job xxiv. 15)
A man that goeth astray from his own bed,
Saying in his heart, Who seeth me?
Darkness is round about me, and the walls hide me,
And no man seeth me; of whom am I afraid?
The Most High will not remember my sins;
And the eyes of men are his terror,
And he knoweth not that the eyes of the LoRD are ten thousand times brighter
than the sun,
 ISRAEL IOI

Beholding all the ways of men,

And looking into secret places.
All things were known unto him or ever they were created,
And in like manner also after they were perfected. (Sir. xxiii, I 8-20)
Yet even the righteous may be tempted by this unholy thought,
although from an utterly different point of view.
Say not thou, I shall be hidden from the LoRD
And who shall remember me from on high?
I shall not be known among so many people,
For what is my soul in a boundless creation? ...
Yea, he setteth not his heart upon me,
And who observeth my ways?
If I sin no eye will see it,
Or if I deal untruly in all secrecy, who will know it? (Sir. xvi. I 6- I 7 and 20-2I)
Yahweh looks into the very depths of the soul and heart:
Sheol and Abaddon are before the LoRD
How much more then the hearts of the children of men! (Prov. xv. I I)
The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD,
Searching all the inntermost parts of the belly. (Prov. xx. 27)
Every way of a man is right in his own eyes,
But the LoRD weigheth the hearts. (Prov. xxi. 2, cf. xvi. 2)
Doth not he that weigheth the hearts consider it?
And he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? (Prov. xxiv. I2)
Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth,
And let not thine heart be glad when he is overthrown:
Lest the LoRD see it, and it displease him. (ibid., I 7-I8)
Hast thou eyes of flesh,
Or seest thou as man seeth? ..
Thou that inquirest after mine iniquity,
And searchest after'"Illy sin,
Although thou knowest that I am not wicked;
And there is none that can deliver out of thine hand? (Job x. 4, 6-7; cf. vii.
17-18)
He searcheth out the deep, and the heart,
And he hath understanding of their cunning devices:
For the Most High knoweth all knowledge,
And he looketh into the signs of the world.
Declaring the things that are past and the things that shall be,
And revealing the traces of hidden things.
No thought escapeth him;
There is not a word hid from him. (Sir. xlii. I8-2o)
For Wisdom is a spirit that loveth man,
And she will not hold a blasphemer guiltless for his lips;
Because God beareth witness of his reins,
And is a true overseer of his heart,
And a hearer of his tongue. (Wisd. i. 6)
102 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Again we find, in this \Visdom literature, that the knowledge of
Yahweh consists essentially in seeing. His ey.es are everywhere: "The
eyes of the LoRD are in every place, keeping watch upon the evil and
the good." (Prov. xv. 3.) They are ten thousand times brighter than
the sun (Sir. xxiii. Ig; see above, p. IOO-I). Nothing escapes the eye of
Yahweh: "Their ways are ever before him; they shall not be hid from
his eyes" (Sir. xvii. I3.) He sees everything: "For great is the wisdom of
the LoRn: he is mighty in power and beholdeth all things" (Sir. xv. I 8).
Yahweh's hearing is closely associated with his seeing, here (e.g.
Lam. iii. 6o sq.) as in the Psalms (cf. p. gg). He can hear everything;
not a word escapes him (Sir. xlii. 20: above, p. 10 I):
Because the spirit of the LoRD hath filled the world,
And that which holdeth all things together hath knowledge of every voice.
Therefore no man that uttereth unrighteous things shall be unseen;
Neither shall Justice, when it convicteth, pass him by.
. . . and the sound of his (the ungodly man's) words shall come unto the
LORD
Because there is an ear of jealousy that listeneth to all things,
And the noise of murmurings is not hid. (Wisd. i. 7-1 o)

In the Wisdom literature Yahweh's power to see all is again con-

nected with his dwelling in heaven. In the Book ofJob, it depends even,
in the opinion of the impious man who is anxious to avoid it, upon the
state of the weather, since the.thick curtain of clouds in the sky might
prevent God from seeing what happens here below:
Is not God in the height of heaven?
And behold the height of the stars, how high they are!
And thou sayest, What doth God know?
Can he judge through the thick darkness?
Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not;
And he walketh in the circuit of heaven. (Job xxii. 12-14; cf. Job xxxvi. 29;
Ps. xviii. 12 =II Sam. xxii. 12)
vVe find that in the \Visdom literature the chief object of the divine
omniscience is man, the human race in general and its deeds and
thoughts, its actions and meditations. On the other hand, divine
omniscience appears in the Wisdom literature as more complete than
in the Psalms. In the latter, indeed, it does not reach the world of the
dead, but stops, so to speak, at the threshold of the lower regions.
Yahweh, more or less of choice, knows nothing of the dead:
Like the slain that lie in the grave,
Whom thou rememberest no more;
And they are cut off from thy hand. (Ps. lxxxviii. 6)
Hide not thy face from me;
Lest I become like them that go down into the pit. (Ps. cxliii. 7)
 ISRAEL 103

But in Proverbs and Job, the Lord can see in Sheol also:

Sheol and Abaddon are before the LoRD (Prov. I 5, I 1)

Sheol is naked before him,
And Abaddon hath no covering. (Job xxvi. 6; cf. xxxviii. 17)

Furthermore, while in the Psalms the earth is indeed an object of the

divine sight ("\Vho looketh upon the earth, and it. trembleth; he
toucheth the mountains, and they smoke", Ps. civ. 32), in the Wisdom
literature the deity's sight and knowledge is active in all directions,
and extends, in a cosmic sense, to the sky and sea:

Behold, the heaven, and the heaven of heavens,

The deep, and the earth, shall be moved when he shall visit.
The mountains and the foundations of the earth together
Are shaken with trembling, when he looketh upon them. (Sir. xvi. 18-19)

In another sense als'o the physical world, the cosmos, is an object of

God's wisdom, inasmuch as it was created by him. To do implies
knowing how to do. Already in the Psalms, we read "He that planted
the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?"
(Ps. xciv. 9; cf. Prov. XX. I 2; Sir. xvii. s). Already in the Psalms, but
above all in the Wisdom literature, this creative wisdom of God is
manifested particularly in the m~king of the material univ~rse.

The LoRD by wisdom founded the earth

By understanding he established the heavens.
By his knowledge the depths were broken up,
And the skies drop down the dew. (Prov. iii. 19-20)
Whence then cometh wisdom?
And where is the place of understanding? ...
God understandeth the way thereof,
And he knoweth the place thereof.
For he looketh to the ends of the earth,
And seeth under the whole heaven; '
To make a weight for the wind;
Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure.
\Vhen he made a decree for the rain,
And a way for the lightning of the thunder:
Then did he see it, and declare it;
He established it, yea, and searched it out. (Job. xxviii. 20 and 23-27; cf. Sir.
i, I-10)

The \Visdom (bokhmii) of God, personified as the first of his creatures

(Prov. viii. 22 ff.; Sir. i. g), is present at the creation of the world:
J04 THE ALL-KNOvVING GOD
\Vhen he established the heavens, I was there:
\Vhen he set a circle upon the face of the deep:
When he made firm the skies above:
When the fountains of the deep became strong:
When he gave the sea its bound,
That the waters should not transgress his commandment:
When he marked out the foundations of the earth:
Then I was by him, as a master workman. (Prov. viii. 27-30)
I came forth from the mouth of the Most High
And covered the earth as a mist.
I dwelt in high places,
And my throne is in the pillar of the cloud.
Alone I compassed the circuit of heaven,
And walked on the depth of the abyss:
In the waves of the sea, and in all the earth,
And in every people and nation, I got a possession. (Sir. x.xiv. 3-6)

This lzoklzmii, which as the wisdom of God is shown particularly

in the works of creation, 2 a on the other hand, as human wisdom
(that is to say, divine wisdom in man), 3 is at the same time knowledge
of nature (elements, seasons, stars, human beings, beasts, plants; see
Wisd. vii. I 7 sqq.), technical skill, 4 and foretelling of the future
by means of divination, including even interpretation of dreams
(Dan. ii. 23, 28 sqq., 47). It is thus essentially, notwithstanding
obvious secondary interactions, different from that omniscience of
Yahweh which, as we have seen, has for its chief object the conduct of
mankind.
The latter is a knowledge ethical in function, which is followed by
a (punitive) sanction. /fokhmii, on the other hand, is wisdom in the
service of action, connected with the creative function, namely the
creation of the world, including the human race (see the Slavonic Book
of Enoch, x.xx. 8). o It is essentially akin to that creative, magical and
Hermetic wisdoiJ?. which, as we shall see, is the especial property of
the Egyptian god Thot (see p. 50), of the Babylonian Ea (p. 78)
and likewise of his son Marduk (p. 79), who is also, like Ea,s creator
of the universe, and who moulded the cosmos as it now is from the
primaeval chaos. Ea indeed is a god of water and of magic, and his
wisdom is a secret virtue inherent in the waters of the abyss, which
rise mysteriously from the depths of the earth (p. 78). /fokhmii also
is a mystery which broods over the world, a principle circulating
throughout the universe, a principle which is hidden or perceived
only, if at all, in the abyss and the places under the earth (see Job
xxviii. 22 sqq.). It is a kind or form of impersonal magic, or magic
imperfectly personified, as a hypostasis or a creature of Yahweh;
compare the Gnostic Sophia, 7
 ISRAEL 105

(b) THE PROPHETS

Divine omniscience appears in the book of Jeremiah as knowledge,
particularly with a view to punishment, of all that men do ("the ways
of men"), their speech (Jer. xvii. 16) and their most intimate thoughts,
like sight (Jer. xxiv. s-6), which nothing can escape, examining the
depths of the heart ("heart and reill$"). As we have seen, all these
ideas and expressions are to be found repeatedly in the Psalms and
the \Visdom literature.

Am I a God at hand, saith the LoRD, and not a God afar off? Can any hide
himself in secr"et places that I shall not see him? saith the LoRD. (Jer. 23. 23-24)
For mine eyes are upon all their ways: they are not hid from my face,
neither is their iniquity concealed from mine eyes. (Jer. xvi. I 7)
(Yahweh) whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men; to give
every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
(Jer. xxxii. 19)
But thou, 0 LoRD, knowest me; thou seest me, and triest mine heart towards
thee. (J er. xii. 3)
But, 0 LORD of hosts, that judgest righteously, that triest the reins and the
heart. (Jer. xi. 20).
The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick: who can
know it? I theLoRD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man
according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. (Jer. xvii, g-ro;
cf. xxxii. I g)
But, 0 LoRD of hosts, that triest the righteous, that seest the reins and the
heart, let me see thy vengeance upon them. (Jer. xx. 12)

The idea that Yahweh knows all that men do is ro be found also
in the Book of Isaiah, together with the same typical phraseology
("uprising and downsitting", "going and coming" in the general
meaning of "doing~', "acting"), which we have already met with in
Ps. 139 (vv. 2-3; see above, p. 97), and which is also to be found in
the Egyptian wisdom-literature. 8 "But I know thy sitting down, and
thy going out, and thy coming in, &c." (Isa. xxxvii. 28, 2 Kings xix.
27). Also the theme of the impious man who denies that God can see
and know all and so cheats himself into believing that his ill-doings
will escape the eye of Yahweh, which we found in the Psalms, in Job
and in ben Sirach (see pp. 98, 100), is already there in Isaiah: "\.Yoe
unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LoRn, and their
works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth
us?" (Isa. xxix. 1 5). The thought that in all the universe there is no
place where man can evade the sight of Yahweh or be out of the reach
of his chastisement is as early as Amos, who expresses it in terms
reminiscent of Ps. cxxxix. 7-9 (see above, p. 97, and cf. Jer. xxiii. 24).
106 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; and though
they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. And though they
hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence;
and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I
command the serpent, and he shall bite them ... and I will set mine eyes upon
them for evil, and not for good. (Amos ix, 2-4)

In like manner, in the Book of Hosea Yahweh knows men and sees
all their unrighteousness:
And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness:
now have their own doings beset them about; they are before my face. (Hos.
vii. 2)
I know EphrClim, and Israel is not hid from me. (Hos. v. 3; cf. vi. 10)

May we not, then, recognise here the genesis of the idea, among
the Israelites, of the omniscience of God? May it not originally have
grown up in the religious atmosphere of the prophets' piety, directed
as it was wholly to the exaltation of Yahweh, and then been trans-
mitted from the (earlier) Prophets to the authors of the Psalms and
the Wisdom-literature?

(c) THE HISTORICAL BOOKS

So far as some explicit testimonies of the all-seeing omniscience of
God in Chronicles and Kings are concerned, we really are still within
the sphere of influence of the prophets, even to the details of the
expression.
For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew
himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. (2
Chron. xvi. g)
For the LoRD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations
of the thoughts. (I Chron. xxviii. g)
For thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men.
(I Kings viii. 3g)

1t!ore often in the historical books, the Lord is credited with a

power of sight, hearing and knowledge9 applied to single determinate
situations and events affecting mankind.1o Among these, the conclusion
of agreements has a special place, also the pronunciation of formal
promises and the taking of oaths (Gen. xiv. 22, xxiv. 3, xxxi. 50;
1 Sam. xii. 5, xx. 23, 42, xxiv. 16).n The Lord is called upon to witness,
because he sees (Gen. xxxi. 49-50), hears (Judges xi. 10) and knows
(Joshua xxii. 22). He sees the situations, he hears the words spoken, he
knows what is affirmed and undertaken. In all this it may be thought
that there is implicit a virtual omniscience, which is not explicitly
mentioned.
 ISRAEL I07

An explicit testimony to the Divine omniscience might be furnished

indirectly by personal names such as Jehoiada (2 Sam. viii. 18; 2
Kings xi. 4 sqq., xii. 3 sqq.), 12 the meaning of which is "Yahweh
(Yahu, Yah) knows", 13 if we might understand it to mean "Yahweh
knows everything".u But, by analogy with the other Semitic tongues,
in which personal names of this type usually allude to the birth of the
child and the circumstances preceding, accomp,ilnying or following it, 16
and in particular, theophoric names compqunded of the root y.d.' 16
usually express thanks to the god for having "known", that is "taken
to heart", just these circumstances, such as the mother's childlessness,
the stages of her pregnancy, her labour-pains and so on, it seems more
probable that in the nameJehoiada also 17 Yahweh's "knowledge" is to
be understood in the special sense just mentioned. 18
On the whole, then, even if we regard the omniscience attributed
to the angel of the Lord, who knows "all things that are in the earth"
(2 Sam. xiv. 20), as a reflex of the omniscience ofYahweh, 10 it cannot
be said that in the historical books omniscience is particularly empha-
sised as a Divine attribute.

(d) ANTIQUITY OF THE IDEA OF DIVINE OMNISCIENCE

H. Gunkel, in discussing Ps. cxxxix, with which we began, writes
that the Divine omniscience and omnipresence which are so clearly set
forth in that Psalm "are foreign to the oldest religion of Israel", and
that "the God of the oldest period is neither omniscient nor omni-
present in the proper meaning of the words", which should not therefore
exclude the possibility of a greater antiquity for omniscience under-
stood in a relative sense.zo H. Gressmann considers that the passage
~!ready cited from Amos (ix. 2-4) is the oldest explicit evidence of
Divine omniscience in the Old Testament. 21 According to J. Hempel,
it is not actually affirmed until Jeremiah, although it goes back to an
earlier epoch; but this great~r antiquity does not in any case imply,
according to him, that it pertained originally to the people of Israel.
Remarking that the idea of Divine knowledge is found mostly in the
\\'isdom literature, Hempel makes it dependent on those foreign
influences which come especially into play in this particular literature
and are Babylonian and above. all Egyptian. 22
Egyptian and Babylonian influences made themselves felt quite early
in Canaan, and through Canaan in Israel. The idea that wherever man
flees, up to heaven or down to hell, he cannot escape Deity, an idea
found as early as Amos ix. 2 sqq., cf. Jer. xxiii. 24, Ps. cxxxix. 8-g and
Job xxvi. 6, is already expressed in the same terms in an El-Amarna
letter. 2 3 The same conception is put forth likewise in a hymn of the
Atharva-Veda (iv, 16, 4, seep. I 19), where the Divine omniscience of
Varuna is celebrated in language so like that of Ps. cxxxix that some
108 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
have even supposed a direct literary dependence either of the Vedic
hymn on the Psalm (if so, then on an older form of the latter), or of
the Psalm on the hymn, or else of both on a common prototype,
po~sibly a Median hymn or a Hittite psalm.24 The vain fancy of the
impious man that he can escape the all-seeing vision of Deity is to be
found also in the Avesta, with reference to Mithra, who is a sky- and
sungod (see Chap. VIII, p. 136). Also the "ten thousand eyes" of the
Iranian Mithra (Yasht x. 7, 24, 82, I4I) and the thousand eyes of
Varuna (Atharva-Veda iv, I6, 4) recall the pronouncement of ben
Sirach that "the eyes of the Lord are ten thousand times brighter than
the sun" (seep. Ioo).
But these agreements in form, even if they are all to be explained
from the influences exercised upon Israel by the great civilisations of
the ancient East, do not imply that the idea of Divine omniscience was
itself originally foreign to the Israelites. The omniscience of Yahweh,
if we consider it, not theologically, as an abstract attribute of Deity,.
i.e., as absolute omniscience, but historically in its concrete, though
imperfect formulation as relative omniscience, is so organically co.n-
nected with the particular and well-defined ideological complex which
makes up the figure of Yahweh himself that it is difficult to suppose it
has a different origin. In the conscience and the history of Israel,
Yahweh is the wakeful, avenging, ''jealous" God, the wrathful God
who judges and punishes. Now a God who punishes is a God who
knows. Yahweh's omniscience has for its principal object the doings of
mankind, and his punitive sanction is often exercised by means of
weather-phenomena. Universal vision and knowledge and punitive
sanction are complementary aspects of the figure of Yahweh, and
another complementary aspect is his abode in the sky (cf. the Tower
of Babel, Gen. xi. 1 /qq., Jacob's ladder, Gen. xxviii. I2 sqq., also I
Kings xxii. xg, etc.). It is from the sky that he sees what men are
doing, and from the sky that he sends his chastisement. An attempt
has been made to find foreign influences, those of Greek and, more
specifically, of Epicurean philosophy 25 in Job xxii. I 3-14 (cf. above,
p. 102); but the idea there expressed that Yahweh's vision may be
interfered with by the curtain of clouds overshadowing the sky is
entirely Biblical (cf. Ps. xcvii. 2, lxxxi. 8, etc.) and connects with the
celestial and meteorological aspects of the god which go back to the
most ancient theophanies. 26 The notion of Stade and others that the
idea of the sky as Yahweh's abode is not earlier than the Exile 27 has
long been abandoned. It is not necessary to give Yahweh a non-
Hebrew and non-Semitic Indo-European origin, on the strength of
the divine name Yaw supposedly occurring in the Ras Shamra texts
and being eventually related to Dyaus, Zeus and so on, or in connection
with the "Aryan" nuclei to be found in Syria and Palestine in the
 ISRAEL 109

second millennium B.c., in order to allow a genuine and original

28

value to his character as a god of the sky and the weather, manifested
in thunder, thunderclouds and the violence of storms (as in Judges
v. 4 sqq.; Deut. xx..xiii. 2; Hab. iii. 4 sqq.; 2 Sam. xxii. 8 sqq.; Ps. xviii. 8
sqq., Ps. lxviii. 8 sqq.). It is from the sky that the Lord sends the rain
or withholds it, according to men's behaviour, for he knows their
hearts (I Kings viii. 35, 36, 39). Yahweh sends the Deluge to punish
mankind, for he has seen their ill-doings from the sky; the rainbow is
his bow, which he finally sets in the cloud as a sign of peace (Gen ix. I 3).
As the idea of Yahweh dwelling in the heavens was developed and
deepened by the Prophets to exalt him, but was already existent in
religious tradition, so the idea of a God who judges and punishes,
which forms so great a part of the ethical ideal of Yahweh for which
the Prophets strove, is older than they,2 9
The omniscience of Yahweh, applied to the doings of men and con-
ceived of anthropomorphically as a function of his universal vision,
and also universal hearing, is in the service of a punitive sanction. This
universal knowledge arising from uni'!'ersal vision belongs to Yahweh
only, or at most, by reflexion from him, to the Angel of the Lord
(2 Sam. xiv. 20). It is not the same as the knowledge of good and
evil, in which not only Yahweh (and his angel, 2 Sam. xiv. 17) but
other beings, both non-human (the serpent) and human (Adam and
Eve, Gen. iii. 5 and 22) have a share. Again, it is not the same as the
practical and oracular "wisdom", such as is shown for instance in
gnomes and responses, the divine wisdom (lzokhmiit elohim) which, e.g.
enables Solomon to give his famous judgement (1 Kings iii. 28),ao that
by which the spirits of the dead (elohim), "those that know" (always
supposing that the yid'oizim are indeed the spirits, or some of the spirits
of the dead),31 have foreknowledge of coming events and are consulted
by those who find themselves in a critical position, as the ghost of
Samuel is called up by the "witch" of Endor at the request of Saul,
I Sam. xxviii. 8 sqq. This wisdom, which does not belong solely to
Yahweh, and which he possibly inherited along with other ele111ents of
a polytheistic character from the various elohim whom he overlaid, 32 is
essentially different from the divine universality of vision and know-
ledge which has human actions for its object. It is primarily a mantic
and magical knowledge which consists above all in knowing what to
do and in being able to do it, an ability to act, which, so far as Yahweh
is concerned, is displayed chiefly in the works of creation.

(e) THE CHERUBIM

The four cherubhn who, in Ezekiel's vision, carry the flaming throne
of the Lord across the sky, have each four faces (Ezek. i. 6, 10, x. 14,
21). These are arranged in two pairs, looking away from each other; the
I IO THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
front face is that of a man, the face behind that of an eagle; that on
the right, of a lion, and that on the left, of a bull. They have also four
\vings, two extended and two folded (ibid. i. 6, I r, x. 2I). Furthermore,
they have "their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and
their wings ... full of eyes round about" (ibid. x. I 2),3 3 while the four
wheels, one alongside of each cherub (ibid. i. I5-I6, x. g-Io), are all
covered with eyes (ibid. i. I8, x. I2). In their formal aspect, these
figures of the cherubim would seem to be related to the Egyptian type
of the "Bes pantheus" 34 or tiarmerti (cf. p. 59), rather than to the
monstrous winged quadrupeds of Mesopotamian art. 36 For the former,
see Figs. I, 2, 3;3s the body is dotted all over with eyes and there
are a number of animal faces set in profile on either side of the front
face. The feet are like those of beasts, and so resemble those of the
cherubim, the soles of which were "like the sole of a calf's foot"
(Ezek. i. 7).
The multiplicity of faces, 37 and, still more, of eyes, possibly signifies
the universal powers of vision of these beings, 38 who can thus look in
all directions without needing to turn; while by means of the wheels,
also covered with eyes, they can go in all directions without needing to
turn on themselves (Ezek. i. I7, x. I I, and I6 sq.). It is not for nothing
that the cherubim have traditionally the office of guardians and
keepers, 39 which reminds us, though at a distance, of the "all-eyed"
(Panoptes; cf. p. I5I) Argos. Such power to see and to go everywhere
is innate in their very nature of beings belonging to the weather-sky,
whether as storm-clouds (cf. Ezek. i. 14, x. 5, etc.) or rather as the
four winds corresponding to the four cardinal points of the heavens,4.o
because it is a property of the wind to go everywhere, and therefore
to see everything (cf. Introduction, p. 10). In 2 Sam. 22, which recurs
in Psalm I 8, God "rode upon a cherub, and did fly", which, as the
parallel clause shows, means that he rode on the wings of the wind
(v. II )41 amid the rage of the tempest.
As thus represented in the vision of Ezekiel, the all-seeing and
omnipresent power of the cherubim sets forth the like powers in
Yahweh himself, 42 who occupies the throne which they upholcl. Indeed
Yahweh, being a sky-god, has eyes which go through the whole earth
(Zach. iv. 10; cf. 2 Chron. xvi. g); the "seven eyes", open and awake
on the last stone of the rebuilt Temple (ibid. iii. g),43 have been
explained as the seven planets, 44 thought of as the eyes of Yahweh,u
those eyes which, "ten thousand times brighter than the sun", see even
in the darkness of night (Sir. xxiii. I 8-20; see above, p. I oo) and
reJ;nind us of the stars with which the firmament is studded. Naturally,
the concrete conception of Yahweh with such a number of eyes was
inconsistent with the idea of God in the Torah.
This inconsistency did not exist in the case bf the Cherubim, and
 ISRAEL I I I

existed still less in that of Satan, to whom, on the contrary, any mon-
strous feature might be assigned without scruple. In the tractate
Aboda Zara, 20 a-b, we read: "A fair woman should not be looked
upon, even though she be unmarried, nor a married woman, though
she be ugly; nor (should one look at) the many-coloured clothes of a
woman, not at a he-ass and a she-ass, a boar and a sow, nor fowls,
while they are coupling, not though one were as full of eyes as the
angel of death (male 't':)'nayim ke-malakh ha-maweth), for it is recorded
that the death-angel is full of eyes (mali 't':}'nayim)." 46 The notion that
the death-angel, who is explicitly identified with Satan in the tractate
Baba Bathra 16a, has eyes all over his body, and that at a man's last
moment he stands at the head of his bed holding a drawn sword, from
which a drop of gall falls into the dying man's mouth and puts an end
to him, is still to be found among the Jews of the Caucasus. A like
notion, that Azrail, the death-angel, has as many eyes as there are
human beings on earth, and that whenever anyone dies, one of the
eyes closes, 47 has been handed on from Islam to the Tartars, Kirghiz
(who say Azrail has six faces), Cheremisses and Chuvasks. 4 S

NOTES

* The renderings of Bfblical passages, unless the contrary is stated, are

taken throughout this chapter from the English Revised Version (canonical
books and Apocrypha), except for the Psalms of Solomon, which are from
Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Vol. ii, and the Book of Jesus Sirach,
which is from Oesterley's Ecclesiasticus in The Cambridge Bible.
I. Cf. H. Middendorf, Gott sieht, eine tmninologische Studie iiber das Schaum
Gottes im A/ten Testament (Dissert. Freiburg i. Br.), 1935.
2. Thus the Revised Standard Version and others.
2a. Cf. J. Hempel, Gott u. Mensch im A/ten Testament (ed. 2, Stuttgart 1936),
p. 59
3 The (zokhmat elohim of Solomon, I Kings iii. 28. Cf. Meinhold, Die Weisheit
Israels (Leipzig Igo8), p. 205 sq.; W. L. Knox, "The Divine Wisdom", in
Journal of Theological Studies, xxxviii ( 1937), 230-37; Ralph Marcus, On Biblical
Hypostases of Wisdom, in Hebrew Union College Annual, xxiii (rgso-sx), Part I,
PP 157-7I.
4 m:f.VTwv TXVLTLS', \\'isdom vii. 22; cf. vii. I 6b, 1TaCJa 'T ~poVT}CJLS' Kat
ipyaCJTHWV imcrrr]p.7] As early as Isa. xxviii. 26-g the wisdom of Yahweh has
taught man to till the ground.
5 G. N. Bonwetsch, Die Bucher der Geheimnisse Henochs, das sogerzannte slauische
Henochbuch (Leipzig I922), p. 28: "Und am sechsten Tage gebot ich meiner
Weisheit den Menschen zu machen .... " Cf. p. 81.
6. For Ea as creator, see Furlani, Ea nei miti babilonesi e assiri, in Atti del R.
lstituto Veneto di Scien~e, Ltttere e Arti lxxxvii, 2 (1927-28), pp. 6sg-g6, especially
p. 681.
112 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
7. Cf. P. Volz, in Die Schriften des AT2 iii, 2 (I 92 I), pp. I 14, I I 7 sq.
8. The "Instructions to Kagemni" (papyrus of the Middle Kingdom); see
Erman, Die Literatur der Aegypter, p. I oo; B. Gunn, The Instruction qf Ptah-hotep
and the Instruction qf Ke'gemni (Wisdom of East Series), London, Igog.
g. Cf. Middenforf, op. cit.
IO. Yahweh sees, Exod. iv. 3I; xiv. 24; Deut. xi. I2j I Sam. i. I I; 2 Sam.
xvi. I2j 2 Kings ix. 26; sees and hears, Exod. iii. 7, g; Deut. xxvi. 7; I Kings
viii. 29 and 52 (2 Chron. vi. 20 and 40); 2 Kings xix. I 6, xx. 5 (cf. I sa. xxxvii.
17); sees and knows (the heart as organ of knowledge corresponding to the eye
as organ ofsight), I Kings ix. 3 (2 Chron. vii. r6), cf. 1 Sam. xvi. 7
1 I. Cf. J. Pedersen, Der Eid bei den Semiten (Strassburg 1914), pp. 142, I6I.
Sometimes, as I Sam. xii. 3 and 5, the king is invoked along with Yahweh.
Even Ittai, who is not an Israelite, swears by Yahweh and the king (David),
2 Sam. xv. 2 I. Joseph too swears, according to Egyptian custom, by Pharaoh,
Gen. xlii. 15-I6. The Babylonians swore by the Sun (and other deities) and
the king, see Mercer, The oath in Babylonian and Ass;rian Literature (Paris 1912),
p. 8 sqq. For the omniscience of Egyptian monarchs, see above, pp. 49-50.
12. Cf. Yeda'yah(ii), No. 582, in M. Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen
im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (Stuttgart Ig28), also his No. 583.
I3 Cf. Eliada in I Kings xi. 23, 2 Sam. v. I6, Beeliada (i.e. Ba'alyada') I
Chron. xiv. 7, Abiada in Gen. xxv. 4
14. Cf. the Akkadian theophoric name Sin-idi, "Sin knows", perhaps an
abbreviated form of Sin-kalama-idi, "Sin knows everything", see H. Ranke,
Early Babylonian Personal Names (Philadelphia I905), pp. r6o, 235; above, p. 79
I5. Noth, op. cit., pp. 4 sqq., 56 sqq.
I 6. South Arabian Elyada' and Yada 'el, Abyada' and Yada 'ab, etc., Assyrian
Ilu-idi and Idi-ilu, Palymrean Balyada; Noth, op. cit., pp. 25 sq., 70, 77, I8I.
I7 Cf. E. Baumann.in .(.A.T.W. xxviii (Igo8), 24, 39
I 8. cr. the story of Hagar and the foretelling of her motherhood by the
Angel of the Lord, Gen. xvi. 7 sqq., and the visit of the three travellers who
announce to Sarah that she shall have a child, Gen. xviii. Ishmael, the name
of Hagar's child, means "God hears", cf. the names Reuben and Simeon given
by Leah to her sons, alluding to the fact that "the LoRD hath looked upon
(ra'a) (her) affliction" and "heard (sama') that (she is) hated", Gen. xxix. 3 I
sq. For Semitic names compounded of I.m.' in other Semitic tongues, see Noth,
op. cit., p. 184 sq. In connection with the story of the three travellers who visit
Abraham and Sarah and of whom one is more conspicuous than the other two,
the singular alternating with the plural in the text, Gunkel, Die Schriften des
AT, 2 i. I, Gottingen I 92 I, I 5 I sq., refers to the myth of Zeus, Poseidon and
Hermes coming as unknown visitors to old Hyrieus in Boiotia and telling him
that he shall have a son, Orion.
19. Fr. Stier, Gott u, sein Engel im AT. (Munster ifW.1934).
20. H. Gunkel, Die Psalmen (Gottingen I926), p. 586: [gottliche Allwissen-
heit und Allgegenwart] . sind der altesten Religion Israels fremd .. ; der
Gott der altesten Zeit ist im eigentlichen Sinne weder allwissend noch allge-
genwartig gewesen. cr. Die Schriften des A T 2 i, I' p. 97: Allwissenheit und
Allgegenwart [Gottes] in absolutem Sinne sind damals ganz unmogliche
Vorstellungen, That Yahweh's omniscience was originally thought of in a
FIG. 10.-Sca)
from
Mohenjo-
Daro; Sir J.
~-Iarshall,
Mohetuo-Daro,
i (London,
I 93 I), plate
xii, no. I7

FIG. I I.-Yogi
in the svastika-
sana position;
H. von Glasc-
napp, Bra/una
wzd Buddha
(Berlin, I 926),
fig. I5
 ISRAEL 113

relative sense is obvious, cf. U. Cassuto, La questione della Gmesi (Florence

I934), p. ISS.
2 I. H. Gressmann, Die Schriften des A T 2 ii, I, p. 356.
22. J. Hempel, Gott u. Mensch im AT2 , pp. 230 sq.
23. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna- Tafeln, No. 264, lines I 5 sqq. (Vol. i, pp.
826-27): "Wenn wir hinaufsteigen zum Himmel, wenn wir hinabsteigen zur
Erde [besser 'Holle', Gunkel, Psalmen, 588], so ist unscr Haupt in dcinen
Handcn".
24. A. Jeremias, Das AT im Lichte des Alten Orients,3 95; Gunkel, op: cit., 590;
H. Haas, Das Scherjlein.der Witwe (Leipzig I922), 99 sqq. (he inclin~ to suppose
that the two texts have independent origins); H. Hommel, Der allgegenwiirtige
Himmelsgott, in A.R.W., I925, 200, note 6, and in .('.A. T. W., 1929, p. 129;
Hempel, op. cit., p. 224, note I.
25. A. H. Krappe, in Rev. et. grecques xxxix {1926), p. 35I sqq.
26. S. Grill, Die Gewittertheophanie im AT (Vienna 1931).
27. Cf. G. Westphal, Jahves Wohnstiitten nach den Anschauungen der alter Hebriier
{Igo8), p. 269 f.
28. E. Littmann, in Arch. f. Orieniforschung xi, 3 (I 936), p. I 62; cf. A.
Schleiff, "Der GottesnameJahwe", in .('eitsch. d. deutschen Morgenliindischen Gesell-
schaft xc {Igg6), p. 686; A. Murtoncn, "The appearance of the name YHWH
outside Israel", in Studia Orientalia xvi {I95I), p. I.
29. Baudissin, Kyrios iii, p. g8g; Mowinckel, Psalmenstudien ii, p. I 78; "Die
'Schriftpropheten' haben selbstverstandlich nicht die ethische Stromung der
Religion geschaffen."
go. Cf. 2 Sam. xiv. 17, where the king is "as an angel of God ... to discern
good and evil".
3 I. According to some, yid'onim is the name of special magical instruments
for summoning the spirits themselves, cf. A. Jirku, Die Diimonen u. ihre Abwehr
im AT {Leipzig 1912), pp. 8 sqq.; H. Schmidt in .('.A.T.W., Beiheft4I {I925),
pp. 253 sqq., who actually thinks of the bull-roarer; H. Kaupel, Die Diimonen
im AT {Augsburg 1930), p. 20.
32. Cp. da'ath qedoJim, Prov. xxx. 3, as possibly signifying such a wisdom as
that which is proper to the divine beings (qedo!im, genetivus subiectivus); sec
Gaster, in Orientalia xi (1942), 59
33 Cf. Rev. iv. 6: "rf(J(Jpa 'ciia yl.f-LOVTa ocpO~f-LiiJV Ef-L1Tpoa0Ev Kat omaOev.
34 H. Gressmann, Die Lade Jahves (Berlin, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1920),
pp. 50 sq.; cp. R. Pettazzoni, "Le corps parseme d' yeux" in .('almoxis i
(1938), p. I ff.
35 L .. Diirr, E;:.echiels Vision von der Erscheinung Gottes im Lichte der vorder-
asiatischen Altertumskunde (Miinster iJW 1917), p. 54 sqq.
36. This has no parallel in the ancient East; at the very most, one might
compare the "1ar-ga;:. with seven eyes" of Gudea (Statue B v, line gg, in
Thureau-Dangin, Die sumerischen und akkadischen Konigsinschriften (Leipzig 1907),
pp. 68-69)
37 On two-headed (?) cherubim see Gressmann, op. cit., p. 49
38. Cp. A. Jacoby, "Zur Erklarung der Kerube'', in A.R. W. xxii (1923-24),
P 257 sqq.
I 14 THE ALL-KNOWING GOD
39 Of Eden after the expulsion of Adam and Eve, Gen., iii. 24, cf. Ezek.
x.xviii. I 4 and I 6; of the Holy of Holies, I Kings, vi. 23 sqq.; on the cover of
the Ark of the Covenant, Exod. xxv. 18 sqq.
40. Cf.Jer. xlix. 36 (with 32); Ezek. xxxvii. 9 (also 5, 10, 12 and 14); Zach.
vi. 5; Dan. xi. 4 See also Philon, de cherub., 21.
41. Cf. Isa. xix. I.
42. A. Berthelet, Hesekiel (Tiibingen 1936), p. 7
43 H. Schmidt, in Z.A. T. W., 1936, p. 48 sqq.
44 So in the midrash Numbers Rabbah xv. 7
45 Otherwise symbolised as the seven lamps of the candlestick, see :Mohlen-
brink, in Zeitschr. d. deutsch. Palastina-Vereins Iii (1929), p. 257 sqq.
46. Cp. A. Jacoby, Zoe. cit., p. 264. Professor Zolli has pointed out to me that
Leviathan has 365 eyes (L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, Philadelphia
1925, v, p. 45, n. 127); the angel Metathron, identified with Enoch, has
365000 eyes, and each one of them is like "the great light", i.e. the sun,
Sifer hikhaloth, in Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrash (Vienna, 1873, p. 174. "In every
hikhal (heavenly court) there are 8766 shining gates, according to the number
of the ~ours of a solar year (8760[ =365 X 24] +6). At each entrance stand
365000 myriads of angels who minister . and all of them, from the soles of
their feet to the crown of their head, are full of eyes; each eye is like the orb
of the moon", etc. (Hikhaloth, in J.D. Eisenstein, Ot~ar Midrashim (New York
1928) i, p. 107 b sqq.).
47 Gaudefroy-Demombynes in Hastings, E.R.E. IV, p. 617.
48. U. Holmberg, "Der Todesengel", in Studia Orierztalia (Helsinki), i (1925),
PP 72-77.