Egyptian Myth and Legend

In our introduction we deal with the divergent character of some of the ancient myths so as to simplify the study of a difficult but extremely fascinating subject. It is shown that one section of the people recognized a Creator like Ptah, who begot himself and "shaped his limbs" ere he fashioned the Universe, while another section perpetuated the idea of a Creatrix who gave birth to all things. At the dawn of history these rival conceptions existed side by side, and they were perpetuated until the end. It is evident, too, that the theologies which were based on these fundamental ideas had undergone, ere the fusion of peoples occurred, a sufficiently prolonged process of separate development to give them a racial, or, at any rate, a geographical significance.