THE CRAFTSMAN


invariably used as a pictorial expression of
the sun's light, and always confined, as all
existing examples show, to the head of
Helios or the personification of some emana-
tion of the same. Hence, in view of this,
as the sign primarily is intended to repre-
sent, as will be subsequently demonstrated,
the light immediately encircling the sun's
disk, it would seem as though halo were a
far more appropriate name than nimbus.
   It is not surprising that the halo, which
in truth belongs to the God of the Sun,
should ultimately have been given by the
ancients to all the gods, goddesses and even
to men, as the light of the sun was to them
the source of life and of all energizing
power. "He hath rejoiced as a giant to
run his course: his going out is from the
end of heaven, and his circuit even to the
end thereof, and there is no one that can
hide himself from his heat." A belief
graphically described in a hymn of 1865
B. C., written by King Akhenaten or some
one of his court:
Thou art very beautiful, brilliant, and exalted
     above the earth,
Thy beams encompass all lands which thou hast
     made.
Thou art the sun, thou settest their bounds,
Thou bindest them with thy' love.
How many are the things which thou hast made!
Thou didst create the land by thy will, thou alone,
With peoples, herds, and flocks,
Everything on the face of the earth that walketh
     on its feet,
Everything in the air that flieth with wings.
Thou makest the seasons of the year to create all
     thy works;
The Winter making them cool, the Summer giving
     warmth.
Thou madest the far-off heaven, that thou mayest
     rise in it,
That thou mayest see all that thou madest when
     thou wast alone-


  Moreover, the deities of Polytheism were
but the personifications of the various attri-
butes of that same central force, or more
accurately they were "emanations from its
substance and manifestations of its inde-
fatigable activity," or, as Lenormant says,
"in that body the ancients saw the most
imposing manifestation of the Deity and
the clearest exemplification of the laws that
govern the world; to it, therefore, they
turned for their personification of the divine
power ;" or, in the words of the Egyptians:
"Ra (the sun) creates his own members,
which are themselves gods, viz., the morn-
ing sun: the god Horus; the power of the


Assyrian solar disc


rising sun: the god Nefer-Atmu; the light
of the sun: the god Shu; the beautifying
power of the sun: the goddess Hathor; the
power of light and heat of' the sun: the
goddess Menhit; the heat of the sun, the
producer of vegetation: the goddess Bast;
the violent heat of the sun: the god-
dess Sechet; the destroying power of the
sun: the god Sebek; the scorching heat of
of the sun: the goddess Serq; the regulator
of the sun's movements: the goddess Maat;
the setting sun: the god Atmu; the night-
sun: the god Seker.
  Ra is "the being in whom every god
existeth; the one of one, the creator of the
things which came into being when the
earth took form in the beginning, whose


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