We will now take the second great light of the heavens, the moon, and consider the forms under which it was personified by the Egyptians. Rising and setting like the sun, and disappearing for regular periods, the moon was represented by a god, who, like the god of the setting sun, occupied a conspicuous position among the powers of the under-world, and was closely connected with thoughts of the existence of the soul after death, and the judgment pronounced on deeds done in the body. Thoth, ‘the Word,’ the ‘Lord of Divine Words,’ was the title given to this deity; but though always making one in the great assemblage in the judgment-hall, his office towards the dead does not approach that of Osiris in dignity. He is not the judge, he is the recorder who stands before the balance with the dread account in his hand, while the trembling soul awaits the final sentence. His character is that of a just recorder, a speaker of true words; he wears the ostrich feather, the token of exact rigid evenness and impartiality, and yet he is represented as having _uneven_ arms, as if to hint that the cold white light of justice, untempered by the warmth of love, cannot thoroughly apprehend what it seems to take exact account of, leaving, after all, one side unembraced, unenlightened, as the moonlight casts dense shadows around the spots where its beams fall. The silent, watching, peering moon! Who has not at times felt an inkling of the parable which the ancient Egyptians told of her cold eye and her unwarming rays which enlighten chilly, and point out while they distort?
In spite of his uneven arms, however, Thoth (the dark moon and the light moon) was a great god, bearing sway in both worlds in accordance with his double character of the revealed and the hidden orb. On earth he is the great teacher, the inventor of letters, of arithmetic, and chronology; the ‘Lord of Words,’ the ‘Lover of Truth,’ the ‘Great and Great.’ Thoth was sometimes represented under the form of an ape; but most frequently with a human figure ibis-headed; the ibis, on account of his mingled black and white feathers, symbolizing the dark and the illumined side of the moon. Occasionally, however, he is drawn with a man’s face, and bearing the crescent moon on his head, surmounted by an ostrich feather; in his hand he holds his tablets and his recording pencil.