THE GREAT ATEN

p. 144

[paragraph continues] Nile-god is thus described only because he was the direct emanation from the great unseen, unknown and incomprehensible creative power, which had existed for ever and was the source of all created things. Statues of the Nile-god were made under the last dynasties of the New Empire, but the hymn quoted above was written many centuries earlier.

The religious literature of Ancient Egypt of all periods is abundant, yet in no class of it do we find any prayer or petition addressed to this unseen and unknown god.

But in the Collections of Moral Aphorisms, or "Teachings," composed by ancient sages, we find several allusions to a divine power to which no personal name is given. The word used to indicate this power is NETER or NETHER.

Many have tried to assign a meaning to this word and to find its etymology, but the original meaning of it is at present unknown. The contexts of the passages in which it occurs suggest that it means something like "eternal God." The same word is often used to describe an object, animate or inanimate, which possesses some unusually remarkable power or quality, and in the plural neteru, it represents the beings and things to which adoration in one form or another is paid.

The great God referred to in the Moral Aphorisms is also spoken of as pa neter, "the God," just as the Arabs speak of Al-Allah, i.e., "the Allah." The following examples drawn from the Precepts of Kagemna