Eden Phillpotts
(detail from a caricature)

November 4

Eden Phillpotts (1862)

It was on this date, November 4, 1862, that British novelist, poet and playwright Eden Phillpotts was born in India. At the age of seventeen, he began working as an insurance clerk by day, but wrote fiction fantasies by night.

Phillpotts' literary career began with Children of the Mist in 1898, and encompassed over 250 books, plays and poetry collections by the time he died on 29 December 1960. He kept his Agnostic views of religion out of his novels, but expressed approval of Rationalism — "The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper" he wrote in his 1933 mystery, A Shadow Passes — and many of his articles on religion expressed skepticism. He had several of his poems published in the British Rationalist Press Association's R.P.A. Annual.

The Atheist ex-priest and historian Joseph McCabe writes, "I have often been his guest and found no man nearer to me in his opinions (on religion), but though he remains an agnostic, in recent years he has become milder and more conservative."

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Howard Carter



Relief of Ptah-hotep

The soberly religious and severe Egyptians were in fact as cheerful and fun-loving as any Western society today. The kings affected solemnity as befits their pose as divine rulers, but tomb inscriptions and texts such as the Book of the Dead show that by 3000 BCE the Egyptians possessed a moral code far superior to the Ten Commandments and the raving Hebrew prophets. These give the lie to the Christian claim that the children of Israel taught the world pure religion and monotheism, or that the pagan world stumbled in darkness until the light of Christ shone on it.

The Prisse Papyrus (a transcription)

We see not only love poetry and popular stories, but childrens toys, paintings of daily life, and humanitarian moral treatises such as the Prisse Papyrus. There was almost certainly some borrowing — by the Hebrews from the Egyptians: the Song of Solomon in the Bible bears the remains of Egyptian wedding songs, and the Potiphar's wife story (Genesis 39:1-23), was taken from the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers.

The claim that the Ancient Egyptians were exceptionally religious and moral, based on their belief in immortality, is easily discarded. Until about 1400 BCE Egyptian priests taught that only kings and nobles were immortal. Even writings such as The Maxims of Ptah-hotep (Prisse Papyrus), when they refer to a god or gods (neter or neteru) do so in a humanist sense. Many make no reference to God whatsoever, and one even exclaims, "If I knew where God is I would certainly make an offering to him."

The reign of Amenhotep III is generally considered Egypt's Golden Age, yet historians Adolf Erman and James Henry Breasted call it an age of heresy. The famous Egyptologist E.A.W. Budge says that "a God more or less made no difference to Amenhotep III," and that "he was as willing to worship himself as Amen." The Song of the Harper, possibly written about the time of Amenhotep's son, the religious reformer Ikhnaten, can be summarized by the modern maxim, "Let us eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Like their Christian successors, the Egyptian priests tried to suppress this wedding song because of its "atheistic joy in life," but the Egyptians remained cheerfully defiant.

* Prisse d'Avennes was the French Egyptologist who discovered the papyrus, which is today known by his name. The Prisse Papyrus, written before 2000 BCE, is a copy of a work written by Ptah-Hotep, Grand Vizier under KIng Isesi. He called it The Instructions (or Maxims) of Ptah-Hotep.

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