Pollytheism and Monotheism

The is from Ancient Egytpian Religion
by W.F. Petrie
copywrite 1912 or something

What we actually find is the contrary
of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable
in theology. Hence we must rather look on
the theologic conception of the Aryan and Semitic
races as quite apart from the demon-worship of
the Turanians. Indeed the Chinese seem to have
a mental aversion to the conception of a personal
god, and to think either of the host of earth
spirits and other demons, or else of the pantheistic
abstraction of heaven.
Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its
earliest stages we find that it results from combinations
of monotheism. In Egypt even Osiris,
Isis, and Horus (so familiar as a triad) are found
at first as separate units in different places, Isis
as a virgin goddess, and Horus as a self-existent
god. Each city appears to have but one god
belonging to it, to whom others were added.
Similarly in Babylonia each great city had its
supreme god ; and the combinations of these, and
their transformations in order to form them in
groups when their homes were politically united,
show how essentially they were solitary deities at
first.
Not only must we widely distinguish the
demonology of races worshipping numerous earth
spirits and demons, from the theology of races devoted
to solitary great gods ; but we must further
distinguish the varying ideas of the latter class.
Most of the theologic races have no objection to
tolerating the worship of other gods side by side
with that of their own local deity. It is in this
way that the compound theologies built up the
polytheism of Egypt and of Greece. But others
of the theologic races have the conception of ' a
jealous god/ who would not tolerate the presence
of a rival. We cannot date this conception
earlier than Mosaism, and this idea struggled
hard against polytheistic toleration. This view
acknowledges the reality of other gods, but
ignores their claims. The still later view was
that other gods were non-existent, a position
started by the Hebrew prophets in contempt of
idolatry, scarcely grasped by early Christianity,
but triumphantly held by Islam.