messenger or envoy. This latter word is used in the Bible not only for human envoys, either of private individuals or of the king, but of supernatural beings sent by God to accomplish His purposes. The Egyptian language has a word (aput) which is used exactly in the same manner. It occurs repeatedly in the Book of the Dead, particularly in the sense of messenger of divine vengeance. The Maxims of Ani speak of the Angel of Death.

Destiny.

The notion of Destiny, which plays so important a part in Greek mythology, does not appear to have been foreign to Egyptian thought. In two of the romantic tales which have reached us, the Hathors appear in the character of the Fates of classical mythology, or the Fairies of our own folk-lore. In the tale of the Two Brothers, they foretel a violent death to the newlyfashioned spouse of Bata. In the tale of the Doomed Prince, "when the Hathors came to greet him at his birth, they said that he would either die by a crocodile, a serpent or a dog." Hathor, in the more recent theology of the texts of Dendera, is not only the Sun himself with feminine attributes, but the universal God of Pantheism. Mythologically, however, she is, even in these very texts, the daughter of Ra and mother of Horus. Like Isis, she is in fact the Dawn, which from

different points of view may be considered either as the daughter or mother, sister or spouse, of the Sun. The Hathors, as represented in the pictures, have the appearance of fair and benevolent maidens; they are not the daughters of Night, like the Erinyes, but they are names of one and the same physical phenomenon, and are spoken of in very much the same relation to human destiny.

The Homeric poems constantly speak of the poîpaι together with the ἠεροφοῖτις ἐρινύς. The Greek Moira has its counterpart in the Egyptian Shai. In the pictures of the Psychostasia which occur in many copies of the Book of the Dead, two personages are seated together; the male is called Shai, the female Renenet. They clearly preside over the meschen, or, as we should say, the cradle, of the infant. Several important texts, which he has quoted in his recent translation of the tale of the Doomed Prince, have induced M. Maspero to translate Shai fate, and Renenet fortune. I believe that the word sha means "divide, portion out;" hence shai, "the divider," and intransitively "the division, part, lot, fate." Renenet, as quoted by M. Maspero, may fairly be translated "fortune," but it has several other well-known meanings. It is used in the sense of "young" and "maiden ;" and Renenet is the name of the goddess of the eighth month and of harvest. All these meanings can be harmonized if we think of the Greek ώρα, ὡραῖος. Hora is the time fixed by natural

laws,1 the fitting time; it is also used in the sense of the spring or prime of life; paía is the season of corn and fruit-ripening. The name Renenet is surely well chosen for a goddess presiding over birth. But she is also represented as suckling the infant Horus. And in whose lap can the Sun be nursed more fitly than in that of the Dawn?

The King's Divinity.

I must not quit this part of my subject without a reference to the belief that the ruling sovereign of Egypt was the living image and vicegerent of the sungod. He was invested with the attributes of divinity, and that in the earliest times of which we possess monumental evidence. We have no means of ascertaining the steps by which the belief came to be established as an official dogma. It was believed in later times that the gods formerly ruled in Egypt; the mortal kings before Mena were called the "successors

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1 Compare the Hebrew "tempus.. spec. (1) de anni tempore (gr. ŵpa) . . . . (2) de tempore vitæ humanæ, max. de juvenili aetate puellæ .. Cf. Tjuventus. . . . (3) tempus justum, ut gr. kaιpós (4) tempus alicujus, i. e. dies alie. . . . i.e. tempus supremum fatale alie, interitus ejus." Gesenius. One of the kindred words is T, "indicavit, definivit, constituit," and the corresponding Arabic verb u'ada, "praesignificavit aliquid, pec. boni, sed passim etiam minatus est aliquid mali."

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of Horus." But the kings who built the Pyramids and all the kings after them took the title of the "golden Horus ;" Chafra and all after him were called "son of Ra" and nutar āa, "great god." The sun in his course from east to west divides the earth and sky into two regions, the north and the south. The king of Egypt, as son and heir of the Sun, assumed the title of King of the North and of the South; not, as has generally been thought, with reference to Egypt, but, as Letronne contended and as M. Grébaut has convincingly shown, with reference to the universe.

The sovereign of Egypt is always said to be seated upon the throne of Horus, and he claimed authority over all nations of the world. He was the "emanation" of the sun-god, his "living image upon earth.” "All nations are subject to me," says queen Hatasu on her great obelisk at Karnak. "The god hath extended my frontiers to the extremities of heaven;" "the whole circuit of the sun he hath handed over (ma-nef) to her who is with him." "I have ordained for thee," says the god to Tehutimes III., "that the whole world in its length and in its breadth, the east and the west, should be thy mansion." Amenophis II. is the "victorious Horus, who has all nations subject to him, a god good like Ra, the sacred emanation of Amon, the son whom he begot; he it is who placed thee in Thebes as sovereign of the living, to represent him." The king himself says, "It is my father Rā

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who has ordained all these things. . . . . He has ordained for me all that belonged to him, the light of the eye which shines upon his diadem. All lands, all nations, the entire compass of the great circuit [of the sun], come to me as my subjects." "He made me lord of the living when I was yet a child in the nest. He hath given me the whole world with all its domains.” The royal inscriptions are full of similar language, and in the temples all the gods are represented as conferring upon the kings whatever gifts they have to bestow. There is a long inscription which appears first in honour of Rameses II. at Ipsambul, and is again found elsewhere, but set up to glorify Rameses III. The god says to the king, "I am thy father; by me are begotten all thy members as divine; I have formed thy shape like the Mendesian god; I have begotten thee, impregnating thy venerable mother. . . . . Around thy royal body the glorious and mighty assemble festively, the high goddesses, the great ones from Memphis and the Hathors from Pithom; their hearts rejoice and their hands hold the tambourine and hymns of homage when they see thy glorious form. Thou art lord like the majesty of the sun-god Rā; the gods and goddesses are praising thy benefits, adoring and sacrificing before thine image." "I give to thee the sky and what is in it; I lend the earth to thee and all that is upon it." "Every creature that walks upon two or upon four legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world I charge to offer