described his victories over Set or the monster Tebha (the Typhon of the Greeks). But the victory of Darkness over Light was appropriately represented by the myth of the Blind Horus. An ancient text speaks of him as "sitting solitary in the darkness and blindness.” He is introduced in the royal Ritual at Abydos, saying, "I am Horus, and I come to search for mine eyes.' According to the 64th chapter of the Book of the Dead, "his eye is restored to him at the dawn of day." A legend contained in the 112th chapter of the same Book describes Horus as wounded in the eye by Set in the form of a black boar. Anubis fomented the wound, of which Horus appears at first to have thought him the author, and according to another legend, Isis stanched the blood which flowed from the wound. But according to another account, Set swallowed the eye, and was compelled to vomit it from the prison in which he was confined, with a chain of steel fastened about his neck. The Eye of Horus is constantly spoken of as a distinct deity, terrible to the enemies of light. The conflict of Light and Darkness is represented in many other mythical forms. The great Cat in the alley of Persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Rā, crushes the serpent. In most parts of Egypt the sun sets behind a mountain-range; it is only in the north that

1 And he said, "Behold, my eye is as though Anubis had made an incision in my eye."-Todt. 112. Although Anubis in the sequel restores the eye, the allusion is clearly to his nocturnal power.

the body of Osiris is said to have been plunged into the waters. According to another legend, the crocodile Maka, the son of Set, devoured the arm of Osiris. Other disastrous mutilations are described as befalling Osiris, Ra, Horus and Set, in their turn. Set and the other powers of darkness assumed the forms of fishes. Horus pursued them, and Set was caught in a net.1 Horus, on the other hand, was changed into a fish, and was saved by his mother Isis.

Set.

Set, though the antagonist of Light in the myths of Rā, Osiris and Horus, is not a god of evil. He repre

sents a physical reality, a constant and everlasting law of nature, and is as true a god as his opponents. His worship is as ancient as any. The kings of Egypt were devoted to Set as to Horus, and derived from them the sovereignty over north and south. On some monuments, one god is represented with two heads, one being that of Horus, the other that of Set. The name of the great conqueror Seti signifies, "he that is devoted to Set." It was not till the decline of the empire that this deity came to be regarded as an evil demon, that his name was effaced from monuments, and other names substituted for his in the Ritual.

1 Indra used a net as well as other weapons against his foes.

Thoth.

The Egyptian god Tehuti is known to the readers of Plato under the name of Thōyth. He is the Egyptian Hermes, and the name of Hermes Trismegistos is translated from the corresponding Egyptian epithet which is often added to the name of Tehuti. He represents the Moon, which he wears upon his head, either as crescent or as full disk; and as our word moon is derived from the root má, to measure, and "was originally called by the farmer the measurer, the ruler of days and weeks and seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord of their festivals, and the herald of their public assemblies," we shall not be surprised if we find a very similar account of the etymology and attributes of Tehuti. There is no such known Egyptian word as tehu, but there is texu, which is a dialectic variety, and is actually used as a name of the god. This form supplies us with the reason why the god is represented as an ibis. As Seb is the name both of a goose and of the Earth-god, so is Techu the name of an ibis and of the Moon-god. Tehuti probably signifies, as M. Naville has suggested, the "ibis-headed." But it means something besides. Techu is the name of the instrument2 which corresponds to the needle of the

1 Max Müller, "Science of Language," I. p. 7.

2 The instrument itself is a vase, and the primitive meaning of the word texu is to be "full;" hence the sense of drunkenness

balance for measuring weights. The ancient Egyptian cubit is called the cubit of Techu. He is called "the measurer of this earth." He is said to have "calculated the heaven and counted the stars," to have “calculated the earth and counted the things which are in it." He is "the distributor of time," the inventor of letters and learning (particularly of geometry), and of the fine arts. Whatever is without him is as though it were not. All this is because the Moon is the measurer.

It is impossible, after this rapid, but, I trust, not deceptive glance at the myths of some of the chief Egyptian gods, to withstand the conviction that this mythology is very similar indeed to that of the IndoEuropean races. It is the very same drama which is being acted under different names and disguises. The god slays the dragon, or a monster blinds, maims or devours the god. What bright god is born from the embrace of Heaven and Earth, and who is his twin sister and spouse? Who are his two wives? Who is the "husband of his own mother"? Who is the divine youth who emerges from the lotus-flower? And what is the lotus? Which is the god who, having performed his course from east to west, is worshipped as the king and judge of the departed? Sanskrit

which it sometimes has. Dr. Duemichen has thoroughly illustrated the use of the word in his "Bauurkunde v. Dendera," and in the Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 39.

1 See Brugsch, Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 9.

scholars who do not know a word of Egyptian, and Egyptologists who do not know a word of Sanskrit, will give different names to these personages. But the comparative mythologist will hardly hesitate about assigning his real name to each of them, whether Aryan or Egyptian. One of the most curious instances of the identification of myths is to be seen in a bas-relief at the Louvre, wherein the legend of our own St. George and the Dragon, which is at bottom the same as that of Indra and Vritra, is represented by Horus spearing a crocodile.1

The Lectures on the Science of Language delivered nearly twenty years ago by Professor Max Müller, have, I trust, made us fully understand how, among the Indo-European races, the names of the sun, of sunrise and sunset, and of other such phenomena, came to be talked of and considered as personages of whom wondrous legends are told. Egyptian mythology not merely admits, but imperatively demands, the same explanation. And this becomes the more evident when we consider the question how these mythical personages came to be invested with the attributes of divinity by men who, like the Egyptians, as we have seen, had so lively a sense of the divine. Here we are at once brought into contact with the notion of the reign of Law.

1 "Horus et St. George d'après un bas-relief inédit du Louvre," by M. Clermont Ganneau, in the Rev. Arch. 1876, September and December.