holding thee is happiness (bis); O god An, beholding thee is happiness. O Unnefer the triumphant, come to thy sister, come to thy wife (bis). O thou whose heart is motionless, come to thy spouse. I am thy sister by thy mother; do not separate from me. Gods and men turn their faces towards thee, weeping together for thee, whenever they behold me. I call thee in my lamentations even to the heights of heaven, and thou hearest not my voice. I am thy sister who loveth thee upon earth; no one else hath loved thee more than I, thy sister, thy sister!"

Then Nephthys takes up the strain:

"O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode ! Rejoice; all thine enemies are annihilated. Thy two sisters are near thee, protecting thy funeral bed; calling thee in weeping, thee who art prostrate on thy funeral bed. Speak to us, supreme Ruler, our Lord. Chase all the anguish which is in our hearts," &c.

In the invocations of which this book chiefly consists, protection is said to be afforded to the body of Osiris, that is, of the deceased person, by various gods in succession: by Isis, Nephthys, Tehuti, Neith, the divine mother of Osiris, and the children of Horus.

The last invocation is as follows: "Come and behold thy son Horus as supreme ruler of gods and men. He hath taken possession of the cities and the districts by the greatness of the respect he inspires. Heaven and earth are in awe of him; the barbarians are in fear of

him. Thy companions who are gods and men have become his. . . . Thy two sisters are near to thee, offering libations to thy ka; thy son Horus accomplished for thee the funeral offering of bread, of beverages, of oxen and of geese. Tehuti chanteth thy festival songs, invoking thee by his beneficial formulae. The children of Horus are the protection of thy members, benefiting thy soul each day. Thy son Horus saluteth thy name in thy mysterious abode; the gods hold vases in their hands to make libations to thee. Come to thy companions, supreme Ruler, our Lord! thyself from them."

Do not separate

The rubric prescribes that whilst this is recited, two beautiful women are to sit upon the ground, with the names Isis and Nephthys inscribed upon their shoulders. Crystal vases of water are to be placed in their right hands, and loaves of bread made in Memphis in their left hands.

Book of glorifying Osiris.

Very similar to these Lamentations is the "Book of glorifying Osiris in Aqerti," contained in a papyrus of the Louvre, which has been published and translated by M. Pierret. It is also supposed to be recited by Isis and Nephthys, and it begins:

"Come to thine abode, O come to thine abode, god An, come to thine abode; good bull, the Lord of all men who love thee and all women; god of the beauti

ful countenance, who residest in Aqerti. Ancient one among those of the sacred West. Are not all hearts swelling with love of thee, O Unnefer! . . . . Gods and men raise their hands in search of thee, as a son seeketh his mother. Come to them whose hearts are sick, grant to them to come forth in gladness, that the bands of Horus may exult, and the abodes of Set may fall in fear of thee. Ho! Osiris, who dwellest among those in Amenti; I am thy sister Isis; neither god nor goddess hath done what I have done for thee. I who am a female have done a man's part to give life to thy name upon earth. Thy potent seed within my womb I have set down upon the earth to avenge thee. . . . . Set yields to his wounds, the partizans of Set rejoin him, but the throne of Seb is for thee who art his beloved son." The book continues to speak of the war energetically conducted with the aid of Nephthys and Horus against all the enemies of Osiris.

The departed, considered as Osiris, is directly identified with the first cause of all things.

"O Osiris ... thou art the Youth at the horizon of heaven daily, and thine old age is the beginning of all seasons. The Nile cometh at the bidding of thy mouth, giving life to men by the emanations which proceed from thy limbs, who by thy coming causest all plants to grow up. O Osiris, thou art the Lord. of millions, raising up all wild animals and all cattle; the creation of all that is proceedeth from thee. To

thee belongeth all that is upon earth; to thee all that is in heaven; to thee all that is in the waters; to thee belongeth all that is in life or in death; to thee all that is male or female. Thou art the sovereign king of the gods, the prince amid the company of the gods."

The text concludes with enumerating a multitude of localities in which Osiris is adored, and is more interesting from a geographical than from a religious point of view. In this composition (the manuscript of which belongs to the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty) the only passages which imply any ethical sympathy are these: "Thou art the lord of Maat (here signifying Righteousness), hating iniquity. . . . . The goddess Maat is with thee, and the whole day she never withdraweth herself from thee. Iniquity approacheth thee not wherever thou art."

Book of the Breaths of Life.

In the later periods, instead of the Book of the Dead, another work, more systematically composed and partly abridged from it, was buried with the dead and placed under the left arm near the heart. This book was called the Shait en sensen, "Book of the Breaths of Life, made by Isis for her brother Osiris, for giving new life to his soul and body and renewing all his limbs, that he may reach the horizon with his father the Sun, that his soul may rise to heaven in the disk

of the Moon, that his body may shine in the stars of the constellation Orion, on the bosom of Nut." It might be called a Breviary of the Book of the Dead, all the ideas in it being borrowed from that older collection, but the obscurities both in form and in matter are studiously avoided.

It was first published in the plates to the Travels of Vivant-Denon; then Brugsch, in an early publication of his, translated it into Latin, calling it the Book of the Metempsychosis of the Ancient Egyptians; and finally, a critical edition has been given of it, with a French translation, by M. de Horrack.

Of the many other compendiums, paraphrases and imitations of the Book of the Dead, I shall only mention one, and that for the sake of a sort of definition which it gives of the gods. The English language is less suited than Greek or German for the translation of cheper chenti chep chet neb em-chet cheper-sen, which is literally, "the Becoming which is in the Becoming of all things when they become." Under this play of words the writer wishes to describe "the cause of change in everything that changes," and he adds: "the mighty ones, the powerful ones, the beneficent, the nutriu, who test by their level the words of men, the Lords of Law (Maat), Hail to you, ye gods, ye associate gods, who are without body, who rule that which is born from the earth and that which is produced in the house of your cradles [in heaven]. . . .