PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE only alterations which have been made in the text of these Lectures are corrections of a few errata and of the transcriptions of a couple of Egyptian words. Other corrections will be found in the notes. My general views remain unchanged, but the continued study of Egyptian texts has led me to the solution of an important problem arising out of the conclusions arrived at in the Lectures.

"The Egyptian mythology, as far as I can see," it is said, p. 250, “dealt only with those phenomena of nature which are conspicuously the result of fixed law, such as the rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars."

This is most strictly true if spoken of the gods of Egypt. Every one of these gods represents a fixed and unalterable Law. It is in consequence of the unvaried succession of physical phenomena that a god is said to be neb maāt, an expression literally translated by "lord of law," but really signifying "conspicuous by fixed rule." And it may be held as certain that every explanation of an Egyptian god or goddess which does not satisfy this canon is utterly erroneous.

But Egyptian mythology was not confined to the persons of gods. There are mythological personages who are never spoken of as gods. Mythological personification does not necessarily imply deification. Nor does mythology deal with

persons only. There are mythological trees as well as reptiles and other animal forms.

For the results of an inquiry into these "residual phenomena," and also respecting some points upon which I spoke hesitatingly in these Lectures, I must refer to a paper on “Egyptian Mythology, particularly with reference to Mist and Cloud," which I read on the 7th March, 1882, before the Society of Biblical Archæology, and has been published in the Society's Transactions of the present year.

The following extracts relate to the identification of gods: "I do not think I was wrong in identifying Nephthys with the Sunset, and Isis, Hathor, Neith, and other goddesses, with the Dawn. But M. Naville was also right in his conjecture that Nephthys might represent the morning, and Isis the evening, twilight. There were, in fact, according to Egyptian ideas, two Dawns, and a word which means Dawn also means Sunset. In the vignettes of the 17th chapter of the Book of the Dead, the goddesses Isis and Nephthys twice appear together, once on the Eastern and once on the Western direction of the bark of the Sun-god. Again, Isis is said to give birth to the sun-god Horus, and Nephthys to nurse him. This is, of course, on the eastern horizon. Yet both Isis and Nephthys are called 'goddesses of the West.' According to one of the glosses of the 17th chapter, Isis and Nephthys are the two feathers on the head of the ithyphallic god Ames, who (we are told in the same place) is no other than Horus, the avenger of his father. In the more recent texts, the hieroglyphic sign representing the rising sun between Isis and Nephthys, is ideographic of the word tuau, morning. When they are associated in this way, it is right to speak of these goddesses as the Two Dawns. When they appear isolated, unless there is a special reason for the contrary, Isis remains

the Dawn, as in the myth where Horus strikes off her head, or in the 133rd chapter, which begins as follows: 'The Sungod rises from his horizon; the company of gods is with him, as the god comes forth who is in the secret dwelling. The mists fall away from the eastern horizon of heaven at the voice of Isis, who has prepared the way for the Sun-god.' And, on the other hand, Nephthys considered as the spouse of Set, the destroyer of Osiris, or as the mother of Anubis, 'who swallows his own father,' can only be identified with the Sunset.

"Hathor, 'the dwelling of Horus,' out of which he comes and into which he returns, stands both for the Dawn and the evening twilight.

"I thought it probable that Neith, the great goddess of Sais, and mother of the Sun-god Rā, who in various texts is identified with Isis, was one of the many names of the Dawn, not of Heaven, as has generally been thought. I ought to have spoken more positively. The passage I referred to in the Book of the Dead (114, 1, 2) is sufficient to support a decided assertion. The goddess herself says on the sepulchral canopi, setua semāsera rā neb, ‘I come at Dawn and at Sunset daily,' and I ought to have remembered that a papyrus of the Louvre says that 'the Sun-god Rā rises at the gates of the horizon at the prime portals of Neith.' Upon which M. Maspero says, 'En tant que déesse cosmique [the Egyptians had no others] Neith représentait la matière inerte et ténébreuse d'où le soleil sortait chaque matin.' I am pleased to find that on some important points I am not so far at variance with other Egyptian scholars as I thought when I delivered my Lectures. I am certainly not disposed to admit the general proposition, that the Egyptian goddesses represented space. But M. Pierret's doctrine, 'qu'elles personnifient la lumière

du soleil ou l'espace dans lequel il prend sa naissance et dans lequel il se couche,' is very nearly my own view. I fear Egyptologists will soon be accused, like other persons, of seeing the Dawn everywhere. The ancient Egyptians at least saw these goddesses where we see them. 'Oh Shu, Amen Rā, Harmachis, self-sprung,' says a hymn, 'thy sister goddesses stand in Buchat, they uplift thee into thy bark.' Buchat, as Brugsch proved many years ago, is the place on the horizon where the sun rises.

"I am, I confess, compelled to see the Dawn, or rather the Two Dawns, in Shu and Tefnut, the two children of the Sungod Rā. It may be quite true that in later times Shu represented Air, but this is only because the Dawn brings fresh breezes-Oriens afflavit anhelis. But in all the early texts Shu is the rising Sun. The Harris magical papyrus identifies Shu with the Sun travelling upwards at the prime of morning, whilst Tefnut, seated upon his head, darts her flame against his adversaries.' · The myth, according to which Shu 'divided heaven from earth,' only means that at the dawning of the day heaven and earth, which were previously confused together in darkness, are clearly seen apart. And when it is added that 'he raised the heaven above the earth for millions of years,' what happens every day is, according to the well-known wont of myths, related as having occurred once. The expression hotep shu, implies that Shu is used for the Sunset as well as for the Dawn. Shu and Tefnut are called the Two Lions, but they are also represented by a single Lion, as though there were but a single divinity. In the tomb of queen Maāt-ka-rā, the two Eyes of Horus are said to be Shu and Tefnut-one being in the morning boat and the other in the evening boat of the Sun.

"As Tefnut etymologically seemed to represent some form