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was Horus, the Sun in his full strength. Set the destroyer is also the son of Seb and Nut, but his triumph is in the west; he is Darkness, and his spouse Nephthys, a deity of mixed character, is the Sunset. There are the traces of a legend according to which Osiris mistook Nephthys for his wife Isis. Nephthys, who loved him, encouraged the illusion, and from their embraces Anpu (Anubis) was born. Anubis, like his It mother, is a deity of a mixed character, partly belonging to the diurnal, partly to the nocturnal

powers. is said of him that "he swallowed his father Osiris." I believe that he represents the Twilight or Dusk immediately following the disappearance of the sun.

I am quite aware that texts may be quoted to prove that Osiris is the Moon, but these texts belong to a pantheistic period in which the god was recognized under all forms. It might rather be doubted whether the story of Osiris had not reference to the annual His death might be rather than to the daily sun. supposed to represent the reign of winter. Some of the Egyptian usages in commemoration of his death and resurrection, such as the sowing of plants and watching their growth, might be cited in support of this view. But the closer we look at these matters of

1 A hymn at Dendera says: " Hail to thee, Osiris, lord of eternity! When thou art in heaven thou appearest as the sun, and thou renewest thy form as the moon." Mariette, Dendera, Vol. IV.

detail, the less will they disturb our conviction that the victory of Set over Osiris is that of Night over Day, and the resurrection of Osiris is the rising of the Sun. And I do not think Osiris will be spoken of as dead throughout an Egyptian winter by any one who has had any experience of that delightful season.

There is a passage in the Book of the Dead1 which says that "Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found the soul of Ra there; each embraced the other, and became as one soul in two souls." This may be a mythological way of saying that two legends which had previously been independent of each other were henceforth inextricably mixed up. This, at all events, is the historical fact. In the words of a sacred text, "Ra is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris the soul of Rā.”

Horus.2

But Horus also is one of the names of the Sun, and had his myths quite independently of Ra or Osiris. The most prominent ones in comparatively later times

1 Ch. xvii. 1. 42, 43.

2 M. Lefébure has published several important essays illustrative of the myths of Osiris and Horus. I should be glad to find real evidence of allusions to lunar eclipses, but it is impossible to reconcile the lunar hypothesis about these myths with the most elementary astronomy. How can a lunar eclipse, for instance, regularly coincide with a fixed day in a month of thirty days? The synodical month is nearly of this length, but the eclipses depend upon the nodes.

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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.

1

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 Ra, 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 represents 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.

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Thoth.

He

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. 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 ma, to measure, and "was originally called by the former 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 instrument which corresponds to the needle of the

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

p. 7.

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