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].

Ye prototypes of the image of all that exists, ye fathers and mothers of the solar orb, ye forms, ye great ones (uru), ye mighty ones (aaiu), ye strong ones (nutriu), first company of the gods of Almu, who generated men and shaped the form of every form, ye lords of all things: hail to you, ye lords of eternity and everlasting."

The author of this composition, the text of which has only been published quite recently,' and was quite unknown to me when I delivered has evidently the same conception of the gods of Egypt my third Lecture, as that which I inferred from the scattered utterances we come across in the course of the national literature. The gods of Egypt are the "mighty ones," the forces acting throughout the universe, in heaven and on earth, according to fixed and unchangeable law, for ever and ever.

Rhind Papyri.

A still more recent book is one which was discovered by Mr. Rhind at Thebes. The papyri are of the Roman period, and they are bilingual. The upper portion of each page is in the ancient language, written in hieratic characters; the lower contains a

1 Wiedemann, Hieratische Texte aus den Museen zu Berlin und Paris; Leipzig, 1879, Taf. 1. This text is from the Louvre 3283, of which a notice is found in Deveria's "Catalogue des Manu papyrus scrits Egyptiens," p. 143.

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translation into the vernacular language of Egypt in the time of Augustus, and this is written in demotic characters. The form of this work is quite unlike that of the Book of the Dead, but the ideas remain unchanged. The same view of the world beyond the grave, and of the gods who influence the destiny of the departed, prevails to the last. The actual deification of the departed is not perpetually dwelt upon, but it is distinctly recognized. "Thou art the eldest brother among the five gods to whom thou art going" (Osiris is called in the Book of the Dead the eldest of the five gods of the family of Seb). "O thou august child of the gods and goddesses, O thou king of the gods and men, who art king of the Tuat," that is, of the nether world. And there is the same disregard of consistency as in the older times, for the departed is spoken of, almost in the same sentence, as one of those who are in the service of Osiris, whom he addresses, "O my lord and father Osiris !"

Magical Literature.1

One of the chief differences between the earlier and the more recent formularies is, that the latter are simply

1 The authorities to be consulted on this subject are:

Chabas, "Papyrus Magique Harris."

Birch, "Egyptian Magical Text," in "Records of the Past," Vol. VI. p. 113.

Pleyte, "Etudes Egyptologiques," and "Papyrus de Turin."

said over the deceased, instead of being intended to be said by him. Hence the absence of the constant personification of the gods by the dead, and the utterance in their names of words of power. This assimilation to divinity, which appears to be the most potent means of overcoming all dangers and disasters after death, was equally resorted to for the purpose of triumphing over all the dangers and disasters of the present life. The metaphysical axiom, that every effect has its cause, the Egyptians conceived in another way; namely, that everything that happened was owing to the action of some divinity. They believed therefore in the incessant intervention of the gods; and their magical literature is based on the notion of frightening one god by the terrors of a more powerful divinity, either by prayer placing a person under the protection of this divinity, or by the person actually assuming its name and authority. Disease and pain being caused by the intervention of some god, the efficacy of the medicines which are taken is owing chiefly to the prayers or incantations

Ebers, "Papyros Ebers, das Hermetische Buch über die Arzneimittel der alten Aegypten."

Goodwin, "Graeco-Egyptian Fragment on Magic," in the Publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.

A good many extracts from magical works will be found in Brugsch's "Grammaire Démotique," and some entire compositions are translated by M. Maspero in his "Etudes Démotiques," published in the Recueil de travaux rélatifs à la philologie et à l'arché ologie égyptiennes et assyriennes.