at Oxford the monument of a man whose priestly office had been endowed by a king of the second dynasty. Excellent scholars like Dr. Hincks and Mr. Goodwin have ascribed the monument to this early date, and have considered it the most ancient of all dated monuments. This indeed cannot be proved; but there is no doubt whatever that it is the most ancient authentic monument recording a religious endowment.

Temples.

No temples of the ancient empire are extant at present, except perhaps the monument discovered some years ago in the neighbourhood of the great Sphinx; but no one can say whether this is a temple or a tomb. But this want of early temples is certainly owing to the destruction of the most ancient cities, like Memphis and Heliopolis. There is no reason for doubting the inscription first published by M. de Rougé, which says that Chufu or Cheops built his pyramid near a temple of Isis, and that he built or endowed a temple to Hathor; or the inscriptions at Dendera, which ascribe the restoration of its ancient temple to Tehutimes III., "according to the plan found in ancient writings of the time of king Chufu." There is every reason for believing that in the ancient empire great and splendid temples were built. But we must not take for granted that temples at this early period were places of worship At no period of the in our modern sense of the term.

Egyptian religion were the public admitted to the temples as worshippers. All the temples we know were royal offerings made to the divinity of the locality, and none but the priestly personages attached to the temple itself had free access to its precincts. But the image of the god and those of the divinities associated with him were often brought out in solemn processions, in which the entire population took part.

Triads and Enneads.

In the principal temple of each province, the chief deity was associated with other gods; hence the expression eo σvvvao of the Greek inscriptions; hence from an early period triads (consisting of the principal god, a female deity and their offspring), or cnneads, consisting of nine gods. Thus at Thebes the triad consisted of Amon, Nut and Chonsu; at Abydos, of Osiris, Isis and Horus. No special importance was attached by the Egyptians to the number three, and it is a mistake to look for triads everywhere, for the number of gods varied according to the place; the number nine was much more frequent, and this is often nothing more than a round number, signifying either the gods. of a locality or the entire Pantheon.

Local Character of Egyptian Worship.

As each deity was connected with some locality, his name was generally followed by a phrase indicating

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this relationship. A deity was said to be Lord of Abydos, mistress of Senem, presiding in Thebes, inhabiting Hermopolis; sometimes a particle was interposed between the name of the god and that of the town, as "Anubis from Sechem," "Neith of Sais;" sometimes one or more epithets were added, as "the mighty," "the beneficent," "the august;" sometimes the name of an animal which was the recognized symbol of the god, a bull, a ram or a lion. Special titles were given to divinities according to the place in which they were worshipped: Osiris, for instance, was called che, "the child," at Thebes; he was ura, "the great one, Heliopolis; ali, "the sovereign," at Memphis. It happened frequently that in the same town one god was worshipped under different aspects, or as proceeding from different localities, and treated as though there were different divine persons of the same name. Chonsu in Thebes, under the name nefer-hotep, is entreated to lend his miraculous power to Chonsu in Thebes under the name ari secher. We read of Set the god of Senu, Set of Uau, Set of Un and Set of Meru. Other forms of Set are well known, but those I have cited are brought together in one inscription as children of the god Tmu. I find invocations in a very early inscription addressed to the Anubis of six different localities. Apis is the son of Ptah, of Tmu, of Osiris and of Sokari. Are all these fathers of Apis one person? Horus is the son of the goddess Isis,

but he is also the son of the goddess Hathor. Isis must then be the same as Hathor, unless mythology is proof against logic. Let us admit this, and also that Seb, the father of Isis, is identical with Ra, the father of Hathor; but what shall we say on being told that Horus was born in Tattu (the Mendes of the Greeks), and also that he was born in Cheb? Geographical localities do not so easily lend themselves to identification. In a well-known text, Horus is called the son of Isis and Osiris, but shortly afterwards Seb is named as his father. Students of mythology will not be astonished or scandalized if they discover that Osiris is at once the father, brother, husband and son of Isis, and also the son of their child Horus. They will read a text on the alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., now in the Soane Museum, which speaks of "the son who proceeds from the father, and the father who proceeds from his son," and if their studies are rightly conducted, the mystery will not be hard to understand.

The Deities Innumerable.

The Egyptian deities are innumerable. There were countless gods in heaven and below the earth. Every town and village had its local patrons. Every month of the year, every day of the month, every hour of the day and of the night, had its presiding divinity, and all these gods had to be propitiated by offerings. I

several times made the attempt to draw up an index of the divine names occurring in the texts, but found it necessary to abandon the enterprize. What can all these gods mean?

Mean Notions concerning these Deities.

Nothing can be more clear than that under the name of God the Egyptians did not understand, as we do, a being without body, parts or passions. The bodies of the gods are spoken of as well as their souls, and they have both parts and passions; they are described as suffering from hunger and thirst, old age, disease, fear and sorrow. They perspire, their limbs quake, their head aches, their teeth chatter, their eyes weep, their nose bleeds, "poison takes possession of their flesh, even as the Nile takes possession of the land." They may be stung by reptiles and burnt by fire. They shriek and howl with pain and grief. All the great gods require protection. Osiris is helpless against his enemies, and his remains are protected by his wife and sister. Hathor extends her wings as a protection over the victorious Horus, or, as one form of the legend expresses it, "she protects him with her body as a divine cow;" yet Hathor in her turn needs protection, and even the sun-god Ra, though invested with the predicates of supreme divinity, requires the aid of the goddess Isis. All the gods are liable to be forced to grant