representative of the forms and forces of outward nature. Between the two come the second series, a transition from the one to the other, children of the higher gods, parents of the lower, neither so abstract as the one nor so concrete as the other, -representing neither purely divine qualities on the one side, nor merely natural forces on the other, but rather the faculties and powers of man. Most of this series were therefore adopted by the Greeks, whose religion was one essentially based on human nature, and whose gods were all, or nearly all, the ideal representations of human qualities. Hence they found in Khunsu, child of Ammon, their Hercules, God of Strength; in Thoth, child of Kneph, they found Herines, God of Knowledge; in Pecht, child of Pthah, they found their Artemis, or Diana, the Goddess of Birth, protector of women; in Athor, or Hathor, they found their Aphroditê, Goddess of Love. Seb was Chronos, or Time; and Nutpe was Rhea, wife of Chronos.

The third order of gods are the children of the second series, and are manifestations of the Divine in the outward universe. But though standing lowest in the scale, they were the most popular gods of the Pantheon; had more individuality and personal character than the others; were more universally worshipped throughout Egypt, and that from the oldest times. "The Osiris deities," says Herodotus," are the only gods worshipped throughout Egypt." "They stand on the oldest monuments, are the centre of all Egyptian worship, and are perhaps the oldest original objects of reverence," says Bunsen. How can this be if they belong to a lower order of Deities, and what is the explanation of it? There is another historical fact also to be explained. Down to the time of Ramses, thirteen hundred years before Christ, Typhon, or Seth, the God of Destruction, was the chief of this third order, and the most venerated of all the gods. After that time a revolution occurred in the worship, which overthrew Seth, and his name was chiselled out of the monuments, and the name of Amun inserted in its place. This was the only change which occurred in the Egyptian religion, so far as we know, from its commencement until the

time of the Cæsars.* An explanation of both these facts may be given, founded on the supposed amalgamation in Egypt of two races with their religions. Supposing that the gods of the higher orders represented the religious ideas of a Semitic or Aryan race entering Egypt from Asia, and that the Osiris group were the gods of the African nature-worship, which they found prevailing on their arrival, it is quite natural that the priests should in their classification place their own gods highest, while they should have allowed the external worship to go on as formerly, at least for a time. But, after a time, as the tone of thought became more elevated, they may have succeeded in substituting for the God of Terror and Destruction a higher conception in the popular worship.

The myth of Isis and Osiris, preserved for us by Plutarch, gives the most light in relation to this order of deities.

Seb and Nutpe, or Nut, called by the Greeks Chronos and Rhea, were the parents of this group. Seb is therefore Time, and Nut is Motion or perhaps Space. The Sun pronounced a curse on them, namely, that she should not be delivered, on any day of the year. This perhaps implies the difficulty of the thought of Creation. But Hermes, or Wisdom, who loved Rhea, won, at dice, of the Moon, five days, the seventieth part of all her illuminations, which he added to the three hundred and sixty days, or twelve months. Here we have a hint of a correction of the calendar, the necessity of which awakened a feeling of irregularity in the processes of nature, admitting thereby the notion of change and a new creation. These five days were the birthdays of the gods. On the first Osiris is born, and a voice was heard saying, "The Lord of all things is now born." On the sec

ond day, Arueris-Apollo, or the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon, who broke through a hole in his mother's side; on the fourth, Isis; and on the fifth, Nepthys-Venus, or Victory. Osiris and Arueris are children of the Sun, Isis of Hermes, Typhon and Nepthys of Saturn.

Isis became the wife of Osiris, who went through the

*So says Wilkinson.

world taming it by means of oratory, poetry, and music. When he returned, Typhon took seventy-two men and also a queen of Ethiopia, and made an ark the size of Osiris's body, and at a feast proposed to give it to the one whom it should fit. Osiris got into it, and they fastened down the lid and soldered it and threw it into the Nile. Then Isis put on mourning and went to search for it, and directed her inquiries to little children, who were hence held by the Egyptians to have the faculty of divination. Then she found Anubis, child of Osiris, by Nepthys, wife of Typhon, who told her how the ark was entangled in a tree which grew up around it and hid it. The king had made of this tree a pillar to support his house. Isis sat down weeping; the women of the queen came to her, she stroked their hair, and fragrance passed into it. She was made nurse to the queen's child, fed him with her finger, and in the night-time, by means of a lambent flame, burned away his impurities. She then turned herself into a swallow and flew around the house, bewailing her fate. The queen watched her operations, and being alarmed cried out, and so robbed her child of immortality. Isis then begged the pillar, took it down, took out the chest, and cried so loud that the younger son of the king died of fright. She then took the ark and the elder son and set sail. The cold air of the river chilled her, and she became angry and cursed it, and so dried it up. She opened the chest, put her cheek to that of Osiris and wept bitterly. The little boy came and peeped in; she gave him a terrible look, and he died of fright. Isis then came to her son Horus, who was at nurse at Buto. Typhon, hunting by moonlight, saw the ark, with the body of Osiris, which he tore into fourteen parts and threw them about. Isis went to look for them in a boat made of papyrus, and buried each part in a separate place.

After this the soul of Osiris returned out of Hades to train up his son. Then came a battle between Horus and Typhon, in which Typhon was vanquished, but Isis allowed him to escape. There are other less important incidents in the story, among them that Isis had another son by the soul of Osiris after his death, who is the god called Har

pocrates, represented as lame and with his finger on his mouth.*

Plutarch declares that this story is symbolical, and mentions various explanations of the allegory. He rejects, at once, the rationalistic explanation, which turns these gods into eminent men, sea-captains, etc. "I fear," says he, "this would be to stir things that are not to be stirred, and to declare war (as Simonides says), not only against length of time, but also against many nations and families of mankind, whom a religious reverence towards these gods holds fast bound like men astonished and amazed, and would be no other than going about to remove so great and venerable names from heaven to earth, and thereby shaking and dissolving that worship and persuasion that hath entered almost all men's constitutions from their very birth, and opening vast doors to the atheists' faction, who convert all divine matters into human.” "Others," he says, "consider these beings as demons intermediate between gods and men. And Osiris afterwards became Serapis, the Pluto of the under-world."

Other explanations of the myth are given by Plutarch. First, the geographical explanation. According to this, Osiris is Water, especially the Nile. Isis is Earth, especially the land of Egypt adjoining the Nile, and overflowed by it. Horus, their son, is the Air, especially the moist, mild air of Egypt. Typhon is Fire, especially the summer heat which dries up the Nile and parches the land. His seventy-two associates are the seventy-two days of greatest heat, according to the Egyptian opinion. Nepthys, his wife, sister of Isis, is the Desert outside of Egypt, but which in a higher inundation of the Nile being sometimes overflowed, becomes productive, and has a child by Osiris, named Anubis. When Typhon shuts Osiris into the ark, it is the summer heat drying up the Nile and confining it to its channel. This ark, entangled in a tree, is where the Nile divides into many mouths at the Delta and is overhung by the wood. Isis, nursing the child of the king, the fragrance, etc., represent the earth nourishing plants and animals. The body of Osiris, torn by Typhon

* The finger on the mouth symbolizes, not silence, but childhood.

into fourteen parts, signifies either the division of the Nile at its mouths or the pools of water left after the drying up of the inundation.

There is so much in this account which accords with the facts, that there can be no doubt of its correctness so far as it goes. At the same time it is evidently an incomplete explanation. The story means this, but something more. Beside the geographical view, Plutarch therefore adds a scientific and an astronomical explanation, as well as others more philosophical. According to these, Osiris is in general the productive, the creative power in nature; Isis, the female property of nature, hence called by Plato the nurse; and Typhon the destructive property in nature; while Horus is the mediator between creation and destruction. And thus we have the triad of Osiris, Typhon, and Horus, essentially corresponding to the Hindoo triad, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, and also to the Persian triad, Ormazd, Ahriman, and Mithra. And so this myth will express the Egyptian view of the conflict of good and evil in the natural world.

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But it seems very likely that it was the object of the priests to elevate this Osiris worship to a still higher meaning, making it an allegory of the struggles, sorrows, and self-recovery of the human soul. Every human soul after death took the name and symbols of Osiris, and then went into the under-world to be judged by him. Connected with this was the doctrine of transmigration, or the passage of the soul through various bodies, a doctrine brought out of Egypt by Pythagoras. These higher doctrines were taught in the mysteries. "I know them," says Herodotus, “but must not tell them." Iamblicus professes to explain them in his work on the Mysteries. But it is not easy to say how much of his own Platonism he has mingled therewith. According to him, they taught in the mysteries that before all things was one God immovable in the solitude of unity. The One was to be venerated in silence. Then Emeph, or Neph, was god in his self-consciousness. After this in Amun, his intellect became truth, shedding light. Truth working by art is Pthah, and art producing good is Osiris.