psychical element, as that in which the kosmic element attains to complete consciousness. Osiris is not a deified man, but inan justified is Osiris. What appears to be historical in the myth is, on the contrary, undisguisedly symbolical: Osiris is the God of the human soul, not merely of nature.

Osiris is the human God: the God-man. According to this highest system, the other Gods are mere personifications of powers in matter, or matters in which the powers are manifested. Osiris is the mind, that is, the God of whom we become conscious through time, the personal God, father of the human race, living for the human race. Osiris, as man, is symbolized both in the kosmogonical and the astral circles, for all nature is the symbol of the human mind: he also symbolizes in himself as man the creative power of nature (phallically), in conjunction with Isis-Earth.

In other words, all the religion of the other circles is in Osiris, but Osiris is not in them. The human soul only properly becomes self-conscious by means of conscience and reason, of will, of action, and of a destiny connected with its own deeds. This is the sphere of the Good and the True. Osiris is the judge of the soul, or the God of the world of spirits.

Osiris is never represented in an animal form, but called the Bull: Isis, the earth, is represented as a cow.

As regards the connexion between Osiris and Set, which has been established in a previous page, Osiris seems to be the purely Egyptian form of an early Asiatic idea of the Deity sacrificing himself in creation and coming to life again in man. So Baal, so Adonis. His history is that of a God-man, not as a real man, but as the idea of man. The history of Osiris is the history of the circle of the year, of the sun dying away and resuscitating itself again. But his name is a riddle of the component elements of his hieroglyphical name Isis is the first. For Osiris is written Hes-iri.

The grammatical sense of this we know to be "throne of the pupil of the eye," "Isis of the eye" (or " pupil "). Now as neither of these conveys any meaning, and as there are other instances of the construction being reversed, and this in the oldest times, we may render it by "eye of Isis," or "eye of the throne," which would be the primeval mode of expressing "eye of the world, soul of the world." For we have seen that the very same idea is expressed in Hathor (house of Horus, of God), and probably in Tefnut also: the meaning of which is "father's hall." But it is highly improbable that this was really the origin of the name of Osiris. Nor must we overlook the fact that Osiris is only found in hieroglyphic characters, never in phonetic. It is very probable, therefore, that it is not originally Egyptian, but the primitive Asiatic epithet of Almighty God, the Lord.

The case is different with Set, the primeval name of God in Asia. This word is derived from a root which is one of the most copious, and at the same time the most varied in signification, in the Egyptian language. He appears as the God of Lower Egypt, afterwards as the violent, the hostile. This latter we are unable to explain from the present point of view of the inquiry.

We can, however, see even now that the three enigmas of the Egyptian religion, the migration of souls, the immortality of the soul, and animal-worship, are inseparably connected, and have their unity in Osiris. and his worship. The soul of man passes through all sorts of animals, and the animals may become men again. This accounts for the sanctity of the animal as such; and we understand why the destructive powers of the animal would be held as sacred as the more gentle and beneficent.

The Egypto-African element in the original doctrine of the soul's immortality is the anxious care for the preservation of the dead body. The notion of this

process of the purification of the soul being dependent upon the preservation of the body was not an original one, but the mummy of a defunct idea, or one of which the signification was lost. But the most sacred customs, and the most gigantic efforts of the people, all originated in that superstition.

We must, at the same time, not lose sight of the fact, that the nation never lost the consciousness of that which produced these symbols, namely, Mind. It is the glory of the Egyptians that, in a certain way, they combined the two.

D.

PRELIMINARY RESULT.

THE

I.

EGYPTIANS HAD NO HERO-WORSHIP: THE LATTER ORDER OF GODS ARE PURELY IDEAL; AND THE OLDEST HUMAN KINGS ARE NOT HEROES, BUT STRICTLY HISTORICAL, SACERDOTAL, ELECTIVE

MONARCHS.

HERE again the information of Herodotus is in the main correct. Neither the "Book of the Dead" nor the monuments contain any mention of heroes or heroworship. The Gods not comprised in the first seven, or their compendium the eighth, are evidently from their name and worship purely ideal, and so they seem to be indeed from their genealogies, which have been traced in the First Book.

But the only way of rendering the proof complete is by discountenancing the notion that Manetho described deified men in his human dynasties prior to Menes.

What he there narrates, on the contrary, is strict

history, that is, the primitive history of the state of the two Egypts, in so far as any records of it exist: consequently the history of the beginnings of constitutional life.

The establishment of this important point we have reserved for this place.

Manetho, according to Africanus, states, in the introduction to the thirty dynasties:

"After the Gods and Nekyes, the Demi-Gods, came the first dynasty of kings," &c.

This passage must not be altered in accordance with the text of Eusebius in Syncellus, where the reading is: "After the Gods and the Nekyes (dead) and DemiGods," &c.94

In the Armenian version of Eusebius 95 it is said, after the enumeration of the Gods, there were 13,900 years of reign down to Bytis. After that "heroes" reigned, and then three series of "other kings," and the stupid extract concludes with these words:

"Then followed the reign of the Manes (souls of the dead) and Heroes for 5813 years."

The confusion here is clear enough, for, had there been heroes and hero-worship in Egypt, their place would have been between the dynasties of Gods and Men. But here the Manes, who are clearly Nekyes, and the Heroes are said to reign, after at least three series of historical kings, of which the two latter are described locally and historically as Memphites and Thinites.

Africanus, however, to whom we must again refer, does not report such nonsense. He explains the Nekyes

94 The word kaí, which in our Appendix of Authorities has been inserted into the text of Africanus in Eusebius before plέove, must therefore be erased.

95 i. 19. See Appendix of Authorities: conf. the account in the First Book.

(which must be the translation of the Egyptian word for the dead) by the current Greek expression, DemiGods. This does not express exactly the Egyptian sense. Manetho must have translated by Nekyes the Egyptian matu, the justified, the departed, the blessed; a word derived from ma, to justify, with the derivative syllable of the past passive participle. It is the standing expression used in inscriptions on coffins and sarkophagi; indeed a king of the 12th Dynasty, in whose stead a woman reigns, has this very epithet appended to his name. Manes, therefore, is at all events the right translation of the Armenian word in Eusebius, with which I am unacquainted. "DemiGods" can only mean that the kings in question enjoyed especial honours; indeed we have seen divine honours paid even to historical kings by their successors, though they continued all the time to be regarded as historical fathers, grandfathers, or ancestors.

But who are these "Blessed ?" The meaning of the word in this list has hitherto not been inquired into. The key to its explanation is to be found in the mention of King Bytis. It has been remarked above (p. 313.) and in the First Book (Chap. IV.), that the Bytis of Manetho is the same Bytis who is mentioned by Jamblichus as a prophet of Ammon the king (of the Gods), that is, one of his priests of the order of prophets.96 As we find him described both as king and prophet, it is not an unwarranted assumption that he belonged to the first order of human kings. Now what could these kings, who are especially noted for their sanctity, have been but sacerdotal kings? The nature of the case, and the ancient traditions in the Hermetic books, would lead us to suppose that there was a sacerdotal race of kings prior to the warrior caste from which the kings were afterwards taken. It existed in Ethiopia for a

96 See the Section about the Sacred Books in Book I.