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the unity of all the gods. Professor Maspero and Professor 

 Petrie held that the Egyptian idea of the Deity had nothing in 

 common with our modern monotheism. This assertion seemed 

 somewhat difficult to reconcile with the expressions that occurred 

 in many of the hymns, even of the earliest limes. In texts of the 

 fifth century many expressions occur which ascribe attributes to 

 the Deity which entirely distinguish him from the lesser gods^ 

 In later dynasties the attributes of the sole God became 

 associated with the god Amen, and though it was 

 true that Amen was originally only a local god, yet it 

 was not impossible to believe that the idea of the 

 Neter gradually centred itself into a name. The sun was his 

 symbol, and his cognomen became compounded as Amen-Ra. To 

 prove that he was not regarded as a material sun, Mr. Wallis 

 quoted from the Egyptian " Book of the Dead," and he made 

 reference to the same remarkable work in demonstrating other 

 arguments. From the attributes of this god set forth in such 

 texts. Dr. Brugsch and others had come to the conclusion that 

 the dwellers in the Nile valley from the earliest times knew and 

 worshipped one God, nameless, incomprehensible, and eternal. 

 If words meant anything, it was clear that the Egyptian 

 priesthood (if not the laity) held abstract ideas of the Divine 

 Being, and that, whether or not he was known by different 

 names in different cities, the conception was of a God who was 

 one " besides whom there is no other." That expression actually 

 occurred in a hymn. Amongst the smaller gods were Nu, the 

 representation of the primeval watery waste ; Nut, the female 

 principle of Nu, and who was the heavens ; Ptah, the creative 

 principle ; Khepera, a form of the rising sun which was both a 

 type of matter which is on the point of passing from inertness 

 into life, and of the dead body which was about to burst forth 

 into a new life in a glorified form. The God was typified by a 

 beetle, or scarabaeus, and thus it was that scarabaei were found 

 so numerously in tombs. The lecturer also gave the legends 

 concerning Osiris, the God of the underworld, the Lord of 

 Eternity, the Judge of the Dead, and the type of what the dead 

 hoped to become, telling how the evil principle (Set) dis- 

 membered him, how Isis recovered the lost fragments, and 

 brought Osiris to life again. Osiris appeared as the good 

 principle at war with the evil, and, through his sufferings, he 

 became the victor and the saviour of mankind. 



Regarding the ideas of the Egyptians concerning themselves, 

 Mr. Wallis pointed out that they considered each human being 

 as comprising three portions ; there was the body, which was 



