8 The Waterlilies. 



Pleyte), and stands in front of Osiris at the judgment of the dead 

 (Buckley). "When the Egyptians approached the place of divine 

 worship," Diodorus tells us, " they held the flower of the ' agrostis ' in 

 their hand, indicating that man had proceeded from a well-watered or 

 marshy land, and that he required a moist rather than a dry aliment " 

 (Wilkinson, /. 428). This " agrostis " Wilkinson considers to be another 

 name for the lotus (1. c. J: 350). The god Nefer Turn "was figured as 

 a man crowned with an upspringing lotus flower (Fig. 1), a symbol of the 

 resurrection, and of his power to grant continuous life in the world to 

 come" (Wiedemann, p. 138). In one manifestation this is distinctly the 

 blue lotus (Fig. 1, a). Ahi, an infant deity is "sometimes represented as 

 sitting on the lotus flower," the vase from which the plant grows repre- 

 senting a lake of water (Wilkinson j: 132-3). "Osiris, too, swam on a 

 lotus leaf, and Harpocrates was cradled in one " (Whewell). Hapi, or the 

 Nile, a god widely known and honored, " was sometimes resolved into the 

 Nile of Upper and the Nile of Lower Egypt, the lotus being considered 

 emblematic of the former, and the papyrus of the latter ; a design con- 

 sisting of both plants tied together formed a favorite subject for the 

 decoration of the royal throne, as typifying the king's rule over Upper 

 and Lower Egypt" (Wiedemann, p. 145-6). 



The use of flowers in funeral decorations seems to have been very 

 prominent in the XIX to XXI dynasties. The custom was to lay wreaths 

 and semicircles of flowers on the breast of the enwrapped corpse until the 

 sarcophagus was quite packed with these floral tributes. Flowers of 

 Nymphaea caerulea on petioles 18 to 20 inches long were fastened 

 between the bands encircling the mummies of Ramses II and the priest 

 Nisboni, scattered singly all over them (Schweinfurth 1883 b). Breast- 

 wreaths consisting mostly of petals and sepals of the same plant, 

 sometimes also with petals of N. lotus, were found in the coffins of 

 Ramses II, Amenhotep I, Ahmes I (1580 b. c), the priest Nisboni, the 

 princess Nzi-Khonsu, and the mummy of the case marked kent, from the 

 XX and XXI dynasties, found at Deir-el-Bahari (Thebes) in July 1881. 

 These are probably the " Egyptian wreaths " of Pliny and Plutarch, the 

 "lotus garlands" of Athenseus. Most of these plant-remains date from 

 nearly 2000 b. c, but those of Ramses II were renewed about 1100 b. c. ; 

 for in moving these sarcophagi at that time into their secret resting-place 

 in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, to avoid the marauding hordes 

 from the desert, that of Ramses was accidentally broken ; a new coffin 

 and new floral decorations were therefore supplied. The wreaths of 



