84 THE 1!EV. V. A. WALKER, r».D., F.L.S., ON 



to obtain your assent to the conclnsionS' I am about to 

 deduce. 



Osiris is regarded by some as the sun, Avhile others have 

 seen in him the Nile inundation. Both theories are, in my 

 humble estimation, compatible. Osiris is the beneficent 

 principle. The Aavifying power that the burning sun 

 exercises on the Nile mud and the fertilising material 

 annually left behind by the river as it sinks down once 

 more into its normal channel are both productive of incalcu- 

 lable good. The two influences are inseparable. It is just 

 Avhen the summer is well advanced, and the sun is at itS: 

 greatest power, that it melts the snows on far distant 

 mountains in Central Africa, which in their turn cause the 

 Nile to rise and overflow his banks^ in all his downward 

 course. But simultaneously Avith the rising of the river 

 comes the rising of the lotus during all the period of the 

 inundation, ever extending its stalks, and lengthening its 

 tendrils, and so keeping its snowy bloom on the surface in 

 proportion as the water increases in height, of either lake or 

 canal wherein it is wont to flourish. In its golden disk we 

 behold the colour, in its star-shaped petals we recognise the 

 shape of the rays of the sun overhead, a product of life 

 renoAved, and thus Ave comprehend Avhy a lotus in mural 

 painting and sculptui'e is so often offered to Osiris, lord of 

 Amenti, the unseen realm, and Avhy the lotus wreaths 

 encircle the necks of mummies as though to accom23any 

 them on their last long jcuirney, for the lotus is a sign of life 

 rencAved, of life beyond the grave, that the sun yet has poAver. 

 Thus once more Set is the night or darkness Avhicli destroys 

 the sun and buries him, but is in its tiu-n slain by the reap- 

 pearing, rejuvenated sun of the next day, Horus of the 

 horizo2i, Avho thus aA'enges his father. Proclus's notion that 

 the lotus floAver Avas typical of the sun has already been 

 referred to, and in the fact that a HoAver shaped like the sun 

 rises from the Avater, Ave have a typical portraiture of the 

 beginning of day. or rise and infancy of the sun, and Ave 

 comprehend the import of Edgar Allan Poe's lines in A I 

 Aaraaf quoted along Avith passages from other poets at the 

 close of this paper. 



" And Valisneriau Lotus, thither tlowii 

 From struggliiifif with the waters of tlie Ehoue." 



It should CA-er be l)orne in mind that in connection Avith 

 the myth of Osiris, Horns is indeed the offspring of Osiris, 

 but still only a child, the youthful or rising sun, and is spoken 



