188 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
crowning the top with ram’s horns, and adding two arms, the hands 
holding the crook and ladanisterion. Frazer has suggested that this 
object might very well be a conventional representation of a tree stripped 
of its leaves. That it was, in fact, a lopped tree is, I believe, certain. 
In the Pyramid Texts it is said of Osiris, ‘ Thou receivest thy two oars, 
the one of juniper (wan), the other of sd-wood, and thou ferriest over 
the Great Green Sea.’ The determinative-sign of the word sd is a tree 
of precisely the same form as the Ded-column that is figured on eariy 
Egyptian monuments, i.e. it has a long, thin stem. This tree-name 
occurs only in inscriptions of the Pryamid Age, and it is mentioned 
as a wood that was used for making chairs, tables, boxes, and various 
other articles of furniture. In the passage quoted from the Pyramid 
Texts it is mentioned together with juniper, and the latter was employed 
in cabinet-making, etc., at all periods of Egyptian history. There is 
no eyidence that juniper ever grew in Egypt, but we have numerous 
records of the wood being imported from the Lebanon region. The 
sd-tree, as we see from the determinative-sign of the name, had horizon- 
tally spreading branches, and was evidently some species of conifer. 
No conifers, however, are known from Egypt; the sd-wood must, 
therefore, have been of foreign importation. As it is mentioned with 
juniper, which we know came to Egypt from Syria, it is possible that 
it came from the same region. Among the trees of the Lebanon there 
are four that have horizontally spreading branches. These are the cedar 
(Cedrus libani), the Cilician fir, the Pinus laricio, and the horizontal- 
branched cypress (Cupressus sempervirens var. horizontales). Much 
misconception at present exists with regard to the Lebanon Cedar, 
because the name ‘ cedar’ is applied to a large number of woods which 
are quite distinct from it, and the wood which we generally call cedar 
(e.g. the cedar of our ‘ cedar’ pencils) is not true cedar at all, but 
Virginian juniper. The wood of Cedrus libani is light and spongy, of a 
reddish-white colour, very apt to shrink and warp badly, by no means 
durable, and in no sense is it valuable. Sir Joseph Hooker, who visited 
the Lebanon in 1860, notes that the lower slopes of that mountain 
region bordering the sea were covered with magnificent forests of pine, 
juniper, and cypress, ‘so that there was little inducement for the timber 
hewers of ancient times to ascend 6,000 feet through twenty miles of 
a rocky mountain valley to obtain cedar wood which had no particular 
quality to recommend it. The cypress, pine, and tall, fragrant juniper 
of the Lebanon, with its fine red heart-wood, would have been far more 
prized on every account than the cedar.’ The sd-tree was, I believe, 
the horizontal-branched cypress which is common in the wild state. 
In the Middle Ages this tree was believed to be the male tree, while the 
tapering conical-shaped cypress was considered to be the female. This 
is an interesting fact, because there is some evidence to show that the 
tapering variety was the symbol of Hathor-Isis, while the horizontal- 
branched one was the symbol of Osiris. 
In the Pyramid Age there are several records of the priests of the 
Ded-column. They were called ‘ priests of the venerable ded-column.’ 
The seat of the cult was Dedu, or, as it was sometimes called, Pr-Wsr, 
‘the House of Osiris,’ the Greek Busiris in the Central Delta. At this 
