ANCIENT EGYPT. 1 39 



same origin in a solar myth, the sun setting in the Con- 

 stellation of Virgo. A small chapel called Mamesi by Cham- 

 pollion, a dwellmg of the mother of God, is attached to all 

 the temples in which a triad is worshipped, and here the 

 inscriptions deal with the mystical conception of Horus, the 

 third person in the trinity of Abydos and of Dendera, the 

 accouchment of Isis, and the boyhood of the god Hermachis, 

 or Horus on the horizon. The resurrection is typified in the 

 rising again of Osiris. The details of the great Osirian myth 

 are too long and complex to permit of any fuller elucidation 

 this evening. 



Ptah of Memphis, the "lord of truth," in the earlier religious 

 forms, and later Ammon of Thebes, represents the creative 

 force of nature. The o.^^ of Kheper, the beetle. Scarab cbus 

 sacer, typifies the earth, which is fashioned by Ptah, and 

 vivified by Ra, the self-begotten; or the Amen Ra of the 

 Middle Empire, the daily renewer of life. On incubation the 

 ^gg divides into Noot, the heavens; Seb, the earth; and 

 Amenti, the lower regions. Ra rises in the morning as 

 Hermachis, the rising sun, as represented in the Great Sphinx; 

 is himself, as the sun's disc, at noon, and dies as Turn or 

 Tmu, the setting sun, at night, thus typifying birth, life, death, 

 and resurrection — in one word humanity. The sun is born 

 again as a child every morning, is drawn as a chariot by the 

 stars through space, and then sets to illumine the under 

 world. Man, therefore, only seems to die, preparatory to 

 eternal life, when he eventually becomes merged in Osiris, 

 from whom, and in whose image, he sprang. The unjust are 

 tormented in Amenti, and their souls transmigrate for a span 

 through the bodies of animals. Ptah is symbolized by Apis, 

 the bull, an emblem of productive force. In one of the 

 chapters of the Book of the Dead the soul is represented as 

 being scourged from the judgment hall, on the day of judg- 

 ment, in the body of a pig ; it is not punished eternally, but 

 eventually becomes reunited in Osiris. 



Osiris was the soul of the world, as the world was conceived 

 in the womb of Isis ; and as each soul emanated from Osiris, 



