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lighted by the lion gods * The blessed Osiriau (the deceased) 
have come from their corner doing’ all thy words ordered. Oh ! 
workmen of the sun, by day and by night, the Osirian lives after 
he dies like the sun daily ; for as the sun died, and was born 
yesterday, so the Osirian is born, every god rejoices uith life, 
the Osirian rejoices, as they rejoice, with life. This simile is 
of great value, because it proves that the cardinal doctrine of a 
resurrection of the soul and body was tne chief cause of the 
Egyptian adoration of the sun as the visible creator and resusci- 
tator of the inanimate world. Nor was this adoration paid to 
the solar deity simply by virtue of his vivific force, for the Ritual 
goes on to declare, “ Hail,0 Sun, Creator, Self-created! perfect 
is thy light in the horizon, illuminating the world with thy rays, 
all the gods rejoice when they see the King ot the Heaven. I 
have reached the Land of the Age where thou hast ordered every 
god, 0 Sun/’ f The remainder of the chapter, from which this 
extract is taken, describes the glories of the youthful god 
Horus-Nets, the destruction of the evil serpent Apophis,J and 
the identification of the Osirian by virtue of his faith and 
religious performances with the various divinities whom 
he adores. The next chief section of the Ritual, the ‘ Egyptian 
Faith,” is also devoted to the glorification of Ra; a few extracts 
from this will, however, suffice. § 
“ I am Turn, the only being in Nu.|| I am the Sun when he rises. His 
rule commences when he has done, and let him explain it.^[ The Sun is 
* Shu and Tefnu. . 
t Cap. xv., section “ The Manifestation to Light. _ 
t The enemy of the sun, and a form of the evil being Set or lyphon. 
The contests between the gods and Apophis form the chief subject of the 
mystical papyrus called the “Book of the Lnder-world, and they 
been tolerably examined in a paper by the author, “ The Serpent Myths 
of Ancient Egypt,” Trans. Viet. Inst., vol. vi. . 
8 Cap xvii. The chapter of conducting the spirit, of coming in and 
going from the Hades, and being among the servants of the Osiris, fed 
with the food of Osiris, the good being, the justified, coming forth from 
the day, making all the transformations he has wished to transform him- 
self into, ploughing with a plough (?), being seated in the hall a hving 
soul, as the blessed, by the great gods of the west after he has been laid 
to rpst. The glory of doing it on earth is for mortals to declare. 
II The heavenly firmament personified as a deity. 
This phrase”, which is of frequent occurrence in this chapter, appears 
to be a rubric to the worshipper which has crept into the text. There are 
many such in the Ritual and Hermetic Books. 
