noiu scctl01 ? of the Ritual which we shall cite is that 
called Ihe Orientation.” It, together, with Chapter CLXIII. 
is written in a still more ambiguous style than the preceding' 
and it practically concludes the Ritual. In the Orientation the 
god 1 both is described as opening the gates of the four winds 
f/rp, Q Cn \° the deceased > and of each of them it is written, 
Ihe Sun lives; the Tortoise, or the evil one, dies”; and the 
nature of the abodes of the deity is an unknown and an 
unutterable mystery, which is not known to rustics or the 
uneducated, and is to be rigidly kept as a secret from every 
living soul. 
T A ( T C )l ief V^ rkj however > in whi ch the esoteric authors 
of the Myth of Ra is contained, is that great litany which is 
called the Litany of the Sun, which ascribes to that divinity 
the paramount superiority over all the gods, and which, next to 
the Ritual or the Dead, is the longest of the sacred writings of 
the Egyptians. Unlike the Ritual, the Litany of Ra is not 
found comp ete on any one papyrus or on any one mural in- 
scription, while as a composition the date of its compilation 
must be ascribed to that of the XVIIIth dynasty, or 1,700 
years B.G.- Although litanies on papyri exist yet, the chief 
eX rT ? t are . t , hos . e . which are engraved on the walls 
of the tombs of Ramesside kings of the XIXth dynasty in the 
e an el Moluk. These extensive catacombs, which take their 
rank among the most stupendous monuments ever executed in 
lonour of the dead, are, in many of the chambers and along the 
corridors and staircases leading to the final vault where the 
royal sarcophagus was deposited, completely covered with 
chapters from the Litany of Ra, illustrated by a variety of 
v’gnettes containing many figures of the deities, often 
life size, and richly adorned with coloured and incised de- 
coration. Ihe royal tombs which are more especially thus 
embellished are those of Raineses III., IV VI an d TY of 
Set, I and II., and of Menepthah I. of ihe iYth dyLsty ''g 
these the texts in the tomb of Set! I. are the most complete 
and have been taken as a standard copy, while the tomb Leif 
commonly called Belzom’s Tomb, after the name of its energetic 
discoverer,! ,s perhaps the most splendid, as it is certainly the 
* Lenormant, Mutoire Andenne des Peuple, de V Orient. 
t It was discovered by Giovanni Belzoni on tl,o 16 th October 1816 and 
a facsimile of one of the chambers, that then known as the ChambcJ of 
