311 
say to one another that thy course (Ra !) is that of Osiris, that thy 
way is his, great god who dwellest in the empyrean. Hail ! god of 
the disk with the brilliant rays, praise be to the spirit Keschi ! four 
times. 
78 Hail to thee, universal covering, who creatcst thy soul and who 
makest thy body grow ; the King traverses the most secret sphere, 
he explores the mysteries contained in it. Ihe King speaks to thee 
like Ra, he praises thee with his intelligence, the King is like the 
god* and reciprocally. He moves by himself, he moves by himself. , 
The all surrounding uuiverse says : Ah, guide him into the interior 
of my sphere ; four times. 
79 This chapter is said to the most mysterious god, these words are 
written like those upon the two sides of the door of the empyrean 
this book is read every day. when he has retired in life, 
according to custom, perfectly.! 
9. Thus far run the first seventy-nine clauses, or the first 
chapter of the Ritual of Ra; each of them commences with 
the same formula of devotion, and contains an inscription to 
the deity of his personal identification with the other divinities, 
and even with the more abstract deities of Heaven, water, air, 
and space. That this sublime conception was very different 
from the vulgar idea of the god is selt-evident, and the votive 
stele and hymns to Anubis, Horus, Isis, Osiris, and Amen, 
which exist in abundance, prove that to the bulk ot the people 
the State creed w'as a mystery, and the national religion was 
a polytheism, full of the most irreconcilable contradictions. 
They did not appear to have regarded their deities, how- 
ever, as having antagonistic prejudices to each other, but 
rather as being eponymous to particular districts, or, as 
the essential local deities of the different towms, taking their 
rank according to the commercial or political grade of the 
place where they w r ere adored, and rising or sinking in 
importance as that town fluctuated in the political scale. 
Hence, therefore, like the Roman, the national religion became 
sufficiently eclectic to admit any other well-established 
divinity into its hierarchy, when the exigencies of the case 
* This was one of the earliest of the Egyptian theories, the adoration 
of the deceased monarchs dating from the I^i th dynasty. Chofo and 
Teti were thus adored, and were interred in pyramids which bad a service 
of priesthood attached to it, analogous iu idea to the chantry chapels for 
the souls of the deceased which abounded in our English cathedrals, and 
which only ceased at the Reformation. 
t This chapter is evidently a rubric interpolated into the text. 
