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the myth of Ra in the same manner as, beyond all doubt, the 
Homs myth was afterwards influenced. Possibly, also, in a 
later time, a still more Pantheistic element was introduced 
into the subsequent Litanies of Ra, and he then became, by an 
apparently contradictory process of reasoning, both a personal 
local god and also an embodiment of the entire visible cosmos. 
It is not at all improbable also that the change of religion under 
Amenotep IV.,* which preceded the original composition of the 
Litany ot Ra, had as much to do with the variations of doctrine 
existing bet\» een it and the Ritual of the Read as the conquests of 
Alexander the Great had with that polytheistic development of it 
which is attested by the inscription of Darius at El Kargeh. So 
much of the Myth ot Ra as has come down to us proves it 
to have been founded on the basis of a pure monotheism with a 
tendency towards Sabsean illustrations, and, like all the doctrines 
of the Egyptian mythology, it was purest and grandest in its 
earliest stages of dogma. For dignity of belief and for simplicity 
of construction the myth is one of the noblest and oldest of extinct 
theologies, the least capable of corruption, and the nearest 
approach to the truth which was ever reached by the unassisted 
light of natural reason ; it fell, as all other myths have fallen 
which were not the original product of inspiration, but it never 
fell so low as did the Isis myths, and it never descended into 
obscenity and extravagance, as did the Zoolatria of Lower 
anf l the continent ol India. To some extent it influ- 
enced the surrounding religions, and, like all the various 
doctrines of the land of Egypt, it infused itself into Christianity 
by the agency of the Gnostic heresies, when for the elucidation 
of truth and the reasonable sustentation of faith the origin of 
all those heresies was more studied by Christian students. To 
the classical reader the myth has a special interest, for it is 
interwoven with the abstractions of Plato and the philosophv 
of the Eleatics and Alexandrians. The similes of the poet and 
the allusions of the historian find their explanation in it, and 
the jargon of the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati, the ostenta- 
tious mystery of the alchymists and astrologers, were derived 
from the language of its Litanies. In conclusion, the Christian 
student will find in the examination of the myth much to 
repay his labour; he will be the better able to judge of the 
* Sae . a P a P er b y Sir Charles Nicholson on the "DiskAVorshippors of 
Memphis, in Trans. Sac. of Literature, vol. for 1868. 
