40 
with other expressions, which only add to its mysteriousness. 
The formula generally runs thus : — “Hail, thou avenger God, 
Son of God ! Hail, thou avenger Horus, proceeding from Osiris, 
born of Isis!”* * * § Other variants of the same invocation have 
“ engendered ” of Osiris in the place of “ proceeding ”;f and 
another, still more singular, “ O avenger, born of Osiris, born of 
Isis,” the Egyptian theory of generation being that all life was 
from the father, and all substance of the mother; and hence 
that a divine being could assume a human body, and yet retain 
his own separate personality. In this, therefore, the second 
office of Horus, there was indisputably an historical element ; 
all tradition points with reverted finger to the period when the 
gods lived with men, and the reigns of Osiris the supreme deity, 
of Isis the great mother, J and of Horus the avenging prince, 
probably transmit the records through the Hamitic race, of the 
time when the Beni Elohim saw the daughters of men that they 
were fair,§ and the days when there were giants in the 
earth, whose annals are preserved in the Izdubar legends of 
Chaldea. || 
In these primeval times, then, Osiris, the Supreme 
Being, or rather the Supreme Being in his human embodi- 
ment as Osiris, was known to mankind as a wise and 
beneficent king; as the author of all wisdom; as the discoverer 
of the arts and sciences, and more especially of that great 
science upon which the existence of Egypt depended — the 
science of agriculture. For these and his other holy offices 
he received the title of Unnefer, or the “ Good Being”; and, 
conjointly with his wife and sister Isis, he governed Egypt 
in peace and prosperity for a long succession of happy 
years. Horus, their son, was the recognized heir to the 
throne, and yet at the same time the mvsterious ancestor 
of the whole divine family. The cosmic deity Set worked 
in harmony with their administration and their aims. One 
discordant clement alone was present to mar the perfect 
concord of the reign of Osiris, the true and glorious reign of 
the gods, and that was the envy and malice of his brother 
Tvphon, afterwards identified with Set, the Sustedkh of the 
* Champollion, Systenie Hieroglyph' que, p. 101. 
+ On a statue in the Museo Borghese. 
X I purposely defer the examination of the Isis and Horus Myth, and the 
“ Hathor suckling Horus” Statuettes, because they have reference to a 
distinct symbolism which is still less understood. 
§ Gen. vi. 2. 
|| See Smith, ('hohlcnu Account of curst*. 
