41 
Asiatic Hvkshos.* Thus far the Greek and Egyptian legends 
coincide, and thus far I am disposed to follow them ; but beyond 
this point they disagree, and therefore from this point I shall 
ignore the theories of Herodotus and Plutarch, regarding them 
with somewhat of the scorn of the Egyptian priest of Sais, who 
proudly told the Teian traveller, “ All you Greeks are children.” 
The truth is, that the hieroglyphic inscriptions do not afford us 
at present any clear information as to the actual status of Osiris, 
the origin of the anger of Typhon, or the cause of its painful 
success. A fratricidal war, they agree, terminated the dynasty 
of Osiris Unnefer. His son was driven from his throne, his wife 
exiled, and his own body shamefully mutilated, and the dis- 
severed fragments strewn over the ruined fields of the once 
prosperous land of Egypt. The widowed Isis, calling to her 
assistance her sister deity Nephthys and the god Anubis, went in 
search of the members of her lord’s body, and wherever she found 
a portion of it, there it was embalmed by Anubis, and buried 
by her sister and herself. The chief portions of the body of Osiris 
were discovered at This or Abydos, and on the island of Philae, 
in the Upper Nile, near Nubia. Hence those two places were 
held as especially sacred to the divinity, and to be buried in or 
near Abydos was, in the time of the first twelve dynasties, 
almost a passport to a happy resurrection. The sanctification 
of the island and temples at Philae, the reticence concerning the 
name of Osiris, the irrevocable oath referred to by Herodotus, 
“ By him who sleeps at Philae, and the Litanies of Isis and 
Nephthys, all seem to belong to the more philosophical religious 
belief of a later period, and to be more derived from, than 
dictated by, the language of the Ritual of the Dead or the 
funei'eal papyri. We are not told definitely by what means the 
young Horus raised an army and dethroned his uncle, or for 
how long a period the war of revenge continued ; but to it and 
to the assistance rendered by certain spiritual beings to Horus 
in the strife, there are many distinct allusions in Egyptian litera- 
ture. In truth, the mythical and the historical elements in the 
lives of Osiris and Horus become so blended together that it is 
* “ In the times which preceded, immortal beings had reigned in Egypt ; 
that they had communication with men, and had uniformly one superior ; 
that Orus, whom the Greeks call Apollo, was the last of these. He was the 
son of Osiris, and after he had expelled Typhon, himself succeeded to the 
throne.” — Herod., Euterpe, cxliv. 
t Herodotus, Euterpe, xxxvi., “ One whom I do not think it religious to 
name.” 
“ Do not thou utter that name of the great god.” — Eenouf, Egyptian 
Grammar, p. 38. 
