46 
W e celebrate thee : 
We praise thv majesty, because thou hast stricken down the 
enemies of thy father.”* * * § 
In the Ritual of the Dead there is not that distinctiveness of 
delineation as regards the office of Horus Nets that is found 
in the Litanies of Horus, and this is owing, of course, to the 
Ritual being, like our own Prayer Book, a collection of prayers 
and offices not necessarily connected together, although having 
very much in common with each other. There is a uniformity 
of design, but by no means a uniformity of expression pre- 
vailing between all the different parts of the work; and thus it 
is that in the Ritual the acts of Horus are blended with the 
acts of the other deities, and he is viewed more in relation to 
the believer than in that of his relationship to his father. The 
Ritual begins with Horus, and it ends with Horus, but it is 
Plorus as assimilated to the soul of the deceased rather than as 
Horus the victorious king of the Horsheshu, though at the same 
time there is a continual reference to the deity in that attribute 
also. Accordingly, in the very first chapter of the Ritual, this 
phrase occurs : “ I am with Horus, supporting the right 
shoulder, or, as we should say, arm of Osiris. I expel the 
wicked from them, or one of the celestial regions where Osiris 
resided. ”f 
In the XIXth chapter, that of “the Crown of Justifica- 
tion,” which is to be given to the deceased by the god Turn as 
his reward for his active holiness, the deceased, still in the 
character of Horus, is said to justify Osiris, who dwells in the 
west, to justify Osiris against his enemies, to be justified against 
Seb and his associates, to make “ all his enemies fall down 
stabbed,” and to repeat this slaughter “ millions of times.” 
“ All his enemies fall down stabbed ; he drags them, throwing 
them down from the place where they are to the blocks of the 
east ; he cuts off their heads, breaks their necks, and cuts off 
their thighs, giving them to the great strangler in the valley. J 
They do not escape the custody of Seb § for ever.” 
With reference to the east, it should be noted that in 
Egyptian mythology hell was situated in the east, as heaven 
was in the west. The great strangler in the valley is the 
devouring serpent, who lives by devouring the souls of the 
ungodly. 
* Navi lie, Textes relatifs an Mythe d’Horus, pi. viii. 
f “ The Chapter of the Manifestation to Light.” 
j; The devouring serpent. See Bonomi, Sarcophagus of Oimevepthah 
plate 14 c, where this very subject is represented. 
§ Seb was the primeval father of all the gods, and the grandfather of 
Horus. His analogue was the Chronos of the Greeks. 
