tlie word and works of the Most High, to work with the 
materials which I, a feeble explorer into the darkness of anti- 
quity, have the privilege to bring before you. I ask you neither 
to accept my statements, or to follow my assertions and con- 
jectures, but to take my facts and to examine them for your- 
selves, remembering always that soon, very soon, if the 
work is not undertaken by those who believe in the 
Bible, it will be caught up bv those who are inimical to 
it, and that a painful reproach will be incurred, and an 
opportunity of expounding the Word of God be lost for ever. 
In the remainder of this paper — and that remainder will not 
be a long one — I shall confine my attention to certain indica- 
tions afforded us by the Gnostic gems and early Christian works 
of art, of the influence of the Horns myth upon Christianity, and 
where that influence was, I contend, prejudicial. Would that I 
could also show, what hereafter a collation of the Egyptian papyri 
will, I confidently anticipate, prove, — in how far, and up to what 
periotl, the Jewish and Christian faiths influenced and purified 
the Horus myths themselves, even as we know that the Greek 
philosophy did so ; but this task must be reserved for an abler 
head and a more spiritual pen than mine. Of one thing, how- 
ever, I am certain, from what little I know of patristic theology, 
that a deeper insight will be given to the writings of Origen, 
Cyprian, Tertullian, and Epiphanius, and the Alexandrian 
fathers generally, when the whole of the Horus legends shall 
have been collated and rendered into English, and their respec- 
tive dates fixed beyond the reach of criticism. Even the 
Ritual of the Dead itself, although written in part in the 
IVth Dynasty, continued to receive rubrics, and glosses up to 
the XXIXth, if not, indeed, to the time of the Roman con- 
quest; and many of these additions and alteration shave, by 
the heedlessness of perfunctory scribes, been incorporated with 
the earlier text to a degree which it is impossible at present to 
probe. What has been done with the Ritual has been done 
with the Book of the Under World * and the Solar and Horus 
litanies also, which last were constantly being added to, and of 
which the longest texts were written in the time of the Roman 
emperors Claudius and Vespasian. 
Perhaps one of the most apposite illustrations which I could 
produce is to be found on an early Christian lamp from the 
catacombs of Alexandria, now in the Boston Museum. This 
singular relic is one of the usual lucernae ; but the interesting 
feature of it is a large Greek cross, which completely divides it 
into four sections, in the two lower of which is placed the crux 
See Deveria, Cat. clcs Manuscrits du Music du Louvre, for an excellent 
precis of this most mysterious book. 
