88 
very rash if we jumped to the conclusion that those things were the result of 
revelation. So also with regard to this Horus myth having any reference to 
Christ, or that Horus was in any way the representative in the primeval ages 
of what Christ was to be in the ages to come, his relations to Osiris and Isis 
were totally different from what we read about Christ. We are unable to 
account for many Christian myths : for the acts attributed to the Virgin, for 
instance, by a great portion of the human race, and the character attributed 
to her by many men of the greatest learning in the Roman Catholic Church. 
The divine attributes given to her, have grown around her existence in the 
form of a faith, and that faith is held at the present moment by a large number 
of Christians. The mythopaeic faculty is ever at work : if the translations of 
Egyptian papyri are absolutely correct, the coincidences between Horus and 
Christ are remarkable ; but they may admit of another explanation than the 
supposition that the acts attributed to him are a kind of prophecy of Christ. 
A Member. — I see towards the end of the first paragraph of the paper 
the following passage : — “Place the period of Abraham where you may, that 
of the Xllth Egyptian Dynasty must precede it ; the arrival of Jacob and his 
family cannot have been earlier than the XVIIIth, and the expulsion of the 
Exodus than the XIXth Dynasties.” It would be interesting to know upon 
what facts that statement is advanced. If you refer to Cardinal Wiseman’s 
sixth lecture on the Connexion between Science and Revealed Religion, you 
will find that there is plenty of reason for the adoption of a very different 
opinion. It seems to me that the duration of these myths has been very 
greatly exaggerated, and that very probably here is an instance in which 
history has been antedated by 6,000 or 7,000 years. 
Mr. Cooper. — With respect to what Canon Titcomb has said about 
Egyptian mythology placing Horus in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, not 
judging the body but the soul, I would remark that the mystical texts 
do not entirely agree with the Ritual as to the details of the resurrection 
(see Appendix). The last speaker doubted the antiquity of the Horus 
myth and of the inscribed monuments of Egypt and Assyria. This is 
a question that is very easily settled. The very oldest and earliest monu- 
ments of Egyptian art have references to the Horus myth upon them. It 
therefore becomes a question of the age to which the oldest monuments 
belong. These monuments are the two Pyramids (the great Pyramid has, 
it is true, no inscription; but the name of Cheops, found roughly painted on 
one of the inside chambers, perfectly agrees with the same cartouche which 
is found on a gold ring now in the Abbot collection, where the god Anubis 
is represented as venerated by Cheops. As for the great Sphinx, it is a 
well-known emblem of the god Horus as Ra Har Makhu (or the sun on the 
horizon), the great Sphinx, the tombs adjacent, and the statues of King 
Chephren, and the monuments of Myceriuus (Menkera) and Sent, which 
range from the Illrd to the Vlth Dynasties. It does not matter to within 
a few hundred years what time you put these dynasties backwards or forwards. 
According to Dr. Birch and the consensus of Egyptologists, the very lowest 
