104 
as set forth in chapters xvii. et seq. of the Book of the Bead, to which 
Mr. Cooper has so many just allusions in his paper, is most valuable in 
showing how far in advance of other heathen nations the ancient Egyptians 
were on that important doctrine of the Christian faith ; and it is much to be 
regretted that those few Egyptian scholars which England as yet possesses, 
have not more thoroughly investigated this branch, if I may so term it, of 
the Horus myth ; as the whole subject might throw more light upon the 
possible analogy between the two faiths. 
I am unable therefore to see what Mr. Cooper says concerning the 
“influence of the Homs myth upon Christianity,” or that the rightful 
understanding of it will give us “ a deeper insight into the writings of the 
Alexandrian fathers generally”; inasmuch as the greatest of them, Clement, 
bishop of that city, while admitting that the Greeks drew many of their 
philosophical tenets from the Egyptians, and surpassed them in many of 
their gross idolatries (see his Exhortation to the Fathers, ch. ii.), yet exposes 
their temple worship in such a way as to show that in his opinion they could 
have no conception of the dogmas of the Christian faith ; e. g. in his 
Pcedagogtcs, ch. ii., he thus speaks : — “ If you enter the penetralia of an 
Egyptian temple, and the sacrificing priest remove a little of the veil in order 
to show the god, he will cause a hearty laugh at the object of their worship ; 
for the god whom you have rushed to see will not be found therein, but a 
cat, a crocodile, or a snake. The god of the Egyptians appears a beast rolling 
on a purple couch.” 
Mr. Cooper alludes to a lamp at Denderah (fig. 2), figured in Denon’s 
Egypte, in which the principal representation is the usual crux ansata of the 
ancient Egyptians, which was probably known to them at least 2000 B.C. ; 
but I do not quite see how this in any way explains the Horus myth, or is 
connected with the misapplication of the doctrine of the cross as entertained 
by multitudes of nominal Christians in the East, especially after the ith 
century, when so great an injury was done to the purity of the Christian 
faith by the admission of the mass of heathen, when Constantine decreed the 
union of Church and State, and his mother, the Empress Helena, through the 
craft of a superstitious priesthood, made that wonderful discovery at Jerusalem 
of the three crosses, resulting in that fabulous legend which has done so much 
injury to the Christian name, and which is as firmly believed in by many 
even in this country, and in the middle of the 19th century, as it was in 
the darkest phase of the Middle Ages. 
Nor can I quite agree in the conclusions at which Mr. Cooper appears to 
have arrived respecting the teaching to be gathered from his very interesting 
account of various Gnostic gems (see fig. 4 et seq.). To mention two cases, 
he cites an example from King’s Gnostics, of “ the Good Shepherd bearing 
upon His shoulders the lost lamb,” which, “ upon closer inspection ,” proves 
to be “ the double-headed uinubis,” — one human, the other that of a jackal. 
What connection had this Anubis, the son of Osiris and Nephthys, who is 
sometimes called Hermes, and represented as conducting the deceased to the 
Hall of Truth at the final judgment, with the Saviour of the Christian Faith? 
