361 
where he would have died of hunger and thirst (chaps, li. — liii.) . 
At last he reaches the sacred sycamore, or tree of life,* in the 
Fig. 72. The goddess Nu in the sacred sycamore-tree, pouring out the water of life 
to the Osirian and his soul, represented as a bird, in Amenti. (Sharpe from a 
funereal stele in the British Museum. ) 
midst of the boughs of which the goddess Nut (fig. 72) is 
stationed. She, pitying his exhausted condition, and 
anxious to aid his further progress, gives him heavenly 
bread, with supernatural virtues of sustentation, and a fluid 
which is expressly termed “ the water of life.” This having 
drunk, grateful and refreshed, the Osirian exclaims, “1 
grow, I live, I breathe again ! ” and prepares to recommence 
his journey to reach the first gate of heaven. J 
26. Then commences a long dialogue between the deceased 
and the personification of the divine light, who instructs him 
in a chapter called the Manifestation to Light (chap. lxiv.). 
This dialogue presents a most remarkable resemblance to the 
dialogue prefixed to the books given by the Alexandrian 
Greeks as translations of the ancient religious writings of 
Egypt, between Thoth (Hermes Trismegistus) and the Light, 
the latter explaining to Thoth the most sublime mysteries of 
nature. This portion is certainly one of the best and grandest 
of the Ritual, and is doubtless the source of all that is mystical 
and profound in the so-called Hermetic books of the later 
Platonists.§ 
27. The Osirian having passed the first gate, continues to 
advance, guided by this new light, to whom, in the lxv th to 
the lxxv th chapters, he addresses his invocations. He then 
* The tree of life is sometimes represented as a persea, or peach-tree, 
groves of which formerly adorned the inner courts of many Egyptian 
temples, and the last specimen of which in Egypt existed till very lately in 
the garden of a convent at Cairo, hut has been recently wantonly destroyed, 
t Wilkinson, vol. i. p. 391. J Lenormant, in loco. 
§ Ritual, cap. lix. 
