detail, the less will they disturb our conviction that the victory of Set over Osiris is that of Night over Day, and the resurrection of Osiris is the rising of the Sun. And I do not think Osiris will be spoken of as dead throughout an Egyptian winter by any one who has had any experience of that delightful season.
There is a passage in the Book of the Dead[1] which says that "Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found the soul of Rā there; each embraced the other, and became as one soul in two souls." This may be a mythological way of saying that two legends which had previously been independent of each other were henceforth inextricably mixed up. This, at all events, is the historical fact. In the words of a sacred text, "Rā is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris the soul of Rā."
But Horus also is one of the names of the Sun, and had his myths quite independently of Rā or Osiris. The most prominent ones in comparatively later times
- ↑ Ch. xvii. l. 42, 43.
- ↑ M. Lefébure has published several important essays illustrative of the myths of Osiris and Horus. I should be glad to find real evidence of allusions to lunar eclipses, but it is impossible to reconcile the lunar hypothesis about these myths with the most elementary astronomy. How can a lunar eclipse, for instance, regularly coincide with a fixed day in a month of thirty days? The synodical month is nearly of this length, but the eclipses depend upon the nodes.
