and by the doubt that prevailed as to the meaning of tradition. "The seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead," which seems to contain a statement of the system of the universe as understood at Heliopolis under the first dynasties, "is known to us by several examples of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties. Each of the verses had already heen interpreted in three or four different ways; so different, that, according to one school, the creator, Râ-Shou, was the solar fire; according to another school, not the fire, but the waters!" The Book of the Dead, in fact, is no book, but collections of pamphlets, so to speak, of very different dates. "Plan or unity cannot be expected," and glosses only some four thousand years old have become imbedded in really ancient texts.[1] Fifteen centuries later the number of interpretations had considerably increased.[2]
Where the Egyptians themselves were in helpless doubt, it would be vain to offer complete explanations of their opinions and practices in detail; but it is possible, perhaps, to account for certain large elements of their beliefs, and even to untie some of the knots of the Osirian myth.
The strangest feature in the rites of Egypt was animal-worship, which appeared in various phases. There was the local adoration of a beast, or bird, or fish, to which the neighbours of other districts were indifferent or hostile. There was the presence of the animal in the most sacred penetralia of the temple;
