the Greek and that of the Egyptian myths there was no direct connexion,
CHAP. II. and no points of likeness, which cannot be explained by the working of independent minds on the same facts or the same materials. But after Egypt had been thrown open to Greek commerce, the Greeks were so impressed by the grandeur of the country and the elaborate mystical system of the priesthood, that they were soon tempted not only to identify their own deities with those of Egypt, but in some cases to fancy that their names as well as the actions ascribed to them were derived from that country. Thus Herodotos could quietly carry away with him the conviction that the name of the Greek and Aryan Athene was only that of the Egyptian Neith read backwards. Nor need we hesitate to say that the mystical system of the Egyptian priests, which made so profound an impression on the mind of Herodotos, was grafted in the process of ages on simpler myths, which corresponded essentially with the phrases which lie at the root of Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic mythology.[1] Thus the sleep of Uasar (Osiris) during the winter, before his reappearance in the spring, is the sleep of the fair maiden who is waked up by Sigurd, and answers to the sojourn of Balder in the unseen world and to the imprisonment of Kore or Persephone in the house of Hades. It is of this Osiris that the horned maiden Isis is both the mother and the wife, and the dogheaded Anubis (Anpu) is their companion. Osiris is killed by his brother Set, or Sethi, as Balder is killed by Hodr; but after his imprisonment beneath the earth he rises to a new life and becomes the judge of the dead. This office was denoted by his title Rhot-amenti, a name manifestly borrowed by the Greeks under the form Rhadamanthys. The son of Isis and Osiris was Horos, who is represented as a boy on a lotus flower with a finger in his mouth. His name, again, Har-pichruti, Horus the Child, the Greeks threwinto the form of Harpokrates.[2]
- ↑ Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 1879, the night. But " although all myths Lecture iii.
- ↑ It is well to know that an examination of Egyptian mythology amply bears out the conclusions reached by those who have worked in the wider domain of Aryan tradition. It matters not where we may go, we are everywhere, as Mr. Renouf remarks, confronted with the fact that, as soon as the nature of the myth is understood, all anomalies and seeming immoralities in the popular stories of the gods are at once explained. In Egyptian myths, as elsewhere, the birth of the sun may be ascribed to ever so many different mothers. He may be the son of the sky, or of the dawn, or of the sea, or of are strictly true, they can be harmonised only when transliterated into the language of physical reality." It was, however, the climate of the Nile valley which determined the character of Egyptian mythology, and confined it almost entirely to phenomena of regular and perpetual occurrence. Mr. Renouf thus reaches the definite conclusion, " Whatever may be the case in other mythologies, I look upon the sunrise and sunset, on the daily return of day and night, on the battle between light and darkness, on the whole solar drama in all its details, that is acted every day, every month, every year, in heaven and in earth, as the 'principal
