Another very prominent sacred animal was the jackal, the emblem of Anubis, the protector of the dead in their wanderings. The association of the jackal, which haunts the cemeteries along the edge of the desert, with a guardian of the dead, is but natural; and though specially worshiped at Slut, yet the jackal is represented in sculptures as a divine emblem throughout the whole country.
(4) The Osiride Religion. The gods of the family of Osiris form a very marked group; they are all purely human and without animal or cos mogonic nature, except so far as combined in later times with other gods. In the most remote age it appears that Osiris, his, Mortis, and Set were all independent and unconnected deities, be longing probably to different tribes. his was a goddess at Buto in the Delta. Horus came to be worshiped with her, and was therefore called her son, though a separate form as "Horus the elder" apart from Isis, continued until late times. Then Set was worshiped along with Horns and Isis, and is treated as a coequal god with /fonts. Lastly, Osiris came to be united with this family, Isis was considered his wife, Horus his son, and Set, with whom he was at enmity, ceased to be coequal with Horus, and became the evil brother of Osiris, with whom Horus waged ceaseless war. This warfare of the Hems tribe with the earlier members of the Set tribe forms the oldest chapter of the legendary history, the earlier stages of the religious changes being only dimly preserved, owing to intense con servatism.
At the earliest historic times we find, then, a compact family of gods: Osiris, who married his sister Isis (for thus all good brothers were bound to do ix ancient Egypt), and also his sister Neb hat, or Nephthys, who is otherwise considered the wife of Set, the evil brother of Osiris. The sons of Osiris were Horns, from Isis, and Anpu or Anubis, from Nebhot. The latter is, however, perhaps only a later theologic connection, as Anubis is never figured with Nephthys, while Isis and Ilarus are constantly shown together.
As the god of the dead, Osiris was of the high est importance to the Egyptian Every good Egyptian needed to enter his kingdom, and to be come osirificd, so as to be assured of immortal bliss. I fence all deceased persons were entitled "the Osiris so-and-so," much as we speak of "the blessed dead." The kingdom of Osiris was a shadowy but glorified copy of earthly life. All the pleasures and needful work of life went on there; and in the vignettes to the "Book of the Dead," which was the guide to the unseen world deposited in the tomb of every well-to-do Egyptian, the varied occupations are delightfully figured. To enter this paradise, however. the dead needed to be judged by Osiris; his heart was weighed against truth to see if it were just, and the dead asserted his innocence of a long list of what we should call "mortal sins." If he failed to be ac cepted, his soul was driven away in the form of a pig to an unknown doom. If his heart proved to be true when weighed, he then passed into the fields of Aalu, where Osiris ruled, and all was peace and plenty. And even there he did not need to labor if his tomb had been properly provided with the ushabtis or slave figures, which we have noticed before.
(5) The Cosmogonic Religion. So great has been the influence of sun-worship in Egypt that to the later Egyptians it absorbed everything else, and almost all the other gods became identi fied with Ra, the sun-god. In the early times be fore 2000 B. C., the solar and cosmogonic gods receive but two or three per cent. of all the men tions of divinities. In the XVIII-XX. dynasty they receive over thirty per cent., while later than that they are less prominent, but only because al most every other god was subdued to Ra and formed but a manifestation of the sun.
This cosmogony has many elements similar to that of Mesopotamia, familiar to us in Genesis. The sky or celestial ocean, Nut, rests upon the earth, Seb, to begin with. Then a firmament lifts the waters above from the waters below, and the god Shu raises Nut and supports her on his arms. Shu is empty space or air, symbolized by the light est bulk known—an ostrich feather. Another version was that Ra, the sun himself, lifted the upper waters from the lower; and this may be seen daily in the sun lifting the thick fog and cloud from off the Nile. The sky, Nut, was sym bolized by a woman spotted over with stars, and resting with hands and feet on the ground—the four pillars of the sky—while Shu, or space, sup and Atmu the creator ; second, the lifting of the sky (Nut) from the earth (Seb) ; third, the birth of the Nile and of cultivation. This corresponds to the first three days of Genesis; the separation of light from the Creator, the separation of the upper waters from the lower by space, and the production of sea and land and plants. Specially connected with this Ra worship was the division of the day and night each into twelve hours. The separate hours of day are not specially important, but the hours of night form the basis of one of the most essential beliefs of Egypt. Each hour was a different territory through which the sun passed, accompanied by his bodyguard of gods, and the spirits of the faithful who accompanied him. Sev eral religious works were adapted to this idea, or founded on it. The Book of the Dead, the Book of the Shades (Duct), and the Book of Gates or of Hades belong to this form of spiritual guide book. In the earlier writings of the Book of the Dead the hours are not so prominent, and Osiris is more important than Ra as a patron of the dead; but in all the later writings Ra became more and more important, and the twelve hours are the basis of the whole system. The motion of the sun was seen to be smooth and regular, as that of a boat on water ; and rain was known to descend from the sky. Hence the conclusion was not un natural that there was a river above in the sky, and the sun floated in a boat on that river. The boat or bark of the sun is therefore constantly represented, and the gods who formed his body guard went with him in this boat. Whenever the sun as a moving body was to be shown, as in rising or setting, the disk is figured on a boat.