my identifies
himself, comparing himself to the three forms of the God Ra,
is also the first earthly king.

** This conception of the primitive Egyptian world is
clearly implied in the very terms employed by the author of
The Destruction of Men. Nuit does not rise to form the sky
until such time as Ra thinks of bringing his reign to an
end; that is to say, after Egypt had already been in
existence for many centuries. In chap. xvii. of the Book of
the Dead (Naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 11. 3-5) it
is stated that the reign of Ra began in the times when the
upliftings had not yet taken place; that is to say, before
Shu had separated Nuit from Sibu, and forcibly uplifted her
above the body of her husband.

Nevertheless in this first attempt at a world there was vegetable,
animal, and human life. Egypt was there, all complete, with her two
chains of mountains, her Nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and
the nomes themselves. Then the soil was more generous; the harvests,
without the labourer's toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when
the Egyptians of Pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any
person or thing, they said that the like had never been known since the
time of Ra.

* This is an ideal in accordance with the picture drawn of
the fields of Ialu in chap. ex. of the _Book of the Dead_
(Naville's edition, vol. i. pis. cxxi.~ cxxiii.). As with
the Paradise of most races, so the place of the Osirian dead
still possessed privileges which the earth had enjoyed
during the first years succeeding the creation; that is to
say, under the direct rule of Ra.

It is an illusion common to all peoples; as their insatiable thirst
for happiness is never assuaged by the present, they fall back upon the
remotest past in search of an age when that supreme felicity which is
only known to them as an ideal was actually enjoyed by their ancestors.
Ra dwelt in Heliopolis, and the most ancient portion of the temple of
the city, that known as the "Mansion of the Prince"--Hait Saru,--passed
for having been his palace. His court was mainly composed of gods and
goddesses, and they as well as he were visible to men. It contained
also men who filled minor offices about his person, prepared his food,
received the offerings of his subjects, attended to his linen and
household affairs. It was said that the _oiru