be imprisoned within the tomb like the doubles of earlier times,
because they feared the light. They "went forth by day," and dwelt in
those places where they had lived; they walked in their gardens by their
ponds of running water; they perched like so many birds on the branches
of the trees which they had planted, or enjoyed the fresh air under the
shade of their sycamores; they ate and drank at pleasure; they travelled
by hill and dale; they embarked in the boat of Ra, and disembarked
without weariness, and without distaste for the same perpetual round.

This conception, which was developed somewhat late, brought the
Egyptians back to the point from which they had started when first they
began to speculate on the life to come.

[Illustration: 285.jpg THE SOUL ON THE EDGE OF THE FUNERAL COUCH, WITH
ITS HANDS ON THE HEART OF THE MUMMY. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
Bey, reproducing the miniature sarcophagus of the scribe Ra
(Maspero, _Guide du Visiteur_, pp. 130, 131, No. 1621).

The soul, after having left the place of its incarnation to which in the
beginning it clung, after having ascended into heaven and there sought
congenial asylum in vain, forsook all havens which it had found above,
and unhesitatingly fell back upon earth, there to lead a peaceful, free,
and happy life in the full light of day, and with the whole valley of
Egypt for a paradise.

The connection, always increasingly intimate between Osiris and Ra,
gradually brought about a blending of the previously separate myths and
beliefs concerning each. The friends and enemies of the one became the
friends and enemies of the other, and from a mixture of the original
conceptions of the two deities, arose new personalities, in which
contradictory elements were blent together, often without true fusion.
The celestial Horuses one by one were identified with Horus, son of
Isis, and their attributes were given to him, as his in the same way
became theirs. Apopi and the monsters--the hippopotamus, the crocodile,
the wild boar--who lay in wait for Ra as he sailed the heavenly ocean,
became one with Sit and his accomplices. Sit still possessed his half
of Egypt, and his primitive brotherly relation to the celestial Horus
remained unbroken, either 'on account of their sharing one temple, as at
Nubit, or because they were worshipped as one in two neighbouring
nomes, as, for example, at Oxyrrhynchos and at Heracleop