ng in the water below; Harmakhis, standing behind
him, is present at the execution. Facing this divine pair,
is the young Horus, who kills a man, another partisan of
Sit, while Isis and Har-Huditi hold his chains; behind
Horus, Isis and Thot are leading four other captives bound
and ready to be sacrificed before Harmakhis.

The history of the world for Egypt was therefore only the history of the
struggle between the adherents of Osiris and the followers of Sit; an
interminable warfare in which sometimes one and sometimes the other of
the rival parties obtained a passing advantage, without ever gaining a
decisive victory till the end of time. The divine kings of the second
and third Ennead devoted most of the years of their earthly reign
to this end; they were portrayed under the form of the great warrior
Pharaohs, who, from the eighteenth to the twelfth century before our
era, extended their rule from the plains of the Euphrates to the marshes
of Ethiopia. A few peaceful sovereigns are met with here and there in
this line of conquerors--a few sages or legislators, of whom the most
famous was styled Thot, the doubly great, ruler of Hermopolis and of
the Hermopolitan Ennead. A legend of recent origin made him the prime
minister of Horus, son of Isis; a still more ancient tradition would
identify him with the second king of the second dynasty, the immediate
successor of the divine Horuses, and attributes to him a reign of 3226
years. He brought to the throne that inventive spirit and that creative
power which had characterized him from the time when he was only
a feudal deity. Astronomy, divination, magic, medicine, writing,
drawing--in fine, all the arts and sciences emanated from him as from
their first source. He had taught mankind the methodical observation
of the heavens and of the changes that took place in them, the slow
revolutions of the sun, the rapid phases of the moon, the intersecting
movements of the five planets, and the shapes and limits of the
constellations which each night were lit up in the sky. Most of the
latter either remained, or appeared to remain immovable, and seemed
never to pass out of the regions accessible to the human eye. Those
which were situate on the extreme margin of the firmament accomplished
movements there analogous to those of the planets.

[Illustration: 293.jpg ONE OF THE ASTRONOMICAL TABLES OF THE TOMB OF
RAMSES IV. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, f