ibes, regarded all
their kings as gods on earth and paid them formal worship after their
death; the later Egyptians, going a step further, worshipped them even
in their lifetime as embodiments of the gods.[3] What is said in the
liturgy for the deification of Unas is much the same as was said of
other kings. The dead king in early Egypt becomes a god, even the
greatest of the gods, and he assumes the name of that god[4]; he
overcomes the other gods by brute force, he kills and devours them.
This is very like what I think was the case with Zeus; the main
difference is that in Egypt the _character_ of the deified king was
merged in that of the old god, and men continued to regard the latter
in exactly the same light as before; but among the forefathers of the
Greeks the reverse happened in at least one case, that of Zeus, where
the character of a hero who had peculiarly fascinated popular
imagination partly eclipsed that of the old god whose name and rank he
usurped. The reason for this, I suppose, is that even the early
Egyptians had already a conservative religion with fixed traditions
and a priesthood that forgot nothing,[5] whereas among the forefathers
of the Greeks, who were wandering savages, social order and religion
were in a very fluid state. However that may be, a deified hero might
oust an older god and reign under his name; and this theory explains
many difficulties in the legends of Zeus.

[Footnote 2: Sir E. A. W. Budge, _Literature of the Ancient
Egyptians_, p. 21 ff., and _Gods of the Egyptians_, i, pp. 32 f., 43.]

[Footnote 3: Erman, _Handbook of Egyptian Religion_, p. 37 f.]

[Footnote 4: Budge, _Lit. of the Egyptians_, p. 21; Erman, _ut supra_,
p. 37 f.]

[Footnote 5: It is even possible that in one case, that of Osiris, a
hero in Egypt may have eclipsed by his personality the god whom he
ousted. See Sir J. W. Frazer's _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, ii, p. 200,
and Sir W. Ridgeway's _Dramas and Dramatic Dances, etc._, p. 94 ff.]

As to the Roman Iuppiter, I need not say much about him. Like all the
genuine gods of Latium, he never was much more than an abstraction
until the Greeks came with their literature and dressed him in the
wardrobe of their Zeus.

Coming now to Ushas, the Lady of the Dawn, and looking at her name
from the standpoint of comparative philosophy, we see that the word
_ushas_ is closely connected with the Greek [Greek: heos] and the
Latin _aurora_. But when we read the literature,