[1252] See, for example, the hymn in _Records of the Past_,
viii, 105 ff.

[1253] He was, therefore, doubtless a god of fertility.

[1254] _Records of the Past_, ii, 129 ff. The names of other
deities also were combined with that of Ra.

[1255] Egyptian civilization, as appears from recent
explorations, began far back of Menes; cf. Ed. Meyer,
_Geschichte des Altertums_, 2d ed., vol. i, part ii, Sec. 169.

[1256] Cf. Breasted, _History of Egypt_, p. 58; Frazer,
_Adonis Attis Osiris_, bk. iii, chap. v.

[1257] Plutarch, _Isis and Osiris_, 18; Frazer, loc. cit.;
Breasted, op. cit., p. 171 f.

[1258] His identification by some ancient theologians with
the sun (Frazer, op. cit., p. 351 f.) or with the moon
(Plutarch, op. cit., 41) is an illustration of the late
tendency to identify any great god with a heavenly body.

[1259] Such is the wording given by Proclus. The form in
Plutarch (_Isis and Osiris_, 9) is substantially the same:
"I am all that has been and that is and that shall be, and
my veil no mortal has lifted." See Roscher, _Lexikon_,
article "Nit," col. 436. Doubts have been cast on the
reality of the alleged inscription.

[1260] Maspero, _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 131.

[1261] So Ed. Meyer, in Roscher, _Lexikon_, article "Isis,"
col. 360.

[1262] Steindorff, _Religion of the Ancient Egyptians_, p.
107 ff.

[1263] See Drexler, in Roscher, _Lexikon_, article "Isis,"
col. 424 ff.

[1264] Barth, _The Religions of India_ (Eng. tr.); Hopkins,
_Religions of India_; Hillebrandt, _Vedische Mythologie_;
Macdonell, _Vedic Mythology_, Bloomfield, _Religion of the
Veda_. See the bibliography in Hopkins, op. cit., p. 573 ff.

[1265] _Rig-Veda_, viii, 41, 1. 7; i, 23, 5 (_[r.]ta_,
'order').

[1266] _Rig-Veda_, x, 121.

[1267] Early imagination apparently connected the future
social life of gods and men not with the calm sky, but with
the upper region that was the scene of constant and awful
movements. But the ground of the choice of Indra as lord of
heaven rests in the obscurity of primeval times.

[1268] For economic reasons a rain-god must generally be
prominent and popular.

[1269] Sec. 703.

[1270] The history of this distinction between Dyaus and
Varuna is lost in the obscurity of the beginnings.

[1271] This conception appears in germinal form in
_Rig-Veda_, v, 84, vi, 515, but is not there or else