g the king's life--after his death Amon, under the vigorous
leadership of the Theban priests, resumed his old position and
maintained it until the first break-up of the national Egyptian
government. But it was Amon-Ra that became supreme from the fourteenth
century onward. The combination of the names was made possible by the
social and political union of the two divisions of the land, and it was
Ra who gave special glory to Amon.[1254]

+728+. A different line of growth appears in the history of Osiris--he
owed his eminence mainly to his connection with the dead. Where his cult
arose is not known; he was a very old god, possibly prominent in the
predynastic period;[1255] at a later time the importance of Abydos, the
chief seat of his worship, may have added to his reputation. But the
ceremonies of his cult and the myths that grew up about his name
indicate that he was originally a deity of vegetation, the patron of the
underground productive forces of the earth, and so, naturally, he became
the lord of the Underworld,[1256] and eventually (as ethical conceptions
of life became more definite in Egypt) the embodiment of future justice,
the determiner of the moral character and the everlasting fate of men.
Why he and not some other underground god became Underworld judge the
data do not make clear. His association with the death and
revivification of plants gave a peculiarly human character to his
mythical biography and a dramatic and picturesque tone to his
cult.[1257] Of all ancient lords of the Otherworld it is Osiris that
shows the most continuous progress and reaches the highest ethical
plane--a fact that must be referred to the intense interest of the
Egyptians in the future.[1258]

+729+. The three most prominent female deities of the Egyptian pantheon,
Hathor of Dendera, Neith (Nit, Neit) of Sais, and Isis of Buto, exhibit
one and the same type of character, and each is occasionally identified
with one of the others. Hathor was widely worshiped, but was not
otherwise especially noteworthy. The famous inscription said to have
stood in the temple of Neith at Sais ("What is and what shall be and
what has been am I--my veil no one has lifted"[1259]) seems not to be
immediately connected with any important religious movement, though it
is in keeping with the liberal and mystical tendency of the later time.
The third goddess, Isis, had a more remarkable history. Her beginnings
are obscure, and she appears in the inscri