oyage, and
many are the obstacles to be overcome during the successive hours of
night before he reaches again the gates of day. The souls of men who
have died are also led by him through those nether spaces; by a
hidden knowledge, if they have been at pains to possess themselves of
it, they are able to keep close to Ra on the perilous journey. He
gives them fields to cultivate in the plains beneath, and they are
made glad by his appearance at the appointed hour in the nights that
follow.

[Footnote 5: There are in Egyptian religion several gods called
Horus; this, the oldest one, is fused with Ra, the first sun-god, in
the double name Ra-Harmachis, a being to whom the highest attributes
are given. The symbol of this god is a recumbent lion with a man's
head, the figure in which also the kings of Egypt are represented.]

[Footnote 6: See the inscription in _Records of the Past_, ii. 98.]

Osiris, the sun-god of Abydos, is also reported to have been a human
being who was exalted to divine honours. (The god of the under-world
and judge of the dead, who bears the same name, is a different
figure; of him we shall speak afterwards.) He is the most interesting
and the best known of the gods of Egypt; his myth is found at length
in Plutarch, with the mystical interpretations proposed for it in
ancient times; he is also the god in whom the affinity of Egyptian
with Babylonian religion appears most clearly: cf. chapter vii. Born,
according to the myth we mentioned above, at one birth with four
other gods, of the venerable parents Seb and Nut (see above), he from
the first has Isis for his wife and sister, and his brother Set is
also born along with him, with whom he lives in perpetual hostility.
Neither can quite overcome the other, and many are the incidents of
their warfare. As a rule the gods of Egypt are serene and good
beings; here only dualism shows itself. Osiris is the good power both
morally and in the sphere of outward nature, while Set is the
embodiment of all that the Egyptian regards as evil,--darkness, the
desert, the hot south wind, sickness, and red hair. It is not the
case that Set was an imported god and belonged to Semitic invaders,
but these invaders found him more suited to their notions of deity
than any other god of Egypt, and sought to make him supreme, in
which, however, they could not succeed. The story of the
dismemberment of Osiris and of the search of Isis for his loved
remains, which she buried i