n fourteen different places where she
found them, is one which is found connected with other names in other
lands. Horus is the avenger of his father. Here we have this deity in
three stages--Horus the child in his mother's arms, Horus the
avenger, and Horus the successor of his father, the complete sun-god.

This family of gods is more human and living to us than that of Ra or
than any other set of Egyptian deities. It was also more taken up in
other lands, when the gods of older peoples began to find acceptance
in the West. We see with special clearness in this case the operation
of the principle according to which the contrast of light and
darkness when represented in the gods passes into that of moral good
and evil, so that the god of light becomes the great upholder of
righteousness and dispenser of beneficence. The good god of Egyptian
religion, moreover, is accompanied by a goddess who is somewhat more
than the pale reflection of the male god, as most Egyptian goddesses
are. The incidents of the legend also lend to the divine characters a
tragic depth in which the prosperous and happy gods of Egypt do not
generally share.

Ptah is the god of Memphis, and adjoining his temple is the chapel of
the bull Apis, who is called the "second life of Ptah." If these two
resided side by side, some theory of their relationship was needed,
and the bull became the earthly representative of the unseen deity.
Each had a worship of prehistoric antiquity, and it is vain to
theorise on their original relation to each other. As for Ptah, his
name means "he who forms," and the Greeks called him by the name of
their own Hephaistos, the artificer. In later times he came to be
identified with the sun, and was called the "honourable," "golden,"
"beautiful," and "of comely face"; but earlier he seems rather to
have to do with the hidden source of the world's heat, the elemental
warmth which is at the beginning of all life. He also is, like Ra and
Osiris, a god of the under-world to which men go after death. He is
said to open the mouth of the dead--that is to say, that he hears
them and judges them. But in the upper-world too he has to do with
justice; he is called the "Lord of the Ell," a title connecting him
with measurements and boundaries, matters of the greatest importance
in Egypt. His son is Imhotep, he who comes in peace; the Greeks
regarded this god as a physician, and called him Asclepios. The
goddess of the triad is Sechet, wh