e
urged in support of the thesis which regards their struggles as
reminiscences of wars between two prominent tribes or confederations of
tribes, one of which worshipped the falcon Horus while the other had the
okapi (?) Seth as its patron and champion. The Horus-tribes were the
victors, and it was from them that the dynastic line sprang; hence the
Pharaoh always bore the name of Horus, and represented in his own
hallowed person the ancient tribal deity. Of Osiris we can only state
that he was originally the local god of Busiris, whatever further
characteristics he primitively possessed being quite obscure. Isis was
perhaps the local goddess of Buto, a town not far distant from Busiris;
this geographical proximity would suffice to explain her connexion with
Osiris in the tale. A legend now arose, we know not how or why, which
made Seth the brother and murderer of Osiris; and this led to a fusion
of the Horus-Seth and the Seth-Isis-Osiris _motifs_. The relationships
had now to be readjusted, and the most popular view recognized Horus as
the son and avenger of Osiris. The more ancient account survived,
however, in the myth that Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys (a
goddess who plays but a minor part in the Osiris cycle) were all
children of the earth-god Keb and the sky-goddess Nut, born on the five
consecutive days added on at the end of the year (the so-called
epagomenal days). Later generations reconciled these contradictions by
assuming the existence of two Horuses, one, the brother of Osiris, Seth
and Isis, being named Haroeris, i.e. Horus the elder, while the other,
the child of Isis and Osiris, was called Harpocrates, i.e. Horus the
child.

Cosmic deities.

The second main class of divinities that entered into the composition of
the Egyptian pantheon was due to that innate and universal speculative
bent which seeks, and never fails to find, an explanation of the facts
of the external world. Behind the great natural phenomena that they
perceived all around them, the Egyptians, like other primitive folk,
postulated the existence of divine wills not dissimilar in kind to their
own, though vastly superior in power. Chief among these cosmic deities
was the sun-god Re, whose supremacy seemed predestined under the
cloudless sky of Egypt. The oldest conceptions represented Re as sailing
across the heavens in a ship called "Manzet," "the bark of the dawn"; at
sunset he stepped aboard another vessel named "Mesenkte