Adonis story of the Semites. This
fact brings with it a suggestion which requires consideration.

The racial connection of the Egyptians may seem to have little to
do with immortality. But I beg a moment's consideration. The two
great dominating ideas of immortality are those held by the
Christians and by the Mohammedans, and these are essentially the
same idea. Both these religions are creations of the Semitic
race. It is, therefore, decidedly of importance to find that the
Egyptian race, the creator of a third great religion, has also a
large Semitic strain. In fact, the investigations of the last ten
years appear to show that this Semitic strain it was which gave
the Egyptian race its creative power and made possible the
development of the Egyptian civilization.

The Egyptian language furnishes us with indisputable proof of the
Semitic affinity, as Professor Adolf Erman showed years ago. The
anatomical examination by Professor Elliot Smith of a large
number of skeletons, dated by careful excavations, has given us a
further clue. There is a prehistoric race found in the earliest
cemeteries--neither Negroid nor Asiatic in characteristics. In
the late predynastic and the early dynastic periods, when the
great development began, this primitive race had become modified
by an infiltration of broad-headed people from the north. In the
Old Empire, this broad-headed people had become predominant, and
remain so throughout all Lower and Middle Egypt until the present
day. This intruding race, whose advent marks the beginning of
Egyptian civilization, I believe to have been Semitic.

Remember this--the texts show clearly older ideas in conflict
with the Osiris belief. The primitive race was not, I believe, a
race of Osiris followers. Professor Erman has stated that the
Osiris belief is as early as 4200 B.C. That I am certain is
absolutely untenable. It is a question of Egyptian chronology in
which I beg to differ radically both from Eduard Meyer and
Professor Erman. In the formal calendar year of three hundred and
sixty-five days, there are twelve months of thirty days and five
intercalary days. These intercalary days are called the birthdays
of Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys--the five most
important figures in the Osiris myth. According to Professor
Meyer and Professor Erman, this formal calendar was introduced in
4200 B.C., one of the occasions when the heliacal rising of the
star Sothis fell o