e sacred
grove, growing brighter every minute, and Osiris came up from the lower
world, led by his victorious son. Isis hastened to embrace her risen
and delivered husband, gave the beautiful Horus his lotus-flower again
instead of the sword, and scattered fruits and flowers over the earth,
while Osiris seated himself under a canopy wreathed with ivy, and
received the homage of all the spirits of the earth and of the Amenti."

[The lower world, in Egyptian Amenti, properly speaking, the West or
kingdom of death, to which the soul returns at the death of the
body, as the sun at his setting. In a hieroglyphic inscription of
the time of the Ptolemies the Amenti is called Hades.]

Darius was silent. Rhodopis began:

"We thank you for your charming account; but this strange spectacle
must have a higher meaning, and we should thank you doubly if you would
explain that to us."

"Your idea is quite right," answered Darius, "but what I know I dare not
tell. I was obliged to promise Neithotep with an oath, not to tell tales
out of school."

"Shall I tell you," asked Rhodopis, "what conclusions various hints from
Pythagoras and Onuphis have led me to draw, as to the meaning of this
drama? Isis seems to me to represent the bountiful earth; Osiris,
humidity or the Nile, which makes the earth fruitful; Horus, the young
spring; Typhon, the scorching drought. The bounteous earth, robbed of
her productive power, seeks this beloved husband with lamentations in
the cooler regions of the north, where the Nile discharges his waters.
At last Horus, the young springing power of nature, is grown up and
conquers Typhon, or the scorching drought. Osiris, as is the case with
the fruitful principle of nature, was only apparently dead, rises from
the nether regions and once more rules the blessed valley of the Nile,
in concert with his wife, the bounteous earth."

"And as the murdered god behaved properly in the lower regions," said
Zopyrus, laughing, "he is allowed, at the end of this odd story, to
receive homage from the inhabitants of Hamestegan, Duzakh and Gorothman,
or whatever they call these abodes for the Egyptian spirit-host."

"They are called Amenti," said Darius, falling into his friend's merry
mood; "but you must know that the history of this divine pair represents
not only the life of nature, but also that of the human soul, which,
like the murdered Osiris, lives an eternal life, even when the body is
dead."

"Th