the Berber king Aahmes I helped the Egyptians to expel the Hyksos.
If we can thus succeed in connecting the archaeology of the prehistoric
age with the history preserved in the myths, it shows that Osiris must
have been the national god as early as the beginning of prehistoric
culture. His civilising mission may well have been the introduction of
cultivation, at about 8000 B.C., into the Nile valley.

{43}

The theology of Osiris was at first that of a god of those holy fields
in which the souls of the dead enjoyed a future life. There was
necessarily some selection to exclude the wicked from such happiness,
and Osiris judged each soul whether it were worthy. This judgment
became elaborated in detailed scenes, where Isis and Neb-hat stand
behind Osiris who is on his throne, Anubis leads in the soul, the heart
is placed in the balance, and Th[=o]th stands to weigh it and to record
the result. The occupations of the souls in this future we have
noticed in chapter iii. The function of Osiris was therefore the
reception and rule of the dead, and we never find him as a god of
action or patronising any of the affairs of life.

+Isis+ (_Aset_ or _Isit_) became attached at a very early time to the
Osiris worship; and appears in later myths as the sister and wife of
Osiris. But she always remained on a very different plane to Osiris.
Her worship and priesthood were far more popular than those of Osiris,
persons were named after her much more often than after Osiris, and she
appears far more usually in the activities of life. Her union in the
Osiris myth by no moans blotted out her independent position and
importance as a deity, though it gave her {44} a far more widespread
devotion. The union of Horus with the myth, and the establishment of
Isis as the mother goddess, was the main mode of her importance in
later times. Isis as the nursing mother is seldom shown until the
twenty-sixth dynasty; then the type continually became more popular,
until it outgrew all other religions of the country. In the Roman
times the mother Isis not only received the devotion of all Egypt, but
her worship spread rapidly abroad, like that of Mithra. It became the
popular devotion of Italy; and, after a change of name due to the
growth of Christianity, she has continued to receive the adoration of a
large part of Europe down to the present day as the Madonna.

+Nephthys+ (_Neb-hat_) was a shadowy double of Isis; reputedly her
sister, a