ed amalgamation in Egypt of two races with their religions.
Supposing that the gods of the higher orders represented the religious
ideas of a Semitic or Aryan race entering Egypt from Asia, and that the
Osiris group were the gods of the African nature-worship, which they found
prevailing on their arrival, it is quite natural that the priests should
in their classification place their own gods highest, while they should
have allowed the external worship to go on as formerly, at least for a
time. But, after a time, as the tone of thought became more elevated, they
may have succeeded in substituting for the God of Terror and Destruction a
higher conception in the popular worship.

The myth of Isis and Osiris, preserved for us by Plutarch, gives the most
light in relation to this order of deities.

Seb and Nutpe, or Nut, called by the Greeks Chronos and Rhea, were the
parents of this group. Seb is therefore Time, and Nut is Motion or perhaps
Space. The Sun pronounced a curse on them, namely, that she should not be
delivered, on any day of the year. This perhaps implies the difficulty of
the thought of Creation. But Hermes, or Wisdom, who loved Rhea, won, at
dice, of the Moon, five days, the seventieth part of all her
illuminations, which he added to the three hundred and sixty days, or
twelve months. Here we have a hint of a correction of the calendar, the
necessity of which awakened a feeling of irregularity in the processes of
nature, admitting thereby the notion of change and a new creation. These
five days were the birthdays of the gods. On the first Osiris is born, and
a voice was heard saying, "The Lord of all things is now born." On the
second day, Arueris-Apollo, or the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon, who
broke through a hole in his mother's side; on the fourth, Isis; and on the
fifth, Nepthys-Venus, or Victory. Osiris and Arueris are children of the
Sun, Isis of Hermes, Typhon and Nepthys of Saturn.

Isis became the wife of Osiris, who went through the world taming it by
means of oratory, poetry, and music. When he returned, Typhon took
seventy-two men and also a queen of Ethiopia, and made an ark the size of
Osiris's body, and at a feast proposed to give it to the one whom it
should fit. Osiris got into it, and they fastened down the lid and
soldered it and threw it into the Nile. Then Isis put on mourning and went
to search for it, and directed her inquiries to little children, who were
hence held by the Egyp