the Book of the Dead ( PDF )

The Gods Of The Book Of The Dead.
the doctrine of immortality, gained through the god who was "lord of the heavens and of the earth, of the
underworld and of the waters, of the mountains, and of all which the sun goeth round in his course,"[1]
had remained unchanged for at least four thousand years of its existence.
Auset or Isis, the seventh member of the company of the gods of Annu, was the wife of Osiris and the
mother of Horus; her woes have been described both by Egyptian and Greek writers.[2] Her commonest
names are "the great goddess, the divine mother, the mistress of charms or enchantments"; in later times
she is called the "mother of the gods," and the "living one." She is usually depicted in the form of a
woman, with a head-dress in the shape of a seat, the hieroglyphic for which forms her name. The animal
sacred to her was the cow, hence she sometimes wears upon her head the horns of that animal
accompanied by plumes and feathers. In one aspect she is identified with the goddess Selk or Serq, and
she then has upon her head a scorpion, the emblem of that goddess;[3] in another aspect she is united to
the star Sothis, and then a star is added to her crown. She is, however, most commonly represented as the
mother suckling her child Horus, and figures of her in this aspect, in bronze and faïence, exist in
thousands. As a nature goddess she is seen standing in the boat of the sun, and she was probably the deity
of the dawn.
Heru or Horus, the sun-god, was originally a totally distinct god from Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis,
but from the earliest times it seems that the two gods were confounded, and that the attributes of the one
were ascribed to the other; the fight which Horus the sun-god waged against night and darkness was also
at a very early period identified with the combat between Horus, the son of
[1. ###.
2. Chabas, Un Hymne à Osiris (in Revue Archéologique, t. xiv., p. 65 ff.); Horrack, Les Lamentations d'Isis et de Nephthys,
Paris, 1866; The Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys (in Archæologia, vol. lii., London, 1891), etc.
3 See Lanzone, op. cit., tav. 306 ff.]
{p. cxv}
Isis, and his brother Set. The visible emblem of the sun-god was at a very early date the hawk is, which
was probably the first living thing worshipped by the early Egyptians; already in the pyramid texts the
hawk on a standard is used indiscriminately with ### to represent the word "god." The principal forms of
Horus the sun-god, which probably represent the sun at various periods of the day and night,
are:--Heru-ur ({Greek A?rwh`rei), "Horus the Great"; Heru-merti, "Horus of the two eyes," i.e., of the
sun and moon;[1] Heru-nub, "the golden Horus"; Heru-khent-khat; Heru-khent-an-maa, "Horus dwelling
in blindness"; Heru-khuti, "Horus of the two horizons,"[2] the type of which on earth was the Sphinx;
Heru-sam-taui, "Horus the uniter of the north and south"; Heru-hekenu, " Horus of Heken"; and
Heru-behutet, "Horus of Behutet."[3] The cippi of Horus, which became so common at a late period in
Egypt, seem to unite the idea of the physical and moral conceptions of Horus the sun-god and of Horus
the son of Osiris and Isis.
Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, appears in Egyptian texts usually as Heru-p-khart, " Horus the child,"
who afterwards became the "avenger of his father Osiris," and occupied his throne, as we are told in
many places in the Book of the Dead. In the pyramid texts the deceased is identified with Heru-p-khart,
and a reference is made to the fact that the god is always represented with a finger in his mouth.[4] The
curious legend which Plutarch relates concerning Harpocrates and the cause of his lameness' is probably
[1. A very interesting figure of this god represents him holding his eyes in his hands; see Lanzone, op. cit., p. 618.
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