ouching the
horizon in the west. A study of certain texts cited by Brugsch clearly
shows that it was for very practical and sensible reasons that the
Egyptian astronomers had adopted the plan of an imaginary human form
stretched across the nocturnal heaven, as it enabled the position of
constellations and stars to be definitely located. Lepsius has shown that,
in a series of inscriptions in the tombs of Ramses VI and Ramses IX, the
movements and positions of stars are given in connection with the parts of
an imaginary human form in the sky. It is thus said of a star that it was
situated: "in the middle of the breast, in the right eye, the left eye,
the right ear, the left ear, the right arm, the left arm, the left thigh."

Brugsch (_op. cit._ I, p. 187) quotes the opinion of Lepsius that the
parts alluded to in the above inscriptions, referred to an imaginary male
figure stretched across the firmament and viewed _en face_, and publishes
a theoretical reconstruction of this imaginary figure. It recalls that of
a Buddha and suggests the idea that the Egyptian schematical figure must
have also been imagined as seated on the stable centre of the heaven.
Egyptian astronomical texts, which I shall cite further on, appear to me
to show distinctly that the lotus flower (the name for flower being ankh)
was employed to express the sound ankh, which means "life" and that it
occurs in connection with other symbols of the pole-star god.

Returning to the representations of Nut stretched across the sky, it
should be noted that this employment of the human form belongs to the same
category as the Sphinx, which appears to have been the terrestrial
counterpart of the celestial schematical figure. On the other hand, the
sign nut, consisting of a circle with four divisions, like the pyramid,
represents the successful attempt to express the same thought in abstract,
geometrical form, such as would be intelligible to an initiated,
intellectual minority only.

It will be seen further on that I advance the view that the pyramid, being
a miniature reproduction of the scheme of the universe, contained a sacred
central chamber, representing the sacred Middle, and that this was
destined to be the "house of eternal repose" for the dead king, the
representative of the universal god.

As Dr. Wallis Budge tells us: "If the deceased succeeds in passing the
ordeal [of judgment after death] satisfactorily, he comes forth at once as
a god (there is no