body. It will be a matter for further research to investigate whether
the "mysteries of Osiris" did not include the dramatization of the death
of Osiris, in which a human victim personified the god and was actually
killed and dismembered.

It is, perhaps, worth noting here, as an analogy, how appropriately the
ancient Mexican annual sacrifice of a youth, chosen among the most
perfect, might have answered as a rendition of the drama of Osiris. The
body of the victim was divided and the pieces distributed to a fixed
number of priests and chieftains, who partook of them as sacred food. The
head was preserved in the Great Temple itself, on the Tzompantli, and the
large number of skulls seen there by the Spaniards constituted a proof of
the great antiquity of the custom. The blood of the victim, poured upon
seeds, seems to have been considered essential for bringing about the
germination of the sacred shoots and typical of the union of the dual
principles of nature and of life springing from death. Idols, formed of
seeds moistened with human blood, were distributed to the participants in
the ceremony. According to some authors this sacred paste, and not pieces
of human flesh, constituted the consecrated food, eaten according to the
prescribed ritual.

How far analogous rites were performed in Egypt remains to be seen; it is,
at all events, certain that, by slow degrees, the cult of the dual
principles of nature gave rise to the institution of strange unnatural
rites, the original naive meanings of which became obscured, debased or
lost. While various localities of Egypt, notably Thebes and Abydos, appear
to have become the birthplace of curious aberrations of the human
intellect, there was one ancient and great centre of learning where
monotheism and the knowledge of the fundamental scheme appear to have been
preserved intact, namely, at Heliopolis, the ancient On or Anu of the
North, named the "House of the Sun" by Jeremiah and "the Eye or Fountain
of the Sun" by the Arabs. According to Mr. Wallis Budge, "its ruins cover
an area three miles square ... the greatest and oldest Egyptian College or
University for the education of the priesthood and laity stood here....
During the XXth dynasty the temple of Heliopolis was one of the largest
and wealthiest of all Egypt and its staff was numbered by thousands. When
Cambyses visited Egypt the glory of Heliopolis was well on the wane and,
after the removal of the priesthood and sag