d Anubis,
to establish themselves in this territory. Beyond Heracleopolis, he
entered the domains of the Memphite gods, the "land of Sokaris," and
this probably was the most perilous moment of his journey.

[Illustration: 062.jpg ONE OF THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKS OF AMON]

The feudatories of Phtah were gathered together in grottoes, connected
by a labyrinth of narrow passages through which even the most fully
initiated were scarcely able to find their way; the luminous boat,
instead of venturing within these catacombs, passed above them by
mysterious tracks. The crew were unable to catch a glimpse of the
sovereign through whose realm they journeyed, and they in like manner
were invisible to him; he could only hear the voices of the divine
sailors, and he answered them from the depth of the darkness. Two hours
were spent in this obscure passage, after which navigation became easier
as the vessel entered the nomes subject to the Osirises of the Delta:
four consecutive hours of sailing brought the bark from the province in
which the four principal bodies of the god slept to that in which
his four souls kept watch, and, as it passed, it illuminated the eight
circles reserved for men and kings who worshipped the god of Mendes.
From the tenth hour onwards it directed its course due south, and passed
through the Augarit, the place of fire and abysmal waters to which the
Heliopolitans consigned the souls of the impious; then finally quitting
the tunnel, it soared up in the east with the first blush of dawn. Each
of the ordinary dead was landed at that particular hour of the twelve,
which belonged to the god of his choice or of his native town. Left to
dwell there they suffered no absolute torment, but languished in the
darkness in a kind of painful torpor, from which condition the approach
of the bark alone was able to rouse them. They hailed its daily coming
with acclamations, and felt new life during the hour in which its rays
fell on them, breaking out into lamentations as the bark passed away and
the light disappeared with it. The souls who were devotees of the sun
escaped this melancholy existence; they escorted the god, reduced though
he was to a mummied corpse, on his nightly cruise, and were piloted by
him safe and sound to meet the first streaks of the new day. As the
boat issued from the mountain in the morning between the two trees which
flanked the gate of the east, these souls had their choice of several
ways of spendin