ame belief with regard to the future world
as their sovereign, and they carried their faith in the sun's power
to the point of identifying themselves with him after death, and of
substituting the name of Ra for that of Osiris; they either did not
venture, however, to go further than this, or were unable to introduce
into their tombs all that we find in the Bab el-Moluk. They confined
themselves to writing briefly on their own coffins, or confiding to
the mummies of their fellow-believers, in addition to the "Book of the
Dead," a copy of the "Book of knowing what there is in Hades," or of
some other mystic writing which was in harmony with their creed. Hastily
prepared copies of these were sold by unscrupulous scribes, often badly
written and almost always incomplete, in which were hurriedly set
down haphazard the episodes of the course of the sun with explanatory
illustrations. The representations of the gods in them are but little
better than caricatures, the text is full of faults and scarcely
decipherable, and it is at times difficult to recognize the
correspondence of the scenes and prayers with those in the royal tombs.
Although Amon had become the supreme god, at least for this class of
the initiated, he was by no means the sole deity worshipped by the
Egyptians: the other divinities previously associated with him still
held their own beside him, or were further defined and invested with
a more decided personality. The goddess regarded as his partner was at
first represented as childless, in spite of the name of Maut or Mut--the
mother--by which she was invoked, and Amon was supposed to have adopted
Montu, the god of Hermonthis, in order to complete his triad. Montu,
however, formerly the sovereign of the Theban plain, and lord over Amon
himself, was of too exalted a rank to play the inferior part of a divine
son.

[Illustration: 074.jpg KHONSU* AND TEMPLE OF KHONSU**.]

* Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette in the
Gizeh Museum.

** Drawn by Thuillier: A is the pylon, B the court, C the
hypostyle hall, E the passage isolating the sanctuary, D the
sanctuary, F the opisthodomos with its usual chambers.

The priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage
of lesser importance, named Khonsu, who up to that period had been
relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. How they
came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with Osiris and
Tho