ommes dans le tombeau de Ramses III," in the
_Transactions_, vol. viii., pp. 412-20); afterwards published anew by
Herr von Bergmann (_Hieroglyphische Inscriften_, pls. lxxv.-lxxxii., and
pp. 55, 56); completely translated by Brugsch (_Die neue Weltordnung
nach Vernichtung des suendigen Menschengeschlechts nach einer
Altaegyptischen Ueberlieferung_, 1881); and partly translated by Lauth
(_Aus AEgyptens Vorzeit_, pp. 70-81) and by Lefebure ("Une chapitre de la
chronique solaire," in the _Zeitschrift fuer AEgyptische Sprache_, 1883,
pp 32, 33)".[178]

Important commentaries upon this story have been published also by
Brugsch and Gauthier.[179]

As the really important features of the story consist of the incoherent
and contradictory details, and it would take up too much space to
reproduce the whole legend here, I must refer the reader to Maspero's
account of it (_op. cit._), or to the versions given by Erman in his
"Life in Ancient Egypt" (p. 267, from which I quote) or Budge in "The
Gods of the Egyptians," vol. i., p. 388.

Although the story as we know it was not written down until the time of
Seti I (_circa_ 1300 B.C.), it is very old and had been circulating as a
popular legend for more than twenty centuries before that time. The
narrative itself tells its own story because it is composed of many
contradictory interpretations of the same incidents flung together in a
highly confused and incoherent form.

The other legends to which I shall have constantly to refer are "The
Saga of the Winged Disk," "The Feud between Horus and Set," "The
Stealing of Re's Name by Isis," and a series of later variants and
confusions of these stories.[180]

The Egyptian legends cannot be fully appreciated unless they are in
conjunction with those of Babylonia and Assyria,[181] the mythology of
Greece,[182] Persia,[183] India,[184] China,[185] Indonesia,[186] and
America.[187]

For it will be found that essentially the same stream of legends was
flowing in all these countries, and that the scribes and painters have
caught and preserved certain definite phases of this verbal currency.
The legends which have thus been preserved are not to be regarded as
having been directly derived the one from the other but as collateral
phases of a variety of waves of story spreading out from one centre.
Thus the comparison of the whole range of homologous legends is
peculiarly instructive and useful; because the gaps in the Egyptian
series, for ex