united to him after the death of the body, and thenceforth took
the name of Osiris. The Egyptian Cosmos consisted of the three
great realms, the Heavens, the Earth and the Depths. Over the vast
ocean which girdles the vault of heaven, the sun moves in a boat or
car drawn by the planets and fixed stars. On this ocean too the
great constellations circle in their ships, and there is the kingdom
of the blissful gods, who sit enthroned above this heavenly ocean
under a canopy of stars. The mouth of this great stream is in the
East, where the sun-god rises from the mists and is born again as a
child every morning. The surface of the earth is inhabited by human
beings having a share in the three great cosmic kingdoms. They
receive their soul from the heights of heaven, the seat and source
of light; their material body is of the earth; and the appearance or
outward form by which one human being is distinguished from another
at sight--his phantom or shadow--belongs to the depths. At death,
soul, body, and shadow separate from one another. The soul to
return to the place from whence it came, to Heaven, for it is a part
of God (of Osiris); the body, to be committed to the earth from
which it was formed in the image of its creator; the phantom or
shadow, to descend into the depths, the kingdom of shadows. The
gate to this kingdom was placed in the West among the sunset hills,
where the sun goes down daily,--where he dies. Thence arise the
changeful and corresponding conceptions connected with rising and
setting, arriving and departing, being born and dying. The careful
preservation of the body after death from destruction, not only
through the process of inward decay, but also through violence or
accident, was in the religion of ancient Egypt a principal condition
(perhaps introduced by the priests on sanitary grounds) on which
depended the speedy deliverance of the soul, and with this her
early, appointed union with the source of Light and Good, which two
properties were, in idea, one and indivisible. In the Egyptian
conceptions the soul was supposed to remain, in a certain sense,
connected with the body during a long cycle of solar years. She
could, however, quit the body from time to time at will, and could
appear to mortals in various forms and places; these appearances
differed according to the hour, and were prescribed in e