man is
an imitative animal and that inventive genius is far from common.(1)
Consequently the wide dispersion of many beliefs and practices, which
used generally to be explained as due to the similar and independent
working of the human mind under like conditions, is now often
provisionally registered as evidence of migratory movement or of
cultural drift. Much good work has recently been done in tabulating
the occurrence of many customs and beliefs, in order to ascertain their
lines of distribution. Workers are as yet in the collecting stage, and
it is hardly necessary to say that explanatory theories are still to
be regarded as purely tentative and provisional. At the meetings of
the British Association during the last few years, the most breezy
discussions in the Anthropological Section have undoubtedly centred
around this subject. There are several works in the field, but the most
comprehensive theory as yet put forward is one that concerns us, as it
has given a new lease of life to the old solar interpretation of the
Deluge story.

(1) See, e.g. Marett, _Anthropology_ (2nd ed., 1914), Chap.
iv, "Environment," pp. 122 ff.; and for earlier tendencies,
particularly in the sphere of mythological exegesis, see S.
Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, t. IV (1912), pp. 1
ff.

In a land such as Egypt, where there is little rain and the sky is
always clear, the sun in its splendour tended from the earliest period
to dominate the national consciousness. As intercourse increased along
the Nile Valley, centres of Sun-worship ceased to be merely local, and
the political rise of a city determined the fortunes of its cult. From
the proto-dynastic period onward, the "King of the two Lands" had borne
the title of "Horus" as the lineal descendant of the great Sun-god of
Edfu, and the rise of Ra in the Vth Dynasty, through the priesthood of
Heliopolis, was confirmed in the solar theology of the Middle Kingdom.
Thus it was that other deities assumed a solar character as forms of Ra.
Amen, the local god of Thebes, becomes Amen-Ra with the political rise
of his city, and even the old Crocodile-god, Sebek, soars into the sky
as Sebek-Ra. The only other movement in the religion of ancient Egypt,
comparable in importance to this solar development, was the popular cult
of Osiris as God of the Dead, and with it the official religion had to
come to terms. Horus is reborn as the posthumous son of Osiris, and Ra
g