The History of Antiquity Volume I Part 2

[20] Not including the thirty-eight shepherd kings; if these are added the number reaches 322.

[21] Dumichen and Lepsius, "Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache," 1864, p. 81 ff. Deveria and Mariette, "Revue Archeolog." 1865, p. 50 ff; 1866 (13), p. 73 ff.

[22] Mariette in "Revue Archeolog.," 1864 (10), p. 170.

[23] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 20, 44, 72; Deveria, _loc. cit._ p.

58 ff.

[24] P. 98.

[25] Gutschmid in the "Philologus," 10, 672.

[26] The number of 113 generations, which Syncellus gives as contemporaneous, does not in the least agree with the accounts of Manetho; moreover, Gutschmid has shown from what items the number 3,555 in Syncellus has arisen in "Beitrage zur Geschichte des alten Orients,"

s. 9.

[27] On this rests the difference of the systems of Lepsius and Bunsen.

Taking the total given by Syncellus from Manetho of 3,555 years before Nektanebos, Lepsius arrives at the years 3,892 B.C. Bunsen also considers the number 3,555 to be from Manetho, but without historical value. He insists on this number because he allows Manetho to reckon 1,286 years for the new monarchy, 922 years for the Hyksos, and 1,347 years for the old monarchy; but for these 1,347 years he subst.i.tutes the 1,076 years of Eratosthenes, in order to fix the historical accession of Menes. According to this, Menes began to reign in the year 3284 B.C.

From this, Reinisch ("Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenl. Gesell." 15, 251 ff.) has attempted to reconcile the systems of Bunsen and Lepsius.

He retains the total of 3,555 years, and the year 3,892 B.C. for Menes; to the 1,076 years given by Eratosthenes for the old monarchy he adds four years for Skemiophris, thus making 1,080 years, fixes the middle monarchy--the Hyksos--at 1,088 years, or down to the era [Greek: apo Menophreos] at 1,490, and the new monarchy down to Nektanebos at 985 years.

[28] Boeckh, "Manetho," s. 411; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 148 ff. Th.

Martin "Mem de l'Acad. d'Inscr," 1869 (8), 265 ff.

[29] Boeckh, "Manetho," s. 404. In the decree of Kanopus, belonging to the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, _i.e._ to the year 238 B.C., we find as follows (Lepsius, "Das Bilingue Decret von Kanopus"): "In order that the seasons of the year may continue to observe their time according to the present arrangement of the world, and that feasts which ought to be celebrated in winter may not be celebrated in summer, because the star advances one day in every four years, while others which are celebrated in summer will in later times be celebrated in winter, as has already happened, and will happen again, if the year is to be composed of 360 days, and the five days usually added, from henceforth a day shall be kept as the festival of the Divi Euergetes, every fourth year after the intercalary days, before the new year." That the discovery of the want of a quarter of a day was made before the time of Ptolemaeus Euergetes I., and that for a long time computations were made by the fixed year with an intercalary cycle every fourth year, as well as by the movable year, is beyond doubt. The decree did not become of universal application till 26 B.C.

[30] Herod. 2, 142.

[31] Boeckh, "Manetho," s. 36; Lepsius, "Chronologie," s. 193.

[32] According to Boeckh's "Kanon des Africa.n.u.s."

[33] Lepsius, "Konigsbuch," s. 118. Biot, "L'Annee vague," p. 57; cf.

however H. Martin, "Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscript." 1869, pp. 1, 8, 265.

CHAPTER III.

THE RELIGION OF THE EGYPTIANS.

Next to its language the oldest possession of a nation is its religion.

Living in a country of very distinct outlines and characteristic forms, where the regularity of external life is brought more prominently before the view than in other countries, the Egyptians at an early period arrived at a fixed expression of their religious feelings and of the forms of their G.o.ds. Their original conceptions are unknown to us. The oldest monuments, our earliest sources of information, present us with a numerous a.s.semblage of G.o.ds, and the conclusions drawn from these carry us back to views far removed from primitive forms of wors.h.i.+p. They indicate a system already developed in the circle of the priests. We can only attempt from the fragments of that system preserved in inscriptions and ma.n.u.scripts, and the very late accounts of the Greeks, to deduce conclusions concerning the religious notions which originally predominated.

The distinction in the nature of the upper and lower valley, already referred to, cannot have been without influence upon the direction of civic life among the Egyptians, and the formation of their religious ideas. So far as we can tell, these developed independently at the same time in the upper and lower country. In both districts peculiar forms were retained at the most prominent centres of religious wors.h.i.+p, until after the union of the country they became amalgamated in all essential points.

Memphis wors.h.i.+pped the G.o.d Ptah. The great sanctuary of the G.o.d at that city was held to be as ancient as the city itself. So far back as our knowledge extends, the Pharaohs were occupied with the extension and adornment of this temple. Among the Greeks the G.o.d of Memphis was known as Hephaestus: they tell us he was represented in the temple by a dwarf-like image; and that similar images of the children of Ptah stood in a part of the temple only entered by the priests.[34] The name Hephaestus, and the further statement of the Greeks, that this G.o.d was the father of the Sun-G.o.d, prove that in Ptah the Egyptians wors.h.i.+pped not only fire, but the spirit of warmth and light generally; and that they must have regarded him as the origin and source of light.

Manetho puts Ptah at the head of the dynasties of the G.o.ds. He ruled for 9,000 years before the other G.o.ds. Inscriptions name Ptah "the lord of truth," the "father of truth," the "ruler of the sky," "the king of both worlds." As the G.o.d of the light which shows everything in its true form, he is the spirit of truth; as the spirit of the light in the sky, he is the lord of heaven. The inscriptions also say that Ptah "moves the egg of the sun and the moon;" he is called "the weaver of the beginnings," the "G.o.d who rolls his egg in the sky." Consequently, to the Egyptians Ptah was the mover of the luminaries, a formative, creative spirit, and as he is called in the inscriptions "the father of the father of the G.o.ds," he must have been to them the first and oldest G.o.d, the beginning of the G.o.ds and of all things.

The Egyptians believed that a kind of beetle peculiar to their country (_scarabaeus sacer_) was propagated without the female s.e.x; they saw the mode of its reproduction in the b.a.l.l.s of dung which the beetles occasionally pushed before them. Hence they consecrated this insect to their G.o.d of beginning and creation, and on monuments and records we find the G.o.d Ptah with a beetle on his shoulders, in the place of a human head. As the G.o.d of the beginning he appears on monuments in the shape of a child or dwarf; and again, as the unchangeable G.o.d, he is wrapped in the casings of a mummy, with the symbols of dominion, the whip and sceptre, or the so-called Nile-gauge, a ring with parallel cross bars, in his hand, in order to denote him as the G.o.d who gives to all things measure, order, and law. He is also coloured green, to signify, as it would seem, that lie is a G.o.d favourable to vegetation, and possessed of a fertilising power.

Thus Ptah was one of the forms under which the Egyptians invoked the creator, the highest G.o.d. On a pillar of Memphis, now in the Berlin Museum, belonging to the time of the nineteenth dynasty, he is called "the only unbegotten begetter in the heaven and on the earth," "the G.o.d who made himself to be G.o.d, who exists by himself, the double being, the begetter of the first beginning." Other inscriptions and records denote him as "the creator in heaven and on earth, who has made all things, the lord of all that is, and is not."[35]

Below Memphis lay On, the city of the sun (Heliopolis). Here the spirit of the sun, Ra, was the pre-eminent G.o.d. In Manetho's list Ra succeeds Ptah in the kingdom. "The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "regard the sun as the body of the beneficent power, the visible form of a being only comprehensible to thought. The morning sun they represented as a new-born child seated on a lotus leaf, and thrice each day--at sunrise, noon, and sunset--they offered incense to Helius."[36] We also find that the Egyptians represented the sun of the winter months as a little child, the sun of the vernal equinox as a youth, that of the summer solstice as a bearded man, and again, the sun of the autumnal equinox as an old man.[37] Hence they looked at the yearly course of the sun under the allegory of human life. Plutarch's remark about the morning sun shows that they regarded the daily course of the sun from the same point of view, and when he tells us that according to Egyptian story, Apopis made war against the G.o.d of the sky,[38] his statements are confirmed by the monuments. According to the inscriptions Ra is "revealed in the abyss of the sky," he is throned "in the orb of the sun," "he moves his egg." "A Supplication to Ra"--such are the words of a prayer--"who each day by himself brings himself to a new birth. Ra has created all that is in the abysses of the sky."[39] In the tombs of the Ramesids, at Thebes, the course of the sun is represented by the hour of the day and night.

On the form of the blue outstretched G.o.ddess of the sky appears the boat of the sun, for the Egyptians conceived the sun as navigating the air in a skiff, as they navigated the Nile; and in the boat is Ra, a child with finger in mouth at the first hour of the morning. As the day goes on the child increases in size, and at every hour the spirits who lead the boat are changed. In the hours of the afternoon the evil serpent, Apep, the darkness, the Apopis of Plutarch, attempts to swallow the sun, but twelve spirits draw the serpent by ropes to the side. In the hours of the night the sun-G.o.d is inclosed in his shrine on the boat, which is carried along by spirits changing every hour over the waters of the under world to the east--just as the boats on the Nile are drawn against the stream--so that he may again s.h.i.+ne out in the east on the next morning. The hieroglyphics accompanying the navigation of the night hours contain seventy-four invocations of Ra in Amenti, _i.e._ in his concealment. In a similar way the monuments of Edfu exhibit the growth of the sun-G.o.d through the twelve hours of the day from a child to a youth and a man, and an old man bowed with age, leaning upon a staff.

This last is called in the inscriptions, "The old man who becomes again a child."[40]

The monuments exhibit Ra in red, with the sun's...o...b..on his head, a sceptre in one hand, and the symbol of life in the other. The cat, the tawny bull, and the hawk are the chosen creatures of Ra; often he is found on the monuments with the head of a hawk in the place of the human head, or as a hawk carrying the sun's...o...b.. All the entrances of the temple and the pylons display the symbolical form of the deity, the sun's...o...b.. supported by two wings. From the sun-G.o.d the kings of Egypt derived their might and power. They generally call themselves "the sons of Ra," and they rule over Egypt as Ra rules over the world.

Hence we can a.s.sume that to the minds of the priests Ptah was essentially the deity of beginning, the first originator of creation. Ra again was the propagating and sustaining power of the divinity embodied in the sun.

At Hermopolis (Ashmunein), besides Thoth, whom the Greeks compared to their Hermes, and the inscriptions name the "Lord of divine truth," the "scribe of truth," to whom the white Ibis with black neck and beak is sacred, the "children of Ptah" were wors.h.i.+pped. These were eight G.o.ds in four pairs. Owing to this wors.h.i.+p Hermopolis was known to the Egyptians as Pe-sesennu, _i.e._ "the city of reverence." These children of Ptah seem to have been spirits of the elements. In an inscription at Edfu we find, "The eight G.o.ds, the very great, who are from the beginning, created before the G.o.ds, the children of Ptah, arising through him, begotten of him, to take possession of the south and the north, to create in the Thebaid, and fas.h.i.+on in the land of Memphis. When they arose the stream flowed out from the young waters, the child of the lotus flower rose up in the boat, the beautiful one, making this earth bright by his beams."[41]

At Sais, at Buto, on the Sebennytic mouth, and at Bubastis (Tel Basta), on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, female G.o.ddesses were wors.h.i.+pped. To the feast of the G.o.ddess of Sais, whom the Greeks called Athene, the Egyptians came from the whole country, as Herodotus tells us, to Sais, and lighted lamps on the appointed night, and even those who did not come to Sais lit lamps, so that lamps were burning throughout all Egypt.[42] Jamblichus and Proclus tell us that the G.o.ddess of Sais, the Neith of the Egyptians, was the mother of the sun-G.o.d; the inscriptions call Neith "the cow which bore the sun," "ancient mother of the sun,"

"mother of the G.o.ds." Hence we may a.s.sume that Neith was a.s.sociated with Ptah, whose green colour she shares on the monuments; and that the creative power of nature was personified in her under a female form. The feast of lamps may have symbolised the birth of light, and its rise from the darkness.[43] The G.o.ddess of Buto, who was also wors.h.i.+pped at Letopolis, near Memphis, was compared by the Greeks with their G.o.ddess Leto, whose child was Apollo, the spirit of light, because at Buto the victorious G.o.d of light of the Egyptians, of whom we shall speak below, was said to have grown up.[44]

The sanctuary of the G.o.ddess at Bubastis was, according to Herodotus'

account, the most delightful, though not the largest or most costly, in the whole of Egypt. It was situated in the middle of the city, and could be seen from every side. "Beyond the market-place a paved road, about forty feet in width, leads to the shrine, which is overshadowed by trees on both sides. The precincts, a place of about a stadium square, is surrounded with a trench one hundred feet broad; this is connected with the Nile, and also planted with trees. The portico is ten fathoms high, and adorned with statues six cubits in height, and well worth description. On the external walls pictures are everywhere engraved, and the temple in which the statue of the G.o.ddess stands is also surrounded by very lofty trees. At the festival of the G.o.ddess the Egyptians from all the land go down in boats to Bubastis: in every boat is a number of men and women; some of the men blow the flute; some of the women have castanets, and strike them; the rest sing and clap their hands. The boat touches at every city on the river bank; and here also the women sing and strike their castanets, while others follow the women of the city with shouts and raillery; others, again, dance; others expose themselves. On arriving at Bubastis, they bring large offerings to the G.o.ddess, and drink more wine at this festival than in all the rest of the year. According to the accounts of the Egyptians, about 700,000 men and women are collected at this festival, without counting children.[45]

Herodotus calls the G.o.ddess of Bubastis Artemis: her Egyptian name was Bast and Pacht; and the city was called after her Pa-Bast, _i.e._ "abode of Bast." On monuments this G.o.ddess has the sun's disk upon her head, or, in the place of a human head, the head of a cat, which animal was sacred to her. At Heliopolis there was a picture of Ra in the form of a he-cat;[46] and in the inscription Pacht is called the daughter of Ra.

Ra was invoked to come to the help of his daughter, the holy she-cat, who was panic-stricken by the snake which approached heaven in order to tread upon the path of the sun-G.o.d, and to defile the limbs of the holy she-cat.[47] In the sketches in the "Book of the Dead" we find a she-cat, with the right forefoot upon the head of a serpent, and in the left a broad knife, with which she is cutting off the head of the serpent.[48] The account given by Herodotus of the customs observed at the festival are confirmed from other sources. The monuments exhibit musicians, whose music is accompanied by the audience with clapping of the hands; and Plutarch describes the castanets of the Egyptians adorned with the figure of a human-headed she-cat, the sound of which was intended to scare away the evil spirit.[49]

In the upper country other deities were wors.h.i.+pped. At Thebes, Amun, known to the Greeks as Ammon, took the place occupied by Ptah at Memphis. Hecataeus of Abdera relates that the Egyptians identified their supreme G.o.d with the universe, but the G.o.d was invisible and concealed.[50] Amun, as a fact, signifies "the concealed" or "veiled."

The monuments of Thebes exhibit him as a creative G.o.d with the Phallus, as a ruling deity either standing or sitting on a throne; on his royal head-dress are two upright feathers, which to the Egyptians were the symbol of dominion over the upper and under world, and in his hand are the sceptre and the symbol of life. His colour is blue. By his side stands the G.o.ddess Mut; the "mother," the "lady of darkness," as the inscriptions[51] style her. She wears on her head the vulture, or the crown of Upper Egypt. She is also found on inscriptions with the head of a vulture, the bird sacred to her, instead of a human head; and in pictures of battles the vulture of Mut hovers over the Pharaoh as the symbol of protection. The son of Ammon and Mut is Shu (Sosis, Sos), the spirit of the atmosphere, "the bearer of heaven," as the inscriptions name him.[52] This (Thinis) and Abydus were the chief seats of his wors.h.i.+p. In Manetho's list the reign of Shu follows on those of Ptah and Ra.

In the place of Ammon we often find another divinity, Tum (Atmu.) This was the sun-G.o.d in a special form. In Upper Egypt the spirit of the sun was invoked under the names Tum and Mentu. Of these names the first signified the declining sun, the sun of the west, the sun of concealment, the sun in the under world; the second the rising sun, the sun of the east, the sun of the day, the bright sun-G.o.d. Tum also wears the double crown, and the two feathers of Ammon, or in the place of them the two royal serpents round his head-dress; he also is lord of both kingdoms. Like Ptah, he is "the father of beginnings, who begot himself," "the father of the G.o.ds;" like him also he is formed with the beetle in the place of the human head; as the creative G.o.d he is the creator of his name, _i.e._ of his properties; he is the primaeval night, the darkness of the beginning, before light existed. To him also belonged the primaeval water. According to Plutarch, the Egyptians believed that the sun arose out of moisture, that it sprang up out of water, and was nourished by it, and therefore water was the beginning and origin of things. This account is confirmed by the monuments. As light in the process of production, Tum is called "Ra in his egg;" and as the spirit of light arising out of darkness and water, the horologe and the sun-dial are his insignia.[53]

At Coptus, in Upper Egypt, a phallic G.o.d was wors.h.i.+pped under the name Chem, whom the Greeks compared to their G.o.d Pan, and at the falls of Syene a ram-headed G.o.d, Chnum (Chnemu, Chnuphis, Kneph), who in inscriptions is named the lord of the "inundations," of the "outpouring of the waters."[54] As a giver of fruits, the colour of his pictures on the monuments is generally green. In the eyes of the inhabitants of Upper Egypt Chnum was, according to the account of Plutarch, an uncreated eternal spirit.[55] We must therefore regard him as a peculiar form of the life-giving G.o.d. Chnum was often united with Ammon, inasmuch as the latter a.s.sumes the attributes of Chnum, the ram's horns or even head.[56] As the wors.h.i.+p of Ammon pa.s.sed beyond Egypt up the Nile as far as Meroe, so the wors.h.i.+p of Ammon-Chnum spread westward in the Libyan desert as far as the oasis of Siwa, where the inhabitants were called by the Greeks Ammonians. Here, even now, in the vicinity of a clear pool surrounded by lofty palms, the remains of a considerable temple are to be seen, with hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the picture of the ram-headed deity.[57]

The wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ddess Hathor was widely diffused both in Upper and Lower Egypt. The most renowned seats of the cultus were Aphroditopolis, near Memphis; Edfu and Dendera, in Upper Egypt. She is called in the inscriptions "the lady of the dance and revel," and is represented on the monuments with fetters and a tambourine in her hands. From this and from her Grecian name we may conclude that she was the Egyptian G.o.ddess of love, of the enchaining pa.s.sion; but though we find in her form hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. She is represented with the horns of a cow--her sacred animal--on her head, and between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. In the rock-temple at Abusimbel, which the wife of Ramses II. dedicated to Hathor, she is represented as a cow in a boat, over which water-plants meet in arches.

To this cow the king and queen offer flowers and fruits.[58] In the temple at Edfu, a structure of the Ptolemies, 360 local forms of Hathor are said to have been enumerated and among these seven were especially prominent.

It was the beneficent, creative, and life-giving powers of nature which the Egyptians wors.h.i.+pped in these divinities--water, light, the clear heaven, the sun, the powers of reproduction and birth. But the phenomena and the powers presented by nature were not in every case beneficent.

Night swallowed up day, and death swallowed up life. Beside the waters and the black fruitful soil of Egypt lay the boundless yellow desert, from which storms blew the sand into the green valley. In the hot months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. Thus in the life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always gained the upper hand. Out of night arose a new day; out of the death of nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life.

Through this conception of a strife raging between the healing and destructive powers of nature, by regarding nature as moving in a circular course from life to death, and death to life, the Egyptians succeeded in making a great advance in their religious ideas. They personified this strife in certain divine forms. The beneficent power, the divinity of life was allowed to succ.u.mb, and then to rise from apparent death into a new life. Only for a moment could the evil powers vanquish the good; the eternal victory remained with the G.o.ds of beneficence.

After Helius, Hephaestus, Ammon, and Hermes, says Diodorus,[59] Cronos and his sister Rhea ruled. These became the parents of Isis and Osiris, of Typhon, Apollo, and Aphrodite. Plutarch tells us that, according to the legend of the Egyptians, Rhea and Cronos were the parents of Osiris and Isis, of Typhon and Nephthys. Osiris ruled happily over Egypt; but Typhon conspired against him with seventy-two a.s.sociates; they inclosed Osiris in a chest and threw it into the Nile, and the stream carried it down to the sea. When Isis heard of it, she put on mourning, and sought with lamentation the body of Osiris. At last she found the chest in the neighbourhood of Byblus, where the sea had cast it up; she mourned over the corpse and carried it back to Egypt. And when Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris, who grew up in Buto, came to his full strength, he prepared to avenge the wrong which Typhon had done to his father and mother.

Thrice he fought with Typhon; the battle raged for many days, and Horus conquered.[60]

According to the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus, Osiris (Dionysus) and Horus (the Apollo of the Greeks) were the last rulers of the divine race.[61] In the list of Manetho, Ptah was followed in the kingdom by Ra and Shu (or, according to the Theban account, by Ammon, Tum, and Shu), Cronos, Osiris, Typhon, and Horus. These then are the younger G.o.ds; the evidence of the monuments shows that they were connected by race with each other, but not akin to the three G.o.ds who ruled before them. And as we also find that the five supplementary days added in the Egyptian year to the original number of 360 (p. 29) were dedicated to these G.o.ds, the first to Osiris, the second to Horus, the third to Typhon, the fourth to Isis, the fifth to Nephthys--the natural conclusion is that these G.o.ds were of later origin.[62] On the other hand it is clear that the belief in Osiris and his power had already arisen at the time when the great pyramids were erected.

The two G.o.ds at the head of this circle, whom Diodorus and Plutarch call Cronos and Rhea, were known to the Egyptians under the names Seb and Nut.[63] They are the spirits of the earth and sky. Osiris himself in the inscriptions and records is called "the king of the G.o.ds," "the lord of unnumbered days," "the king of life," "the regulator of eternity."

The inscription on the lid of a coffin runs thus--"Ra gave thee the richly streaming light which gleams in thy eyes. Shu gave thee the pleasant air which in thy lifetime was inhaled in thy nostrils. Seb gave thee all fruits whereon thou livest. Osiris gave thee the Nile-water whereon thou livest."[64] As a life-giving G.o.d, the colour of Osiris is green; his sacred tree is the evergreen tamarisk; and his sacred bird a kind of heron, distinguished by two long feathers at the back of the head. Osiris is always represented in a human form, and with a human head.

The chief seats of the wors.h.i.+p of Osiris were Philae and Abydus, in Upper Egypt. In the temple on the island of Philae, formed by the Nile above Syene, the history of the G.o.d was represented.[65] On a little island close by, where only the priests might tread, lay the grave of Osiris, overshadowed by tamarisks;[66] here were libations offered to him, and Diodorus tells us that in Upper Egypt no more sacred form of oath was known than the oath by Osiris who rests at Philae.[67] In the temple of Osiris at Abydus (Arabat-el-Medfuneh) the wealthy Egyptians sought to be buried, that they might rest in the vicinity of the G.o.d's grave. In Lower Egypt Osiris[68] was wors.h.i.+pped in the cities of Memphis, Sais,[69] and Busiris. At Busiris (the name Pe-osiri meant "abode of Osiris"), on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile, in the middle of the Delta--it was the chief city of the district of Busiris--was situated the largest temple of Isis, as we learn from Herodotus, and here also, according to other evidence, the grave of Osiris was to be found.[70]

Here the whole land wors.h.i.+pped this G.o.d and G.o.ddess.[71] Thousands of men and women a.s.sembled, according to Herodotus, made lamentation for Osiris, and brought an offering to the greatest G.o.ddess (Isis). Amid prayers the bull was flayed, the thighs and other parts cut out, and a part of the belly filled with bread, honey, and incense; these were drenched plentifully with oil, and set on fire, and so long as the sacrifice burned the people lamented. When the lamentation ended, the remainder of the sacrifice was eaten.[72] Plutarch says that with Osiris the Egyptians lamented the receding of the Nile, the ceasing of the cool north wind, the death of vegetation, and decrease in the length of the day. On the 17th Athyr, the day on which Typhon slew Osiris (on this day the sun pa.s.ses through the Scorpion), the priests inst.i.tuted rites of lamentation, and, among other things, as a sign of the sorrow of Isis, they exhibited for four days a gilded cow, covered with a black veil of byssus--for the cow was the Egyptian symbol of this G.o.ddess. On the 19th Athyr, in the night, they went down to the sea, and the priests brought out the chest, and the congregation cried, "Osiris is found!"[73] Moreover, according to Plutarch, the holy rites represented the burial of Osiris: in these the wood was cut for the chest, the linen torn for cerements, and libations poured. A serpent was also slain in effigy.[74] About the time of the winter solstice, as Plutarch tells us in another place, the Egyptians carried "the cow," _i.e._ Isis, seven times round the temple, and this procession was called the search for Osiris.[75] On the monuments the Isis wors.h.i.+pped with Osiris appears generally in a youthful shape, with the horns of a cow on her head, the moon's disk between the horns, with the flower-sceptre and symbol of life in her hands. The inscriptions denote her as the "royal consort,"