the body, and the air from her wings entered the nostrils of Osiris so that he was imbued with life once again. He afterwards became the Judge and King of the Dead.
Egyptian burial rites were based upon this legend. At the ceremony enacted in the tomb chapel two female relatives of the deceased took the parts of Isis and Nepthys, and recited magical formulae so that the dead might be imbued with vitality and enabled to pass to the Judgment Hall and Paradise.
Osiris and Isis, the traditional king and queen of ancient Egyptian tribes, were Identified with the deities who symbolized the forces of Nature, and were accordingly associated with agricultural rites.
The fertility of the narrow strip of country In the Nile valley depends upon the River Nile, which overflows its banks every year and brings down fresh soil from the hills. The river is at its lowest between April and June, the period of winter. Fed by the melting snows on the Abyssinian hills, and by the equatorial lakes, which are flooded during the rainy season, the gradual rise of the river becomes perceptible about the middle of June. The waters first assume a reddish tint on account of the clay which they carry. For a short period they then become greenish and unwholesome. Ere that change took place the Ancient Egyptians were wont to store up water for domestic use in large jars. By the beginning of August the Nile runs high. It was then that the canals were opened in ancient days, so that the waters might fertilize the fields.
“As the Nile rose,” writes Wilkinson,[1] “the peasants were careful to remove the flocks and herds from the lowlands; and when a sudden irruption of the water, owing to the bursting of a dike, or an unexpected and
- ↑ The Ancient Egyptians, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson.
