the prayers of men, through fear of threats which it is inconceivable to us that any intelligence but that of idiots should have believed. There are many aspects of this religion, and some of them are extremely ridiculous. The very impulse, however, which prompts us to laugh at the religion of our fellow-men, ought to suggest a doubt whether we have really caught their meaning.
We are tempted, in our bewilderment at the number of the gods, to ask whether the process of reduction is not applicable to them as well as that of multiplication. And we discover to our relief that such a process is actually suggested to us by documents of indisputable authority, which show that the same god is often known under many names. In the Litanies of the god Rā, which are inscribed on the walls of the royal tombs at Bibān-el-molūk, the god is invoked under seventy-five different names. A monument published in Burton's Excerpta Hieroglyphica gives the names, or rather a selection of the names, of Ptah, the principal god of Memphis. The Book of the Dead has a chapter entirely consisting of the names of Osiris. The inscriptions of the temple of Dendera give a long list of the names of the goddess Hathor. She is identified not only with Isis, but with Sechet at Memphis, Neith at Sais, Saosis at Heliopolis, Nehemauit at Hermopolis,
