sometimes by the figure of a man bearing a scepter, sometimes by that of a coachman carrying a whip, or plainly by an eye.*

They were often contented with setting down the marks of his dignity, such as a scepter surmounted with an eye, or a scepter with a serpent twined round it, the symbol of life which the sun maintains, or barely the whip and the scepter united; sometimes the royal cap of Osiris on a throne, with or without a scepter.

The Egyptians every where saw, and especially in the place of their religious assemblies, a circle or the figure of the sun. Near the sun, over the head of the symbolical figures, were seen sometimes one or two serpents, the symbol of life, sometimes certain foliages, the symbols of the bounties of nature; sometimes scarabeus's wings the emblem of the variations of the air. All these things being connected with the object of their adorations, they entertained a sort of veneration for the serpent, which they besides saw honorably placed in the small chest that was the memorial of the state of the first men, and the other ceremonies whose meaning began to be lost.

Having already contracted a habit of confounding the Most High with the sun, they by little and little mistook the symbol itself of the sun, the Osiris, the mederator of the year, for a man. Osiris, from the letter or symbolical personage he was before, becoming in the minds of the people a real person, a man who had formerly lived among them, they made his history to relate to the attributes which attended the figure. So soon as Egypt was possessed with the ridiculous notion, that the statues of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, which served to regulate society, by their respective significations, were monuments of their founders; that Osiris had lived in Egppt, and had been intered there, they framed stories agreeable to this belief. For want of a tomb containing in reality the body of Hammond or Osiris, they were contented with a cenotaph, an empty tomb. A vast concourse of people gathered near these pretended tombs, and with pomp celebrated an annual feast there. Plutarch often mentions the feasts of Osiris's tomb, and informs us, that when the Egyptians were reproached with placing in heaven gods whose tombs they showed, their reply was, that the bodies of these gods had been embalmed and interred in Egypt; but that their souls resided among the stars.

"Eye and sun are expressed by the same word in most of the ancient languages of Asia." (Ruins p. 159.)

This is one of the emblems of masonry, called the all seeing eye, and said to repre sent the true God; whereas it is nothing more than a symbol of the sun made use of by the ancient Egyptians, and from them descended to the masons.-Edit.

These tombs, tho merely representative, were become a necessary part of the ceremonial. The Cretians, being of Egyptian extraction, had their own feast of Osiris or Jehov, the feast of their god, and of course the empty tomb was inseparable from that solemnity.

Death and Resurrection of Osiris.

The author here gives a complex figure, copied from the collection of Mountfaucon and which, he says, is painted on a mummy at the Austin-fryar's of La Place des Victoires, representing the death and resurrection of Osiris, and the beginning, progress, and end of the inundation of the Nile.

The sign of the lion is transformed into a couch,-upon which Osiris is laid out as dead; under which are four canopi of various capacities, indicating the state of the Nile at different periods. The first, is terminated by the head of the dog-star, which gives warning of the approach of the overflow of the river; the second by the head of a hawk, the symbol of the Etesian wind, which tends to swell the waters; the third by the head of a Heron, the sign of the south wind, which contributes to propel the water into the Medeterranean sea; and the fourth by that of the Virgin, which indicates that when the sun had passed that sign, the inundation would have nearly subsided.

To the above is superadded a large Anubis, who with an emphatic jesture, turning towards Isis who has an empty throne on her head, intimates that the sun, by the aid of the lion, had cleared the difficult pass of the tropic of Cancer, and was now in the sign of the latter, and, altho in a state of exhaustion, would soon be in a condition to proceed on his way to the South; at the same time, gives to the husbandman the important warning of retireing to avoid the inundation. The empty throne is indicative of its being vacated by the supposed death of Osiris.

The raising of grand master Hiram, in the third degree of Masonry, by the "grip or paw of the Lion," (the terms used in that operation) who, as the story goes, had been murdered by three fellows of the craft, is evidently copied from this fable of the death and resurrection of Osiris. The position of the master Mason, when in the act of raising Hiram, is a fac simile of that of Anubis over the body of Osiris.

Mr. Pluche seems not to have had an adequate conception of the fabled death of Osiris, and consequently to have mistaken the purport of the figure now under consid eration I therefore offer the foregoing explication as the result of my investigation of the subject.

Mr. Pluche candidly acknowledges that he had doubts of his understanding the intention of the picture which he endeavors to expound; for he says, immediately after giving his explanation, “But it would be a rashness in me to presume to write any longer in Egyptian, when I am not as yet over sure of my skill in reading it. Let us first of all confirm ourselves therein, and again try the application of our principles to some other monuments." He adds, in a note, "We shall in another place explain why this figure is used about a dead body, when we show how the sense of these symbols came to be preverted."

This he afterwards attempts to do as follows;

"Thus being gradually come to ascribing divinity, and offering their worship to the ruler, representing the functions of the sun, they to complete the absurdity, took him

The coffin of Hiram has a place among the emblematical figures of masonry.- Edit.

for the first of their kings. Thence this odd mixture of three inconsistent notions, I mean of God, of the Sun, and of a dead man, which the Egyptians perpetually confounded together."

The cause of their thus confounding them is easily accounted for, when the supposed death of Osiris, the sun, and God of the Egyptians, is taken into consideration. It must be understood that the sun was supposed to be in insurmountable difficulties at both the solstices, which caused as great lamentations as his victories and reappearance afterwards, did rejoicings. What led to these apprehensions when he was in the summer solstice, is well explained, in Rees's Cyclopedia, as follows:

"Orus or Horus,* a famous Deity of Egypt, which, as well as Osiris, was an emblem of the sun. Macrobius, who informs us why the Greeks gave Horus the name of Apollo, says, in the mysteries (Saturn, lib. 1,) they discover us a secret which ought to be inviolable, that the sun arrived at the upper hemisphere, is called Apollo. Hence we may infer, that this emblematical Deity was no other than the star of day, passing through the signs of summer. As Apollo among the Greeks was called the Horus of the Egyptians, as to his skill both in Medicine and divination, he was regarded as the same person, and called by the ancients Horus-Apollo.t The Allegory of Horus has been thus explained. The wind Rhamsin makes great ravages in Egypt in the spring, by raising whirlwinds, of burning sands, which suffocate travellers, darken the air, and cover the face of the Sun, so as to leave the earth in perfect obscurity. This circumstance represents the death of Osiris, and the reign of Typhon. When the sun approaches the sign of the lion, he changes the state of the atmosphere, disperses these tempests, and restores the northerly winds, which drives before them the malignant vapors, and préserve in Egypt coolness and salubrity under a burning sky. This is the triumph of Horus over Typhon, and his glorious reign. As some natural philosophers have acknowledged the influence of the moon over the state of the atmosphere, they united her with this god to drive away the usurper from the throne. The priests considering Osiris as the father of time, might bestow the name of his son on Horus, who reigned three months in the year.

Jablonski, who has interpreted the epithet of Arueri, which the Egyptians gave to Horus, pretends that it signifies efficatious virtue. These expressions perfectly characterize the phenomina which happened during the reign of this god. It is in summer, in fact, that the Sun manifests all his powers in Egypt. It is then that he swells the waters of the River with rains, exhaled by him in the air, and driven against the summit of the Abysinian Mountains; it is then that the husbandman reckons on the treasures of agriculture. It was natural for them to honor him with the name of Arueri, or efficatious virtue, to mark these auspicious effects."-(Savery's Letters in Egypt, etc.)

The reasons which the inhabitants of northern climates have for lamenting the absence of the sun when in the southern hemisphere, is thus beautifully portrayed by Dupuis :

“We have, in our explication of the labors of Hercules, considered the sun principally as the potent star, the depository of all the ener gies of nature, who creates and measures time by his march through the heavens, and who, taking his departure from the summer solstice.

:

Authors write this name differently in the Greek, from which it seems to be copied, the first letter, omega, is aspirated.-Edit.

+"Orus was more particularly Osiris in his second state, and therefore represented by the Egyptians as a child." (Holwell's Myth. Dict.)-Edit.

or the most elevated point of his route, runs over the course of the twelve signs in which the celestial bodies move, and with them the different periods or revolutions of the stars, under the name of Osiris or of Bacchus, we shall see this beneficent star, who, by his heat, in spring, calls forth all the powers of generation; who governs the growth of plants and of trees; who ripens the fruits, and who dispenses to all seeds that active sap which is the soul of vegetation, and is the true character of the Egyptian Osiris and the Greek Bacchus. It is above all in spring-time that this humid generator developes itself, and circulates in all the rising productions; and it is this sun, by its heat that impels its movements and gives its fertility.

"We may distinguish two points in the heavens which limit the duration of the creative action of the sun, and these two points are those where the night and the day are of equal length. All the grand work of vegetation, in a great part of northern climates, appears to be comprised between these two limits, and its progressive march is found to be in proportion to that of light and heat. Scarcely has the sun, in his annual route attained one of these points, than an active and prolific force appears to emanate from his rays, and to communicate movement and life to all sublunary bodies, which he brings to the light by a new organization. It is then that the resurrection of the great god takes place, and with his that of all nature. Having arrived at the opposite point, that power seems to abandon him, and nature becomes sensible of his weakness. It is Atys, whose mutilation Cybele deplored; it is Adonis, wounded in the virile parts, of which Venus regretted the loss; it is Osiris, precipitated into the tomb by Typhon, and whose organs of generation the disconsolate Isis never found.

"What picture more effectual to render man sorrowful than that of the earth when, by the absence of the sun, she finds herself deprived of her attire, of her verdure, of her foliage, and when she offers to our regard only the wreck of plants dried up or turned to putrefaction, of naked trunks, of arid lands without culture, or covered with snow; of rivers overflowed in the fields, or chained in their bed by the ice, or of violent winds that overturn every thing. What has become of that happy temperature which the earth enjoyed in the spring and during the summer? that harmony of the elements, which was in accord with that of the heavens ? that richness, that beauty of our fields loaded with grain and fruits, or enameled with flowers whose odour perfumed the air, and whose variegated colors presented a spectacle so

ravishing. All has disappeared, and the happiness of man has departed with the god, who, by his presence, embellished our climes; his retreat has plunged the earth into mourning from which nothing but his return can free her.

"He was then the creator of all these benefits, since we are deprived of them by his departure; he was the soul of vegetation, since it languished and ceased as soon as he quitted us. What will be the term of his flight and of his descent into other regions? Is he going to replunge nature into the eternal shade of chaos, from whence his presence had drawn it?'

"Such were the inquietudes of these ancient people, who, seeing the sun retiring from their climate, feared that it might one day happen that he would abandon them altogether from thence arose the feasts of Hope, celebrated at the winter solstice, when they saw this star check his movement, and change his route to return towards them. But if the hope of his approach was so sensibly felt, what joy would not be experienced when the sun, already remounted towards the middle of heaven, had chased before him the darkness which had encroached upon the light, and usurped a part of its empire. Then the equilibrium of the day and the night is reëstablished, and with it the order of nature. A new order of things as beautiful as the first recommences, and the earth, rendered fruitful by the heat of the sun, who had renewed the vigor of youth, embellishes herself under the rays of her lord." (Abrégé de l'Origine de tous les cultes, p. 142.)

The civil year.-Isis.

We might here reasonably enough call the order of the feasts the ecclesiastical year, since they were religious assemblies. But this order of the days appointed for working or for religious purposes being the rule of society, we shall call it the civil year.

The figure of the man, who rules over every thing on earth, had been thought the most proper emblem to represent the sun, which enlivens all nature and when they wanted a characteristic of the production of the earth, they pitched upon the other sex. The changes of nature, the succession of seasons, and the several productions of the

*I will here remark, that all the talk put into the mouth of Masonic candidates about wanting light and more light, relates to a physical and not to a mental benefit: it has reference to the light of the sun. In fact, on taking the bandage from the eyes of a candidate, the blaze of many tapers is exhibited before him in satisfaction of his desires, with this declaration of the master, "And God said let there be light, and there was light." These ceremonies are emblematical of the sun's return to the northern hemisphere.-Edit.