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 202 A Short History of The World -«S»*,^»«(^ ISIS AND HORUS An Egyptian statuette of the XIX Dynasty pi • (In tlu British Museuiii) *- "Ul^- religious life, and ligious life of the world. A great peum, was set up which a sort of worshipped. These was Osiris-Apis re- and Horus. These as separate gods of one god, and tified with the Roman Jupiter sun-god. This wor- ever the Hellenic even into North The idea immortality of centre of Egyptian indeed of the re- whole Hellenic temple, the Sera- by Ptolemy I at trinity of gods was were Serapis (who christened), Isis were not regarded but as three aspects Serapis was iden- Greek Zeus, the and the Persian ship spread wher- influence extended, India and Western of immortality, an compensations and consolation, was eagerly received by a world in which the common life was hopelessly wretched. Serapis was called " the saviour of souls." " After death," said the hymns of that time, " we are still in the care of his providence." Isis attracted many devotees. Her images stood in her temples, as Queen of Heaven, bearing the infant Horus in her arms. Candles were burnt before her, votive offerings were made to her, shaven priests consecrated to celibacy, waited on her altar. The rise of the Roman empire opened the western European world to this growing cult. The temples of Serapis-Isis, the chanting of the priests and the hope of immortal life, followed the Roman stand- ards to Scotland and Holland. But there were many rivals to the Serapis-Isis religion. Prominent among these was Mithraism. This was a religion of Persian origin, and it centred upon some now for- gotten mysteries about Mithras sacrificing a sacred and beneA'olent bull. Here we seem to have something more primordial than the complicated and sophisticated Serapis-Isis beliefs. We are carried back directly to the blood sacrifices of the heliolithic stage in human culture. The bull upon the Mithraic monuments always bleeds copiously from a wound in its side, and from this blood springs new life. The votary to Mithraism actually bathed in the blood of the sacri- ficial bull. At his initiation he went beneath a scaffolding upon which a bull was killed so that the blood could actually run down on him.