Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 25--Liturgy of Funeral Offerings.pdf/26

 believed that the dead rose again because Osiris rose from the dead, and that it was indeed he "who made mortals to be born again," and who bestowed upon the “re-born” new life, with new powers, spiritual, mental, and material, they spared no pains in performing the works which they thought would help themselves and their dead to put on immortality and to arrive in the dominions of him who was the “king of eternity and the lord of everlastingness.” Every tradition which existed concerning the ceremonies that were performed on behalf of the dead Osiris by Horus and his "sons" and “followers” at some period, which even so far back as the time of the IVth Dynasty, or about 3800, was extremely remote, was carefully preserved and faithfully imitated under succeeding dynasties, and for long after Christianity was established in the northern part of the Nile Valley, and Egypt was tilled with Christian monks.

The formulae which were declared to have been recited during the performance of such ceremonies were written down and copied for scores of generations, and every pious, well-to-do Egyptian made arrangements that what had been done and said on behalf of Osiris should be done and said for him outside or inside his tomb after his death. No ceremony, however trivial, was considered unimportant, and no