Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/120

 possess was that about Osiris, and even this was imagined to have been brought into shape through Hellenic influences. This opinion is altogether an erroneous one: it confuses the notion of myth with that of mythological tale or legend; and whilst the Egyptians really had an abundance of legendary tales, their myths are simply innumerable. The tale of Osiris is as old as Egyptian civilization itself; that is, very much more than two thousand years before Hellenic influences came into operation.

Several mythological tales of considerable extent are now well known to us. The legend of the revolt of the first men against the god Rā and his destruction of them was discovered by M. Naville in one of the tombs at Bibān-el-molūk. A long narrative of the victories of Horus was copied by the same accomplished scholar from the walls of the temple at Edfu. It is written in the style of the heroic annals of the kings of Egypt, and accounts for the names of geographical localities by the exploits of the divine warrior. The tale of Osiris, as told in the Greek work attributed to Plutarch, is made up out of several genuine Egyptian legends, and the wanderings of the widowed Isis formed the subject of many legendary narratives. But the religious texts are literally crowded with allusions to mythological legends, and these allusions, though they are necessarily obscure to us, must have been familiar to the Egyptians.