Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/156

 are in Tep, may he be in the flame of Aptaui in the day of her terrible wrath, may he have no son or daughter to give him the lustral water."

One of the most recent of the Ptolemaic tablets records the fulfilment of a promise made in a dream by the god I-em-hotep to Pasherenptah with reference to the birth of a son, and it contains the invocation, "Oh, all ye gods and goddesses who are unnamed, let a child remain in my place for ever and ever &hellip; keeping alive the name of my house."

The lustral water offered upon earth to the dead had its counterpart in the other world. The most usual representation of this is the picture in which the goddess Nut pours out the water of life to the deceased, from the interior of a sycamore-tree. In a picture published by M. Chabas, the deceased kneels before Osiris, and receives from him the water of life from a vessel under which is written ānch ba, "that the soul may live." The picture is taken from the mummy of a priest who lived twelve hundred years before Christ. But the same idea occurs in a Greek inscription found at Saqāra by Mr. C. Wescher. "She lived twenty-five years," the inscription says, "and Osiris beneath the earth gave her the refreshing water."

Now let me remind you that the oblation of cakes