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 differeat 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 malig nant vapors, and preserve 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 energies 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 dif ferent 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 equili brium 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.

earth, which no doubt were the subject of the common thanksgivings, might easily be expressed by the several dresses given this woman.❤

When the sacrifice was intended to be made in the day, Isis was dressed in white, but if in the night she was dressed in black. They put a sickle in her hand to denote the time of harvest. When the purpose of a feast was to remind the people of the security afforded by their dwellings, Isis was crowned with small towers. † To intimate the winter neomenia, the head of Isis was covered with little fillets and with skins sewed together; sometimes with feathers ranged one over the other, or with small shells neatly set by each other. ‡ There were sometimes on the head of Isis a craw-fish or crab, sometimes the horns of a wild goat, according as they had a mind to signify

"On comparing the different explanations given by Plutarch, and other ancient writers, it will appear that Osiris is the type of the active, generating ana beneficent force of nature and the elements; Isis, on the contrary, is the passive force, the power of conceiving and bringing forth into life in the sublunary world. Osiris was particularly adored in the sun, whose rays vivify and impart new warmth to the earth, and who on his annual return in the spring, appears to create anew, all organic bodies. Isis was the earth, or sublunary nature, in general; or, in a more confined sense, the soil of Egypt inundated by the Nile, the principle of all fecundity, the goddess of generation and production. United to one another, Osiris and Isis typify the universal being, the soul of nature, the Pantheus of the Orphic verses.

"The Egyptians solemnized, at the new moon of Phamenoth (March,) the entrance of Osiris into the moon, which planet he was believed to fecundate, that it might in turn fecundate the Earth. (Plut. de Is et os.) Finally, on the 30th, of Epiphi, (24th, of July,) the festival of the birth of Horus took place, (of Horus the representative of Osiris, the conquerer of Typhon,) in the second great period."-Anthon's Lemp. Class. Dict. Art. Isis.)

The first conquest of Osiris over Typhon was at the winter solstice, and then the birth of a renewed sun was celebrated; the second conquest, as above stated, was attributed to Horus, which, or rather Horus Apollo, as before observed, was the name given to the sun when in the northern hemisphere, or at least after his passing the summer solstice.

One of the grand festival days of masons is on the 24th., of June. The cause of this variation from the ancient custom arises from the precession of the equinoxes, which has caused the northern solstice to occur on that day, when the sun is in the sign Cancer; whereas it was in Leo (July 24th,) that this solstice took place in ancient times during 2160 years. This is the reason why the Egyptians consecrated this animal to the sun, while in its full strength, and as the forerunner of the summer solstice, of the rise of the Nile and its succeeding overflow, which caused the fertility of Egypt. (See "Truth drawn from Fables" by Dr. Constantio.)

+ It is a little remarkable, that one of the significations given to tower, is high headdress.-Edit.

This is Mosaic work, and was no doubt intended to represent in anticipation the variegated face of the earth in the approaching season, after the sun had changed his course to return to the northern hemisphere.-Edit.