The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

154 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

on the desert frontiers of the country, and which was stronger
in the Delta than in the south. The old struggle, therefore,
between light and darkness, order and confusion, which formed
the background of Babylonian mythology, became the struggle
which was waged for such long centuries, first between the
Pharaonic Egyptians and the neolithic races, then between the
kingdoms of the south and north, and finally between the united
monarchy and the Bedâwin of the desert or assailants from Asia.
Where the foreign element prevailed, Set was an honoured god;
where the ruling Egyptian was dominant, his place was taken by
his brother and his antagonist.
It has been thought that the struggle between Horus and Set
[167] typified the struggle that is ever going on between the desert and
the cultivated land. But such an idea is far too abstract to have
formed the basis of an Egyptian religious myth. It might have
been elaborated subsequently by some theological school out of
the contrast between the Sutu of the desert and the god of the
agriculturists; but it could never have been there originally. The
interpretation is as little justifiable as that which sees in Osiris
the seed that is buried in the ground.
It is indeed true that the Egyptians of a later period, when the
Osirian doctrine of the Resurrection was fully developed, found
an analogy to it in the seed that is sown in order to grow again.
The tomb of Ma-her-pa-Ra, the fan-bearer of Amon-hotepII. of
the Eighteenth Dynasty, discovered by M. Loret in the valley of
the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, contains a proof of this. In
it was a rudely-constructed bed with a mattress, on which the
figure of Osiris had been drawn. On this earth was placed, and in
the earth grains of corn had been sown. The corn had sprouted
and grown to the height of a few inches before it had withered
away. But such symbolism is, like the similar symbolism of
Christianity, the result of the doctrine of the resurrection and not
the origin of it. It is not till men believe that the human body can
rise again from the sleep of corruption, that the growth of the