The “Book of the Dead” treats principally of the refining processes through which the spirits of dead people passed in the under-world, or Cher Nuter, before being purified sufficiently to inherit a state of bliss and become spirits of light (Chu) to be absorbed into the sun at the point where it is born, and taken within it to An, the celestial Heliopolis. Before the time of Menes the religion of Egypt was animistic, blended with a vague kind of sun-worship, the supreme deity being, at Thinis-Abydos, the ancient capital, called Osiris, the god of gods, son of Seb, god of earth, and Nu, goddess of the heavenly ocean, and grandson of Ra. Osiris was the sun-god of the daily and annual circle, who enjoyed his spouse, Isis, the great mother, during the summer months and the daytime, after which he was overcome by the evil Set-Typhon and his wife Nephthys, and tortured in the under-world, until released by his son Horus, the conqueror sun-god, who rose into the upper world as the avenger of his father’s defeat, and liberated the soul of Osiris from torture, to be absorbed by, and for ever shine forth in the constellation _Orion_, as the soul of Isis shines for ever in _Sirius_. At Heliopolis, An, On, or Para, the city of the sun, Ra was worshipped as supreme god, who as Tum, the hidden god, fought the demon of darkness, the serpent Apap, in Amenti, and who rose again from the under-world as Harmachis. Later, when Menes reigned as the first monarch of the Old Empire (_circa_ B.C. 5000), Memphis, or Mennefer, was the capital city, in which Phtah was worshipped as the supreme god or creator of the world (called Sekru, the slain god, when in the lower world), together with Ma, goddess of righteousness, and Imhotep, the chief of priests, whose name signified “I come in peace,” and who formed the third part of a kind of trinity, with Phtah and Ma. All these, and other minor deities, such as deified kings, etc., were represented on earth by incarnations in the shape of animals, Ra, Osiris, and Phtah, the supreme gods, being manifested in the sacred bull Apis, representing the sun at the vernal equinoctial point in the zodiacal constellation _Taurus_. During six dynasties these gods were worshipped peacefully, their incarnations and religious rites being protected by the kings; but about the year B.C. 3800 the kingdom appears to have dropped to bits, its religion to have been mixed up in a most confused manner, and its people divided into a number of small nationalities, with separate kings and separate laws; until, at length, the whole country was once more united under the reigning monarchs of the eleventh dynasty (Second Empire), whose capital was Thebes, and whose popular deity was Amen, the hidden god, called also Amen-Ra, to signify that he was not only the sun-god in the under-world, but also the rising and conquering sun-god of the early morn and spring of the year. In fact, Amen was the sun-god of the whole revolution, the Theban