During this long period—which is often quoted, not without reason, as the classic instance of the evils attending the Priest in Power—the mass of the Egyptian people had clung firmly to the worship of one god whose vogue goes back to very early times. While the rich and powerful were raising temples to Ra and Amen and showering wealth upon their priesthoods, the poorer classes remained faithful to Osiris and the gods of his cycle with such effect that most of the other divinities found it necessary to include him in their own cults. In the very earliest recension of the _Book of the Dead_, we find Osiris invoked together with Ra in a way that gives no hint that one has any superiority over the other[114]; in the great recension of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Osiris and Ra, already made into the “king of the gods” by his union with Amen, are said to have “joined souls” and become one[115]; and in the Saitic period, Osiris became united with Ptah and a very ancient divinity called Seker, in a triune deity called Ptah-Seker-Osiris to whom everyone looked for happiness after death[116]. So, when the bull Apis came to be adored, he was said to be the “life of Osiris,” meaning probably his earthly incarnation[117], and there is fairly good evidence that Osiris had long before absorbed into himself the personality of several older deities, such as Khent-Amentit “Lord of Amenti,” and Apuat “the opener of the ways[118].” It is plain, therefore, that the practice of _theocrasia_ which we have seen rife among the Greeks was known to the Egyptians from the very earliest times[119]. Yet, all this was effected without there ever having been a special priesthood or college of priests of Osiris such as undoubtedly existed in the case of Ra, Amen, and probably Ptah. It seems really a case of the survival of the fittest, or, in other words, of the choice by the Egyptian people of the worship of the god best suited to their wants, in spite of the well-meant attempts of their rulers to draw their attention to other deities.