[Footnote 5: There are in Egyptian religion several gods called Horus; this, the oldest one, is fused with Ra, the first sun-god, in the double name Ra-Harmachis, a being to whom the highest attributes are given. The symbol of this god is a recumbent lion with a man's head, the figure in which also the kings of Egypt are represented.] [Footnote 6: See the inscription in _Records of the Past_, ii. 98.] Osiris, the sun-god of Abydos, is also reported to have been a human being who was exalted to divine honours. (The god of the under-world and judge of the dead, who bears the same name, is a different figure; of him we shall speak afterwards.) He is the most interesting and the best known of the gods of Egypt; his myth is found at length in Plutarch, with the mystical interpretations proposed for it in ancient times; he is also the god in whom the affinity of Egyptian with Babylonian religion appears most clearly: cf. chapter vii. Born, according to the myth we mentioned above, at one birth with four other gods, of the venerable parents Seb and Nut (see above), he from the first has Isis for his wife and sister, and his brother Set is also born along with him, with whom he lives in perpetual hostility. Neither can quite overcome the other, and many are the incidents of their warfare. As a rule the gods of Egypt are serene and good beings; here only dualism shows itself. Osiris is the good power both morally and in the sphere of outward nature, while Set is the embodiment of all that the Egyptian regards as evil,--darkness, the desert, the hot south wind, sickness, and red hair. It is not the case that Set was an imported god and belonged to Semitic invaders, but these invaders found him more suited to their notions of deity than any other god of Egypt, and sought to make him supreme, in which, however, they could not succeed. The story of the dismemberment of Osiris and of the search of Isis for his loved remains, which she buried in fourteen different places where she found them, is one which is found connected with other names in other lands. Horus is the avenger of his father. Here we have this deity in three stages--Horus the child in his mother's arms, Horus the avenger, and Horus the successor of his father, the complete sun-god.