Ptolemaic version of the temple of Edfou is published by M. Naville, _Mythe d'Horus_ (Geneva, 1870). They are mainly allusive, without any connected narrative. Fortunately the narrative, as related by the priests of his own time, is given by the author of _De Iside et Osiride_, and is confirmed both by the Egyptian texts and by the mysterious hints of the pious Herodotus. Here we follow the myth as reported in the Greek tract, and illustrated by the monuments. The reader must, for the moment, clear his mind of all the many theories of the meaning of the myth, and must forget the lofty, divine and mystical functions attributed by Egyptian theologians and Egyptian sacred usage to Osiris. He must read the story simply as a story, and he will be struck with its amazing resemblances to the legends about their culture-heroes which are current among the lowest races of America and Africa. Seb and Nut--earth and heaven--were husband and wife. In the _De Iside_ version, the sun cursed Nut that she should have no child in month or year; but thanks to the cleverness of a new divine co-respondent, five days were added to the calendar. This is clearly a later edition to the fable. On the first of those days Osiris was born, then Typhon or Set, "neither in due time, nor in the right place, but breaking through with a blow, he leaped out from his mother's side".* * De Iside et Osiride, xii. It is a most curious coincidence that the same story is told of Indra in the Rig- Veda, iv. 18, 1. "This is the old and well-known path by which all the gods were born: thou mayst not, by other means, bring thy mother unto death." Indra replies, "I will not go out thence, that is a dangerous way: right through the side will I burst". Compare (Leland, Algonquin Legends, p. 15) the birth of the Algonquin Typhon, the evil Malsumis, the wolf. "Glooskap said, 'I will be born as others are'." But the evil Malsumis thought himself too great to be brought forth in such a manner, and declared that he would burst through his mother's side. Mr. Leland's note, containing a Buddhist and an Armenian parallel, but referring neither to Indra nor Typhon, shows the _bona fides_ of the Algonquin report. The Bodhisattva was born through his mother's right side (Kern.. Der Buddhismus, 30). The Irish version is that our Lord was born through the crown of the head of the Virgin, like Athene. _Saltair na Rann_, 7529, 7530. Se« also Liebrecht, _Zur Volkskunde_, p. 490. For the Irish and Buddhist legends (there is an Anglo-Saxon parallel) I am indebted to Mr Whitley Stokes. Probably the feeling that a supernatural child should have no natural birth, and not the borrowing of ideas, accounts for those strange similarities of myth.