All this goes to show that the heaven of the primitive Egyptians was nothing more than an extension of terrestrial conditions, or perhaps it might be said an improvement upon them. So long as the Egyptian had the wherewithal to make bread and to brew beer, and had cleanly garments, and shelter under a homestead the ground round which was intersected with numerous canals, he considered that to be the best of all possible heavens. The crops, of course, would grow of themselves. The whole idea was quite a material one, if the life was simple but comfortable. There is nothing sophisticated about the Egyptian heaven like the Mohammedan or Christian realms of bliss; even the manner of reaching it was primitive, the early dwellers by the Nile imagining that they could reach it by climbing on to its metal floor by way of the mountains which supported it, and their later descendants believing that a ladder was necessary for the ascent. In many tombs models of these ladders were placed so that the dead people might make use of their astral counterparts to gain the celestial regions. Even Osiris required such a ladder, and was helped to ascend it by Ra and Horus, or by Horus and Set. Many pictures of such ladders are also found in various papyri of the _Book of the Dead_ which were placed in tombs. Its length was regulated by the deceased himself according to the power of the magical words he pronounced over it. The deceased by words of power was further enabled to turn himself into many bird and animal shapes. It is difficult to understand the reason for these animal transformations in Paradise, but the conception has a parallel in the idea of the Aztec warriors that when they entered the domain of the sun-god they would accompany him in his course and would descend to earth during part of his daily journey in the shape of humming-birds. [1] See _Zeitschrift fϋr Aeg. Sprache_, li. p. 127: "The Cult of the Drowned in Egypt." [2] The moon is always masculine in Egypt. I am here following Plutarch.--AUTHOR. [3] Another version gives the children of Nut thus: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Anubis. [4] Lang states (art. "Mythology" in _Encyclopædia Britannica_) that "the Osirian myth originated in the same sort of fancy as the Pacullic story of the dismembered beaver out of whose body things were made." [5] _Golden Bough_, vol. ii. p. 137. [6] See M.A. Murray, _Osireion at Abydos_, p. 26. [7] Or Seb. [8] Maspero, _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. iv, p. 62. [9] _Book of the Dead_, Papyrus of Ani, vol. i, p. 7. CHAPTER V: THE GREAT GODS Ra, the Sun-God