[35] Of course, faith in immortality was in nowise peculiar to Egypt, but was universal; as vivid in _The Upanishads_ of India as in the Pyramid records. It rests upon the consensus of the insight, experience, and aspiration of the race. But the records of Egypt, like its monuments, are richer than those of other nations, if not older. Moreover, the drama of faith with which we have to do here had its origin in Egypt, whence it spread to Tyre, Athens, and Rome--and, as we shall see, even to England. For brief expositions of Egyptian faith see _Egyptian Conceptions of Immortality_, by G.A. Reisner, and _Religion and Thought in Egypt_, by J.H. Breasted. [36] Pyramid Texts, 775, 1262, 1453, 1477. [37] For a full account of the evolution of the Osirian theology from the time it emerged from the mists of myth until its conquest, see _Religion and Thought in Egypt_, by Breasted, the latest, if not the most brilliant, book written in the light of the completest translation of the Pyramid Texts (especially lecture v). [38] Much has been written about the Egyptian Mysteries from the days of Plutarch's _De Iside et Osiride_ and the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius to the huge volumes of Baron Sainte Croix. For popular reading the _Kings and Gods of Egypt_, by Moret (chaps. iii-iv), and the delightfully vivid _Hermes and Plato_, by Schure, could hardly be surpassed. But Plutarch and Apuleius, both initiates, are our best authorities, even if their oath of silence prevents them from telling us what we most want to know. [39] Among the Hindoos, whose Chrisna is the same as the Osiris of Egypt, the gods of summer were beneficent, making the days fruitful. But "the three wretches" who presided over winter, were cut off from the zodiac; and as they were "found missing," they were accused of the death of Chrisna. [40] A literary parallel in the story of AEneas, by Vergil, is most suggestive. Priam, king of Troy, in the beginning of the Trojan war committed his son Polydorus to the care of Polymester, king of Thrace, and sent him a great sum of money. After Troy was taken the Thracian, for the sake of the money, killed the young prince and privately buried him. AEneas, coming into that country, and accidentally plucking up a shrub that was near him on the side of the hill, discovered the murdered body of Polydorus. Other legends of such accidental discoveries of unknown graves haunted the olden time, and may have been suggested by the story of Isis. [41] _The Gods of the Egyptians_, by E.A.W. Budge; _La Place des Victores_, by Austin Fryar, especially the colored plates. [42] _Quests New and Old_, by G.R.S. Mead. [43] _Pythagoras_, by Edouard Schure--a fascinating story of that great thinker and teacher. The use of numbers by Pythagoras must not, however, be confounded with the mystical, or rather fantastic, mathematics of the Kabbalists of a later time.