(_b_) A further type of symbolical conception is to be found in Isis and Osiris. Osiris is an object of procreation and birth, and is done to death by Typhon. Isis seeks for the scattered members, finds, collects, and buries them. This mythos of the god has, then, in the first place as its content purely _natural significance._ From one point of view, that is to say, Osiris is the sun, and his life-history stands as symbolic for his yearly course; from another, however, he signifies the rise and fall of the Nile, which is necessarily the source of all fruitfulness in Egypt. For in Egypt there may not be a drop of rain for years together, and it is the Nile which primarily waters the land by its floods. In winter time it flows but a shallow stream within its bed; then, however, with the summer-solstice ("Herod.," II, 19) it begins for a hundred days to rise, pours over its banks and streams far and wide over the land. Finally the water dries up beneath the sun's heat and the scorching desert winds, and once more retires to its course. Under such conditions the tillage of the soil is carried out with ease; the most luxurious vegetation springs up. Everything buds and ripens. The sun and Nile, and the way both of them become weak or strong, these are the conspicuous forces of Nature in this land, which the Egyptian has symbolically depicted under a human form in the myths of Isis and Osiris. To this type of symbolism, too, belongs the symbolical representation of the zodiac, which is associated with the year's course, just as the number of the twelve gods is bound up with the months. Conversely, however, Osiris typifies under another aspect the entirely _human._ He is held sacred as the founder of agriculture, of the division of the soil, property and laws, and his worship is consequently to an equal extent related to human activities, which are connected in the closest manner with ethical and judicial functions.