But while, on the one hand, there is continuity between the religious thought of ancient Egypt and the religious thought of the world of to-day, there is also continuity, on the other hand, between the religion of Egypt and that of primitive Babylonia. In the course of these lectures I have more than once pointed to the fact: the Pharaonic Egyptians were of Asiatic origin and they necessarily brought with them the religious ideas of their Eastern home. As we come to know more both of early Babylonian civilisation and of the beginnings of Egyptian history, we shall doubtless discover that the links between them are closer than we at present imagine, and much that is now obscure will become clear and distinct. Meanwhile there is one link which I cannot pass over. Astro-theology once played a considerable part in the religion of the Egyptians. In the historical age it has lost its importance; the stars have been identified with the official deities, who have accordingly absorbed their individual attributes; but echoes of the worship formerly paid to them are still heard in the Pyramid texts. Saḥu or Orion is still remembered as a mighty hunter, whose hunting-ground was the plain of heaven, and whose prey were the gods themselves. When he rises, it is said in the Pyramid of Unas, “the stars fight together, and the archers patrol” the sky which drops with rain; the smaller stars which form his constellation pursue and lasso the gods as the human hunter lassoes the wild bull; they slay and disembowel their booty, and boil the flesh in glowing caldrons. The “greater gods” are hunted “in the morning,” those of less account at mid-day, the “lesser gods” “at evening, and Saḥu refreshes himself with the divine banquet,” feeding on their bodies and absorbing “their magic virtues.” “The great ones of the sky” launch “the flames against the caldrons wherein are the haunches of the followers” of the gods; the pole-star, “who causes the dwellers in the sky to march in procession round” Orion, “throws into the caldron the legs of their wives.”(187) We are transported to the cannibal’s kitchen of some African chieftain, such as that represented on a curious stela found in Darfûr, and now in the museum of Constantinople. The whole description takes us back to a period in the history of Egypt long anterior to that of the Pyramids, when the Pharaonic invaders were first beginning to mingle with the older population of the land and become acquainted with its practices. In the days of Unas the real meaning of the expressions handed down by theological conservatism had been forgotten, or was interpreted metaphorically; but they remained to prove that the age when Orion was still an object of worship superior to the gods of heaven was one which went back to the very dawn of Pharaonic history. The cult of the stars must have been brought by “the followers of Horus” from their Asiatic home.(188)