There are two lion-gods in the Ritual, attached to the limits of heaven, the extreme bounds of the sun's journeys. Horus says to his father Osiris, 'Thou receivest the headdress of the two lion-gods; thou walkest in the roads of heaven, beheld by those attached to the limits of the horizon of heaven.'[1] The lion-gods supply his headdress. That is, they crown the sun-god. It is also said of Amen­Ra, 'Thou art the lion of the double lions.'[2] The headdress of feathers is found in various forms. The sem is a double plume of tall feathers, a symbol of the upper and lower heaven, crowning the solar disk. Another crown, the atf, a type of the fatherhood, has the two ostrich feathers; these denote the two truths of light and shade. 'The lion-gods equip the Osiris among the servants of him who dwells in the west at the end of every day daily.'[3] These are the servants of Tum. The headdress of the two feathers was put on when the sun-god made his transformation from one character into another at the limit of his course. The 'two lion-gods say to Osiris who dwells in his abode, attired in his gate, Thou goest back; nowhere in heaven is thy like, embodied in the transformation of a divine hawk.'[4] That is, wearing the feather of light. On the other side he wore the feather of shade. The two feathers were worn in a fillet called the apru. This fillet apru, in Egyptian, is identified with the feather in the Hebrew abru (רבא) the wing-feather of the ostrich[5]. The two lion-gods in the Ritual are especially attached to the god Atum, the one wearer of the ostrich-feathers among the solar gods. They are the chosen, preferred and adopted ministers (sems) of 'Tum in the lower country.'[6] Tum is said to light the lion-gods[7]. The twin lions are the two brothers[8], elsewhere the two brethren who make the festival of the sun, that is of Tum on the horizon where they are the founders of his divine abode. Their place is on the horizon, and they support the sun, as the lion and unicorn sustain the [p.229] British crown. They are also named the ruti or rehiu whom we may call horizon-keepers, ruru being the horizon as the place of the two lions.

The lions have various forms with but one original meaning, as representatives of the two truths, the two heavens, light and shade, the two eyes, or the two horizons. We shall find the two truths were first of all assigned to the feminine nature, the two goddesses of the upper and lower heaven. Corresponding to these we have the two lionesses, the typical form of which exists in pekht, the lioness-cat, or pehti, the dual lion, the peh-peh type of double force and vigilance. These were the most ancient. They were represented by the lion and panther, who drew the car or stood beside the statue of the Great Mother as Kubele, and the goddess Amma­Agdistis of the Phrygians. In the figure of Diana of Ephesus her two arms are extended crosswise, and on these she carries two lions. Then the dual image of Sut-Har (Sabean) is called the two lions. Osiris is designated the double lion, lord of the lion city, master of the double strength and Lord of Hu[9]. Hu is the sphinx; the male sphinx being also a form of Shu, with the hinder part lioness. Shu with his sister Tefnut, and Shu with the khepsh on his head, are other types of the dual lion. It is Shu in his two characters with which we are now concerned. In Shu we can trace the bringing on from the twin female lions to the male and female, and lastly to the dual-male type, personified in Shu and Anhar, who is the Onouris (Mars) of the Greeks. He is addressed thus in the Hymn to Shu: 'Thou art greater and more ancient than the gods, in that name which is thine of Aa-Ur (very great). Thou art higher than the heaven with thy double-feathered crown, in that name which is thine of him who lifts up the double-feathered crown.'[10] In this passage the lion-god is traced back to his feminine origin, and to the goddess who preceded all the gods, and who is here called the very great, the first, oldest, greatest mother, who was Ta-Urt in the typhonian scheme and Pekht or Tefn in another. As Tefn or Tefnut she is called his sister.

As Shu and Anhar we have the lion-gods in two male forms. Champollion found the god Shu at Biban-el-Muluk, sitting with fillet and feather, and coloured red, like the goddess Ma[11]. He gives another representation of him standing[12], with two large feathers, as in the sculptures of the temple of Ibsambul, and of a green colour. Red is the colour of the setting sun and the crown of the lower region, and agrees with the sitting posture; green, with the figure standing or uprising from the underworld. The red figure sitting is Shu; the green figure stands for Anhar. Shu's name is written with the feather sign ¶, that of Anhar Ú' with the [p.230] vase sign of bringing, and the heaven. Shu is said to raise the heaven which Anhar brings. He was the separator and elevator of the heaven from the earth, 'millions of years above the earth,' and he established it with his two hands. Shu is portrayed kneeling on one knee to support the sun with his uplifted hands. Anhar, in a marching attitude, is the bringer who forces the sun along with his rope. He is the wearer of the long robe in whom is the 'whole of Shu,' as 'in the long garment was the whole world.'[13] So Iu-em-hept wears the long robe in the second or renewed form of Tum, the Solomon, the completer of the circle in the solar myth. Raising the heaven is synonymous with beginning the circle; and bringing the heaven, with fulfilling the circle.

Anhar sometimes wears a headdress of four feathers; these symbolize the four quarters of the circle completed by him. It is another illustration of this character that one of the four rams near the decan of Num personated the soul of Shu as lord of On, the place of return. Shu is the analogue of Har-ur, and Anhar of Har-Tema. Shu is a god of the southern heaven, and the horizon of the west; Anhar of the northern heaven, and the horizon of the east. The sun of the south-west, the sun of the left hand, is the sinking sun; hence Shu, as its supporter, kneels: the sun of the north-east rises, hence Anhar stands up and marches. In the Egyptian planispheres the lion of the south is represented couching; according to Aratus, the progress of the sun through this sign was typified by a couching lion[14]. The lion of Shu is depicted in this position. Another lion, that of Ma'tet, is standing. These typify the descending and ascending sun.

They were solstitial at first. Hence the lion deposited in the zodiac marks the point of commencement of the Egyptian sacred and solstitial year. One lion-god was the conductor of the downward sun; the other of the sun that rose again. Shu, in his dual character, is portrayed in what is termed Bruce's or the Harper's tomb at Biban-el-Muluk, in company with the black sun-god Iu, or Au, who represented Atum in his youthful form. There is an inscription containing a snatch of the hymn being sung by the musician to the harp accompaniment. It is a discourse of the gods, and runs: 'The gods at rest in the divine circle (the put or pleroma of the nine gods) proclaim (or tell of) the chiefs who are in the hail of the Two Truths, Anhar (and) Shu-si-ra; proclaim Shu the son of the Sun; proclaim the chiefs (or heads of roads) who are resident in the empyreal region or gate of the dead.'[15] The double apheru of the east and west, the double house of Anubis, is depicted in the representation. It is a fragment of a song of the nine gods in place of muses, who sit on the sacred hill and celebrate the lion-gods, the conductors of the sun on the two roads of his eternal round. Sut was a guide of the [p.231] sun on these two roads in the characters of Anubis and Apheru, and Shu was the conductor, also in two characters, as Shu and Anhar.

A hymn to the god Shu, found in the Magic Papyrus[16], furnishes other features and titles for the reconstruction of his manifold character. He is the conductor of the solar bark or ark of the gods in his name of the god dwelling in the divine ark, Har-Sekti. He blows off the divine ark with a favourable wind in that name which is his of the goddess Ma. Ma means wind, and Shu represents breath, or spirit, one of the two truths, by whomsoever personated. Shu is addressed as the 'valiant, who is lord of events, and overthrows the wicked every day. The (solar) barge is sailing joyfully, the (solar) ark in jubilation, as they see Shu, the son of Ra, in (his) triumph, he darts his spear against the serpent.' The ark of the sun is crossing the waters, and the crew are jubilant at the victory over the Apophis monster, the Akhekh of darkness, the dragon of the deep.

On the astronomical ceilings of some of the royal tombs the divine bark is represented as drawn along through the Hades by certain personified stars. Ra says to the star-gods 'Pull forward with your rope of the prow. Oh, ye born gods! oh, shine forth, gods! Shine forth, gods, at my birth (in the retreat in skhem, the shut shrine), oh, take your crowns of the north, pull with the rope of the stern of the boat of him who is born of me. It is Horus (the son), of the royal countenance.'[17]

In the tombs of the Ramesids, at Thebes, the course of the sun is depicted from childhood to old age by the hours of the day and night. The solar bark appears on the shape of the outstretched goddess, painted blue, with the sun in it as a child. Hour by hour the young sun grows up and the conductors of the boat are changed. Towards night the Apap, monster of darkness, rears itself and tries to swallow Ra. Twelve spirits draw the serpent away. During the night-hours the god shut in his shrine on the boat is conveyed by spirits through the Amentes, and towed across the waters all night towards the east. At Edfu he is represented as a child in the morning, a bearded man at noon, an old man bowed and leaning on a staff at evening; in this character he is called 'the old man who becomes a child again.'[18]

A visitor to the tombs at Deir-el-Medinah describes a scene wherein a small boat is ascending a cataract bearing a huge beetle, the sacred scarabaeus, having a ram's head; on each side of it is a bird with the human head. This is found where the elongated figures which represent the overarching and enclosing heavens are extended the length of fifty feet across the ceiling[19]. This was Khepra in his boat; the human-headed birds were souls; the beetle with ram's head marked the passage from the place of [p.232] resurrection where the spring equinox was in the Ram up to the Crab (beetle), the place of the summer solstice and top of the ascent to light. The upward journey is portrayed by the ascent of a cataract. The writer calls this a conceit. How his interest would have quickened had he known that this was Khepra making the kute. Making the kute is now applied to shooting down the cataracts. In Egyptian mythology khut means going with the current toward the north, but the khut is the horizon of the resurrection, the place where the souls emerged for the southward ascent against the current up which only the boat of Khepra could climb. This, then, is a form of the ark conducted by Shu. Shu is likewise called 'the King of Upper and Lower Egypt,' i.e., of the celestial Egypt[20]; the Egypt often intended by the Hebrew writers.

In the Talmud Egypt is described as being 400 miles wide 'Egypt is 400 miles in length, and the same in breadth. Egypt is equal to a sixth part of Ethiopia; Ethiopia to a sixth part of the world; the world to a sixth part of the Garden of Eden, and Eden to a sixth part of Hell.'[21] But neither the Egypt, nor Ethiopia intended is geographical any more than the Garden of Eden. The terrestrial Egypt is some seven miles in breadth. In Lower Egypt lies the Red Sea, or Pool of Pant, where the hindering enemy of the sun lurks with his evil confederates to stop and overthrow the divine bark conducted and defended by Shu, who fights the battle of Christian against Apollyon in this, the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He overthrows the wicked far from his father Ra, and the boat proceeds in peace; his towmen are jubilant, the gods in exultation, when they hear his name as Shu-si-ra. 'I am, Shu, the image of Ra, sitting in the inside of his father's sacred eye. If he who is in the waters opens his mouth (or), if he grasps with his arms, I will let the earth fall into the waters' well (the abyss), being the south made north; being the earth turned round'[22] (upside down). This statement is accompanied by a figure of the sacred eye, an image of the circle which was full at daybreak—'thou fillest at daybreak the place of his sacred eye in An,' or at the conclusion of the year. The promise is, that if the Apophis open its mouth to swallow, or put forth his arms, devil-fish-like, to clutch, they will still pass on in the yearly revolution or circle-making, whereas the enemy was a fixture, fast bound, and this appears to have been rendered according to the later knowledge that the earth turned round.

They will escape through the god who makes the earth revolve, and reverses the relative positions. The crossing of the waters, the passage of the darkness and victory over the demons, is actually figured as the earth's revolution, 'being the south made north,' and contrariwise.

[p.233] The earth that falls 'into the waters' well,' or the abyss meh of the north, in its turning re-emerges from the dark depths of the lower heaven where dwells the devouring monster, and comes up out of the celestial Egypt, leading its inhabitants into the land of light and of the sacred eye, portrayed at the place of the equinox.

In another passage we read, 'I am the chosen of millions coming out of the lower heaven (i.e., the celestial Khebt or Egypt), whose name is unknown. When his name is spelt on the bank of the river, then it is dried up. When his name is spelt on the land, it is set on fire;'[23] or as the passage has also been translated, 'If his name be uttered on the bank of the river, oh, then it quencheth; if it be uttered on land, oh, then it maketh sparks.'[24] The 'chosen of millions coming up out of the lower heaven, whose name is unknown,' may be meant for Shu. but according to the Hebrew parallel it represents the sun-god. In the fragment from Artabanus it is related that when the Egyptians came up with the Israelites, the fire flashed on them from above, while the waters overwhelmed their path, so that they perished both by fire and flood[25]. This is not found in the Hebrew version, but is in the Egyptian, where Tefnut sends her fire from on high to reduce the enemies to non-existence.

The chosen of millions coming out of the lower heaven is the god of those who came up out of Egypt when 'all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt.'[26] Upon the bank of the Red Sea his 'name is spelt' by Moses when the waters dry up or divide, and leave the ground dry while the 'Lord looked upon the host of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire.' In the second passage the 'bank of the river,' where the miracle is wrought, is identified with the brink of Jordan, Iarutana, or Eridanus, the river of the division, and Joshua the son of Nun is the representative and facsimile of Shu the son of Nun. He who leads up the Israelites is the god of the name unknown until it is announced by Moses as Jah-Adonai; the god who is the 'chosen of millions,' the elect of Joshua and of the people at a later stage of the exodus[27]. This reading would make the comparison more perfect, but is not essential.

Shu is accompanied by the goddess Tefnut, the Egyptian Miriam, who 'gives her fire against his enemies to reduce them to non-existence.' So Miriam 'gives her fire,' in song against the cruel pharaoh and his host, when they are overwhelmed and annihilated in the Red Sea. Miriam's song reminds us that this hymn to the god Shu is contained in the 'Chapter of excellent songs which dispel the immerged.'[28] The immerged are the evil host of Typhon, the dragon Rahab of the deep, lurking beneath the Red Sea. In the Egyptian writings the enemy is represented as the immerged 'Raw-head-and-bloody-bones.' In the Hebrew the hosts of the opposing pharaoh [p.234] sink to the bottom of the Red Sea. After the overthrow of the enemy it is said of the dead—'Those who are immerged do not pass along; those who pass along do not plunge: they remain floating on the waves like the dead bodies on the inundation. And they shut their mouths as the seven great dungeons are closed with an eternal seal.'[29] The same work of progressive destruction that is assigned to Moses and Joshua is ascribed to Shu.

'Thou seizest the spear, and overthrowest the wicked, in that name which is thine of Har-Tema.

Thou destroyest the An of Tukhenti, in that name which is thine of Double-Abode-of-Ra. Thou strikest the Menti and the Sati in that name which is thine of Young Elder.'[30]

One of Shu's names is Anhar, the celestial conductor, the heaven-bringer, not only the bringer to heaven. He is thus addressed: 'Thou leadest the upper heaven with thy rod, in that name which is thine of An-Har:' he is also 'Anhar, lord of the scimitar.' In another section of the hymn we read: 'Hail to you, O five great gods, issuing from Sesen, who (when) not being in heaven, not being on earth, Shu (as light of the sun) not existing, have been the morning light! come to me! Try for me the river. Shut up what is in it! What is immersed, do not let it pass out! Seal the mouths! Choke the mouths! as is sealed up the shrine for centuries!'[31] The five great gods issuing from Sesen are here appealed to as protectors. Osiris is called the 'oldest of the five gods begotten of Seb'[32] All we can say of these five in an Osirian legend is that they were time-gods, and that the solar Osiris has been foisted into one of their places. But the name of Sesun, or Sesennu, also signifies to agitate, distract, torment, and fight. This may account for the five reappearing in the Book of Joshua as the five fighting leaders of the Amorites, the kings of Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon, who made war on Gibeon, the story of which was found in the Book of Jasher[33], and the Hebrew account represents them as being totally overthrown by Joshua the servant of Jah-Adonai. The five great gods of Sesen were pre-solar earlier than Ra, or Shu as the son of Ra. The river is synonymous with the Red Sea (Pool of Pant). 'Try for me the river! Shut up what is in it! What is immersed, do not let it pass out.'[34] So, in the Hebrew version, the Vaheb-suph is coupled with the Amon. Moses crosses the Red Sea, Joshua the river Jordan, and both passages belong to the same miracle or myth. Sesen, the place of the eight, is close to the river in the planisphere, and the five great gods who issue thence appear not only in the Book of Jasher, they are also the same five lords of the Philistines who dwelt in Geshuri near Shihor (the Nile river) and the land that remained unconquered by Joshua[35]. The five lords who remained that the children of Israel might teach them war and be [p.235] proved by them[36]: they being the pre-solar gods in Sesen the place of Taht, the lunar divinity. These five can be followed a little farther.

In the Book of Genesis we find the conflict of four kings against the five. The four are Amraphel, Arioch, Chedorlaomer, and Tidal, According to the present reading these are kings of the four quarters who superseded the five gods of Sesun who were before the solar zodiac, and possibly the lunar, was established. The battle was fought in the vale of Siddini, which was the place of slime-pits. So shihor in Hebrew means the slimy river. In the Ritual it is the morass of primordial matter, whether called the Nile or the Red Sea. Then Abram smote the confederate five kings, and—this is the point—one of those who aided him was Aner. Aner, Eshcol, and Mamre were the three who, with Abram, made up another confederacy of four that warred on the five, and put them to rout. This was at the valley of Shaveh, identical with Suph, the Red Sea. The king of Sodom and Melchizedek belong to the earliest Sabean regime. It is now suggested that the Hebrew aner (רנע) is the Egyptian Anhar—aner means to push, drive, precipitate, force along, which is emphatically the character personified in Anhar, who is said to force the sun along—and that the five kings belong to the same myth on a different line of derivation from that of the Book of Joshua.

Such being the legend of the Egyptian lion-gods, we are now prepared to prove that Shu and Anhar have been reproduced as the Moses and Joshua of the Hebrew mythos. And first of the name.

According to Fuerst[37], the etymology of the name of Moses, as given[38], implies the form (יושמ) Mashui, or Mashevi. Ma (Eg.) is truth, and shui reads light and shade, the two feathers, two aspects of truth, the two characters of Shu, corresponding to the two appearances of Moses with and without the veil. The head-attire of the two feathers is given to the Osirian as 'the image of the great waters.'[39] These are named Shu-Ma. Josephus explains that Thermutis called Moses by that name because mo (mu or ma, Eg.) is water, and those who are saved out of it are called by the Egyptians uses[40]. It is quite true that ses means to reach land and breathe after the passage of the waters. But the water ma and the breath ses (or ssu) are more to the present purpose, for these are the two truths, as in Shu-Ma or Mashu. Shu is the god of breath; he typifies or impersonates the breath of the mouth of Hathor. Ses or ssu (Eg.) means to breathe, respire, reach land again, as did Shu the breather in person emerging from the waters, who, in his twin character, was Ma-Shu. Clement Alexander also derives the name of Moses from 'drawing breath.'[41] The feather, or feathers, read Ma-Shu, the dual form of truth. In Sharpe's Inscriptions[42] the name of Shu is written Mau, with the cubit [p.236] sign of Ma, not with the feather, which might only read Shu. Mau and Shu, the two-one, are not only illustrated by the dual feather, but by the lion and the cat. One group of signs now read Mau for the cat, was formerly read Shau; and Mau for the lion, and Shau for the cat, do help to give distinctness to the types. Thus Mau-Shau would read lion-cat; but the dual lion included both, and the duality was expressed by other single signs than the feather. Mau is both lion and cat, and at one part of the celestial circle Shu transformed from the lion-type of Mau into that of the cat Shau. Moreover, it is the great cat, and some of the American aborigines call the lion the great and mischievous cat. When this change took place and the two were blended, the proper name of the dual type would be Mau-Shau, or Ma-Shu. Also Ma-Shu is the actual name of the divinity in one shape of the double type. As khu is an earlier form of Shu (in An-khu, variegated plumes), Ma-Shu had an earlier phase in Ma-Khu, and this is extant, with its variants, in the Manyak (Tibetan) macheu for a cat; meko, African Penin, a leopard; mage, Bagrmi, a cat; mechou, Carib, cat; mighoi, Mongolian, cat; mucia, Italian, she-cat; mocha, Bodo, cat; mochi, Khari Naga, a cat. If we now render the cat-lion or lion-leoparded in the hard form, then Ma-Shu is the Ma-Khu, identical with the Carib mechou and Manyak macheu. This in the form of Shu-Ma is the name of the pool of the Two Truths, where the Ma is transformed into the Ma-Shu. The name and signification of השמ include both a and shu, and the Kabbalists maintained that Moses transferred his soul to, or transformed into Joshua. That is the pure and perfect myth. Shu is said to be more ancient than the gods in that name which is his of goddess Aa-Ur, 'the very great,' that is in the El feminine form brought on from the origin of the Two Truths. One of his names in this character is Ma; he is then Ma-Shu. This character is also assigned by tradition to Moses, or Ma-Shu. It is reported by Suidas that the Hebrew lawgiver and author of the Jewish laws was Musu, a Hebrew woman[43]. Nothing is omitted.

The epicene nature of Ma-Shu is preserved in the character of Moses in a remarkable way. In Hebrew at (תא) is the feminine form of thou, and attah (התא) is the masculine form. The feminine form is looked upon as being merely the masculine shortened, although, as Fuerst says of it, 'The reason for this abbreviation has not always been discovered, and therefore the LXX and Syriac read in Ezek. 1. c. תא (with).'[44] In Deut. 5:27 (in the original, 5:24), the first 'thou' is in the usual masculine form התא (attah); the second 'thou' is in feminine form תא (at); that is, Moses in the same verse is described as both male and female. The listener to the Lord is in the masculine gender, and the utterer of the word to the people is in the feminine gender. The symbolical mouth is feminine, as the ru and peh of the hieroglyphics; the primeval utterance [p.237] was by this mouth, preserved in the Hebrew. When Moses, in the masculine character, says he cannot be the mouth, Aaron is appointed for that purpose. Miriam likewise was a feminine mouth to Moses[45], as Ma is to Shu. 'Thou blowest the divine barge off with a favourable wind in that name which is thine of the goddess Ma,'[46] is said to Shu, and the female nature of Moses is retained by a feminine thou. The name of Moses, then, being of Egyptian origin, we claim that it is mashu. It is also true that ma-shâ (Eg.) may be rendered 'raised from the water, or the water-raised.' In this sense the water-reeds and the crocodile are named Shui. In the form of יושמ (mashevi) we have the intermediate between Shu and Kafi, one of Shu's names as the ape—a type of the god who, in one character, is personified as the kafi ape; he 'has the face of a kafi ape; the head of hair of a monkey, Aani.'[47] By aid of the ape it may be possible to resolve into its primary signification the rabbinical tradition that Moses was born circumcised[48]. Such statements do not pertain to the human being, but to the mythical; and the Moses meant is mythical. As mythical, the statement can be read. Shu was represented by the ape, which, according to Horapollo[49], was 'born circumcised,' and was therefore made a type of the priest, or rather it was a prototype, as the priests are said to have adopted circumcision from the ape.

Shu supports and sustains the heaven of night, that is the most ancient earth as the netherworld of two. The rabbis say that it was while Moses was digging the foundations of the earth that he found a stone on which was inscribed the unutterable name—the stone of the seven eyes and the stars of the northern heaven, which was succeeded by the heaven elevated by Shu and brought by Anhar.

The double lions are extant in the Hebrew imagery as the twin lions of Judah, the young lion and the old lion that couched. 'Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion.'[50] These are the two characters of the lion-god in his name of Young-elder and of new Saatu, prince of slaughterers. In the Chronicon Samaritanum[51] there is a letter from Shaubec, king of Armenia, in which Joshua is designated 'the murdering wolf.' This is the Samaritan Book of Joshua, considered to be a compilation of the middle ages[52]. But it contains most ancient matter.

Shu has passed into Hebrew in his proper character of gatekeeper. 'The gate of the Tser, it is the gate of the transit of Shu. There is the north gate, it is the gate of the doorway; or they are the doors through which his father Tum goes forth to the eastern horizon of the heaven (saying) to those who belong to his race.'[53] Shuar (רעוש) is the typical porter or gatekeeper[54], who as Kore was Shuar towards the [p.238] east, identical in position with Shu-Anhar, who kept the gate through which the sun went to the eastern horizon. Shu is the personified bringer, the turner, turner-back, and returner, the goer to and fro, all of which meanings are found in the Hebrew בוש shukal is the lion, the fierce lion. Shual, the underworld, grave, pit, hell, the Ethiopic siōl, is the nocturnal heaven supported on his head by Shu, as the starry light of it, its light-in-shade. This is also the הלמש or sunken land, the underworld that Shu and Joshua led up from. The gorge of Shu is said to be the dwelling of Neith; he is hidden in the way of the gorge[55]. Shu is called the En-pe or Na-pe, rendered by Birch the 'leader of heaven.'[56] As Anhar is the one who ascends, and na means to descend, the en-pe is further the leader of heaven who descends, as indicated by the stooping position of Shu, the bearer of the sun, and its conductor in the descent from the solstitial height. Shu is specially portrayed in the attitude and act of holding up his hands aloft and bearing the disk of the sun above his head. A hieroglyphic legend describes him on the abime of the heaven, on the steps of the inhabitants of Smen, where he 'afflicts the race of the wicked on the steps of the residents in Smen.' In the same text he is identified with Ra and Atum[57]. This portrait of Shu with hands uplifted was so well known that in the porcelain figures the modellers have frequently figured him with hands elevated and the solar disk omitted.i Shu holding his hands aloft and supporting the sun, which is saluted by eight cynocephali, typical of the region of Smen, as he stands on the steps of the residents in Smen, the region of preparation, purification, establishing the son in place of the father, Shu-Anhar instead of Ma-Shu, is the original of Moses on the top of the hill in Rephidim, holding up his hands until sunset whilst Joshua discomfited Amalek in the war that went on for ever.

One of Shu's titles is Shu-Kebion, Lord of Tebut, rendering victorious his arms. Tebut (Tebhut) is the winged solar disk, the sun above the horizon. The keb is the corner, the turning-point; and kebion, where Shu rendered his arms victorious, is the Hebrew Gibeon upon which the sun stood still while the arms of Moses were held up, and those of Joshua were victorious. The sun supported by the arms of Shu-Kebion is in the Hebrew version up-borne at poise on Gibeon. The word chabion (ןויבח) is used by Habakkuk[58] in the description of the god coming from Teman, the luminous emanations of his hand being the chabion of his power. This has been translated the hiding and the tent of his power. The Egyptian kab shows it should be 'the redoubling of his power.' In Teman, or the south, the sun was in the very furnace and fiery-hornedness of its strength. Gibeon or Kebion is the place of equinoctial poise and turning, the [p.239] recognized place and time of standing still. 'The sun stops himself in the west.'[59] He is prayed to prolong his transformation. The chiefs, one of whom is Shu, sang 'Glory to thee, arresting thy person.'[60] At this time, the standing still of the moon at the level is a fact verifiable every harvest-moon, when the orb rises about the same time for several nights consecutively and, as it were, stands still instead of gaining on the solar time.

The Hebrew ajalon is an Egyptian name recognized as aaruna, a topographical place found in a fragment of the 'battle of Megiddo'[61] as the valley of Aaruna. But Aaruna belongs primarily to the celestial aaru or fields of heaven.

In the Iroquois mythological astronomy each of the four cardinal points was presided over by a spirit, and the name of the one who presided over the West was Kabaun[62]. At the equinox began the great battle of the lion-gods of the north and south against the powers of darkness which got the better of the solar god in the west, but were utterly annihilated in the east. These two were fabled to keep the balance or libration of the scales, the level of the equinox being the crossbeam, and were figured as contending on the day of the battle between Horus and Sut, when it was 'pull devil, pull baker,' between the powers of light and darkness, one at each of the two scales.

It was somewhat like the battle of the lion and the unicorn (Shu and Typhon) fought up and down the garden; theirs being in the fields of the Aaru. The same conflict was depicted by the Dakotas as for ever going on between their two gods of the north and south, Wa-ze-at-tah We-chas-tah (north) and Eto-kah We-chas-tah (south), who battle for the supremacy of the world, and for warm and cold weather, and will continue, like Jah and Amalek, to battle from generation to generation for ever[63]. In this yearly 'set-to' 'Shu and Tefnut make charms to fascinate the wicked conspirators' of Typhon. 'Tefnut changes her shape into a club' in the hands of Shu, and as he smites them she cries, 'The cowards are upset by thy blows. I am Tefnut, thundering against those who are kept on the earth (as the lower region), who are an4ihilated for ever.' 'She is like fire against the wicked ones.' 'Back, back, ye damned. Shu resists, he prevails against the wicked ones;' 'O ye wicked ones, the flames of Amen-Ra are in his members.'[64] In the Quiche and Hebrew versions the enemies are driven out by the hornet. The hornet is the stinger, and the name might be applied to variants of the stinger. The serka in Egyptian answering to the Hebrew הערצ (tzirgah) is the scorpion. This may help us to understand the hornet, for it was in the sign of Scorpio, according to the Lion calendar, that the great conflict with [p.240] Typhon or Am-Melek began. Orion sets soon after the rising of this constellation. There is a scorpion goddess, Serk, connected with the four quarters[65]. Very little is known of her. But Sothis was consecrated to her, and she has the style of hert, the mighty. She is not an evil goddess, so that when personified in her the scorpion is on the side of the gods.

Sekhet vomits flames against the wicked to suffocate them. Tef­Nut is like fire; she gives her fire against them; and no doubt the stinging scorpion of Serk helped to drive them out. The Magical Texts mention the 'Scorpion, the great one of the sun, called the devouring throat, which swallows.'[66] The scorpion of the sun is of course on the side of the sun; and this was impersonated by Serk, who stings and drives out the lurking enemy from their holes. Now when Miriam becomes Tzirag (ערצ), the likelihood is that she takes the shape of the scorpion-goddess Serk, instead of becoming leprous[67]. The consort of Kepheus is the queen of Ethiopia or Kush, and Moses is said to marry the Kushite. The setting of the constellation of Cassiopeia, the queen of Kush, corresponds to the celestial position of the sun in the Scorpion, and the Kushite queen goes down then and there to help fight the battle in the underworld. This, in one version[68], is paralleled by the death of Miriam. Serk likewise means to end, to be exhaled, which applies particularly to the water of Mirian! The other occurrence takes place where Joshua and the dog go to spy out the land of Amalek and the Anakim.

The Samaritan[69] Book of Joshua contains a good deal more of the true mythic matter than the Hebrew version. Amongst other important things, a war is described as having been carried on against Saubek, a son of Haman, called King of Persia. In the Ritual Sebek is the capturer, as the crocodile-headed deity. The crocodile was in later times so clothed with an evil reputation as the type of Typhon that Sebek has also suffered—got mixed up with the devouring demon Ammit, the crocodile-headed. The monster Shesh­Shesh is one-third crocodile. Saubek, son of Haman, is Sebek, as the crocodile of Am, the Ammit. In chapter thirty-two the speaker says, 'I have made my soul come.' The soul or shade thus constitutes himself in the character of Shu, the saviour, who here saves the deceased from the crocodiles. 'My father saves me from the eight crocodiles. Back, crocodile of the west (Am); I am not given to thee! Back, crocodile of the east; I have crossed! Back, crocodile of the south; do not gore me with thy claw! Back, crocodile of the north; I am the light of the eyes!' He is Shu. In the next chapter he asks, 'Dost thou stop Shu?'[70] This is the war of Joshua with Sebek in the typhonian phase.

Shu and Tefnut are a form of the two lion-gods fighting against the wicked, the typhonian monsters, devils, giants, or bogies of the [p.241] human childhood, who dwelt in darkness and waylaid the passengers in death or by night.

Rephidim denotes the region of gloom, terror, the dead, the giants, the Apophis or giant in shape of the dragon. It was at the level called the plain, like the Egyptian rostau. Then and there came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim[71]. The place is otherwise called Massah and Meribah. In the blessing of Moses[72] we read, 'And of Levi he said, Thy Thummim and Urim be with thy Chasid (דיסח) whom thou didst prove at Massah, and strive with at the waters of Meribah.' The chasid is the turner-back. Khesf (Eg.) means to turn back and return in spite of all opposition. This was what Shu did as Anhar, and Moses through Joshua. On the journey there are two particular places of trial and strife, Massah and Meribah. Meribah is Egyptian for the celestial inundation. Meri is heaven; bah the inundation. In one reference[73] the two are fused together; in the other they are apparently distinct[74]. Both are right according to the myth. In the Ritual the two chief places of trial are in the west, and in the crossing of the waters of Meribah one of the formulas to be recited four times by the soul that wishes to awe the monsters, is, 'I am Bahu The Great!'[75] that is, he personates the god of the inundation (Meri). Am is the west, and at this point one of the worst typhonian monsters and liers-in-wait for souls, is the crocodile, expressly called the crocodile of the west, the Ament. 'Back, crocodile of the west, living off those who are never at rest.'[76] Massah (הסמ) is the place of terror and dissolving with fear. The type of this terror in the west was the devouring demon, called the crocodile. In Egyptian the name of the crocodile itself is Masuh[77], or Emsuh. Where the devourer as Masuh waited in the west, was the first place of trial for the dead, who were weighed in the scales there, by the seven chief powers (seven devils also were there), at the arm of the balance on the day of trial[78]. It is designated the 'Angle of the West,' where Typhon as Baba the beast was the watcher[79]. Amalek is described[80] as the lier-in-wait; he is synonymous with Am (Eg.), the ruler and devouring demon of Hades.

The crocodile as Am, or the devouring Emsuh, was stationed here in the Ament, the region of Amalek. This is the Hebrew place of trial, called Massah, or, without the point, Masah. When the imagery is found in the Book of the Dead it has been rendered more remote because applied to a sort of spirit-world; the basis, however, is always astronomical, and the main features may be identified in the various planispheres. The crocodile of the west, for instance, is a constellation lying across the three decans of Scorpio [p.242] facing the southi, on the downward road of the sun[81]. The crocodile which fed on souls as they entered the dark river in the later phase of the myth was the swallower of the setting stars in the earlier. The Hebrew version is more plainly zodiacal than the Ritual, and either it was not written for the dead, or it was rewritten for the living.

Horapollo says the Egyptians 'denote a rapacious and inactive man by a crocodile with the wing of an Ibis on its head, for if you touch him with the wing of an Ibis you will find him motionless.'[82] In the Magical Texts a crocodile, carrying a feather on its head, sits on a particular-shaped wheel, inside of which is an uraeus serpent: a legend calls it 'the turner-of-destruction-crocodile, that which nurtured by impurity; the great truth, burning its enemies by the entire revolution of its hole in Karrt'[83]—the abodes of the damned. Shu is denominated the Repeller of Crocodiles. 'Thou repellest the crocodile, coming out of the abyss, in that name which is thine of Repeller of Crocodiles.'[84] This is a type of Am or Amalek as the devourer, in the form of a crocodile. After the battle, 'Moses built an altar, and called the name of it סנ־הוהי Jehovah-Nehs (or Nes).' The Egyptian nusa is a pedestal or stand on which the Nile was represented; a kind of throne or seat, as the nusa is the hinder-part or back side. He erected a nusa for Jehovah or Jah because, as he said, it figured his throne or seat, he who, as god of the hinder part (which was shown to Moses), the lower region from the west downwards, warred with Amalek from generation to generation, or from time to time continually. The Egyptian teru, time, denotes the two times of the circle in which the battle was fought from year to year. In connection with the Nile-stand or nusa it may be noted that the yod[85], stands for one side or bank of the Nile. Also one of the titles of Shu is connected with the stand which in one form is the nusa. 'Thou comest here upon thy stately stand, in that name which is thine of Being in thy Stately Stand.'[86] Shu was the stand, altar, nusa, or hand which uplifted the sun and figuratively supported the solar god, whereas Moses is said to have reared an altar or stand. There is the same choice of stand or standard in the Egyptian am-aat as in the Hebrew nes.

The wars of the Lord are also found in the fifth chapter of the Book of Judges, as the subject of Deborah's song, which is a very precious page of the Hermean lore, and indeed one of the few fragments in the early books of the Old Testament which possess any intrinsic value. That these are the wars in heaven is shown by the kings who came and fought. 'They fought from heaven; they were the stars in their courses that fought against Sisera.'[87] In this version the river that takes the place of Jordan, the Red Sea, the Vaheb of Suph, [p.243] or Pool of Pant, is the Kishon. 'The river Kishon swept them away, that ancient river, the river Kishon;' Deborah sings the song of triumph instead of Miriam or Tefnut, and Barak the lightener is the hero in place of Shu the light-in-shade. Sisera may be paralleled with the Shesh crocodile, and with Saubek, or the original of all the crocodile of darkness, whose image is figured across the west, the place of execution, where, in the Hebrew myth, Sisera is captured and executed. There is an Egyptian version of the myth, in which the woman is the subduer of the evil one. Isis is depicted in the act of piercing the head of a serpent. In other pictures it is the crocodile, Shesh, whose head is being speared, as in the vignettes to the Ritual, and according to Diodorus it was Isis who subdued Typhon at the battle in An (Ant or Antaeus) in the north[88]. The piercing of the Shesh by the woman takes the shape of the nail driven through the head of Sisera by Jael.

Moses was only to see the hinder or backward part belonging to the god, the 'Akar.' This, when applied to a personified deity, is repellent and needlessly gross. But that is not the meaning. The Akar, in Egyptian as well as Hebrew, is the Hades, the lower region, left side, hinder part, west and north. The Au-kar is the nether place. Moses, as conductor, was only to see the Akar; except in a glimpse of the promised land on the mountain top, he was not to behold the glory of the Lord in front, nor see the sun upon the horizon of the east.

The general idea in the Book of the Hades is that the earth in the west opens and swallows the sun, the gods, and the souls that accompany the luminary below. The goddess Athor, regent of the western regions, received the dead in the west as the spotted cow. The west is also designated 'the good west (who) holds out her arms to take thee.'[89]

At sunset the earth is said to stretch her arms in the western horizon to receive the god in the embrace of his mother, and in the mesak or breeding-place he prepares the fresh generation for his new birth next morning. The same process applies to the annual sun. 'Oh, enter (or issue from) the east. Come from the belly of thy mother.'[90]

The Qorak of the psalmist belongs to this Akar of the underworld, and this is the place said to have been made by Moses, who dug a deep pit in the land of Gad, in which he confined the evil demon Karun, who was only permitted to issue forth and plague the Israelites when they sinned[91]. Karun is the Arabic form of the Hebrew qorak. In Egyptian kar-un would denote a being of the kar or hole. There is such a being in the Ritual, called akar, the viper of Typhon.

Moses was the typical lawgiver in Israel, and the astronomical [p.244] character of the lawgiver spoken of in the blessing of Moses can be shown by reference to an Egyptian planisphere. 'Of Gad he said, Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad; he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the head,' and 'he provided the first part for himself, because there in a portion of the lawgiver was he exalted, and he came with the heads of the people, he executed the justice of the Lord, and his judgments with Israel.'[92] It is the same typical lawgiver[93] in another passage, 'The princes digged the well, the nobles of the people by (the direction of) the lawgiver, with their staves.' And in another of these most ancient fragments to be found in the Hebrew collection it is said, 'The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.'[94] The name of this lawgiver is derived from the Hebrew cheq, a decree or thing appointed and established, a limit, bound or boundary, a circle, a law. Cheq is identical with khekh, the collar, and khekh, the whip symbol of rule and the ruler. The khekh is also the balance or equinox, where the circle was completed. The first law-giving depended on recurring cycles of time, and certain stars and constellations were the celestial lawgivers and angels.

The khekh of the equinox was ruled by the lion-gods, Shu and Anhar, or Shu in his two characters, who pulled at the ropes of the scales until Horus, the coming Shiloh, had conquered Typhon[95].

Drummond[96] showed from his point of view that this lawgiver in Israel was the constellation of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, or Regulus, who is represented as a man with a crown on his head and a sceptre in his hand. In the description of Gad it is said he dwells as a lion, and tears the arm with the crown of the head. Cepheus, the crowned and sceptred lawgiver, according to Columella, rises on the 7th of the Ides of July, and in the course of a few days he comes to rise under the sign of the lion, and continues to be the paranatellon of Leo, until the sun enters Scorpio[97]. Drummond was right so far, but had not the Egyptian origins for his court of appeal. The Arabians called this constellation both Cheic, the ruler or lawgiver, and Keiphus[98]. Now, when the sun was in the sign of the lion, Kepheus was visible very low down in the northern hemisphere, at the same time Leo was hidden in the solar radiance. Thus Kepheus took the place of Leo as guide of the sun, or indicator or lawgiver, the Regulus in person, as the paranatellon of Regulus the star (Cor-Leonis) in the lion, and, being so low down in the northern hemisphere, he may be described as seen under the feet of Judah or the lion. In one Egyptian planisphere reproduced by Kircher, the figure of Shu-Anhar, as Cepheus, fills all three decans of the Watermani. He wears upon his head the two ostrich feathers which read Ma-Shu; in his stretched-out right hand he holds the sceptre or rod, and in his [p.245] left he grasps the arrow. He is portrayed in his marching martial attitude, and, as a paranatellon of the lion, is literally the lawgiver between the feet of the Lion of Judah[99]. Cepheus, the lawgiver, be it understood, has two stars. One is Regulus, the heart of the lion, the other, the northern constellation.

The Chaldean astrologers predict that if the star of the great lion (query: Regulus?) be gloomy, the heart of the people will not rejoice. That was one type of the lawgiver.

In their astronomy the sun was designated the star doubly great and doubly little. He was the doubly-dependent on Regulus, for Regulus marked the solstices in the sign of Leo and Aquarius. The sun was the doubly great with Regulus in the lion and the doubly little with Regulus in the Waterman. Thus Regulus was the double support of the sun in its two extreme aspects; he was represented by Cepheus or Shu-Anhar, and the dual form of the lion called the twin lion-gods. Here we have one of those things which tend, at first sight, to make Asia look older than Africa; the oldest forms of words being frequently found outside of Egypt. Nevertheless this is the superficial view. Language had gone on developing and modifying more in that land after the migration, that is all. It is evident to me that Cepheus or Kefu is the lion-god Shu, and his name of Shu is the worn-down form of Kefu. We know that the feather Shu is found with the value khu, and the u is the earlier fu. Shu can be identified by name with Cepheus in his character of kafi, the ape. Also Shu, who appears in the Persian sphere with a crown upon his head, is depicted in the monuments bearing on his head the hinder-part of the lioness called the khepsh, and this symbol may supply the name of Cepheus. The khepsh denotes the north, the hind-quarter, the heaven supported by Shu. Mars was the planetary type of Shu, and the Twins of the zodiac are the sign of Shu in the dual character of Shu and his sister Tefnut, a form of the lion-gods as male and female, but no explanation has yet been offered of the constellation Cepheus being one of the types of Shu. This belongs to his Sabean and pre-solar character as the son of Nun before he became Shu-si-Ra. He had a dual solstitial function earlier than that of ruler of the equinox, and he can be identified astronomically as the god of the north who rises figuratively under the lion and is a ruler of the south, the two characters corresponding to the upper and lower lands and heavens.

When the sun was passing through the sign of Aquarius the constellation Kepheus, or Regulus, arose with his consort, Cassiopeia, queen of Ethiopia, as the attendant of the sun through the abyss. The sun is said to be 'forced along by the conducting of Shu.'[100] 'Shu is the conqueror of the world in Suten-khen' the celestial [p.246] Bubastis, the royal birthplace, and the great chief in An, another name of the solar birthplace.

In the lower heaven was the place of judgment in the northern quarter, which included the sea-goat, waterer, and fishes. And of Gad it is said he provided the first part for himself; a portion of the lawgiver, or ruler of the north, that is, Gad occupied the first part of the northern quarter, the first of the water signs. The stars of Gad are still found in Capricorn, the sign called Gadia by the Chaldeans, Gadi by the Syrians, Giedi by the Arabians. Rabbi Solomon and others state that Capricorn was the sign of Gad in Israel[101], as is shown by his being ceiled or celestialized in the first portion of the lawgiver, Cepheus. The Well celebrated[102] was evidently in the portion of the lawgiver that began with Capricorn and ended with the Fishes. The Well answers to the Pool of Persea and water of life to be found in the Waterer or in An (fish) of the final zodiac. The lawgiver was to remain until Shiloh came. Shu was the support of heaven until the sun-god was reborn from the abyss. Then the Osirian, in the character of the young god, at this point says, 'I tell the great whole of Shu.'[103] This being the place where the duality of Shu, and of Osiris respectively, became unified; the place of the afterbirth. The Egyptians, says Plutarch, celebrate the festival of her (Isis) afterbirth, following the vernal equinox[104]. The afterbirth was the second Horus, the Egyptian shiloh, or sherau, the adult son, with the determinative of thirty years of age. One meaning of the word shiloh (ny) in Hebrew is 'the afterbirth.' The shiloh, or sherau, the adult son, was the younger Horus or the one who came with peace. In the solar myth of Atum this imagery is equinoctial; the shiloh was born at the vernal equinox. But the Egyptian sacred year began in July with the sun in the sign of Leo, and it is there in the Egyptian planisphere that the symbolism of Jacob's description is visibly present. The shiloh was to come, 'binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine he washed his garments in wine and his clothes in the blood of grapes, his eyes red with wine and his teeth white with milk.'[105]

The imagery is extant in the sign of Leoi, where there are two lions and a whelp, together with the figures of an ass bridled and a man leading a horse to tether it to the Vinei, a constellation found in Virgo with branches reaching over into the sign of Leo[106]. The vine and wine (arp) are synonymous with the repa, the heir-apparent, the gracious child Horus, who was conceived of the virgin mother, on this side of the zodiac, as the branch of the vine, or the grapes, to be reborn of the genetrix in the sign of Pisces on the opposite side. The vine or tree constellation is figured in the three decans of Virgo the virgin goddess bears seven ears of corn, and it may be noted in [p.247] passing that there is or was a fresco in the church Bocca della Verita at Rome, in which the goddess Ceres was portrayed shelling corn, with Bacchus squeezing grapes to provide the elements of the eucharist for a table below[107].

The dual character of the lion-god Shu or Cepheus is represented by the double lion of Judah, and it is now suggested that this dual lion of Judah is identical with Shu and Anhar, and with Cepheus, who is represented as the lawgiver, by the star Regulus (Cor-Leonis), in the lion, and by Regulus the constellation Cepheus in the north, who brought in the solar Shiloh or sun of the resurrection at the time of the summer solstice, as Tammuz, Duzi, Adonai, or the child Horus, and the Horus of the resurrection or of Easter at the vernal equinox. According to the Hebrew law, no man was allowed to enter in at the south gate of the Jewish sanctuary, that being the gate of entrance for the Lord[108]. The gate of the south was at the beginning of the Egyptian sacred year, with the sun in the lion, or, in another calendar, in the crab; not at the place of the spring equinox with the month Nisan. The gate is made eastward by the prophets on behalf of the repa, or prince, who was Horus redivivus. These two points in the south and east are indicated by 'the Lord came from Sinai' (and) 'shined forth from Mount Paran;'[109] also, 'God came from Teman (or the south) and the Holy One from Mount Paran.'[110]

The birth of Moses is associated with the lion in Hebrew tradition.

Albiruni observes that the birth of Moses, according to the report of the Jews, must have coincided with the rising of the 'tooth of Leo' and the moon's entering the 'claws of Leo.' 'Cor-Leonis,' he says, 'rises when Suhail (i.e., Canopus) ascends in Alhijâz, Suhail being the forty-fourth star of Argo Navis, standing over its oar.'[111]

Moses can also be identified with Regulus and Cepheus the lawgiver, by means of a description in the Book of Isaiah[112]. 'Then he remembered the days of old, Moses (and) his people (saying), Where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherd of his flock?' The 'Shepherd of the Heavenly flock,' the Babylonian Sib-zi-anna is, according to M. Oppert, the star Regulus[113]. Other Assyriologists say it is a name of Mars. It may be both, as Mars is also the planetary type of Shu, the Egyptian heaven-bringer.

Again, we shall find the character of Shu represented by Moses, who is the registrar of the different stations in the wilderness[114], and is [p.248] credited with being the inventor of the divisions of lands[115], that is primarily in the chart of the heavens. Shu is the Egyptian word for the division of land; the Shut or Sheft being a section. The earliest division is that of Shu, light and shade.

As before said, the feather of Shu reads both Ma and Shu, light and shade; he being a god of light and a light in shade. This dual personification is marked in Moses. Nothing proves his identity with Shu (light-and-shade) more than the description of his changefulness from light to dark, from glow to gloom.

Before Joshua takes the place of leader Moses is the light-and-shade in one, and changeful in appearance as the feather, or the sheen of shot silk. In the Authorised Version and other Protestant versions[116] Moses is said to have put on a veil, in order that he might hide the splendour reflected in his face from the divine presence. The Seventy and the Vulgate represent him as putting on the veil, not whilst he is speaking with the people, hut afterwards, to hide, not the glory, but its vanishing away, and as wearing the veil until he returned to the presence of the deity, and the splendour had once more visibly rekindled. 'When Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him he put off the veil until he came out.' 'And Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with Him.'[117] The character permutes and alternates like that of Ma-Shu.

The astronomical chapter[118] of the twelve signs or twelve tribes in which the description of the lawgiver occurs precedes the death or disappearance of Moses. He is said to ascend Mount Nebo, whence he vanishes. In the mapping out[119] Nebo is in the territory assigned to Gad. The passage[120] reads literally, with the English put backwards to parallel the Hebrew,

The rashith or point of commencement for Gad was identified by means of the lawgiver, because it was in the first part of his area or field. The 'fields of the Aahru' (Eg.) is an expression for the celestial divisions. The sign of Gad is the Goat, and in that was in the supposed burial-place of Moses, identifiable by means of Mount Nebo in the land of Gad.*

* The present writer regrets that he is unable to find room for a section in which the stations and districts of the Israelites are compared with the chart of the heavens, more particularly the Hindu, Chinese, and Arabic chart of the twenty-eight lunar mansions.

The Nebo, where Moses dies or transforms into Joshua, answers well to the mount of the double earth, the Mount of Nub-Tata an Egyptian god. The place of Nebo can be identified in the Hermean zodiaci, where the Goat is Anubis, [p.249] one of whose names is Nub (Sut-Nub). Also Capricorn, the sign of Sut-Anubis, was called the domicile of Saturn, the star of Israel. The great dog was a type of Anubis, one star of which constellation was called the star of Isis, and Anubis in the Goat rattles the sistrum of Isis[121]. Now in the lion-calendar, when the sun entered the sign of the Goat, the great dog and the dog Procyon were both setting. Here was the grave of the lawgiver, whether called Cepheus or Moses. Here Cepheus was no longer visible; it was the time of his transformation, or descent, for the constellation Argo sinks beneath the horizon when the sign of Capricorn arises. The pilot, who was Shu, in the forepart of the boat, and the rudder, are visible in Egypt. Shu-Anhar is the god dwelling in the divine barge or Argo, who stands at the prow to strike the Apophis monster of the darkness and the deep, and who, in his triumph, darts his spear against the serpent, when it rears its head to swallow Ra. Nebo, being in the first water sign, also marks the two truths of land and water as they are indicated in the Persian sphere at the place of the equinox in the Scorpion. Nebo is in the plains of Moab. Mu-ab, as Egyptian, reads, 'opposite the water.' The place was opposite the water which Moses did not cross. He was buried on the boundary. The picture of the devil disputing with Michael about the body of Moses[122] is curiously like the dispute and settlement of the boundary of An between Sut (Satan) and Horus, in the Inscription of Shabaka[123]. When the Sun arrived at the place of the western equinox it entered the domain of Typhon. It was there that Typhon tore Osiris into fourteen parts—the fourteen lunar houses answering to half of the zodiacal circle. No one knew where Moses was buried, but the devil claimed possession of his body, and contended for it with Michael, as Typhon contended with Har-Makhu, Har of the two horizons or of the equinoctial balance, level or plain. At the autumn equinox, our Michaelmas, the dip of the scales was in favour of Typhon.

In the mythos the sun is received at evening or in the autumn by the goddess Hathor at the mountain of the west. She is the habitation of Har, the son. The god re-enters her womb to be buried and reborn. This, too, was the burial-place of Moses, who, the scripture says, died in the land of Moab, Al Phi-Jehovah (הוהי־יפ־לע). Phi, of course, denotes a mouth, and the peh (Eg.) sign of the female hinder-part will explain the rest. He entered the mouth of the void, the bahu, or peh of the north, as the sun entered the peh or khepsh, carried on the head of Anhar, the Akar or pit, said to have been dug by Moses.

'The mouth of the well has swallowed him up' is a Hebrew saying of the underworld. The well is the tepht (Eg.), the void or abyss, and the mouth of Jehovah as the feminine divinity may apply, the horizon or ru being the mouth, but the mouth of the male god can [p.250] by no means supply a figure of the entrance to the underworld. The goddess received the sun, the sun stood still. Moses was buried in the west, opposite to the water, or in the first water sign, and in a famous Hawaiian legend of Hiaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele we find the goddess as the one of the two divine sisters who receives the sun—'i ka muli o Hea'—over the pool or estuary of Hea! It is related that when Hiaka went to the island of Kauai to recover and restore to life the body of Lohiau, the lover of her sister Pele, she came to the foot of the Kalalu mountain shortly before sunset, and on being told there would not be light long enough for her to climb it and get the body out of the cave, she prayed to her gods to keep the sun stationary until she had accomplished her purpose. The prayer was heard, the sun stood still; she climbed the mountain and received the body[124].

The abyss in this myth is the Estuary of Hea, the same as in the Assyrian cosmogony. The two sisters are likewise the same as in the Egyptian mythos. In the invocations of Isis and Nephthys Isis says to Osiris, 'I am thy double sister.' Ra joins himself to his double mother[125]. One of the Ptolemies calls himself the beloved of the double (divine) mother, otherwise the two sisters.

The passage of the sun in the Goat was marked by the temporary setting of the river of Aquarius. Hence, perhaps, the fable of crossing the Jordan dry-shod. Next month, when the sun entered the sign of Aquarius Cepheus again rose, and the Lawgiver was visible as supporter of the heaven. This is Shu-Anhar with the khepsh on his head, the type of the hinder-part and sign of attainment, of reaching and arriving.

This re-arising of Cepheus corresponds to the role of Joshua after the death or transformation of Moses. 'The permutation or transformation of Israel,' says the Kabbala Denudata[126], 'is Mashu:' the true doctrine. The god of the Asar was represented by the transforming twins, Moses and Joshua, Moses being here recognized as the one through whom the deity was dually manifested. 'I am the great whole of Shu,' says Osiris in the Ritual. The Hebrews gave the prominence to Moses. In the Ritual the sun of winter is said to transform into a cat. 'I am the great Cat,' says the Osirian, 'which is in the Pool of Persea, in Annu, the night of the battle made to bind the wicked; the day of strangling the enemies of the universal lord there, the great cat which is in Tattu, in the Pool of the Persea, placed in Annu, is the sun himself, called a cat. For it is like what he has done; he has made his transformation into a cat. Or it is Shu making the likeness of Seb,'[127] (i.e., Time). Shu was the earlier lion-god, and his was the true transformation into the cat-lion or leopard. In heraldry the leopard represents those [p.251] warriors who manifested the utmost boldness and suddenness in attack; the promptitude of power is typified by the leopard. Our English lion is drawn leoparded like Anhar: it is the lion of the north. Further a young lion is called a cat-lion, and it was in this region that the sun was catted or brought forth as young. Here Anhar becomes the lion-supporter of the sun, on the opposite side of the shield to that of Shu, and as the sun in Anrutef most needed support, Anhar was made the great hero of the twin lion-gods who conducted the sun up out of the very pit.

The total of all that we are here contending for is confessed in the name of the veil with which Moses concealed his face. It is the הסמ one Hebrew rendering of Ma-Shu, the Two Truths, the light and shade of the feather. Nowhere in the Hebrew writings is a veil called masuh or mashu, except the one worn by Moses[128], 'and this mashu as a veil,' says Gesenius, 'cannot be explained on philological grounds;'[129] as the reader will see, it can on the mythological grounds. The mashu represents the permutation of Ma changing into Shu, or the passage of the sun into the domain of Shu, the shade and veil; this the Ritual designates 'making his transformation.'[130] Mashu (Eg.) means to turn, just as the changing of Moses is indicated by the mashu, called the veil. In the Avesta there is a mountain named Ushidarena said to possess pure brightness—the glory and kingly majesty wherewith Yima the first man was endowed until his fall. From this mountain the fabulous kings descended, and it is a Parsee doctrine that kings and rulers originally came down endowed with a peculiar brightness from heaven[131]. So when Moses came down from the mount the skin of his face shone with such splendour they were afraid to come near him[132]. In keeping with this symbolism of Shu and Anhar, light and shade, are the instructions for building the arks or tabernacles (הכס) for the Feast of Tents celebrated on the fifteenth of Tizri, the first month of the civil year.*

* The Jews celebrated their New Year's Day in London, in the year 1876, on the 17th of September, and in 1880 on the 6th of September.

We learn from the Mishna[133] that a succah or ark was not valid unless it conformed to certain rules, or as the words are, 'which had more sun than shade.' It was to be erected equally in sun and shadow; the part open to the rays of the sun was to exactly balance the shade of the covering, because it was emblematic of the equinox, the balance of light and shade, the level of the two heavens of Shu and Anhar, Moses and Joshua, or Ma-Shu. This ark was likewise the double abode of Ra, which was typified by Ma-Shu, the light and shade in one personification. The dual meaning of Shu's name as light and shade is reflected in the legends that tell of Moses being the first [p.252] teacher who set up gnomons to measure the light by the length of the shadow as a mode of time-keeping. Shu, as the father of Seb, is the progenitor of Time.

We have now arrived at the point of time and place where the scene of transformation occurs—at the time of the winter solstice (in the Ram calendar), the turning-point of the lower heaven. Shu does not die: he makes his transformation into Anhar. Moses passes into or permutes with the character of Joshua. Not until he has obtained a glimpse from Pisgah as did Shu, if we may judge by what the Osirian says in this place 'the Osiris has seen the sun born in the star, at the thigh of the great water;'[134] that is, seen it pass into the keeping of Anhar or Cepheus, who takes up the conductorship noose-in-hand, or with the later sceptre of the lawgiver.

In the Ritual the stars or planets are described as hauling the sun along with ropes, the ropes having a noose to them. When the winter sun was low in the nether world by night, or in the winter signs, men looked up at the starry movers through the heavens that retained all their light in their lustre, and never slackened in their speed, as did the sun; and their thought was, 'Pull him along, you glorious goers through the dark. You swift-winged Mercury and blood-red Mars, haul away at the ropes of the sun.' 'O conductors of the bark of millions of years! led through the gateway, clearing the paths of heaven and earth; accompany ye the souls to the mummies. Your hands are full, bearing your ropes, your fists holding the coils.'[135] Again, the Osirian, or soul of the deceased, says, 'I make the haul of thy rope, O sun.'[136] 'I do not fall at the towing of the sun.'[137]

One starry image of Shu was Mars marching with his noose in hand and forcing the sun along; for the Ritual[138] says, 'The sun is forced along by the conducting of Shu, who gives blasts of flame from his mouth.' Shu, then, with his noose is identifiable with the sun-catcher of the Maori, Polynesian, and North American Indian myths. The myth of catching the sun is that of measuring time. Until the revolving orbs were tethered, or time was spaced out, there was no reckoning for men to go upon.

In the Mangaian legend Maui (the Egyptian alter ego of Shu) set about tethering the sun to regulate his movements and time him. He plaited six royal nooses, and placed them at six different apertures which the sun passed through on his path, and eventually caught him and held him tight, and fastened the end of his rope to a rock. Ra agreed that in future he would not hurry through heaven so furiously fast. Maui slackened the nooses, but Ra still wears them, and they may be seen hanging from the sun at dawn and evening[139].

The same story is told in the Samoan Islands. There was a man who set himself to build a house of great stones, to last for ever. [p.253] But he could not get it finished, the sun went round so fast. At last the Itu, or Atua, caused the facehere creeper to grow. With this the man made a noose and caught the sun. Then he built the house[140].

The Ojibwas have the same tale of catching the sun in a noose of red metal cord. When it had been caught, the animal world was in a state of consternation. The dormouse at last nibbled the cord in two, which set the sun free[141]. The Dog-rib Indian legend makes the mole the deliverer of the ensnared sun.

In the Ute mythology the passage of the sun across the heavens in its appointed course is described as being the result of a fierce conflict between Ta-Wats, the hare god, and Ta-Vi, the solar god. Once on a time, or rather before time was, the sun was accustomed to roam the earth at will and without bounds. At one period he would come so near to men that they were scorched; at another he concealed himself in a cave, and they nearly perished during the long night of his absence. Then Ta-Wats took the matter in hand, and determined to subdue and tether the erratic solar god. After a long, long journey, he came to the edge of the earth and waited patiently for the wayward deity. When the sun arose Ta-Wats aimed an arrow at his flaming face, but it was dissolved by his burning breath before it could reach him. He shot arrow after arrow all in vain, until one only remained in his quiver. This was the magical arrow, never known to fail. This he baptized in a divine tear, and shot it. The arrow struck the sun full in the face, and the wayward god was conquered. He was now compelled to appear before the gods in council to receive sentence. This council condemned him to travel across the firmament until the end of time, in one appointed and determined course, by which decision the days and nights, the seasons the years, with their lengths and recurring periods, were established for ever according to the solar chart[142].

In addition to identifying the tetherer of the sun with Maui (Shu), it may be noted that wat is an English name of the hare; skhat in Egyptian. The hare-headed kukufa sceptre is a most ancient emblem of sovereignty, and it bears on it the feather of Shu.

The vignette to the abode, chapter 150 of the Ritual, shows a hare-headed god with bow and arrows. The arrow is still another symbol of Shu; one of its names is the kesr, the turner-back, and it keeps its character in the Ute myth. Also the Divine Tear is an Egyptian type of creative power.

The bow of Seb is the circle of time, of starry time. The first drawer of this bow, and maker of the earliest circle of time, was the Great Bear. By aid of these facts we can interpret the tradition of the Laps, who relate in their mythological epic the feats of Pawin [p.254] Parne, the mighty hunter and bowman, an obvious form of Shu­Anhar, also called like him the 'Son of the Sun,' as well as the offspring of Kalla. This Nimrod of the far north is represented as hunting along with his fellow giants, and using the Great Bear for his bow. With this bow he pursues and tames such celestial stags as Jupiter and Venus, the 'colour-changing hind,' in the constellation Cassiopeia. The bow of the Great Bear was the primordial bow of Seb, or time, the first circle of the year. By means of this the primitive observers could reckon the number of years in the revolutions of Jupiter, Venus, and the other planets, which enabled them to establish planetary time. Thus Pawin Parne drew the bow of Seb in its primal shape; and the bow with which he tamed Jupiter and Venus was a type similar to the noose of Shu, who made the 'likeness of Seb,' and of the facehere loop in the Samoan mythos, with which the sun was tethered, so that the proper reckonings could be kept.

The connection with Cassiopeia shows the relation of Pawin Parne to Cepheus, who was her consort. Also, the bow identifies the lion-god Shu. 'I am the lion-god coming forth with a bow; what I have shot at is the eye of Horus.'[143] That is Pawin Parne and Ta-Wats in one. In the Egyptian texts Ra, the sun, is called 'the Runner which no one is able to catch in the morning of his births.' The sun is the runner or racer in the Psalms, when he issues from his chamber like a bridegroom rejoicing as a strong man to run race; to which image the author of Primitive Marriage[144] might have pointed as another illustration of the races run at the capture of the bride for marriage. The first tethered timekeeper was Kef (the hippopotamus), and kefiu (Eg.) means the tethered.

Tethering the sun and building the house are forms of arranging the twelve signs. Shu presides over six of these signs down which the sun hurries, and is represented as being impeded in his course by the six nooses of Maui. The Egyptian Maui is the god of the six descending signs. Six nooses in the hieroglyphics read six months. We thus recover the primitive meaning. Shu is depicted as holding up and staying the sun in its downward course; Anhar as forcing it along in its ascent by means of the noose in his hand.

It must not be thought that the Israelites or Solarites are absent from the Egyptian myth. Anhar does not only conduct the sun. In the creation by Ra, Nun, the father of Shu, says 'My son Shu, thou shalt do ... thy father in his creations. My son Shu, take with thee my daughter Nut, and be the guardian of the multitudes which live in the nocturnal sky; put them on thy head and be their fosterer.'[145] That is a metaphor for bearing them up. 'I establish, as inhabitants, all the beings which are suspended in the sky, the stars.' 'I assemble and give the possession of those multitudes of men.' [p.255] In these passages Shu is bidden to support Ra by guarding the multitudes that dwell in night or live in the nocturnal heavens; that is in Hades, or Sheol. These transactions were solar and Sabean at first, and secondarily a spiritual sense was read into them, but they were never supposed by the initiated to be human and historical. That notion was a legacy bequeathed by later error to still later ignorance.

Shu (Anhar) is lord of the sanctuary or tabernacle of the god. The Hebrew Joshua is the son of Nun and minister of the tabernacle. He has the care and custody of the sanctuary in which the God of Israel has, like Ra, resolved to be lifted up and carried. The Samaritan name of the Messiah, according to De Sacy, signifies the 'Returning One'[146] and Juynboll[147] supposes that the Messiah was called by this name because he was regarded as the returning Moses. Mashu (Eg.) or meshu means to turn back, return. The night of the last day of the old year, and the evening meal of the first day of the new, were called the masiu. Messu was a name of the typical prince of Ethiopia corresponding to Cepheus, and therefore to Shu, in his character of the 'Returning One.' Joshua is the messiah or saviour, as the returning Moses.

The first words addressed by Jah-Adonai to Joshua are, 'Moses, my servant, is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan.'[148] In Egyptian Jordan is Jarutana, i.e., the river that divides. Joshua leads the Israelites across the dividing river; they pass over on dry ground, and twelve stones are erected as a memorial in Gilgal, on the other side. Then Jordan returned and overflowed his banks again, just as the river of the zodiac re-arises in the train of Cepheus and his consort the queen of Ethiopia. In the chapter of opening the backdoors and coming forth at the back of the heaven, it is said: 'Shu has opened the gate. I have come forth with a rush. I have gone forth, I have gone into the cabin of the boat of the sun.'[149] Shu opening the gate for the passage of the Iarutana is identical with Joshua leading the Israelites over the Jordan. The Osirian enters the boat, or ark of the sun, and crosses; he prevails over the waters, streams, pools. When the ark is brought to the edge of the Jordan, the waters divide for the host to pass through. In other words, they realize their name of Iaru-tana, the dividing river of Egypt. 'The Osiris does not arrive front the other side deceived (or does not go obfuscated) when he has gone round the heaven at its southern shoulder saying that to the Osiris are given the winds of the blest, to eat and drink the food of those belonging to the sun.'[150] He has spied out the land of promise and plenty beforehand, and is not deceived, having 'Thousands of food and drink off the tables of his father; oxen, bulls, red cattle, geese and ducks.' These, like the Hebrew milk and honey, were sacred types [p.256] of abundance and offering. The spying out of this land was from the turn of the southern shoulder of the heaven.

Now when Moses deputed Joshua to spy out the land of Canaan he sent him up into a mountain southward to spy out whether the land was fat or lean. This answers to the southern shoulder of the heaven, from whence the Osirian spies out his land of the table, hept, of the sun, piled with plenty. Joshua was accompanied on his journey by Caleb, the dog, and eleven others. These are, probably, the 'Dogs of Shu,' who, in the Ritual, follow the person of Shu[151]. The spies bring back a huge cluster of grapes from the south. In the south arose the dog-star, the watch or spy of the gods, who announced the coming plenty to be poured into Egypt's lap by means of the inundation.

Kalb (בךכ), the Hebrew name for the dog, is identical with the Egyptian kherf, kherp, or kherb, the first form, model figure, the princeps, as was the Dog-star in heaven. The character assigned to the kalb as the raging, the furious, is that of the fiery Dog-star, and the god of fury and fire, Bar-Sutekh; kalb being the same word in that sense as yelp. Chalab is a Turkish god, or typical image; Kilip an Akkadian divinity; Kolpia, Phoenician; Glipo, African Basa. The kalp was a wooden idol, venerated by the Hebrews. Kalb the kherp was one of the primordial glyphs in heaven. Of all the hosts that came out of Egypt, ranging from 600,000 to 2,000,000 souls who were promised the land of plenty, which they never attained, only Caleb the dog and Joshua reached the end of the journey[152]. The imagery on which this was based is to be seen in the Egyptian planispherei, and there only can the reality be found. The Dog-star and Cor-Leonis (Regulus, the sign of Shu in the south) were the two stars at the point where one circuit ended and another began in the Egyptian solstitial year. In one of the Egyptian planispheres reproduced by Kircher[153] there appears the constellation of the Vine to the south-west, near the lion and virgin, and in its branches stands the Dog, looking eastward, spying out the promised land of spring time, and the golden fields of the ascending suni. The words, 'Shu has opened the gate' are preceded by 'Those who belong to Nu have opened the gate, those who belong to the Spirits have besieged it.' So Joshua opens the gate and forces the passage by the siege of Jericho.

The spies who bring back with them the giant bunch of grapes and other fruit report that the cities of the children of Anak were huge and walled round. 'And they brought up an evil report of the land, saying, It is a land which eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and there we saw the sons of Anak which come of the giants, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.'[154]

This region of things gigantic may be found in the mystical abodes [p.257] through which the soul has to pass on its way to the world of light and blessedness. The second abode is called, 'Greatest of possessions in the fields of the Aahru. Its wall is of earth. The height of its corn is seven cubits, the ears are twin, its stalks are three cubits (said) by the spirits seven (cubits) in length.' The spirits also are said to be seven cubits in stature, the height of the corn[155]. Of the fifth abode it is said, 'Hail, abode of the spirits, through which there is no passage. The spirits belonging to it are seven cubits long in their thighs. They live as wretched shades.' 'Oh, this abode of the spirits. Oh, ye spirits belonging to them, open your road. I have ordered it is said by Osiris, the living lord, Osiris in his illumination. If any condemned spirit sets his mouth against me, or any male or female devil comes to me on that day, he falls at the block.' The monsters are here called spirits, but the word akh, meaning how great, would equally render giants, and these are nearly a cubit longer in their thighs alone than the Hebrew giant[156]. Indeed in chapter 109 the inhabitants are eight cubits in height[157]. The passage through the Hades in the eleventh abode is described as the belly of hell. 'There is neither coming out of nor going into it, on account of the greatness of the terror of passing him who is in it.' That is the devouring demon, the Am-Moloch. The same fear is reflected in the faces of the spies from the land of giants; they had seen the same sight. The Moabites called the giants who dwelt there in times past Ammis[158]. The Am-am in Egyptian are the devourers. Am is the male devourer, Am-t the female devourer in the Ritual.

Lot's wife fleeing from Sodom is a picture of the escape from Sut, the Egyptian devil, whose domain contains the hells of smoking, fulminating fires, sent forth destroyingly for ever, in blasts that stifle every breath. The Hebrew shedim are the devils, and Sodom is the place of the Egyptian hells. In this were the nitre, sulphur, and bitumen which furnished the modern fire and brimstone, the circuit of serpents that die not, and the ceiling of everlasting flame. Now in the chapters of 'Leading the Boat from Hades,' without which there is no escape from the hells, the Osirian cries, 'I have flown as a hawk out of the net of the great destroyer. I have come from the scalding pools from the flaming fields, I have come forth from the mud,' (the vale of Siddim was that of the slimepits)[159]. He escapes from that 'dreadful coast' in the passage out of this 'Border of Apophis,' or devil's land. Amongst the tormentors, conspirators, accusers and other associates of Sut are the naspu[160], those who render torpid, from nasp or nasb, to numb, stupefy, and petrify. The naspu are the petrifiers through the terror they create. This word naspu appears in Hebrew as natzeb (בצנ) to fix, make firm, rigid; and it is applied to the transformation of Lot's wife in the sense of petrifaction. She was (naspu) [p.258] numbed, stupefied, petrified, or, as our version has it, turned into a pillar of salt. She was petrified in 'Siddim' which is the salt (melak) sea[161]. Siddim, the salt sea, is the pool of salt in the Ritual. 'I have,' says the escaping Osirian, 'crossed by the northern fields in the region of the captured.' They placed 'a flaming lamp' to him and 'an amulet of feldspar.' 'I have buried myself in the well of the pool of salt at night time.' The 'Wells of the pool of salt are that sceptre of stone'[162] which has been made. These are the saltpits of Siddim, and the wells of the pool of salt that was a sceptre of stone have a look of the petrifaction attributed to Lot's wife. Salt is in itself an image of petrifaction and purifying, and this was the legion of both.

When Joshua had crossed the river Jordan or Iarutana (Eg.) he invested the city of Jericho. Aur, Ior, Iaru, is the river and Jericho is Cho by the river, in Egyptian Kau, and the Egyptians had a city Gau[163], or Ko, according to Ptolemy[164]. This was geographical, but had been, like Heliopolis and other chief places, arranged and named from the mythical scenery of the heavens. Diodorus relates that after the death of Osiris, caused by Typhon at the autumn equinox, Typhon was defeated by Horus and his mother Isis, on the Arabian side of the river Nile at a spot near Antaeus[165]. This city of Antaeopolis, where stood a temple on the bank of the Nile, was called Gau or Ko, i.e., literally Iaru-Ko. The original of both was in the heavens, and the celestial river was made mundane in the Egyptain Aru and the Jordan. Also, the region of Ai, and Ben-Ben is a place in the celestial circle, referred to in the Magical Texts, the region where Atum sits in his glory, in the pyramidion, at the apex of his power, after the crossing of the waters[166]. It was the work of Shu, the bringer, to lead up the sun and land him on the eastern horizon, after the great conflict in the valley with the swarming powers of darkness.

On the horizon just across the river was the seat of Atum in An, the red region. This reappears as the city of Adam. From Jericho to Adam[167] the waters dried up, while the ark of the god was borne across. Here the circle was completed, the eye made in the equinoctial year.

According to Hipparchus, the zodiac, ab Arietis 8 mediâ parte ad 14, descends with the Crown and Sceptre of Cepheus. In this sign Shu may be seen seated with the whip of rule in his hand, close to the triangle of three starsi, the terminus of the conductorship of Anhar, and the range of the lawgiver in the northern quarter[168].

The sun was reborn as the son, the solar messiah, he who comes. Atum reappears as Iu-em-hept, he who comes with peace. Iu, the son, written in Egyptian, is Iu-Su or Iu-Sif, i.e., Jesus or Joseph. This fact lies at the origin of a sort of identity between Joseph and Jesus.

[p.259] Iu-Sif is the son who comes at the time of the vernal equinox. This was the son conducted up by Anhar, whose work then ended. In the Hebrew legend we are told that Moses carried the atzem (םצע) of Joseph up out of Egypt, and this was placed in Shechem at the time of Joshua's death. Atzem is rendered[169] bones. But the word also means self-same, the same, the likeness. At-sem (Eg.) reads the mummy-type, also to make the likeness, also the young sun, the typical heir and branch. Sem is the sun with the two tall plumes, and these were placed on the head of the deity by the lion-gods called the sems, his ministers. Sem-pi-Khart was a solar god, and if Moses and Joshua are the two lion-gods, what they conducted out of Egypt and placed in Shechem was the sun-god himself; as Adonai, the son of the mother, the solar disk considered as Aten. Shakem in Hebrew is the name for the shoulder as the symbol of bearing. This type was assigned to the male bearer as Horus in Sekhem, but the first bearer was the female, the mother Zikum in the Akkadian, the Skhem shrine of the genetrix in the Egyptian mythos, and the σχηνή ιερά which was carried about by the Carthaginians[170]. The Arabic sukhamat, rendered podex, is a form of the Skhem-shrine.

The Egyptian Sekhem is a secret shrine, the holy of holies, always found in the hindermost room of the temple, surrounded on three sides by a row of cloisters or secluded chambers. The Sekhem was particularly connected with the great mother and was prominent in the worship of Atum or Aten, the Hebrew Adonai.

This was the Joseph who went out through the land of Egypt[171] whom we shall meet again in the next chapter. There is a group of avengers or punishers attached to Shu in the Ritual[172].

'The Punishers of Shu, who come behind thee to cut off thy head, to chop off thy hand, do not see thee performing the robbery of their Lord.' 'The Punishers of Shu have turned away.'[173]

These are either the same figures or they are supplemented with the 'Dogs of Shu.' The punishers belonging to Shu who chop off the hands of the enemies appear in the followers of Joshua[174] as the pursuers of the Canaanites and Perizzites, and the cutters off of the fingers and toes of their captives.

The dogs of Shu are represented in the Hebrew version by Caleb, the dog of Joshua, and the dogger or punisher of the enemy, after Joshua's death. The 'swift dogs following Shade, or the person of Shu,' are rendered[175] by the avengers who come after Joshua in the Book of the Judges, headed by Caleb the dog. Adoni-Bezek, who was mutilated, has a name signifying in Egyptian the revolted ruler Besh-ak, hostile to Adonai, the sun-god.

[p.260] In the Hebrew narrative the followers of Joshua, the avengers and associates of the dog (Caleb), ergo, the dogs of Shu, assail the three sons of Anak called Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai[176]. Naka is a name of the Apophis, a type of the criminal, impious deluder. In the Ritual the serpent Ruhak is triple-headed, and Anak and his three sons are a form of the monster, triple-headed. The Vedic Ahi, the serpent of darkness, is triple-headed. The monster Zohak slain by Feridun had three heads. The Chimera killed by Bellerophon was a threefold monster. The three names are all in keeping. Seshai is one. Sesha is the great serpent of the waters in the Hindu mythology. The Shesh-Shesh in the Ritual is a mystic monster of a triadic form, with the Ap-serpent for its tail. Ahiman answers to the Vedic Ahl, and the Zend Ahriman the evil being, and the Azhi-Dahaka of the Avesta. Ahi, as the demon Vritra, is the power that prevents the clouds from pouring out their water, that is the inimical one opposed to fertility. The Hebrew name Talmai, from הלת to suspend, and ימ, the fertilizing waters, reads the suspender of the waters, the Hebrew Vritra. It was not without significance in this connection that Moses of Khorene should refer to the popular songs relating to the triumph over Aj-dahak the serpent[177].

Out of these 'Wars of the Lord,' these battles from generation to generation with Amalek, the endless conflict between the sun and the Apophis, the conducting of souls up out of the valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Crossing of the Waters, came the various myths of an exodus or migration of a people as the first fact of their existence, which belong one and all to the mythological astronomy.

The Mexicans depicted the sun of the eastern horizon as being accompanied by hosts of warrior spirits, the bravest that ever fell in battle, who rose up with him and marched in all the pomp and glory of war, as they escorted him towards the midday heaven with shouts of triumph until the conquering sun had attained the noonday height. Then they rested, and the women-warriors, chiefly those who had heroically died in childbed, met the sun, and assumed the duty of carrying him on a litter made of rich feathers and brandishing the weapons of war, as the men of the morning had done in the clashing and clangour of conflict, while they bore him downward to the west[178].

The men of the ascent and women of the descent correspond to the lions as Ma-Shu or Shu and his feminine half, Tefnut. This is portrayed in the Ritual in a kind of astronomical eschatology, which shows the skeleton of the theological building without stucco or plaster. The deceased is told to pass on. 'Depart, O Osiris, go round the heaven with the sun. See the spirits.'[179] Taht, it is said, 'Has prepared millions; he has billions. They have allowed the deceased to go. The [p.261] circle of the ministers of Sem (the Sems or Lion-Gods) is before him.' 'The Osiris goes in company.'[180] For the dead spirits or gods are described as swarming through the horizon in crowds. They gather for the battle of the Sun and the Apophis.

'The sun, he comes forth: Receive your weapons; Receive your battle armour.' 'The doors of the chief horizon of the Sun open; he comes forth.'[181]

'For the night of the battle, their march is from the east of the heaven. The battle is made in the heaven and on the whole earth.'[182]

The sun 'strangles the children of wickedness on the floor of those in Sesen.'[183]

'The sun rises from his horizon; his gods are behind him. When he comes forth from the Amenti, the despisers fall down in the eastern heaven at the words of Isis. She has prepared the path of the sun, the great chief.'[184]

'I am the sun coming forth from the horizon against my enemies. My enemies have not made me to fall.'[185]

'O conductors of the bark of millions of years! Ye bruise the Accusers.'[186]

'Hail, ye gods of the orbit (Aalu), strangle ye the enemies of the sun. I put forth blows against the Apophis. Strangle ye the wicked in the west.'[187]

'Hail, O thou sun in his ark, shining with his light, gleaming with his gleam. The Creator, in the midst of his boat, who smiteth the Apophis daily; say for the children of Sut, who smiteth the enemies of Osiris, they are crushed by the boat. Horus smites off their heads to the heaven for the fowls, their thighs to the earth for wild beasts, to the waters for the fishes. The 0isiris crushes all evil spirits, male or female, whether they go from heaven or earth, come out of the waters or cross from the tips of the stars. Taht cuts them up—a stone out of the buildings of those who possess the ark of Osiris! The sun is that great god, the greatest of smiters, the most powerful of terrifiers; he washes in your blood, he dips in your gore.'[188]

Isis, the great mother, preparing the pathway of the sun, corresponds to the women-warriors of the Mexican myth; and this would be still more in keeping with their fierceness when the great mother was portrayed as Tefnut, the lioness-headed goddess. In a general way it may be said, the souls emerged with the sun from the horizon east, and accompanied him in his battle-march along the celestial course until they came round to the mountain of the west; and there, where the dead went down, was the mount of the final ascension to the land of the blessed, the Mount Manu and place of spirits [p.262] perfected, where dwelt the twelve kings who presided over this region of the west.

As Shu and Anhar, in Egyptian mythology, and Moses and Joshua conducted their people with the solar orb round the circle of signs, overcoming the opposing powers postulated by the early men, so in the Toltec mythology Huemac (or Huematzin) and Quetzalcoatl conducted their people through the pilgrimage and wanderings recorded in their picture-writings. Huemac, like Moses, wrote the code of laws for the nation, and conducted the civil government. Quetzalcoatl, in relation to Huemac, plays the part of Joshua. When Quetzalcoatl began to give the laws instead of Huemac, he sent a crier to the top of the 'mountain of outcry,' whose voice could be heard for three hundred miles round[189]. Joshua follows Moses as the leader of Israel, and instructs the people to go up against Jericho (his mountain of outcry), and assail it with a shout that ought to have been heard at an equal distance, as it was loud enough to make the walls fall flat[190].

The Old Red Land (Huehuetlapallan) was the name of the original home in the north, from which the Toltecs migrated. Their leader, Quetzalcoatl, wore a long robe marked with crosses. The sign identifies him as the one who crosses. Quetzalcoatl attained the land of promise, and in his golden reign an ear of wheat grew so large that one man could hardly carry it. Joshua led the people into the land flowing with milk and honey, where a single bunch of grapes was a load for two men. Moses is placed in a cleft of the rock whilst the Lord goes by, and tradition asserts the print of his body to have been engraved on the stone, visible to this day. The impression of the hand of Huemac is likewise said to have been stamped in a rock[191].

The lion-gods not only supplied the Hebrews with their mythical Moses and Joshua; the twin typical and transforming lions, the lion of light and the lion of darkness, reappear amongst the twelve symbolic signs called totemic of the North American Indians[192]. One of these twelve signs is a dual form of the same figure answering to the Egyptian twin-lion. It is a fabulous panther or lynx: the body in both has a human head with horns. But one of the two is marked all over the body with crosses. These, according to Schoolcraft, denote darkness in the Indian symbolism, and this is in perfect accordance here with the Egyptian, as the name of Kak, the god of the crossing, and therefore of the cross, means darkness and night. The other, without crosses, is the same animal in the light. The name of the chimera is given as Misshi-Bezhiu, not an impossible rendering of Mau-Shu, the twin lions, or lion of light and shade, who is represented as changing into the cat, or becoming leoparded. Moreover Bes (Eg.) is the beast, a tiger, leopard, or typical beast; [p.263] Iu is dual; Bas-Iu, in Egyptian, is the twin-beast here called Misshi, and in Egypt Mau-Shu. The Indians had no lion, but they made use of such beasts as they found in the country.

The Chronicles of Fuentes, of the kingdom of Guatemala, and the MS of Don Juan Torres, grandson of the last of the Quiche kings, may now be looked at less askancely[193]. The document, having passed through the hands of Father Francis Vasques, historian of the order of St. Francis, has been more than suspected. For it was said to relate that the Toltecs were descended from the children of Israel, whose deliverer was Moses, and who crossed the Red Sea and fell into idolatry, and afterwards separated from their fellows and set out upon their further wanderings under a chief named Ta-Nub, till they came to the place of the seven caverns, in Mexico, where they founded the famous town of Tula[194]. The children of Israel, who have been sought all over the earth, belong to the heavens; and the heavens, together with their charts and allegories, belong to various peoples of the earth without derivation from the Hebrews. Ma-Shu is as good a Moses for the Quiches as for the Jews. Ta (Eg.) means to cross over the water; nub is the lord; and the lord who crossed was Tanub, or Anhar-Mashu.

In the battle of Rephidim we have a rendering of the same original myth as that from which the Greeks drew their story of Hercules and Atlas. When Hercules, in quest of the golden apples of the Hesperides, had come to the spot where Prometheus lay chained, and had shot the eagle that preyed on his liver, that is, when the sun entered the sign of the Waterman, Prometheus, out of gratitude, warned him not to go himself to fetch the golden apples in the keeping of the polar dragon, but to persuade Atlas, the keeper of the pillars which hold heaven and earth asunder (as Homer calls him[195]), to go instead. Atlas consents, and sallies forth to assail the dragon of darkness; meanwhile Hercules takes his stand in the place of Atlas, and supports the heaven himself. Atlas succeeds; he wins the apples, and on coming back to Hercules refuses to take back the burden of the sky upon himself again. In the Mosaic parallel Moses has come within sight of the promised land, or the Hesperides, in the keeping of the monster Amalek. He does not go himself to win the victory but sends Joshua; and whilst the battle is going on Moses takes his stand on the top of a hill and backs up Joshua, not by holding up the heavens for him, as did Hercules, but by holding up his hands; 'and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun,' and the perpetual battle between the Lord and Amalek was once more won. Jah had once more 'spoken by the hand of Moses,' as in Egypt[196]. Of course the holding up of the hands, or the heavens either, is only a figure, but the figure surely sets forth the same thing, which thing as myth was the [p.264] common property of both Jews and Ionians, from the Egyptian original of Anhar holding up his hands as supporter of the heaven.

Atlas takes his place again, and in later legend is transformed into or gives his name to a mountain in Libya. So Moses passes away, leaving no trace save the mountain in Moab, in which he was buried, with the mountain for his grave. The name of Atlas, in Egyptian At-Ras, means the chief (at) or typical supporter of the heaven. Ras, to raise up, has the propped-up heaven for determinative. The lion-gods are those who 'do not let the heavens fall.'

Also a perfect parallel may be drawn from the Greek and Roman report and the Hebrew scriptures between Moses and Bacchus. Bacchus, like Moses, was born in Egypt. He was exposed on the Nile in an ark. Orpheus calls Bacchus Mysos, and the Greek sos renders the Egyptian Shu; thus Mysos answers to Masu, as Shu-Anhar, or as Moses. Bacchus was called Bimater; he had two mothers—his own and Thyos, his nurse. Moses had his own mother and the daughter of Pharaoh, his nurse. Bacchus, like Moses and Cepheus, was the lawgiver. Bacchus was represented with horns, as was Moses. Bacchus, like Moses, carried the rod which turned into a dragon, and with which he struck water out of the rock. Bacchus covered the Indians with darkness; Moses the Egyptians. Moses crossed the Red Sea dry-shod; Bacchus did the same at the river Orontes. A nymph of Bacchus, like Miriam, crossed the Red Sea. Jupiter commands Bacchus to go and destroy an impious people in the Indies, just as Moses is ordered to abolish the abominations of the idolatrous nations. Pan gave to Bacchus a dog as his faithful companion; in like manner Moses is accompanied by Caleb, the dog. Bacchus warred with and vanquished the giants; Moses conquered the Anakim. Bacchus is said to have married Zipporah, a name of Venus, one of the seven planets. The priest of Midian had seven daughters; Moses married one of these, whose name was Zipporah. According to Boyse On the Gods[197], Bacchus was called Jehovah-Nissi; Moses erected an altar to Jehovah-Nissi. Bacchus was divinely instructed on Mount Nyssa, whence he was named Dionysus.

Now, as before remarked, the Greeks and Hebrews did not derived their mythology and religion from each other. The cult of both was originally Ionian, Yavonian, or Kephonian. The name of the ancient mother, Kefa, is retained in Koivy, a name of the Hellenistic languages. But they derived from one common original in Egypt. Bacchus and Moses are but two other forms of Shu-Anhar. These two lines are equal to each other, because each is equal to a third—the base of a triangle only to be found in Egypt.

Kapi, a name of Shu, modifies on its way to Shu into Khu. Khu means to rule, to govern, and the ruler is the lawgiver; hence [p.265] Cepheus, Kapi, Khu, or Shu, is the lawgiver. This offers one derivation for the name of Bacchus. Khu also means spirit. In the form of kep the word denotes the mystery of fermentation and fertilization. Bakh (Eg.) means generating, fecundating. Bakh-Khu, then, is. the fecundating spirit, personified in Bacchus as lord of the vine, his great symbol. Bakh (Eg.) also means beverage, and shut is effervescing wine. Moreover, the name of one of the lion-gods is found to be written with the sign of the winepress, which reads nemu, the lion-headed Mâtet, whom the present writer considers to be a form of Shu as the punisher of the wicked. The origin and typology of Shu is somewhat obscure. In the calendar inscription at Esneh, Seb (Time) is called the son of Shu. The Two Truths, however, will help us some way. Bacchus is the youthful god of this dual nature. Shu is designated the 'Youthful double force in the circle of Thebes.' Shu is the Dio or dual god, and in the Ritual