[Each human soul was considered as a part of the world-soul Osiris, was united to him after the death of the body, and thenceforth took the name of Osiris.  The Egyptian Cosmos consisted of the three great realms, the Heavens, the Earth and the Depths.  Over the vast ocean which girdles the vault of heaven, the sun moves in a boat or car drawn by the planets and fixed stars.  On this ocean too the great constellations circle in their ships, and there is the kingdom of the blissful gods, who sit enthroned above this heavenly ocean under a canopy of stars.  The mouth of this great stream is in the East, where the sun-god rises from the mists and is born again as a child every morning.  The surface of the earth is inhabited by human beings having a share in the three great cosmic kingdoms.  They receive their soul from the heights of heaven, the seat and source of light; their material body is of the earth; and the appearance or outward form by which one human being is distinguished from another at sight—­his phantom or shadow—­belongs to the depths.  At death, soul, body, and shadow separate from one another.  The soul to return to the place from whence it came, to Heaven, for it is a part of God (of Osiris); the body, to be committed to the earth from which it was formed in the image of its creator; the phantom or shadow, to descend into the depths, the kingdom of shadows.  The gate to this kingdom was placed in the West among the sunset hills, where the sun goes down daily,—­where he dies.  Thence arise the changeful and corresponding conceptions connected with rising and setting, arriving and departing, being born and dying.  The careful preservation of the body after death from destruction, not only through the process of inward decay, but also through violence or accident, was in the religion of ancient Egypt a principal condition (perhaps introduced by the priests on sanitary grounds) on which depended the speedy deliverance of the soul, and with this her early, appointed union with the source of Light and Good, which two properties were, in idea, one and indivisible.  In the Egyptian conceptions the soul was supposed to remain, in a certain sense, connected with the body during a long cycle of solar years.  She could, however, quit the body from time to time at will, and could appear to mortals in various forms and places; these appearances differed according to the hour, and were prescribed in exact words and delineations.]

“But enough of these matters; thou wilt find it difficult to enter into such thoughts.  Tell me rather what thou thinkest of our temples and pyramids.”