impossible positions, till at last he rises from a bowl--perhaps his
"garden"--all but erect, between the outspread wings of Isis, while
before him a male figure holds the _crux ansata_, the "cross with a
handle," the Egyptian symbol of life. In ritual, the thing desired,
_i.e._ the resurrection, is acted, in art it is represented.

No one will refuse to these bas-reliefs the title of art. In Egypt,
then, we have clearly an instance--only one out of many--where art and
ritual go hand in hand. Countless bas-reliefs that decorate Egyptian
tombs and temples are but ritual practices translated into stone. This,
as we shall later see, is an important step in our argument. Ancient art
and ritual are not only closely connected, not only do they mutually
explain and illustrate each other, but, as we shall presently find, they
actually arise out of a common human impulse.

* * * * *

The god who died and rose again is not of course confined to Egypt; he
is world-wide. When Ezekiel (viii. 14) "came to the gate of the Lord's
house which was toward the north" he beheld there the "women weeping for
Tammuz." This "abomination" the house of Judah had brought with them
from Babylon. Tammuz is _Dumuzi_, "the true son," or more fully,
_Dumuzi-absu_, "true son of the waters." He too, like Osiris, is a god
of the life that springs from inundation and that dies down in the heat
of the summer. In Milton's procession of false gods,

"Thammuz came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate
In amorous ditties all a summer's day."