rites. At the beginning of the festival there was a ceremony of
ploughing and sowing. One end of the field was sown with barley, the
other with spelt; another part with flax. While this was going on the
chief priest recited the ritual of the "sowing of the fields." Into the
"garden" of the god, which seems to have been a large pot, were put sand
and barley, then fresh living water from the inundation of the Nile was
poured out of a golden vase over the "garden" and the barley was allowed
to grow up. It was the symbol of the resurrection of the god after his
burial, "for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine
substance."

The death and resurrection of the gods, and _pari passu_ of the life and
fruits of the earth, was thus set forth in ritual, but--and this is our
immediate point--it was also set forth in definite, unmistakable art. In
the great temple of Isis at Philæ there is a chamber dedicated to
Osiris. Here is represented the dead Osiris. Out of his body spring ears
of corn, and a priest waters the growing stalk from a pitcher. The
inscription to the picture reads: _This is the form of him whom one may
not name, Osiris of the mysteries, who springs from the returning
waters._ It is but another presentation of the ritual of the month
Choiak, in which effigies of the god made of earth and corn were buried.
When these effigies were taken up it would be found that the corn had
sprouted actually from the body of the god, and this sprouting of the
grain would, as Dr. Frazer says, be "hailed as an omen, or rather as the
cause of the growth of the crops."[1]

Even more vividly is the resurrection set forth in the bas-reliefs that
accompany the great Osiris inscription at Denderah. Here the god is
represented at first as a mummy swathed and lying flat on his bier. Bit
by bit he is seen raising himself up in a series of gymnastically