TO THE CANDID READER

BEHOLD, Reader, I place into your hands that most highly praised little book of Plutarch on Isis and Osiris: I call it most highly praised because the Author is mentioned in this single work more often than in any other of his minor writings, however excellent and filled with all manner of erudition they may be. For whether you are a Mythologist a student of myths, and wish to explain and clarify the Fables of the Ancients, which are of truly marvelous composition and prodigious nature, to recall them to the credibility of ancient History, to test them by the standard of Philosophy, to relate them to the customs and laws of Nations, and finally to compose them according to the established institutes of Religion, this is the Book you are looking for, or you shall look in vain. Or, if you are a Historian, and are entirely occupied with investigating, composing, and organizing the Migrations, Customs, Laws, Kings, and Dynasties of the most ancient Nations—you may read Herodotus, weigh the words of Diodorus in the balance, yet you will not have performed your duty sufficiently unless you have read through this Treatise of Ours with a diligent and curious eye. To say it in a word, the Relics of the Egyptian Religion are stored here.