over him. Neith, the great goddess of Sais, is rarely mentioned. She was the mother of the sun-god Rā, and is commonly supposed to represent Heaven; but some expressions1 which are hardly applicable to Heaven render it more probable that she is one of the many names of the Dawn. The goddess Sechet is the raging heat of the Sun.2

The gods of Thebes are conspicuous by their absence from the Book of the Dead, or at least from almost every chapter. Amon, the great god of Thebes, is named once only, and that in a chapter where the text is extremely doubtful. Chonsu, the moon-god, is only once named. But even the frequent occurrence of these gods would not introduce a different series of conceptions.

Beatification of the Dead.

The Beatification of the Dead is, however, the main subject of every chapter. The everlasting life promised to the faithful may be considered in three of its aspects.

1 For instance, the verb uben, expressive of an act of Neith (Todt. 114, 1, 2), is inapplicable to Heaven, and is never used except for the sunrise.

2 [So it was generally thought. But I am now quite certain that Sechet also is one of the names of the Dawn.]

The renewed Existence "as upon Earth."

1. The blessed is represented as enjoying an existence similar to that which he had led upon earth. He has the use of all his limbs, he eats and drinks, and satisfies every one of his physical wants, exactly as in his former life. His bread is made of the corn of Pe, a famous town of Egypt, and the beer he drinks is made from the red corn of the Nile. The flesh of cattle and fowl is given to him, and refreshing waters are poured out to him under the boughs of sycamores which shade him from the heat. The cool breezes of the north wind breathe upon him. The gods themselves provide him with food: he eats from the table of Osiris at Ristat, and from the tables of the sun-god Rā. He is given to drink out of vessels of milk or wine; cakes and flesh are provided for him from the divine abode of Anubis. The gods of Heliopolis themselves bring the divine offerings. He eats the bread which the goddess Taït herself has cooked, and he breathes the sweet odour of flowers. He washes his feet in silver basins which the god Ptah of Memphis, the inventor of all arts, has himself sculptured. Fields also are allotted to him in the lands of Aarru and Hotep, and he cultivates them. It is characteristic of an industrious and agricultural population that part of the bliss of a future state should consist in such operations

as ploughing and hoeing, sowing and reaping, rowing on the canals and collecting the harvests daily. Warriors and kings who in the course of ages had risen to the head of a mighty empire, still looked forward towards these delights with the same religious faith which inspired them when, on the great panegyrical festival of the ithyphallic Amon, they received the iron sickle from the hands of a priestly ministrant, cut the ears of corn, and presented them as an offering to the god presiding over vegetation and increase.1 We are told that the height of the corn in the fields of Aarru is seven cubits, and that that of the ears is two (in some readings, four) cubits. This blissful place is surrounded by a wall of steel, and it is from its gate that the sun comes forth in the eastern sky.

Transformation.

2. But the happy dead is not confined to this locality, or to the human form, or to an earthly mode of existence. He has the range of the entire universe in every shape and form that he desires. This is repeatedly stated in the Book of the Dead, and twelve of the chapters consist of formulas through which certain transformations are operated. The forms assumed, according to these chapters, are the turtle-dove, the

1 There are two representations of this, one at the Memnonium (Denkm. iii. pl. 163, 164), and another at Medinet Abu (Denkm. iii. pl. 212, 213).

serpent Sata,1 the bird called Bennu (which has generally, but, I think, upon insufficient grounds, been thought to have given rise to the story of the Phoenix), the crocodile Sebek, the god Ptah, a golden hawk, the chief of the principal gods, a soul, a lotus-flower and a heron. Brugsch has found a monument according to which these transformations correspond to the twelve successive hours of the day. There is, however, no evidence as to the date at which such a correspondence was first imagined, or of the general recognition of this correspondence. And the transformations to which these chapters refer are far from exhausting the list of possible ones. No limit whatever is imposed on the will of the departed.

The subject has often been misunderstood through a confusion between Egyptian notions and either Pythagorean or Hindu notions. The Pythagoreans held the notion of the metempsychosis, and the legendary history of their founder represented him as having travelled in the East, and as having been initiated by Egyptian priests into their mysteries. The Pythagorean doctrines about the destinies of the human soul have, in consequence of this unauthenticated history,

1 The later texts show that Sata is Horus Sam-taui, who comes out of the lotus-flower in the middle of the solar bark. See picture in Mariette, Dendera, II. pl. 48, 49. In one of the crypts of Dendera he is called "the living soul of Atmu.” Elsewhere, Dendera, III. pl. 45, he is called "the soul rising out of the lotus in the Maat," the morning boat of the sun.

been transferred to the Egyptians, even by scholars who might have known better. There is really no connection, either doctrinally or historically, between the two systems. Nothing in the Pythagorean system is foreign to previously existing Hellenic modes of thought, or which requires in any way to be accounted for by foreign influence, and its metempsychosis is essentially based upon the notions of expiation and purification. Men were supposed to be punished in various forms of a renewed life upon earth, for sins committed in a previous state of existence. There is not a trace of any such conception to be found in any Egyptian text which has yet been brought to light. The only transformations after death depend, we are expressly told, simply on the pleasure of the deceased or of his "genius."

Nor is there any trace to be found of the notion of an intermediate state of purification between death and final bliss. Certain operations have to be performed, certain regions have to be traversed, certain prayers to be recited, but there is no indication of anything of an expiatorial nature. If the judgment in the Hall of Law is favourable, the departed comes forth triumphantly as a god whom nothing can harm ; he is identified with Osiris and with every other divinity. The nether world, and indeed the universe at large, is full of terrible and hostile forces; but through his identification with the great gods and his uttering words of power