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aromatic drugs, and having been bandaged in many a fold of linen, lay in its tomb, ready to take part in the life which was inherited by those who were deemed worthy of it.

After the death of a man it was thought that he was taken into the hall of the god Osiris, judge of the dead, and that his conscience, symbolized by the heart, was weighed in the balance before him. Thoth, the scribe of the gods, stood there with his reed and palette to write down the result, while his associate, a cynocephalus ape

sat over the middle of the beam of the balance, and watched the index pointer. The man's soul, and destiny, and nurse, and cradle stood by, watching the weighing of the heart by Anubis against a feather,, emblematic of Law. If the result were favourable, the dead man was led by Horus into the presence of Osiris, where stood the four children. of. Horus, Amset, Häpi, Tuamautef, and Kebḥsenuf (to each of whom certain intestines were dedicated), upon a lotus flower which sprung forth from under the throne of Osiris; and after making offerings to the god, the dead man passed into everlasting life. If the result were unfavourable, the Devourer, a beast part lion, part hippopotamus, and part horse, stepped forward and claimed the dead man as his. Annihilation was the result.

After death the soul of the dead man was supposed to have many enemies to combat, just as the sun was supposed to spend the time between his rising and setting in fighting the powers of mist, darkness, and night. These he vanquished by the knowledge and use of certain "words of power." The deceased was also supposed to be condemned to perform field labours in the nether-world, but to avoid this, stone, wooden, or Egyptian porcelain figures were placed in his tomb to do the work for him. After

undergoing all these troubles and trials, the soul went into the abode of beatified spirits, and there it did everything wished by it, and remained in bliss until it rejoined its body in the tomb. The soul of the dead man entered successively into a phoenix (bennu), a heron, a swallow, a snake, a crocodile, etc.

In the hall of Osiris the soul was supposed to affirm before forty-two gods that it had not committed any of the forty-two sins which are detailed in good papyri at full length as follows:

"I

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"I am not a doer of what is wrong, I am not a plunderer, am not a robber, I am not a slayer of men, I do not "stint the quantity of corn, I am not a niggard, I do not "seize the property of the gods, I am not a teller of lies, I am not a monopolizer of food, I am no extortioner, I am not unchaste, I am not the cause of others' tears, I am not a dissembler, I am not a doer of violence, I am not a domineering character, I do not pillage cultivated land, “I am not an eavesdropper, I am not a chatterer, I do not "dismiss a case through self-interest, I am not unchaste "with women or men, I am not obscene, I am not an "exciter of alarms, I am not hot in speech, I do not turn a "deaf ear to the words of righteousness, I am not foul

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mouthed, I am not a striker, I am not a quarreller, I do "not revoke my purpose, I do not multiply clamour in "reply to words, I am not evil-minded or a doer of evil, I am not a reviler of the king, I put no obstruction upon "the water, I am not a bawler, I am not a reviler of "the god, I am not fraudulent, I am not sparing in "offerings to the gods, I do not deprive the dead of the "funereal cakes, I do not take away the cakes of the child "or profane the god of my locality, I do not kill sacred. "animals." (Renouf, Introduction to Papyrus of Ani, p. 17, col. 2.)

It is tolerably evident then that grand tombs were not

built as mere objects of pride, but as "everlasting habitations" which would serve to preserve the body from decay, and be ready to be re-inhabited by the soul at the proper season. Greek authors have written much about the beliefs of the Egyptians; but the greater number of their statements are to be received with caution. They wrote down what they were told, but were frequently mis. informed.

The papyri which have come down to us show that the moral conceptions of the Egyptians were of a very high order and works like the Maxims of Ptaḥ-hetep and the Maxims of Ani show clearly that a man's duty to his god and to his fellow-man was laid down in a distinct manner. Such works will compare very favourably with the Proverbs of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach.

The religious literature of the Egyptians includes a large number of works, of which the most important is the collection of chapters generally called the Book of the Dead; in Egyptian its name is per em hru, "Coming forth by day." Selections from this work were written in the hieratic character upon coffins as early as the XIIth dynasty (B.C. 2500), and this practice was continued down to the time of the Roman Empire. The walls of tombs were covered with extracts from it, and scribes and people of rank had buried with them large rolls of papyrus inscribed with its principal chapters, and ornamented with vignettes explanatory of the text which ran beneath. Some of the chapters in the work are of very great antiquity; and so far back as B.C. 2500 the text was so old, and had been copied so often, that it was already not to be understood. Many parts of it are obscure, and many utterly corrupt; but the discovery from time to time of ancient papyri with accurate readings tends to clear up many doubtful points, and to bring out the right meaning of certain parts of the work.

The following is a list of the most important gods with their names in hieroglyphs; it will be readily seen how very many of them are merely forms of the sun-god Rā, and how many of them have the same attributes:

CHNEMU,* the 'Moulder,' —, is represented with the head of a ram, and is one of the oldest gods of the Egyptian religion. He was thought

to possess some of the attributes of Åmen, Rā, and Ptaḥ, and shared with the last-named god the attribute of "maker of mankind." At Phile he is represented making man out of clay on a potter's wheel. Chnemu put together the scattered limbs of the dead body of Osiris, and it was he who constructed the beautiful woman who became the wife of Bata in the Tale of the Two Brothers. Like Amen-Rā he is said to be the father of the gods. His cult had great vogue in the regions round about the first cataract, where he was always associated with Aneq and Sati. In bas-reliefs he is usually coloured green, and wears the atef crown with uræi, etc.

CHNEMU.

* The authorities for the figures of the gods are given by Lanzone in his Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia.

+ The following are the crowns most commonly met with on the

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PTAH, the 'Opener,' perhaps the oldest of all the gods of Egypt, was honoured with a temple and worshipped at Memphis from the time of the Ist dynasty.

He is said to be the father of the gods, who

came forth from his eye, and of men, who
came forth from his mouth.
He is repre-

sented in the form of a mummy, and he

1

holds a sceptre composed of usr, 'strength,'

† änch, ‘life,' and 1

tet, stability.' With

reference to his connection with the resur-
rection and the nether-world, he is called
PTAH-SEKER-AUSAR, and is then repre-
sented as a little squat boy, at times wearing
a beetle on his head.
He is at times repre-

РТАН.

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sented with Isis and Nephthys, and then appears to be a

form of Osiris.

TMU, or ATMU J,

'Closer' of the day or night.

was the

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