316 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XUI. 



the presence of Osiris ; the purport of which is, 

 that they are justified by their works, weighed and 

 not " found wanting." To men and to women also 

 was given after death the name of Osiris*, — im- 

 plying that, in a future state, the yirtuous returned 

 to the fountain of all good, from which they origin- 

 ally emanated; and that the soul, being separated 

 from its material envelope, was pure and intellec- 

 tual, divested of all the animal feelings which a dis- 

 tinction of sex might indicate, and free from those 

 impurities or imperfections to which human nature 

 was in this life subject. 



They also considered the souls of men to be 

 emanations of that divine soul, which governed 

 and pervaded the Universe ; each eventually re- 

 turning to its divine origin, provided the virtuous 

 course of life it had led in this world showed 

 it to be sufficiently pure to unite with the imma- 

 culate nature of the Deity. It was their opinion, 

 that those which had been guilty of sin were 

 doomed to pass through the bodies of different 

 animals, in order so to purify them that they might 

 be rendered worthy again to mix with the parent 

 Soul whence they emanated ; the number and 

 duration of these transmigrations, and the kind of 

 animals through which they passed, depending on 

 the extent of their impieties, and the consequent 

 necessity of a greater or less degree of purification. 

 This doctrine of the metempsychosis, or trans- 

 migration of the soul, was afterwards adopted by 



* Conf. Plut. de Is. s. 28. Vide also infra, p. 322. 



