THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 45 



brought offerings, and placed a repast on the offering table, of which, 

 after the living had departed, the double was supposed to partake. 

 But those recently dead were found to engross most of the attention 

 of the living, and when action was taken, similar to that our forefa- 

 thers used to take in our own Christian times by establishing found- 

 ations to have such ceremonies performed by the priesthood, it only 

 put off a little further the day of forgetfulness and consequent an- 

 noyance to the dead, whose double might, it was thought, through 

 such neglect, be reduced to seek food from the garbage of the town. 

 To obviate such a calamity recourse was had to painted and sculp- 

 tured representations of offerings in lieu of the offerings themselves. 

 At first decorations were confined to the chapel of the tomb, but 

 afterwards on the vaults pictures were painted and passages were in- 

 scribed from the Book of the Dead and from other works, intended 

 to strengthen the soul during its probation in the other world. This 

 practice goes back to the time of the early dynasties. The inner 

 walls of some of the pyramids are covered with inscriptions. At a 

 later date such texts were written upon sarcophagi, and on some of 

 the early tombs whole chapters from the Book of the Dead are in- 

 scribed. Later on still, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 B. C, these books of the dead were written on papyri attached to 

 the person of the mummy, placed between the folds of the banda- 

 ges, or laid near the coffin. 



A fair general view of ancient Egyptian literature may be ob- 

 tained from the " Records of the Past," a series of volumes published 

 in London and edited by Birch, Renouf, Sayce and other scholars 

 of reputation. The Book of the Dead is, however, the most inter- 

 esting volume of Egyptian literature as yet discovered. As early as 

 1805 M. Cadet published "A figured copy of a roll of paper found 

 at Thebes in the tomb of a King," and made some curious specula- 

 tions concerning its contents. Other copies followed, the chief of 

 which was '''' Das Todtenbuch der ^gypter nach dem hieroglyphischen 

 papyrus in Turin, 1842" The edition by Lepsius contained 165 

 chapters, and he was likely the first modern editor who understood 

 the text. Every museum of note in Europe has now a copy of the 

 Book of the Dead, and numerous fac similes have been published. 

 But no single papyrus hitherto found contains all the chapters of the 

 book, and the Congress of Orientalists, held at London in 1874, 

 commissioned M. Naville, a distinguished scholar, to prepare a com- 



