45 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



" 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-mouthed, I am not a striker, I am not a quarreler, 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 obstructions 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 

 " funeral cakes, I do not take away the cakes of the child or pro- 

 " fane the god of my locahty, I do not kill sacred animals." 



Amongst trials which our traveller in the other world under- 

 goes, he has to pass through a veritable valley of the shadow of 

 death, " for it is all abyss, utter darkness, sheer perplexity." He is 

 also tried by fire, which the artist represents pictorially, but has 

 compensation by a sojourn in the Egyptian Elysian fields, where he 

 ploughs and sows and reaps, and through which runs a canal, " the 

 limit of which cannot be stated," and in which are fish and no 

 serpents. The papyrus ends with a picture of Hathor, a personifica- 

 tion of the sky, in the form of a. hippopotamus. On her head she 

 holds the solar disk, and in her left hand she holds the symbol ofhfe. 



The time has not yet come for a satisfactory expo- 

 sition of the ;^yptian religion ; but as some of the 

 acutest intellects in Europe are engaged in its study, 

 we may hope that light will yet shine into the dark 

 places. Their more important gods received homage in different 

 localities under different names. Each canton, or nofue, had its own 

 college of priests and tutelar divinities, so that we come to regard 

 their religious system, at first sight, as a heterogeneous polytheistic 

 mass. They personified sun, moon and stars, the earth and sky, 

 light and darkness, and, according to Renouf, recognized a divinity 

 wherever they discerned a fixed law either of permanence or change. 

 But behind and above these adored personifications of natural 

 objects and forces there was the recognition of one great power. 

 That admits of no doubt. It is true some incline to believe the 

 esoteric doctrine of the Egyptian priests was materialistic ; that they 

 held matter to be endowed with intelligent, inherent creative force, 

 and to be eternal. On the other hand many passages from their 

 writings are monotheistic. Referring to the powers higher than the 

 popular divinities, a power to whom no temple was raised, one of 



