Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/221

 Religious Developments 201 hard and systematic thinking and they have a dream-hke coherence. Beneath this triple group there are other and darker Egyptian gods, bad gods, the dog-headed Anubis, black night and the like, devourers, tempters, enemies of god and man. Every religious system does in the course of time fit itself to the shape of the human soul, and there can be no doubt that out of these illogical and even uncouth symbols, Egyptian people were able to fashion for themselves ways of genuine devotion and consolation. The desire for immortality "was very strong in the Egyptian mind, and the religious life of Egypt turned on that desire. The Egyptian religion was an immortality religion as no other religion had ever been. As Egypt went down under foreign conquerors and the Egyp- tian gods ceased to have any satisfactory political significance, this craving for a life of compensations hereafter, intensified. After the Greek conquest, the new city of Alexandria became the MITHRAS SACRIFICING A BULL (ROMAN) (/m the British Museum)