Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 25--Liturgy of Funeral Offerings.pdf/25



tombs, temples, and religious literature of all periods of the history of Egypt proclaim with no uncertain voice that the ancient Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the dead, and that they possessed an innate conviction that the souls of the blessed renewed their existence in the world beyond the grave under circumstances and conditions which gave them happiness and prevented them from dying a second time. The consistent, persistent, ineradicable and unalterable belief in immortality is the chief fundamental of the Egyptian Religion, and the attainment of everlasting life was the end to which every religious ceremony was performed, and every funerary text written.

Now, although in the Dynastic Period the Egyptians