Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/743

719 LAWS.] EGYPT 719 piivate that of the temples and that of the tombs. Every town had at least one temple dedicated to the chief divinity of the place, with certain associated gods, and usually, if not always, a living symbol in the form of a sacred animal supposed to be animated by ths chief local divinity. The services wore conducted by priests, and on occasions by the king, and by scribes, who sometimes formed a college and lived at the temples, the various duties of which required the services of learned men. It is probable that the common people had a very small share in the religious services, the most important of which took place in the smaller inner chambers, which could never have admitted many worshippers. The outer courts, and still more the great inclosures containing the whole group of temple-buildings, must, however, have been the chief public resort for business and pleasure. There were no other public build ings, or, apparently, market-places. Like the modern mosque, the temple must have been the chief centre of the population. The worship in the tombs was not local. It was always connected with Osiris or a divinity of the same group, and had the intention of securing benefits for the deceased in the future state. It took place in the chapel of each tomb of the wealthy; and though properly the function of the family, whose members officiated, the inscriptions invite all passers-by, as they ascend or descend the Nile, overlooked by the sepulchral grottoes, to say a prayer for the welfare of the chief person there buried. The sacrifices were of animals and vegetables, with liba tions of wine, and burning of incense. Human sacrifice seems to have been practised in early periods. The monuments do not mention it, but Manetho speaks of its having been abolished, at least at one place, by Amosis, no doubt the first king of Dynasty XVIII. The reference is probably to some barbarous usage during the great war with the Shepherds. 1 The origin and destiny of man in the Egyptian religion is now known to us on the authority of its own documents, which in the main confirm what Greek writers had already stated on the subject. The aspect of the Egyptian teaching is either that of a simple theory, which was afterwards mythically interpreted, or of a union of such a theory with a superstition existing side by side with it. In the famous seventeenth chapter of the Ritual it is possible, as De Kongo has done with extraordinary skill, to extract from the text a consistent theory which the glosses confuse by the mythological turn they give to the simple statements of the text. Notwithstanding this difficulty, it is suffi ciently clear that the Egyptians attributed to the human soul a divine origin, that they held that it was throughout life engaged in the warfare of good and evil, and that after life its final state was determined by judgment according to its doings on earth. Those who were justified before Osiris passed into perpetual happiness, those who were condemned into perpetual misery. The justified took the name of Osiris, the judge, under which they indeed already appeared for judgment. Had this plain outline been left unfilled by the priests, the Egyptians might have been credited with a lofty 1 According to Plutarch, Manetho stated that human sacrifices were anciently practised at Eilethyia (De Is. et Osir. i. cap. 73) ; whereas Porphyry says, on the same authority, that Amosis abolished them at Ileliopolis (De Abslin., p. 199). As, however, according to Porphyry they were sacrificed to Hera, who would well correspond to Suben, goddess of Eilethyia, not to any goddess of Heliopolis, it is probable that Ileliopolis is an error for Eilethyia ( HAioO ir6ft for Eij0i/i aj ir6d, as in the other passage where this is a correction for 15i6vi.as ir6a), but^ the two citations are very different. According to Por phyry, Amosis substituted waxen figures for the victims. The figure called the &quot;Bride of the Nile,&quot; now annually thrown into the river at the cutting of the Caml of Cairo, is said to represent a girl annually eacritkrd in foimer times. philosophy. Unfortunately, however, a thousand super stitions took the place of the attempt to lead an honest life. In the tombs we find every one who could pay for a sculptured record characterized as justified, every mummy already an Osiris. How was this determined ] Possibly there was a council held, which decided that the deceased could be treated as one who was certain of future happiness. It is, however, caore probable that the learning certain prayers and incantations, the performance of ceremonies, and the whole process of embalming, together with the charms attached to the mummy, and prayers said by those who visited the tomb, were held to secure future happiness. In reading the Ritual we are struck by the small space given to man s duties as compared with that filled by incantations and charms. The human mind must have lost sight of the value of good and seized upon the multifarious equivalents which needed nothing to be done by way of either self-restraint from evil or active bene volence. Thus as we look at the documents we see a noble idea lost in a crowd of superstitious fancies ; as we look at the Egyptians as they lived, we trace the effect of the in domitable good, and yet find it always greatly alloyed with evil. The Egyptian idea of the future state is the converse of that of Socrates. It is no little incident of human weakness, like the request to sacrifice a cock to ^Esculapius, which injures but does not destroy a harmonious whole ; a mere glimpse of truth is seen through thick mists peopled with the phantoms of the basest superstition. In the long course of ages the Egyptian ideas as to the future state seem to have undergone changes, not in them selves, but in the manner in which they were regarded. The vast labour expended on the Pyramids, and their solid simplicity, are in striking contrast with the elaborate religious representations of the tombs of the kings of Dynasties XIX. and XX. So, too, the sculptures on the walls of the tombs of subjects of the earlier kings, representing the everyday life of duty and pleasure, give place to funereal and religious scenes in the later periods. These w r ere fashions, but they show the changed mood of the national mind. It is only in a tablet of the age of the Ptolemies that Greek ideas assert their pre dominance in a touching lament addressed from the land of shades, which no longer speaks of active happiness, but in its place of purposeless oblivion (Birch, &quot; Two Tablets of the Ptolemaic Period,&quot; Archceologia, xxxix. 22, 23). Laws and Government. We are gradually gaining an in sight into the Egyptian laws. This is principally due to M. Chabas, the third volume of whose Melanges Egyptolu- giques mainly consists of essays, nearly all by himself, on texts relative to the administration of justice under the Pharaohs. His general results confirm the accuracy of what Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch state on the subject. It was to be expected that their evidence would have been good as to matters which could not have been easily mis understood, and which must in the case of Diodorus have been personally observed. In this matter the two sets of authorities may fairly be combined. The government of Egypt was monarchical. It was determined as early as the rule of Dynasty II., according to Manetho, that women could reign. Accordingly we find instances of queens regnant. Their rule, however, seems to have been disliked, and they are passed over in the lists made under Dynasty XIX., when, it may be ob served, the royal family seems to have been affected by Shemite influences. The royal power can scarcely have been despotic, although under certain kings it became so. It is sufficient to compare Assyrian and Babylonian with Egyptian history and documents to perceive a marked difference. The earliest monuments indicate a powerful local aristocracy holding hereditary functions. Those of