Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/122

 delineated as judge, while before him is a scribe, who is reckoning up for him the deeds of the soul brought into his presence. This realm of the dead, that of Amenthes, constitutes a principal feature in the religious conceptions of the Egyptians. As Osiris, the life-giving, was opposed to Typhon, the annihilating principle, and was the sun of the earth, so the antithesis of the living and the dead makes its first appearance here. The realm of the dead is just as fixed a conception as the realm of the living. The realm of the dead discloses itself when natural Being is overcome; it is just there that what has no longer natural existence persists.

The enormous works of the Egyptians which still remain to us are almost entirely those only which were destined for the dead. The celebrated labyrinth had as many chambers above as beneath the ground. The palaces of the kings and priests have been transformed into heaps of rubbish, while their tombs have bid defiance to time. Deep grottos extending several miles in length are to be found hewn in the rock for the mummies, and all the walls are covered with hieroglyphics. But the objects which excite the greatest admiration are the pyramid-temples for the dead, not so much in memory of them, as in order to serve them as burial-places and as dwellings. Herodotus says that the Egyptians were the first who taught that souls are immortal. It may occasion surprise that, although the Egyptians believed in the immortality of the soul, they yet devoted so much care to their dead: one might think that man, if he holds the soul to be immortal, would no longer have special respect for his body. But, on the contrary, it is precisely those peoples who do not believe in an immortality who hold the body in slight esteem after its death, and do not provide for its preservation. The honour which is shown to the dead is wholly dependent upon the idea of immortality. If the body falls into the power of the forces of nature, which are no longer restrained by the