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Rh in the time of the great pyramid-building kings of the fourth dynasty. There can be no doubt that the greater part is of extreme antiquity.

Two great difficulties assail us in the endeavor even to construe this book. It was held to be specially advantageous to the mummified Egyptian that a copy should be deposited in his tomb. Consequently it became the custom to write these copies in great numbers, and, as they were not to be read, the scribes were careless in their copying. Hence arises a multitude of errors which at every step embarrass the student. The other difficulty is due to the causes which render the Epyptian religious writings more hard to interpret than the historical. Yet, thanks to M. de Rougé's patience and skill, the general purport of the work is now understood. It is throughout text and commentary, and curiously, as already remarked, the text usually simpler than the commentary, which by its allegorizing method renders the obscurity of the subject greater. The theme of the "Ritual" is the story of man's fate in the netherworld, and the text consists of a series of prayers to be said in each of the several zones through which the soul was to pass on its way to judgment, and the confession of innocence that was to ensure its acquittal. It might be supposed that so great a matter would have been treated in the loftiest style of which the language was capable, with the simplicity of the Egyptian memoir, the pathos of the dirge, and the occasional grandeur of the historical writings and the religious hymns. But it is far otherwise. Nowhere is the lower element of the Egyptian religion so evident as in the "Ritual." It is obscure and mysterious, without elevation or dignity. The student seeks in vain for a single passage worthy of the ideas conveyed through the eye by the pyramids and the tombs of the kings. He wanders through a labyrinth peopled by the forms of the lowest superstition, and the idea forces itself upon him that the negro element of the Egyptian mind is here dominant, not always in the thoughts, but always in their expression. Nothing more forcibly shows the strength of this element, not even animal-worship. Side by side with the "Ritual" we find another work relating to the underworld, the "Book of the Lower Hemisphere," describing the journeyings of the soul after death through twelve zones corresponding to the twelve hours of the nocturnal sun. This book was in fashion at the period to which most of the tombs of the kings (nineteenth and twentieth dynasties) belong, and their pictures afford the illustrations of its chapters.

The "wisdom of the Egyptians" is not to be found in the "Ritual" and the "Book of the Lower Hemisphere," but in the few moral treatises that are left. The oldest complete one of these, that of Ptah-hotep, a prince, son of a king of the fifth dynasty, is the first work of the character of the Hebrew Proverbs which has come down to us as a whole. It teaches a high morality apart from the Egyptian religion; that religion it almost ignores, in general speaking of God in the singular as the judge of men's actions. It is a curious question whether proverbial writing of this kind, that is, wisdom embodied in short pithy sayings, very often stating a duty and the reason for its performance, is not of Egyptian origin. In Hebrew literature it is scarcely found before the date of the Proverbs. If that book is in its origin of the time of Solomon, and this can scarcely be doubted, a curious question arises. How are we to explain the striking similarity of method in the Hebrew and the Egyptian book? It is not likely that the contact between Egypt and the East between the times of Moses and Solomon was sufficiently strong to influence Hebrew literature. It is far more probable, unless the similarity is accidental, that tradition preserved a method of teaching that must have been known to Moses, who was "educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." If so, the Hebrew work may contain archaic fragments preserved by the original collector just as it contains sayings added after its first completion.

Scientific literature, at least in the province of medicine, not unmixed with superstition, is of the first age of Egyptian monuments, and probably historical literature in the shape of memoirs, afterwards among our best sources, is not much later. Fiction, letters, and state annals are not yet known of this antiquity, and therefore must be afterwards noticed.

Thus much we know of the belief and thought of the people of Egypt in the age of their first monuments. What they did and how they lived in those days is the next point of interest.

As we stand beneath the Great Pyramid the first question that rises in our mind is this. How long ago was this monument raised? Has it stood for four, five, or six thousand years? M. Mariette answers six, Professor Lepsius five, and some cautious reckoners adhere to Napoleon's forty centuries. But in truth the question 