Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/110

96 or arriving at this through transitional and rudimentary stages.

In strong contrast with the schemes of savage future existence, I need but set before the reader's mind a salient point here and there in the doctrine of distinct and unquestionable moral retribution, as held in religions of the higher culture. The inner mystic doctrines of ancient Egypt may perhaps never be extracted now from the pictures and hieroglyphic formulas of the 'Book of the Dead.' But the ethnographer may satisfy himself of two important points as to the place which the Egyptian view of the future life occupies in the history of religion. On the one hand, the soul's quitting and revisiting the corpse, the placing of the image in the tomb, the offering of meat and drink, the fearful journey to the regions of the departed, the renewed life like that on earth, with its houses to dwell in and fields to cultivate — all these are conceptions which connect the Egyptian religion with the religions of the ruder races of mankind. But on the other hand, the mixed ethical and ceremonial standard by which the dead are to be judged adapts these primitive and even savage thoughts to a higher social development, such as may be shown by fragments from that remarkable 'negative confession' which the dead must make before Osiris and the forty-two judges in Amenti. 'O ye Lords of Truth! let me know you! ... Rub ye away my faults. I have not privily done evil against mankind. ... I have not told falsehoods in the tribunal of Truth. ... I have not done any wicked thing. I have not made the labouring man do more than his task daily. ... I have not calumniated the slave to his master. ... I have not murdered. ... I have not done fraud to men. I have not changed measures of the country. I have not injured the images of the gods. I have not taken scraps of the bandages of the dead. I have not committed adultery. I have not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings. I have not hunted wild animals in the pasturages. I have not netted