Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/485

 EGYPT (LANGUAGE AND LITERATUBE) 477 are yet almost entirely unknown. The reli- gious is the most important branch of the Egyptian literature that has come down to us. At first sight it seems to proclaim the Egyptians the most polytheistic of men, but a more careful examination leads to the sup- position that the various gods were only in- tended to bring out in symbol and in allegory the various qualities and manifestations of one great God, uncreate, eternal, and omnipotent. Egyptologists strongly combat the commonly received opinion that the doctrine of one God was the belief of the learned only, and that the Egyptian ritual was intended for the vul- gar. The most prominent of the theological treatises is the " Book of the Dead," also called the "Funeral Ritual." The earliest known copy is in hieratic writing of the oldest type, and was found in the tomb of a queen of the llth dynasty, which can hardly be placed later than 3000 B. 0. The sense of certain chapters had already become obscure to the writers, who add many notes and rubrics, and some- times another reading ; thus it contains another version of the 64th chapter, ascribed to King Menkera of the 4th dynasty. The latest copy is of the 2d century A. D., and is a demotic papyrus written in pure Coptic. It consists, in its complete state, of 166 chapters, many of which were added in the days of the new em- pire, or about 1600 B. 0., and perhaps as late as the time of Psammetik. The main body of the work is uniform throughout, and gives a mys- tical account of the adventures of the soul after death, and directions how by the use of theolo- gical knowledge, as being able to recite the names and titles of innumerable gods, the soul could reach the hall of Osiris. Here it was to be judged by Osiris and the 42 assessors, who took cognizance of the 42 mortal sins. It was prob- ably from some confused report of this chapter of the ritual that Diodorus was led to state, what is often repeated in modern books, that the Egyptians held trial over their dead before burial. The soul was sent, after a successful examination, to the abode of the sun, to live in blessedness. Almost every museum in Europe has specimens of the ritual, and many have published facsimiles of it. A complete trans- lation, by Dr. Birch, may be found in the 5th volume of the 2d edition of Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in Universal History" (London, 1867). The best editions of the whole text are Lep- sius's Todteribuch (Leipsic, 1842), from a Turin copy in linear hieroglyphics ; De Rouge's Ei- tuel funeraire (Paris, 1861-'5), in hieratic; and a collection of the most important texts in Lepsius's Aelteste Texte des altdgyptischen Todtenbuchs (Berlin, 1867). The preparation of these books of the dead seems to have been a regular trade with the Egyptian priests. They were written and illustrated in various styles, proportioned to the rank of the deceased or to the price which his relatives chose to pay, and they were placed in the coffin with the dead. As the books were to be sealed up, and not to be read, or seen again by the relatives, they are often written with the greatest care- lessness, and are full of omissions and gross faults in orthography. They seem to have been kept ready made, for the name of the de- ceased appears in different ink and handwriting from the rest of the book, and appears to have been inserted in a blank left for the purpose. The only other kind of composition which can be strictly classed as theological are the treatises describing the metamorphoses of the gods, and the lamentations of Isis, found in the tombs of priests and priestesses ; but these books are so replete with allegories that it is almost impos- sible to discover their meaning. To this class belong also the myths in the Ptolemaic temples, and it is believed that when the immense pro- fusion of pictures found at Edfoo, Esne, Den- derah, and other such temples are collected and deciphered, the obscurities of the ritual will be greatly diminished. They explain such myths as that of the winged disk, or the adventures of Horus in avenging his father Osiris, and possess occasional historical allusions of great value. Some of these texts are given in Brugsch's Die geflugelte Sonnenscheibe (Berlin, 1870), and Na- ville's Textes relatifs au mythe d* Horus (Paris, 1870). The devotional treatises mainly consist of hymns, some of which are addressed to the sun or to the god of Egypt considered as such, and abound hi lofty and pure sentiment. Trans- lations of such hymns are scattered among the archs9ological, philological, and oriental re- views ; some may be found in Ch abas' s Papy- rus magique Harris (Chalons, 1861) and Mas- pero's Hymne au Nile (Paris, 1868). The ethi- cal treatises are in part in the form of regular moral essays, either in a connected discourse or in disjointed proverbs ; partly in an episto- lary form, under the garb of a private letter from a teacher to his pupil, but evidently in- tended for general use ; and also in the form of dialogue. The oldest hieratic book which we possess is the moral treatise of Prince Ptah- hotep, and the copy of it, called the Prisse papyrus, may have been prepared as late as the llth dynasty; but the author speaks of hav- ing reached a ripe old age under Assa, the last king but one of the 5th dynasty. The collection of proverbs in the Leyden papyri, which is of the Ramesid era, and the instruc- tions of a demotic papyrus in the Paris library, dating from the Ptolemies, differ in no funda- mental point from the ancient treatise, and do not even show a development. They enume- rate and enjoin the same private and social qualities which are now thought to make a man respectable. Fragments of Ptah-hotep's moral discourse have been translated by Dumichen in Der AegyptiscJie Felsentempel von Abu-Sim- lel (Berlin, 1869), and by Lauth in his Moses der Ebraer (Munich, 1868). The proverbial precepts of the demotic treatises are given in the Eecueil de travaux. relatifs a la pMlologie egyptienne et assyrienne (Paris, 1870). The moral philoso- phy of one of the Leyden papyri speaks in para-