Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/141

 resorted to in our days through the mere pressure of external circumstances or novel temptations."

Far more important than any single instance from the descriptions of modern savages is the ancient tomb of Aurignac. "If the fossil memorials," says Sir Charles Lyell, "have been correctly interpreted—if we have before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault, with skeletons of human beings consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place—if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits, while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave lion, the cave bear and woolly rhinoceros—we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history or tradition."

But if from pre-historic we pass to historic times, we at once meet on Egyptian ground with an entire system