Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/198

 been transferred to the Egyptians, even by scholars who might have known better. There is really no connection, either doctrinally or historically, between the two systems. Nothing in the Pythagorean system is foreign to previously existing Hellenic modes of thought, or which requires in any way to be accounted for by foreign influence, and its metempsychosis is essentially based upon the notions of expiation and purification. Men were supposed to be punished in various forms of a renewed life upon earth, for sins committed in a previous state of existence. There is not a trace of any such conception to be found in any Egyptian text which has yet been brought to light. The only transformations after death depend, we are expressly told, simply on the pleasure of the deceased or of his "genius."

Nor is there any trace to be found of the notion of an intermediate state of purification between death and final bliss. Certain operations have to be performed, certain regions have to be traversed, certain prayers to be recited, but there is no indication of anything of an expiatorial nature. If the judgment in the Hall of Law is favourable, the departed comes forth triumphantly as a god whom nothing can harm; he is identified with Osiris and with every other divinity. The nether world, and indeed the universe at large, is full of terrible and hostile forces; but through his identification with the great gods and his uttering words of power