Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/211

 in place of that which is right. I am not cognizant of iniquity; I am not a doer of evil. I do not force a labouring man to do more than his daily task. &hellip; I do not calumniate a servant to his master; I do not cause hunger; I do not cause weeping; I am not a murderer; I do not give order to murder privily; I am not guilty of fraud against any one; I am not a falsifier of the measures in the temples. &hellip; I do not add to the weight of the scale; I do not falsify the indicator of the balance; I do not withhold milk from the mouth of the suckling." The catalogue of the forty-two sins, each of which has an avenging deity, includes some of those I have quoted and omits others. The sins are not catalogued according to any scientific arrangement. Besides the crimes of violence and theft, different sins against chastity are mentioned; not only evil-speaking and lying, but exaggeration, chattering and idle words are condemned; he who reviles the king, his father or his god, the evil listener and he who turns a deaf ear to the words of truth or justice, he who causes pain of mind to another, or who in his heart thinks meanly of God—all these fail to satisfy the conditions of admission into the ranks of the triumphant dead.

The 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead certainly contains the oldest known code of private and public morality. The fifteenth chapter, which is a hymn to the rising and to the setting Sun, is the most ancient