The ancestors of the Egyptians, when they entered the valley of the Nile, did not come either empty-handed, or empty-headed. They brought with them their looms, their ploughs and seed-corn, and their sheep and cattle: for what they had been used to in the old home was what they would wish to have in the new. They did this whether they came by land or by sea. None of the first European settlers in the New World found any difficulty in carrying with them their live stock across the broad and stormy Atlantic. They brought with them also, and which was of more importance than all the rest, their belief in an after life. We are as certain of this, whether they came in ten, or twenty thousand years ago, as we are that, at a geological epoch so remote from the present time that the organized life of the Earth has since been changed again and again, there were winds and tides, and sunshine and rain. Every branch of the Aryan family, from the Ganges to the Thames, participated in this belief; it had, therefore, existed among them at a date anterior to their dispersion. It occupied in their organized thought the position the vertebrate skeleton does in the animal organization. It was the governing idea. Everything contributed to it, or was deduced from it: either, went to feed it, or grew out of it. Those races of animals which have not arrived at vertebration are the lowest forms, with the fewest specialized organs: still they appear to have a kind of tendency towards it, or virtual capacity for it. Just so of the mental condition of some portions of our race with respect to this idea of a future life. There are some whose thought is so rudimentary that it has never yet grown into this form; but they are the lowest minds: still, even they have a kind of tendency towards it, and of capacity for it—though, indeed, several such tribes and people have died out without ever having attained to it. And so will it be with many of those who, at the present day, are in this condition. They will be swept away by those who possess the higher form of organized thought, without their ever reaching this point in the progress of moral and intellectual being.

If the question be asked—Why we do ourselves believe in a future life?—the answer is—That we believe in it for the same reason that Homer and Virgil, Cheops and Darius, Porus, Arminius, and Galgacus believed in it—that is to say, because our remote, but common ancestors, had passed out of the state in which thought is chaos, and had reached the state in which thought has begun to organize itself; and because the vertebral column of the form in which it had with them begun to organize itself was belief in a future state. None of all of us, whether dwellers on the banks of the Ganges, the Thames, or the Nile, could any more get rid of, or dispense with, or act independently of, that formative column of thought, than our animal constitution could of its formative column of bone. Belief in God, in moral distinctions, in personal responsibility, in the supremacy of intelligence—that is to say, that it is intelligence which orders, and co-ordinates God, the universe, and man, would all be powerless and unmeaning, were it not for this belief in a future life. These, and others beliefs may feed and support it; but it acts in, and through them, and gives them their chief value. It puts man in permanent relation with God, and the universe. Hitherto with us nothing else has done this. Without it these other beliefs would have been mere chaotic elements of thought.

We must see this in order that we may understand the life, the mind, and even the arts of the ancient Egyptians. Nothing about them is intelligible if their belief in a future life is lost sight of; for this it was that made them what they were, and enabled them to do what they did. The connexion with it of their greatest achievement is close and evident. As an instrument of human progress, language, of course, takes precedence of everything. Nothing would be possible without it. But, if man had stopped short at the acquisition of language, not much would have been gained. Something more was needed, and that something was the art of writing, which is that extension of the uses of language, without which no serviceable amount of knowledge could have been attained, or retained. Without this little could have been done. With it everything became possible. The further we advance by its aid, the longer, and the broader, and the more glorious are the vistas that open before us. Now, of this we are certain, that the ancient Egyptians discovered this art. The idea of the possibility of speaking words to the mind through the eye, and rendering thought fixed, and permanent, and portable, and transmissible from generation to generation, of committing it, not to the air, but to stone, or, still better, to paper, first occurred to the Egyptians. And they were the first to give effect to the idea, which they did in their hieroglyphic form of writing, out of which afterwards grew the hieratic and demotic forms.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this discovery. It contained in its single self the possibility of the whole of science, art, law, religion, history, beyond their merest rudiments, which were all that would have been attainable without it. It contained all this as completely as the acorn contains the oak. Where, and what would any and every one of them now be were it not for that discovery? Indeed, what does it not contain? There are now 31,000,000 souls within the United Kingdom, had it not been for that discovery probably there would not have been 3,000,000. Neither the readers nor the writer of this book would have existed. None of the existing population of Europe would have seen the light. Other combinations would have taken place. Europe would be sparsely tenanted by tribes of rude barbarians—only a little less rude in its favoured southern clime. The New World would be still unknown. On the day some Egyptian priest, perhaps at This, thought out a scheme for representing words and sounds by signs, Christianity, the British Constitution, and the steam-engine became possible. With respect to so great, so all-important a discovery, one on which the destinies of the human race so entirely depended, every particular of its history must be deeply interesting. Of one particular, however, at all events, we are certain: we know where it had its birth. And this is what has made so many in all times desire to visit Egypt. It was that they wished to see the land of those who had conferred this much-containing gift upon mankind—not all of them seeing this distinctly, yet having a kind of intuition that the wisdom of the Egyptians was a mighty wisdom to which civilization, through this discovery, owed itself.

We know, too, another particular, and that is, that this discovery was first used for sacred and religious purposes; and it must have been invented for the purposes for which it was first used. We can imagine what prompted the thought that issued in the discovery. We can trace out what it was that set the discovering mind at work. It must have been some idea in Egypt that was more active, and so more productive than ideas that were stirring in men’s minds elsewhere. It must have been some need in Egypt that spurred men on more than the needs felt elsewhere. And this idea could only have been that of the future life; and this need that which arose out of this idea, the need of recording the laws it prompted, and the ritual which grew out of it; and of aiding, embellishing, and advancing in their general laws, their religious observances, their arts, and what afterwards became their science and their history, the whole life of the people which was struggling to rise into higher conditions, more worthy of their great idea.

But we must give some account of what the Egyptian doctrine of the future life actually was. Fortunately, in the Book of the Dead, we have for its historical reconstruction the identical materials the old Egyptians had for its construction in their own moral being. This Book of the Dead was one of their Sacred Scriptures. Its contents are very various and comprehensive, and are quite sufficient to give us a distinct idea of what we are in want of here. It is divided into 165 sections. Its object is to supply the man, now in the mummy stage of existence, with all the instructions he will require in his passage to, and into, the future world. It contains the primæval hymns that were to be sung, and the prayers that were to be offered, as the mummy was lowered into the pit of the catacomb or grave; and the invocations that were to be used over the mummy, the various amulets appended to it, and the bandages in which it was swathed. These bandages had great mystical importance. Some of them have been unrolled to the length of 1,000 yards; and we are told that there is no form of bandage known to modern surgery of which instances may not be found on the mummies.

What has now been mentioned forms, as it were, the introductory part of the book. The rest is devoted to what is to be done by the mummy himself on his passage to, and entrance into, the unseen world. It taught him what he was to say and do during the days of trying words, and on the occasion of the great and terrible final judgment. An image of the rendering of this awful account had already been presented to the eyes of the surviving friends and neighbours at the funeral. It was a scene in which the mummy had often taken part himself in the days of his own earthly trial. The corpse, on its way to the grave, had to pass the sacred lake of the nome, or department. When it had reached the shore there was a pause in the progress of the procession, and forty-two judges, or jurymen, stood forward to hear any accusations that any one was at liberty to advance against the deceased. If any accusation could be substantiated to the satisfaction of the judges, whether the deceased were the Pharaoh who had sat on the throne, or a poor peasant or artizan, the terrible sentence, to an Egyptian beyond measure terrible, was passed upon him, that his mummy was to be excluded from burial. The awful consequence of this was 3,000 years of wandering in darkness, and in animal forms.

But, supposing that the mummy had passed this earthly ordeal, he was then committed to his earthly resting-place; and this Book of the Dead, either the whole, or what was deemed the most essential part of it, was placed on, or in the mummy case: sometimes it was inscribed on the sarcophagus. These were the instructions which were to guide him on the long, dread, difficult course upon which he was about to enter. He will have to appear in the hall of two-fold Divine Justice—the justice, that is, which rewards as well as punishes. Osiris, the judge of the dead, will look on, as president of the court. He will wear the emblem of truth, and the tablet breast-plate, containing the figure of Divine Justice. The scales of Divine Justice will be produced. The heart of the mummy will be placed in one scale, and the figure of Divine Justice in the other. The mummy will stand by the scale in which his heart is being weighed. Anubis, the Guardian of the Dead, will watch the opposite scale. Thoth, who had been the revealer to man of the divine words, of which the Sacred Books of Egypt were transcripts, will be present to record the sentence.

The book contains, for the use of the mummy, the forty-two denials of sin he will have to make in the presence of this awful court, while his heart is in the balance, and the forty-two avenging demons, all ape-faced, symbolizing man in the extremity of degradation, with reason perverted and without conscience, and each with the pitiless knife in his raised hand, will be standing by, ready to claim him, or some part of him, if the balance indicates that the denial is false. These forty-two denials have reference to the ordinary duties of human life, such as all civilized people have understood them; though, of course, as might have been expected, the forms of some of these duties are Egyptian, as, for instance, that of using the waters of the irrigation fairly, and without prejudice to the rights of others: an application to the circumstances of Egypt, of the universally received ideas of fairness and justice, which the working of human society must, everywhere, give birth to. The denials also include, as again we might be sure they would, the mummy’s observance of Egyptian ceremonial law.

There is still a great deal more in the book. The mummy will have to achieve many difficult passages before he can attain the empyrean gate, through which those who have been found true in the balance, for that is the meaning of the Egyptian word for the justified, are at last admitted to the realms of pure and everlasting light. This gate is the gate of the Sun, and this light is the presence of the Sun-god. There will be many adversaries that will be lying-in-wait for him, seeking to fasten charges of one kind or another upon him, and to destroy him. The book tells him how he is to comport himself, and what he is to do, as each of these occasions arise. There are certain halls, for instance, through which he will have to pass. These halls he will find inhabited by demons, but they are a necessary part of the great journey. And the entrance to them he will find barred and guarded by demon door-keepers. Here mystical names and words must be used, which alone will enable the mummy to get by these demon door-keepers, and through these demon-inhabited halls. These names and words of power he will find in the book. We here have traces of the thought of primitive times, when men regarded with wonder, deepening into awe, the supposed mysterious efficacy of articulate sound.

One demon, in particular, will endeavour to secure the mummy’s head. In a hellish place he must cross, a net will be spread to entangle him. He will have to journey through regions of thick darkness, and to confront the fury of the Great Dragon. He will have to go through places where he may incur pollution; through others where he may become subject to corruption. He will have to submit to a fiery ordeal. He will have to work out a course of carefully and toilsomely conducted husbandry, the harvest of which will be knowledge. He will have to obtain the air that is untainted, the water that is of heaven, and the bread of Ra and Seb. The book will give him all the needful instructions on these, and on all other matters where he will require guidance.

Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress enables us to understand this Book of the Dead. The aim of both is the same. Each presents a picture of the hindrances and difficulties, both from within and from without, and of the requirements and aids of the soul, in its struggle to attain to the higher life. The Egyptian doctrine places the scene in the passage from this life to the next. The Elstow tinker places it, allegorically, in this life. But this is a difference that is immaterial. The ideas of both are fundamentally the same. The consciousness to which they both appeal is the same. The old Egyptian of 5,000 or 6,000 years ago received the teaching of his book on precisely the same grounds as we ourselves at this day receive the teaching of the Pilgrim. With how much additional authority does this discovery invest these ideas! The mind must be more or less than human that arrays itself against what has, so overwhelmingly, approved itself semper, ubique, et omnibus.

The antiquity of the book is very great. Portions of it are found on the mummy cases of the eleventh dynasty. This shows that it was in use 4,000 years ago. But this was very far from having been the date of its first use; for even then it had become so old as to be unintelligible to royal scribes; and we find that, in consequence, it was at that remote time the custom to give together with the sacred text its interpretation.

All collections of Egyptian antiquities contain copies of this book, or of portions of it. Several are to be seen in our British Museum. Of course this abundance of copies results from the nature of the book, and the use to which it was put. It was literally the viaticum, the itinerary, the guide and hand-book, the route and instructions, for the mummy to and through that world, from which no traveller returns. Each of its sections is accompanied by a rubric, and generally illustrated by a vignette, directing, and showing the mummy, how the section is to be used.

I know nothing more instructive and more touching in human history than one of these old Egyptian Books of the Dead, with its doctrine, its invocations, its hymns, its prayers, its instructions, its rubrics, its illustrations. All its images are of the earth earthy. How could it be otherwise? The soul that has kept all the commandments, that has been tried in the balance and not found wanting, that has fought the good fight to final triumph through all the dangers, and temptations, and pollutions, that beset its path, reaches at last only a purer ether and eternal light.

It is easy to endeavour to dismiss all this with cold indifference, or with a cheap sneer. But those who placed this book by the side of a departed relative had hearts that were still turned towards those they could never any more behold in the flesh. All their care and thought were not for themselves. And, too, they believed in right and truth, in justice and goodness. And because they believed in them, they believed also in a world and in a life of which those principles would be the law.