The Zoroastrian designation of heaven was the “Home of Song;” while hell was known as the “Home of the Lie."[1] There was in the Zoroastrian thought only two rival principles in the universe, represented by Ormuzd and Ahriman, as the God of truth, and the father of lies; and the lie was ever and always an offspring of Ahriman, the evil principle:  it could not emanate from or be consistent with the God of truth.  The same idea was manifest in the designation of the subordinate divinities of the Zoroastrian religion.  Mithra was the god of light, and as there is no concealment in the light, Mithra was also god of truth.  A liar was the enemy of righteousness.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Mueller’s Sacred Books of the East, XXXI., 184.]

[Footnote 2:  Mueller’s Sacred Books of the East, XXIII., 119 f., 124 f., 128, 139.  See reference to Jackson’s paper on “the ancient Persians’ abhorrence of falsehood, illustrated from the Avesta,” in Journal of Am.  Oriental Soc., Vol.  XIII., p. cii.]

“Truth was the main cardinal virtue among the Egyptians,” and “falsehood was considered disgraceful among them."[1] Ra and Ma were symbols of Light and Truth; and their representation was worn on the breastplate of priest and judge, like the Urim and Thummim of the Hebrews.[2] When the soul appeared in the Hall of Two Truths, for final judgment, it must be able to say, “I have not told a falsehood,” or fail of acquittal.[3] Ptah, the creator, a chief god of the Egyptians, was called “Lord of Truth."[4] The Egyptian conception of Deity was:  “God is the truth, he lives by truth, he lives upon the truth, he is the king of truth."[5] The Egyptians, like the Zoroastrians, seemed to count the one all-dividing line in the universe the line between truth and falsehood, between light and darkness.

[Footnote 1:  Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, I., 299; III., 183-185.]

[Footnote 2:  Exod. 39:  8-21; Lev. 8:  8.]

[Footnote 3:  Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History, V., 254.]

[Footnote 4:  Wilkinson’s Anc.  Egyp., III., 15-17.]

[Footnote 5:  Budge’s The Dwellers on the Nile, p. 131.]

Among the ancient Greeks the practice of lying was very general, so general that writers on the social life of the Greeks have been accustomed to give a low place relatively to that people in its estimate of truthfulness as a virtue.  Professor Mahaffy says on this point:  “At no period did the nation ever attain that high standard which is the great feature in Germanic civilization.  Even the Romans, with all their coarseness, stood higher in this respect.  But neither in Iliad nor in Odyssey is there, except in phrases, any reprobation of deceit as such.”  He points to the testimony of Cicero, concerning the Greeks, who “concedes to them all the high qualities they choose to claim save one—­that of truthfulness."[1] Yet the very way in which Herodotus tells to the credit of