The first and most important place is occupied by the monuments, which contain the names and tablets of the gods of the three orders.  Then come the sacred books of the Egyptians, known to us by Clemens Alexandrinus.  From him we learn that the Egyptians in his time had forty-two sacred books in five classes.  The first class, containing songs or hymns in praise of the gods, were very old, dating perhaps from the time of Menes.  The other books treated of morals, astronomy, hieroglyphics, geography, ceremonies, the deities, the education of priests, and medicine.  Of these sacred Hermaic books, one is still extant, and perhaps it is as interesting as any of them.  We have two copies of it, both on papyrus, one found by the French at Thebes, the other by Champollion in Turin.  And Lepsius considers this last papyrus to be wholly of the date of the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, consequently fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred years before Christ, and the only example of an Egyptian book transmitted from the times of the Pharaohs.  Bunsen believes it to belong to the fourth class of Hermaic books, containing Ordinances as to the First Fruits, Sacrifices, Hymns, and Prayers.  In this book the deceased is the person who officiates.  His soul journeying on gives utterance to prayers, confessions, invocations.  The first fifteen chapters, which make a connected whole, are headed, “Here begins the Sections of the Glorification in the Light of Osiris.”  It is illustrated by a picture of a procession, in which the deceased soul follows his own corpse as chief mourner, offering prayers to the Sun-God.  Another part of the book is headed, “The Book of Deliverance, in the Hall of twofold Justice,” and contains the divine judgments on the deceased.  Forty-two gods occupy the judgment-seat.  Osiris, their president, bears on his breast the small tablet of chief judge, containing a figure of Justice.  Before him are seen the scales of divine judgment.  In one is placed the statue of Justice, and in the other the heart of the deceased, who stands in person by the balance containing his heart, while Anubis watches the other scale.  Horus examines the plummet indicating which way the beam inclines.  Thoth, the Justifier the Lord of the Divine Word, records the sentence.[168]

Sec. 4.  Central Idea of Egyptian Theology and Religion.  Animal Worship.

We now proceed to ask what is the IDEA of Egyptian mythology and theology?

We have seen that the idea of the religion of India was Spirit; the One, the Infinite, the Eternal; a pure spiritual Pantheism, from which the elements of time and space are quite excluded.  The religion of Egypt stands at the opposite pole of thought as its antagonist.  Instead of Spirit, it accepts Body; instead of Unity, Variety; instead of Substance, Form.  It is the physical reaction from Brahmanism.  Instead of the worship of abstract Deity, it gives us the most concrete divinity, wholly incarnated in