deity the designation customarily used in their city—­Phtah at Memphis, Anhuri-Shu at Thinis, Khnumu in the neighbourhood of the first cataract—­they were quite willing to allow, at the same time, that these appellations were but various masks for one face.  Phtah, Hapi, Khnumu, Ra,—­all the gods, in fact,—­were blended with each other, and formed but one deity—­a unique existence, multiple in his names, and mighty according to the importance of the city in which he was worshipped.  Hence Amon, lord of the capital and patron of the dynasty, having more partisans, enjoyed more respect, and, in a word, felt himself possessed of more claims to be the sole god of Egypt than his brethren, who could not claim so many worshippers.  He did not at the outset arrogate to himself the same empire over the dead as he exercised over the living; he had delegated his functions in this respect to a goddess, Maritsakro, for whom the poorer inhabitants of the left bank entertained a persistent devotion.  She was a kind of Isis or hospitable Hathor, whose subjects in the other world adapted themselves to the nebulous and dreary existence provided for their disembodied “doubles.”  The Osirian and solar doctrines were afterwards blended together in this local mythology, and from the XIth dynasty onwards the Theban nobility had adopted, along with the ceremonies in use in the Memphite period, the Heliopolitan beliefs concerning the wanderings of the soul in the west, its embarkation on the solar ship, and its resting-places in the fields of Ialu.  The rock-tombs of the XVIIIth dynasty demonstrate that the Thebans had then no different concept of their life beyond the world from that entertained by the inhabitants of the most ancient cities:  they ascribed to that existence the same inconsistent medley of contradictory ideas, from which each one might select what pleased him best—­either repose in a well-provisioned tomb, or a dwelling close to Osiris in the middle of a calm and agreeable paradise, or voyages with Ra around the world.*

     * The Pyramid texts are found for the most part in the tombs
     of Nofiru and Harhotpu; the texts of the Book of the Dead
     are met with on the Theban coffins of the same period.

[Illustration:  060.jpg DECORATED WRAPPINGS OF A MUMMY]

The fusion of Ra and Amon, and the predominance of the solar idea which arose from it, forced the theologians to examine more closely these inconsistent notions, and to eliminate from them anything which might be out of harmony with the new views.  The devout servant of Amon, desirous of keeping in constant touch with his god both here and in the other would, could not imagine a happier future for his soul than in its going forth in the fulness of light by day, and taking refuge by night on the very bark which carried the object of his worship through the thick darkness of, Hades.  To this end he endeavoured to collect the formulae which would enable him to attain to this