=Sacred Animals.=—­What did the Egyptians wish to designate by this symbol?  One hardly knows.  They, themselves, came to regard as sacred the animals which served to represent the gods to them:  the bull, the beetle, the ibis, the hawk, the cat, the crocodile.  They cared for them and protected them.  A century before the Christian era a Roman citizen killed a cat at Alexandria; the people rose in riot, seized him, and, notwithstanding the entreaties of the king, murdered him, although at the same time they had great fear of the Romans.  There was in each temple a sacred animal which was adored.  The traveller Strabo records a visit to a sacred crocodile of Thebes:  “The beast,” said he, “lay on the edge of a pond, the priests drew near, two of them opened his mouth, a third thrust in cakes, grilled fish, and a drink made with meal.”

=The Bull Apis.=—­Of these animal gods the most venerated was the bull Apis.  It represented at once Osiris and Phtah and lived at Memphis in a chapel served by the priests.  After its death it became an Osiris (Osar-hapi), it was embalmed, and its mummy deposited in a vault.  The sepulchres of the “Osar-hapi” constituted a gigantic monument, the Serapeum, discovered in 1851 by Marietta.

=Cult of the Dead.=—­The Egyptians adored also the spirits of the dead.  They seem to have believed at first that every man had a “double” (Ka), and that when the man was dead his double still survived.  Many savage peoples believe this to this day.  The Egyptian tomb in the time of the Old Empire was termed “House of the Double.”  It was a low room arranged like a chamber, where for the service of the double there were placed all that he required, chairs, tables, beds, chests, linen, closets, garments, toilet utensils, weapons, sometimes a war-chariot; for the entertainment of the double, statues, paintings, books; for his sustenance, grain and foods.  And then they set there a double of the dead in the form of a statue in wood or stone carved in his likeness.  At last the opening to the vault was sealed; the double was enclosed, but the living still provided for him.  They brought him foods or they might beseech a god that he supply them to the spirit, as in this inscription, “An offering to Osiris that he may confer on the Ka of the deceased N. bread, drink, meat, geese, milk, wine, beer, clothing, perfumes—­all good things and pure on which the god (i.e. the Ka) subsists.”

=Judgment of the Soul.=—­Later, originating with the eleventh dynasty, the Egyptians believed that the soul flew away from the body and sought Osiris under the earth, the realm into which the sun seemed every day to sink.  There Osiris sits on his tribunal, surrounded by forty-two judges; the soul appears before these to give account of his past life.  His actions are weighed in the balance of truth, his “heart” is called to witness.  “O heart,” cries the dead, “O heart, the issue of my mother, my heart when I was on earth, offer not thyself as witness, charge me not before the great god.”  The soul found on examination to be bad is tormented for centuries and at last annihilated.  The good soul springs up across the firmament; after many tests it rejoins the company of the gods and is absorbed into them.