=Mummies.=—­During this pilgrimage the soul may wish to re-enter the body to rest there.  The body must therefore be kept intact, and so the Egyptians learned to embalm it.  The corpse was filled with spices, drenched in a bath of natron, wound with bandages and thus transformed into a mummy.  The mummy encased in a coffin of wood or plaster was laid in the tomb with every provision necessary to its life.

=Book of the Dead.=—­A book was deposited with the mummy, the Book of the Dead, which explains what the soul ought to say in the other world when it makes its defence before the tribunal of Osiris:  “I have never committed fraud; ...  I have never vexed the widow; ...  I have never committed any forbidden act; ...  I have never been an idler; ...  I have never taken the slave from his master; ...  I never stole the bread from the temples; ...  I never removed the provisions or the bandages of the dead; I never altered the grain measure; ...  I never hunted sacred beasts; I never caught sacred fish; ...  I am pure; ...  I have given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; I have sacrificed to the gods, and offered funeral feasts to dead.”  Here we see Egyptian morality:  observance of ceremonies, respect for everything pertaining to the gods, sincerity, honesty, and beneficence.

THE ARTS

=Industry.=—­The Egyptians were the first to practice the arts necessary to a civilized people.  From the first dynasty, 3,000[13] years B.C., paintings on the tomb exhibit men working, sowing, harvesting, beating and winnowing grain; we have representations of herds of cattle, sheep, geese, swine; of persons richly clothed, processions, feasts where the harp is played—­almost the same life that we behold 3,000 years later.  As early as this time the Egyptians knew how to manipulate gold, silver, bronze; to manufacture arms and jewels, glass, pottery, and enamel; they wove garments of linen and wool, and cloths, transparent or embroidered with gold.

=Architecture.=—­They were the oldest artists of the world.  They constructed enormous monuments which appear to be eternal, for down to the present, time has not been able to destroy them.  They never built, as we do, for the living, but for the gods and for the dead, i.e., temples and tombs.  Only a slight amount of debris is left of their houses, and even the palaces of their kings in comparison with the tombs appear, in the language of the Greeks, to be only inns.  The house was to serve only for a lifetime, the tomb for eternity.

=Tombs.=—­The Great Pyramid is a royal tomb.  Ancient tombs ordinarily had this form.  In Lower Egypt there still remain pyramids arranged in rows or scattered about, some larger, others smaller.  These are the tombs of kings and nobles.  Later the tombs are constructed underground, some under earth, others cut into the granite of the hills.  Each generation needs new ones, and therefore near the town of living people is built the richer and greater city of the dead (necropolis).