BY ALFRED WIEDEMANN, D.PH. PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BONN AUTHOR OF “ÆGYPTISCHE GESCHICHTE,” “DIE RELIGION DER ALTEN ÆGYPTER,” “HERODOT'S ZWEITES BUCH” With Twenty-one Illustrations LONDON H. GREVEL & CO. 33, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1895 Printed by Hazell Watson, &. Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury....

I N writing this treatise my object has been to give a clear exposition of the most important shape which the doctrine of immortality assumed in Egypt. This particular form of the doctrine was only one of many different ones that were held. The latter, however, were but occasional manifestations, whereas the system here treated of was the popular belief among all classes of the Egyptian people, from early to Coptic times. By far the greater part of the religious papyri and tomb texts and of the

L ITTLE as we know of the ancient Egyptian religion in its entirety, and of its motley mixture of childishly crude fetichism and deep philosophic thought, of superstition and true religious worship, of polytheism, henotheism, and pantheism, one dogma stands out clearly from this confusion, one article of belief to which the Egyptian religion owes its unique position among all other religions of antiquity−-the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul. It is true that other ancient religions