the other world, and would be able in
heaven to go in and out just as they had done upon earth, and to be
happy for ever.

The book is full of all kinds of magical charms against the serpents and
dragons and all the other kinds of evil things that sought to destroy
the dead person in the other world. The scribes used to write off copies
of it by the dozen, and keep them in stock, with blank places for the
names of the persons who were to use them. When anyone died, his
friends went away to a scribe, and bought a roll of the Book of the
Dead, and the scribe filled in the name of the dead person in the blank
places. Then the book was buried along with his mummy, so that when he
met the demons and serpents on the road to heaven, he would know how to
drive them away, and when he came to gates that had to be opened, or
rivers that had to be crossed, he would know the right magical words to
use.

Some of these rolls of the Book of the Dead are very beautifully
written, and illustrated with most wonderful little coloured pictures,
representing different scenes of life in the other world, and it is from
these that we have learned a great deal of what the Egyptians believed
about the judgment after death, and heaven. But the common ones are very
carelessly done. The scribes knew that the book was going to be buried
at once, and that nobody was likely ever to see it again; so they did
not care much whether they made mistakes or not, and often they missed
out parts of the book altogether. They little thought that, thousands of
years after they were dead, scholars would dig up their writings again,
and read them, and see all their blunders.

Of course, a great deal of this book is dreadful rubbish, and anything
more unlike the noble and beautiful teaching of the Bible you can
scarcely imagine. It has no more sense in it than the "Fee! fi! foh!
fum!" of our fairy-stories. Here is one little chapter from it. It is
called "The Chapter of Repulsing Serpents," and the Egyptians supposed
that when a serpent attacked you on your way to heaven, you had only to
recite this verse, and the serpent would be powerless to harm you:
"Hail, thou serpent Rerek! advance not hither. Stand still now, and thou
shalt eat the rat which is an abomination unto Ra (the Sun-God), and
thou shalt crunch the bones of a filthy cat."

It sounds very silly, doesn't it? And there are many things quite as
silly as this in the book. You can scarcely imagine how