wise people like
the Egyptians could ever have believed in such drivel. But, then, side
by side with this miserable stuff, you find really wonderful and noble
thoughts, that surely came to these men of ancient days from God
Himself, telling them how every man must be judged at last for all that
he has done on earth, and how only those who have done justly, and loved
mercy, and walked humbly with God, will be accepted by Him.

CHAPTER XII

TEMPLES AND TOMBS

Anyone travelling through our own land, or through any European country,
to see the great buildings of long ago, would find that they were nearly
all either churches or castles. There are the great cathedrals, very
beautiful and wonderful; and there are the great buildings, sometimes
partly palaces and partly fortresses, where Kings and nobles lived in
bygone days. Well, if you were travelling in Egypt to see its great
buildings, you would find a difference. There are plenty of churches,
or temples, rather, and very wonderful they are; but there are no
castles or palaces left, or, at least, there are next to none. Instead
of palaces and castles, you would find tombs. Egypt, in fact, is a land
of great temples and great tombs.

[Illustration: Plate 14
GATEWAY OF THE TEMPLE OF EDFU. _Pages_ 74, 75]

Now, one can see why the Egyptians built great temples; for they were a
very religious nation, and paid great honour to their gods. But why did
they give so much attention to their tombs? The reason is, as you will
hear more fully in another chapter, that there never was a nation which
believed so firmly as did the Egyptians that the life after death was
far more important than life in this world. They built their houses, and
even their palaces, very lightly, partly of wood and partly of clay,
because they knew that they were only to live in them for a few years.
But they called their tombs "eternal dwelling-places"; and they have
made them so wonderfully that they have lasted long after all the other
buildings of the land, except the temples, have passed away.

First of all, let me try to give you an idea of what an Egyptian temple
must have been like in the days of its splendour. People come from all
parts of the world to see even the ruins of these buildings, and they
are altogether the most astonishing buildings in the world; but they are
now only the skeletons of what the temples once were, and scarcely give
you any more idea of their former glory and be