; but as soon as these names
were spoken the gates opened, and the soul went in. Within the Hall
there stood a great pair of scales, and beside the scales stood a god,
ready to mark down the result of the judgment; while all round the Hall
sat forty-two terrible creatures, who had authority to punish particular
sins.

The soul had to make confession to these avengers of sin that he had not
been guilty of the sins which they had power to punish; then, when he
had made his confession, his heart was taken, and weighed in the scales
against a feather, which was the Egyptian sign for truth. If it was not
of the right weight, the man was false, and his heart was thrown to a
dreadful monster, part crocodile, part hippopotamus, which sat behind
the balances, and devoured the hearts of the unjust; but if it was
right, then Horus, the son of Osiris, took the man by the hand, and led
him into the presence of Osiris the Judge, and he was pronounced just,
and admitted to heaven.

But what was heaven? Well, the Egyptians had several different ideas
about it. One rather pretty one was that the souls which were pronounced
just were taken up into the sky, and there became stars, shining down
for ever upon the world. Another was that they were permitted to enter
the boat, in which, as I told you, the sun sails round the world day by
day, and to keep company with the sun on his unending voyage.

But the idea that most believed in and loved was that somewhere away in
a mysterious land to the west, there lay a wonderful and beautiful
country, called the Field of Bulrushes. There the corn grew three and a
half yards high, and the ears of corn were a yard long. Through the
fields ran lovely canals, full of fish, and bordered with reeds and
bulrushes. When the soul had passed the Judgment Hall, it came, by
strange, hard roads, and through great dangers, to this beautiful
country. And there the dead man, dead now no more, but living for ever,
spent his time in endless peace and happiness, sowing and reaping,
paddling in his canoe along the canals, or resting and playing draughts
in the evening under the sycamore-trees.

Now, I suppose that all this seemed quite a happy sort of heaven to most
of the common people, who had been accustomed all their days to hard
work and harder fare; but by-and-by the great nobles came to think that
a heaven of this sort was not quite good enough for them. They had never
done any work on earth; why should they