children
together--crowding into the boats, which at such times covered the Nile,
the men piping, and the women clapping their hands or striking their
castanets, as they passed from town to town along the banks of the
stream, stopping at the various landing-places, and challenging the
inhabitants to a contest of good-humoured Billingsgate. From the
monuments we see how the men sang at their labours--here as they trod
the wine-press or the dough-trough, there as they threshed out the corn
by driving the oxen through the golden heaps. In one case the words of a
harvest-song have come down to us:

"Thresh for yourselves," they sang, "thresh for yourselves,
O oxen, thresh for yourselves, for yourselves--
Bushels for yourselves, bushels for your masters!"

Their light-hearted drollery sometimes found vent in caricature. The
grand sculptures wherewith a king strove to perpetuate the memory of his
warlike exploits were travestied by satirists, who reproduced the scenes
upon papyrus as combats between cats and rats. The amorous follies of
the monarch were held up to derision by sketches of a harem interior,
where the kingly wooer was represented by a lion, and his favourites of
the softer sex by gazelles. Even in serious scenes depicting the trial
of souls in the next world, the sense of humour breaks out, where the
bad man, transformed into a pig or a monkey, walks off with a comical
air of surprise and discomfiture.

It does not, however, help us much towards the true knowledge of a
people to scan their frames or study their facial angle, or even to
contemplate the outer aspect of their daily life. We want to know their
thoughts, their innermost feelings, their hopes, their fears--in a word,
their belief. Nothing tells the character of a people so much as their
religion; and we are only dealing superficially with the outward shows
of things until we get down to the root of their being, the conviction,
or convictions, held in the recesses of a people's heart. What, then,
was the Egyptian religion? What did they worship? What did they
reverence? What future did they look forward to?

Enter the huge courts of an Egyptian temple, or temple-palace, and you
will see portrayed upon its lofty walls row upon row of deities. Here
the king makes his offering to Ammon, Maut, Khons, Neith, Mentu, Shu,
Seb, Nut, Osiris, Set, Horus; there he pours a libation to Phthah,
Sekhet, Tum, Pasht, Anuka, Thoth, Anubis; elsewhere, it