will. I have done good upon
earth; I have harboured no prejudice; I have not been wicked; I have
not approved of any offence or iniquity; I have taken pleasure in
speaking the truth.... Pure is my soul; while living I bore no malice.
There are no errors attributable to me; no sins of mine are before the
judges.... The men of the future, while they live, will be charmed by my
remarkable merits." And another: "I have not oppressed any widow; no
prisoner languished in my days; no one died of hunger. When there were
years of famine, I had my fields ploughed. I gave food to the
inhabitants, so that there was no hungry person. I gave the widow an
equal portion with the married; I did not prefer the rich to the poor."

The moral standard thus set up, though satisfactory, so far as it went,
was in many respects deficient. It did not comprise humility; it
scarcely seems to have comprised purity. The religious sculptures of the
Egyptians were grossly indecent; their religious festivals were kept in
an indecent way; phallic orgies were a part of them, and phallic orgies
of a gross kind. The Egyptians tolerated incest, and could defend it by
the example of the gods. Osiris had married his sister; Khem was "the
Bull of his mother". The Egyptian novelettes are full of indecency and
immorality, and Egyptian travellers describe their amours very much in
the spirit of Ferdinand, Count Fathom; moreover, the complacency with
which each Egyptian declares himself on his tomb to have possessed every
virtue, and to have been free from all vices, is most remarkable. "I was
a good man before the king; I saved the population in the dire calamity
which befell all the land; I shielded the weak against the strong; I did
all good things when the time came to do them; I was pious towards my
father, and did the will of my mother; I was kind-hearted towards my
brethren ... I made a good sarcophagus for him who had no coffin. When
the dire calamity befell the land, I made the children to live, I
established the houses, I did for them all such good things as a father
does for his sons."

And, notwithstanding all this braggadocio, performance seems to have
lagged sadly behind profession. Kings boast of slaying their unresisting
prisoners with their own hand, and represent themselves in the act of
doing so. They come back from battle with the gory heads of their slain
enemies hanging from their chariots. Licentiousness prevailed in the
palace, and member