not permitted to leave, and this
watch was continued to the end.

On the next day the body of the queen arrived from Men-nefer and I was
directed to complete the embalming already begun. This occupied a
fortnight.

The day the embalming was completed Rahotep came to my chamber and,
sending the guards from the room, said:

"On the morrow at sunrise you will be strangled to death, after which
your body will be delivered to me for disposition. When it is carefully
embalmed I shall place it in a new tomb in the temple of Amun and it
shall become sacred to him. The tomb is so constructed that light and
air penetrates through slits in the portal and it may be entered from
the temple by members of our order. Amun will permit your soul to occupy
and grow in your mummied body. You have said you are not afraid of
death. Neither you nor any other man knows what lies beyond. It is not
the end of things as you declare but the beginning of the thought life.
Living through the ages in your old shell you shall learn that the
infinite is the author of all things and from the order and harmony of
nature you shall deduce the existence of God and the immortality of the
soul. You shall learn that the soul is an immaterial being which can go
where the body can not and can live where the body cannot live and is so
sometimes punished. That its controlling force is not the body nor even
the mind but a power which pervades all space, which has existed from
the beginning, looking after the universe and each creature therein.
This is the infinite, the beginning, the end of all things, which,
lacking a better name and light to discern, I call Amun, The Great, The
Only One. The wind has not a body, yet you know the wind blows; light
has not substance, yet you feel and see it and know it comes from the
worlds in the skies. Your soul has existed from the beginning as a part
of the infinite. It came into existence as the angels of light and
darkness. It is of the size of the faith that is in you and yours is
quite small. Yours shall grow during the ages, as Amun is about to begin
its experience, which each soul is to have, though the experience given
each is different, being judged and punished or rewarded according to
the light given, which in every case is dim. You are first to be turned
over to Phtha, the great father of beginnings. Your little seed of a
soul, assuming the form of a beetle, shall remain in your mummified
body. Your embalming rob