we have noticed. The idea of thus
preserving the body seems to look forward to some later revival of it
on earth, rather than to a personal life immediately after death. The
funeral accompaniment of this view was the abundance of amulets placed
on various parts of the body to preserve it. A few amulets are found
worn on a necklace or bracelet in early times; but the full development
of the amulet system was in the twenty-sixth to thirtieth dynasties.

We have tried to disentangle the diverse types of belief, by seeing
what is incompatible between them. But in practice we find every form
of mixture of these views in most ages. In the {18} prehistoric times
the preservation of the bones, but not of the flesh, was constant; and
food offerings show that at least the theory of the soul wandering in
the cemetery was familiar. Probably the Osiris theory is also of the
later prehistoric times, as the myth of Osiris is certainly older than
the dynasties. The Ra worship was associated specially with
Heliopolis, and may have given rise to the union with Ra also before
the dynasties, when Heliopolis was probably a capital of the kings of
Lower Egypt. The boats figured on the prehistoric tomb at
Hierakonpolis bear this out. In the first dynasty there is no mummy
known, funeral offerings abound, and the _khu_ and _ka_ are named. Our
documents do not give any evidence, then, of the Osiris and Ra
theories. In the pyramid period the king was called the Osiris, and
this view is the leading one in the Pyramid inscriptions, yet the Ra
theory is also incompatibly present; the body is mummified; but funeral
offerings of food seem to have much diminished. In the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties the Ra theory gained ground greatly over the
Osirian; and the basis of all the views of the future is almost
entirely the union with Ra during the night and day. The mummy and
amulet theory was not dominant; but the funeral {19} offerings somewhat
increased. The twenty-sixth dynasty almost dropped the Ra theory; the
Osirian kingdom and its population of slave figures is the most
familiar view, and the preservation of the body by amulets was
essential. Offerings of food rarely appear in these later times. This
dominance of Osiris leads on to the anthropomorphic worship, which
interacts on the growth of Christianity as we shall see further.
Lastly, when all the theologic views of the future had perished, the
oldest idea of all, food, d