The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, says Mr. Birch,[161] is as
old as the inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty, many of which contain
extracts from the Ritual of the Dead. One hundred and forty-six chapters
of this Ritual have been translated by Mr. Birch from the text of the
Turin papyrus, the most complete in Europe. Chapters of it are found on
mummy-cases, on the wraps of mummies, on the walls of tombs, and within
the coffins on papyri. This Ritual is all that remains of the Hermetic
Books which constituted the library of the priesthood. Two antagonist
classes of deities appear in this liturgy as contending for the soul of
the deceased,--Osiris and his triad, Set and his devils. The Sun-God,
source of life, is also present.

An interesting chapter of the Ritual is the one hundred and twenty-fifth,
called the Hall of the Two Truths. It is the process of "separating a
person from his sins," not by confession and repentance, as is usual in
other religions, but by denying them. Forty-two deities are said to be
present to feed on the blood of the wicked. The soul addresses the Lords
of Truth, and declares that it has not done evil privily, and proceeds to
specifications. He says: "I have not afflicted any. I have not told
falsehoods. I have not made the laboring man do more than his task. I have
not been idle. I have not murdered. I have not committed fraud. I have not
injured the images of the gods. I have not taken scraps of the bandages of
the dead. I have not committed adultery. I have not cheated by false
weights. I have not kept milk from sucklings. I have not caught the sacred
birds." Then, addressing each god by name, he declares: "I have not been
idle. I have not boasted. I have not stolen. I have not counterfeited, nor
killed sacred beasts, nor blasphemed, nor refused to hear the truth, nor
despised God in my heart." According to some texts, he declares,
positively, that he has loved God, that he has given bread to the hungry,
water to the thirsty, garments to the naked, and an asylum to the
abandoned.

Funeral ceremonies among the Egyptians were often very imposing. The cost
of embalming, and the size and strength of the tomb, varied with the
position of the deceased. When the seventy days of mourning had elapsed,
the body in its case was ferried across the lake in front of the temple,
which represented the passage of the soul over the infernal stream. Then
came a dramatic representation of the trial