of the soul before Osiris. The
priests, in masks, represented the gods of the underworld. Typhon accuses
the dead man, and demands his punishment. The intercessors plead for him.
A large pair of scales is set up, and in one scale his conduct is placed
in a bottle, and in the other an image of truth. These proceedings are
represented on the funeral papyri. One of these, twenty-two feet in
length, is in Dr. Abbott's collection of Egyptian antiquities, in New
York. It is beautifully written, and illustrated with careful drawings.
One represents the Hall of the Two Truths, and Osiris sitting in
judgment, with the scales of judgment before him.[162]

Many of the virtues which we are apt to suppose a monopoly of Christian
culture appear as the ideal of these old Egyptians. Brugsch says a
thousand voices from the tombs of Egypt declare this. One inscription in
Upper Egypt says: "He loved his father, he honored his mother, he loved
his brethren, and never went from his home in bad-temper. He never
preferred the great man to the low one." Another says: "I was a wise man,
my soul loved God. I was a brother to the great men and a father to the
humble ones, and never was a mischief-maker." An inscription at Sais, on a
priest who lived in the sad days of Cambyses, says: "I honored my father,
I esteemed my mother, I loved my brothers. I found graves for the unburied
dead. I instructed little children. I took care of orphans as though they
were my own children. For great misfortunes were on Egypt in my time, and
on this city of Sais."

Some of these declarations, in their "self-pleasing pride" of virtue,
remind one of the noble justification of himself by the Patriarch
Job.[163] Here is one of them, from the tombs of Ben-Hassan, over a Nomad
Prince:--

"What I have done I will say. My goodness and my kindness were ample. I
never oppressed the fatherless nor the widow. I did not treat cruelly the
fishermen, the shepherds, or the poor laborers. There was nowhere in my
time hunger or want. For I cultivated all my fields, far and near, in
order that their inhabitants might have food. I never preferred the great
and powerful to the humble and poor, but did equal justice to all."

A king's tomb at Thebes gives us in few words the religious creed of a
Pharaoh:--

"I lived in truth, and fed my soul with justice. What I did to men was
done in peace, and how I loved God, God and my heart well know. I have
given bread to the hungry, water t