ouls at death pass down through the west into Amenthe,
and are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to the
earth, or confined in the nether space for punishment. If
justified, they join the blissful company of the Sun God, and rise
with him through the east to journey along his celestial course.
The upper hemisphere is divided into twelve equal parts,
corresponding with the twelve hours of the day. At the gate of
each of these golden segments a sentinel god is stationed, to whom
the newly arriving soul must give its credentials to secure a
passage. In like manner, the lower hemisphere is cut into the same
number of gloomy sections, corresponding with the twelve hours of
the night. Daily the chief divinity, in robes of light, traverses
the beaming zones of the blessed, where they hunt and fish, or
plough and sow, reap and gather, in the Fields of the Sun on the
banks of the heavenly Nile. Nightly, arrayed in deep black from
head to foot, he traverses the dismal zones of the damned, where
they undergo appropriate retributions. Thus the future destiny of
man was sublimely associated with the march of the sun through the
upper and lower hemispheres.19 Astronomy was a part of the
Egyptian's theology. He regarded the stars not figuratively, but
literally, as spirits and pure genii; the great planets as
deities. The calendar was a religious chart, each month, week,
day, hour, being the special charge and stand point of a god.20

There was much poetic beauty and ethical power in these doctrines
and symbols. The necessity of virtue, the dread ordeals of the
grave, the certainty of retribution, the mystic circuits of
transmigration, a glorious immortality, the paths of planets and
gods and souls through creation, all were impressively enounced,
dramatically shown.

18 Liber Metempsychosis Veterum Agyptiorum, edited and translated
into Latin from the funeral papyri by H. Brugsch.

19 L'Univers, Egypte Ancienne, par Champollion Figeac, pp. 123
145.

20 Agyptische Glaubenslehre von Dr. Ed. Roth, ss. 171, 174.

"The Egyptain soul sail'd o'er the skyey sea
In ark of crystal, mann'd by beamy gods,
To drag the deeps of space and net the stars,
Where, in their nebulous shoals, they shore the void
And through old Night's Typhonian blindness shine.
Then, solarized, he press'd towards the sun,
And, in the heavenly Hades, hall of God,
Had final welcome of the firmament."

This solemn linking of the fate of man with the