Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nelson English Year 1 Primary 2 Workbook 1 Wendy Wren Sarah Lindsay Full Chapter PDF
Nelson English Year 1 Primary 2 Workbook 1 Wendy Wren Sarah Lindsay Full Chapter PDF
Nelson English Year 1 Primary 2 Workbook 1 Wendy Wren Sarah Lindsay Full Chapter PDF
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-1-primary-2-pupil-book-1-wendy-wren-sarah-lindsay/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-5-primary-6-workbook-5-sarah-lindsay-wendy-wren/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-4-primary-5-workbook-4-sarah-lindsay-wendy-wren/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-3-primary-4-workbook-3-wendy-wren-sarah-lindsay/
Nelson English: Year 2/Primary 3: Workbook 2 Sarah Wren
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-2-primary-3-workbook-2-sarah-wren/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-6-primary-7-pupil-book-6-sarah-lindsay-wendy-wren/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-5-primary-6-pupil-book-5-sarah-lindsay-wendy-wren/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-3-primary-4-pupil-book-3-wendy-wren-sarah-lindsay/
https://ebookmass.com/product/nelson-english-
year-2-primary-3-pupil-book-2-wendy-lindsay/
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
needed, and that something was the art of writing, which is that
extension of the uses of language, without which no serviceable
amount of knowledge could have been attained, or retained. Without
this little could have been done. With it everything became possible.
The further we advance by its aid, the longer, and the broader, and
the more glorious are the vistas that open before us. Now, of this we
are certain, that the ancient Egyptians discovered this art. The idea
of the possibility of speaking words to the mind through the eye, and
rendering thought fixed, and permanent, and portable, and
transmissible from generation to generation, of committing it, not to
the air, but to stone, or, still better, to paper, first occurred to the
Egyptians. And they were the first to give effect to the idea, which
they did in their hieroglyphic form of writing, out of which afterwards
grew the hieratic and demotic forms.
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this discovery. It
contained in its single self the possibility of the whole of science, art,
law, religion, history, beyond their merest rudiments, which were all
that would have been attainable without it. It contained all this as
completely as the acorn contains the oak. Where, and what would
any and every one of them now be were it not for that discovery?
Indeed, what does it not contain? There are now 31,000,000 souls
within the United Kingdom, had it not been for that discovery
probably there would not have been 3,000,000. Neither the readers
nor the writer of this book would have existed. None of the existing
population of Europe would have seen the light. Other combinations
would have taken place. Europe would be sparsely tenanted by
tribes of rude barbarians—only a little less rude in its favoured
southern clime. The New World would be still unknown. On the day
some Egyptian priest, perhaps at This, thought out a scheme for
representing words and sounds by signs, Christianity, the British
Constitution, and the steam-engine became possible. With respect to
so great, so all-important a discovery, one on which the destinies of
the human race so entirely depended, every particular of its history
must be deeply interesting. Of one particular, however, at all events,
we are certain: we know where it had its birth. And this is what has
made so many in all times desire to visit Egypt. It was that they
wished to see the land of those who had conferred this much-
containing gift upon mankind—not all of them seeing this distinctly,
yet having a kind of intuition that the wisdom of the Egyptians was a
mighty wisdom to which civilization, through this discovery, owed
itself.
We know, too, another particular, and that is, that this discovery
was first used for sacred and religious purposes; and it must have
been invented for the purposes for which it was first used. We can
imagine what prompted the thought that issued in the discovery. We
can trace out what it was that set the discovering mind at work. It
must have been some idea in Egypt that was more active, and so
more productive than ideas that were stirring in men’s minds
elsewhere. It must have been some need in Egypt that spurred men
on more than the needs felt elsewhere. And this idea could only have
been that of the future life; and this need that which arose out of this
idea, the need of recording the laws it prompted, and the ritual which
grew out of it; and of aiding, embellishing, and advancing in their
general laws, their religious observances, their arts, and what
afterwards became their science and their history, the whole life of
the people which was struggling to rise into higher conditions, more
worthy of their great idea.
But we must give some account of what the Egyptian doctrine of
the future life actually was. Fortunately, in the Book of the Dead, we
have for its historical reconstruction the identical materials the old
Egyptians had for its construction in their own moral being. This
Book of the Dead was one of their Sacred Scriptures. Its contents
are very various and comprehensive, and are quite sufficient to give
us a distinct idea of what we are in want of here. It is divided into 165
sections. Its object is to supply the man, now in the mummy stage of
existence, with all the instructions he will require in his passage to,
and into, the future world. It contains the primæval hymns that were
to be sung, and the prayers that were to be offered, as the mummy
was lowered into the pit of the catacomb or grave; and the
invocations that were to be used over the mummy, the various
amulets appended to it, and the bandages in which it was swathed.
These bandages had great mystical importance. Some of them have
been unrolled to the length of 1,000 yards; and we are told that there
is no form of bandage known to modern surgery of which instances
may not be found on the mummies.
What has now been mentioned forms, as it were, the introductory
part of the book. The rest is devoted to what is to be done by the
mummy himself on his passage to, and entrance into, the unseen
world. It taught him what he was to say and do during the days of
trying words, and on the occasion of the great and terrible final
judgment. An image of the rendering of this awful account had
already been presented to the eyes of the surviving friends and
neighbours at the funeral. It was a scene in which the mummy had
often taken part himself in the days of his own earthly trial. The
corpse, on its way to the grave, had to pass the sacred lake of the
nome, or department. When it had reached the shore there was a
pause in the progress of the procession, and forty-two judges, or
jurymen, stood forward to hear any accusations that any one was at
liberty to advance against the deceased. If any accusation could be
substantiated to the satisfaction of the judges, whether the deceased
were the Pharaoh who had sat on the throne, or a poor peasant or
artizan, the terrible sentence, to an Egyptian beyond measure
terrible, was passed upon him, that his mummy was to be excluded
from burial. The awful consequence of this was 3,000 years of
wandering in darkness, and in animal forms.
But, supposing that the mummy had passed this earthly ordeal, he
was then committed to his earthly resting-place; and this Book of the
Dead, either the whole, or what was deemed the most essential part
of it, was placed on, or in the mummy case: sometimes it was
inscribed on the sarcophagus. These were the instructions which
were to guide him on the long, dread, difficult course upon which he
was about to enter. He will have to appear in the hall of two-fold
Divine Justice—the justice, that is, which rewards as well as
punishes. Osiris, the judge of the dead, will look on, as president of
the court. He will wear the emblem of truth, and the tablet breast-
plate, containing the figure of Divine Justice. The scales of Divine
Justice will be produced. The heart of the mummy will be placed in
one scale, and the figure of Divine Justice in the other. The mummy
will stand by the scale in which his heart is being weighed. Anubis,
the Guardian of the Dead, will watch the opposite scale. Thoth, who
had been the revealer to man of the divine words, of which the
Sacred Books of Egypt were transcripts, will be present to record the
sentence.
The book contains, for the use of the mummy, the forty-two denials
of sin he will have to make in the presence of this awful court, while
his heart is in the balance, and the forty-two avenging demons, all
ape-faced, symbolizing man in the extremity of degradation, with
reason perverted and without conscience, and each with the pitiless
knife in his raised hand, will be standing by, ready to claim him, or
some part of him, if the balance indicates that the denial is false.
These forty-two denials have reference to the ordinary duties of
human life, such as all civilized people have understood them;
though, of course, as might have been expected, the forms of some
of these duties are Egyptian, as, for instance, that of using the
waters of the irrigation fairly, and without prejudice to the rights of
others: an application to the circumstances of Egypt, of the
universally received ideas of fairness and justice, which the working
of human society must, everywhere, give birth to. The denials also
include, as again we might be sure they would, the mummy’s
observance of Egyptian ceremonial law.
There is still a great deal more in the book. The mummy will have
to achieve many difficult passages before he can attain the
empyrean gate, through which those who have been found true in
the balance, for that is the meaning of the Egyptian word for the
justified, are at last admitted to the realms of pure and everlasting
light. This gate is the gate of the Sun, and this light is the presence
of the Sun-god. There will be many adversaries that will be lying-in-
wait for him, seeking to fasten charges of one kind or another upon
him, and to destroy him. The book tells him how he is to comport
himself, and what he is to do, as each of these occasions arise.
There are certain halls, for instance, through which he will have to
pass. These halls he will find inhabited by demons, but they are a
necessary part of the great journey. And the entrance to them he will
find barred and guarded by demon door-keepers. Here mystical
names and words must be used, which alone will enable the mummy
to get by these demon door-keepers, and through these demon-
inhabited halls. These names and words of power he will find in the
book. We here have traces of the thought of primitive times, when
men regarded with wonder, deepening into awe, the supposed
mysterious efficacy of articulate sound.
One demon, in particular, will endeavour to secure the mummy’s
head. In a hellish place he must cross, a net will be spread to
entangle him. He will have to journey through regions of thick
darkness, and to confront the fury of the Great Dragon. He will have
to go through places where he may incur pollution; through others
where he may become subject to corruption. He will have to submit
to a fiery ordeal. He will have to work out a course of carefully and
toilsomely conducted husbandry, the harvest of which will be
knowledge. He will have to obtain the air that is untainted, the water
that is of heaven, and the bread of Ra and Seb. The book will give
him all the needful instructions on these, and on all other matters
where he will require guidance.
Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress enables us to understand this Book of
the Dead. The aim of both is the same. Each presents a picture of
the hindrances and difficulties, both from within and from without,
and of the requirements and aids of the soul, in its struggle to attain
to the higher life. The Egyptian doctrine places the scene in the
passage from this life to the next. The Elstow tinker places it,
allegorically, in this life. But this is a difference that is immaterial. The
ideas of both are fundamentally the same. The consciousness to
which they both appeal is the same. The old Egyptian of 5,000 or
6,000 years ago received the teaching of his book on precisely the
same grounds as we ourselves at this day receive the teaching of
the Pilgrim. With how much additional authority does this discovery
invest these ideas! The mind must be more or less than human that
arrays itself against what has, so overwhelmingly, approved itself
semper, ubique, et omnibus.
The antiquity of the book is very great. Portions of it are found on
the mummy cases of the eleventh dynasty. This shows that it was in
use 4,000 years ago. But this was very far from having been the date
of its first use; for even then it had become so old as to be
unintelligible to royal scribes; and we find that, in consequence, it
was at that remote time the custom to give together with the sacred
text its interpretation.
All collections of Egyptian antiquities contain copies of this book,
or of portions of it. Several are to be seen in our British Museum. Of
course this abundance of copies results from the nature of the book,
and the use to which it was put. It was literally the viaticum, the
itinerary, the guide and hand-book, the route and instructions, for the
mummy to and through that world, from which no traveller returns.
Each of its sections is accompanied by a rubric, and generally
illustrated by a vignette, directing, and showing the mummy, how the
section is to be used.
I know nothing more instructive and more touching in human
history than one of these old Egyptian Books of the Dead, with its
doctrine, its invocations, its hymns, its prayers, its instructions, its
rubrics, its illustrations. All its images are of the earth earthy. How
could it be otherwise? The soul that has kept all the commandments,
that has been tried in the balance and not found wanting, that has
fought the good fight to final triumph through all the dangers, and
temptations, and pollutions, that beset its path, reaches at last only a
purer ether and eternal light.
It is easy to endeavour to dismiss all this with cold indifference, or
with a cheap sneer. But those who placed this book by the side of a
departed relative had hearts that were still turned towards those they
could never any more behold in the flesh. All their care and thought
were not for themselves. And, too, they believed in right and truth, in
justice and goodness. And because they believed in them, they
believed also in a world and in a life of which those principles would
be the law.
CHAPTER XXV.
WHY THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES IGNORE THE
FUTURE LIFE.