Chapter XIII: Conclusion

This doctrine of the life to come, like the theistic doctrine the Egyptians at one time attained, might have seemed destined to lead to a pure spiritual faith, from which superstition should have disappeared. But in neither case is that result attained. The later history of Egyptian religion is that of the increase of magic, and of the rise of a priestly class absorbing to itself, as the older priests who were closely connected with the civil life of the nation had never done, all the functions of religion. Doctrine grows more pantheistic and more recondite, mysteries and symbols are multiplied, all to the increase of the influence of the priesthood, and to the infinite exercise of ingenuity in coming times. Popular religion, on the other hand, comes to be more taken up with such matters as charms and amulets and horoscopes; and while morals did not decline from the high level they had gained from the reign of the gods of light, the spirit of the nation lost vigour under the growth of religiosity at the expense of patriotism, and healthy reform grew more and more impossible. What of the religion of Egypt lived on in other lands which felt her influence, it is hard to say. The religious art of Egypt, and with it no doubt some tincture of the ideas it embodied, undoubtedly went northwards to Phenicia; and Greece owed to Phenicia, as we shall see, many a suggestion in religious matters. Long before Isis and Serapis were introduced in Rome in their own persons, the legend of Osiris had flourished in Greece under new names, and the Greek doctrine of the life to come, taught in the mysteries, has suggested to some scholars an Egyptian origin. To the Greeks and Romans this religion afforded an infinity of puzzles and mysteries; to the modern world it affords the greatest example of a religion the early promise of which was not fulfilled, the splendid moral aspirations of which were stifled amid the superstitions they were too weak to conquer.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

For general information Wilkinson's _Egyptians_.

E. A. W. Budge, _History of Egypt_, vols. i.-viii., 1902-03.

E. A. W. Budge, _The Mummy_; chapters on Egyptian funeral archæology, Cambridge, 1893.

E. A. W. Budge, _The Book of the Dead_, English Translation of the Theban Recension, 3 vols., 1910.

Flinders Petrie, _A History of Egypt_.

Flinders Petrie, in _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. i. p. 184, _sqq._

The Histories of Antiquity of Duncker, Maspero, and especially Ed. Meyer.

Erman, _Life in Ancient Egypt_, 1894.

Maspero, _Manual of Egyptian Archæology_, Second Edition, 1895.

Renouf's _Hibbert Lectures_.

Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, translated by Ballingal.

Wiedemann, _Ägyptische Geschichte_, 1884-88; "Die Religion der alten Aegyptier," 1890; also "Egyptian Religion," in Hastings' _Bible Dictionary_, vol. v.

A. O. Lange, "Die Ägypter" in De la Saussaye. _Records of the Past_, First Series (1873-81), vols. ii., iv., vi., viii., x., xii. Second Series, 1888-92, vols. ii.-vi.

Benson and Gourlay, _The Temple of Mut in Asher_, 1899.

Naville, _The Old Egyptian Faith_, translated by Colin Campbell, 1909.

Colin Campbell, _Two Theban Queens_, 1909. A study of the inscriptions in two royal tombs.