Beacon Lights of History, Volume 01 | Page 6

in the future world, whatever errors
may have crept into theological dogmas and speculations.
Believing then in a future state, where sin would be punished and virtue
rewarded, and believing in it firmly and piously, the ancient Egyptians
were a peaceful and comparatively moral people. All writers admit
their industry, their simplicity of life, their respect for law, their loyalty
to priests and rulers. Hence there was permanence to their institutions,
for rapine, violence, and revolution were rare. They were not warlike,
although often engaged in war by the command of ambitious kings.
Generally the policy of their government was conservative and pacific.
Military ambition and thirst for foreign conquest were not the peculiar
sins of Egyptian kings; they sought rather to develop national industries
and resources. The occupation of the people was in agriculture and the
useful arts, which last they carried to considerable perfection,
especially in the working of metals, textile fabrics, and ornamental
jewelry. Their grand monuments were not triumphal arches, but
temples and mausoleums. Even the pyramids may have been built to
preserve the bodies of kings until the soul should be acquitted or
condemned, and therefore more religious in their uses than as mere
emblems of pride and power; and when monuments were erected to
perpetuate the fame of princes, their supreme design was to receive the
engraven memorials of the virtuous deeds of kings as fathers of the
people.
The priests, whose business it was to perform religious rites and
ceremonies to the various gods of the Egyptians, were extremely
numerous. They held the highest social rank, and were exempt from
taxes. They were clothed in white linen, which was kept scrupulously
clean. They washed their whole bodies twice a day; they shaved the

head, and wore no beard. They practised circumcision, which rite was
of extreme antiquity, existing in Egypt two thousand four hundred
years before Christ, and at least four hundred years before Abraham,
and has been found among primitive peoples all over the world. They
did not make a show of sanctity, nor were they ascetic like the
Brahmans. They were married, and were allowed to drink wine and to
eat meat, but not fish nor beans, which disturbed digestion. The son of
a priest was generally a priest also. There were grades of rank among
the priesthood; but not more so than in the Roman Catholic Church.
The high-priest was a great dignitary, and generally belonged to the
royal family. The king himself was a priest.
The Egyptian ritual of worship was the most complicated of all rituals,
and their literature and philosophy were only branches of theology.
"Religious observances," says Freeman Clarke, "were so numerous and
so imperative that the most common labors of daily life could not be
performed without a perpetual reference to some priestly regulation."
There were more religious festivals than among any other ancient
nation. The land was covered with temples; and every temple
consecrated to a single divinity, to whom some animal was sacred,
supported a large body of priests. The authorities on Egyptian history,
especially Wilkinson, speak highly, on the whole, of the morals of the
priesthood, and of their arduous and gloomy life of superintending
ceremonies, sacrifices, processions, and funerals. Their life was so full
of minute duties and restrictions that they rarely appeared in public, and
their aspect as well as influence was austere and sacerdotal.
One of the most distinctive features of the Egyptian religion was the
idea of the transmigration of souls,--that when men die; their souls
reappear on earth in various animals, in expiation of their sins. Osiris
was the god before whose tribunal all departed spirits appeared to be
judged. If evil preponderated in their lives, their souls passed into a
long series of animals until their sins were expiated, when the purified
souls, after thousands of years perhaps, passed into their old bodies.
Hence it was the great object of the Egyptians to preserve their mortal
bodies after death, and thus arose the custom of embalming them. It is
difficult to compute the number of mummies that have been found in

Egypt. If a man was wealthy, it cost his family as much as one
thousand dollars to embalm his body suitably to his rank. The
embalmed bodies of kings were preserved in marble sarcophagi, and
hidden in gigantic monuments.
The most repulsive thing in the Egyptian religion was animal-worship.
To each deity some animal was sacred. Thus Apis, the sacred bull of
Memphis, was the representative of Osiris; the cow was sacred to Isis,
and to Athor her mother. Sheep were sacred to Kneph, as well as the
asp. Hawks were sacred to Ra; lions were emblems of Horus, wolves of
Anubis, hippopotami of Set. Each town was jealous of the honor of its
special favorites among