ey gave an unmistakable insight into that which the writers
and the readers of them think praiseworthy.

In the famous tombs at Beni Hassan there is a record of the life of
Prince Nakht, who served Osertasen II., a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty
as governor of a province. The inscription speaks in his name: "I was
a benevolent and kindly governor who loved his country.... Never was
a little child distressed nor a widow ill-treated by me. I have never
repelled a workman nor hindered a shepherd. I gave alike to the widow
and to the married woman, and have not preferred the great to the small
in my gifts." And we have the high authority of the late Dr. Samuel
Birch for the statement that the inscriptions of the twelfth dynasty
abound in injunctions of a high ethical character. "To feed the hungry,
give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead, loyally
serve the king, formed the first duty of a pious man and faithful
subject." [29] The people for whom these inscriptions embodied their
ideal of praiseworthiness assuredly had no imperfect conception of
either justice or mercy. But there is a document which gives still
better evidence of the moral standard of the Egyptians. It is the "Book
of the Dead," a sort of "Guide to Spiritland," the whole, or a part,
of which was buried with the mummy of every well-to-do Egyptian, while
extracts from it are found in innumerable inscriptions. Portions of this
work are of extreme antiquity, evidence of their existence occurring
as far back as the fifth and sixth dynasties; while the 120th chapter,
which constitutes a sort of book by itself, and is known as the "Book of
Redemption in the Hall of the two Truths," is frequently inscribed upon
coffins and other monuments of the nineteenth dynasty (that under which,
there is some reason to believe, the Israelites were oppressed and the
Exodus took place), and it occurs, more than once, in the famous tombs
of the kings of this and the preceding dynasty at Thebes. [30] This
"Book of Redemption" is chiefly occupied by the so-called "negative
confession" made to the forty-two Divine Judges, in which the soul of
the dead denies that he has committed faults of various kinds. It
is, therefore, obvious that the Egyptians conceived that their gods
commanded them not to do the deeds which are here denied. The "Book
of Redemption," in fact, implies the existence in the mind of the
Egyptians, if not in a formal writing, of a series of ordinanc