t in a museum, and gazed upon by people who
live in lands which were savage wildernesses when Egypt was a great and
mighty Empire.

CHAPTER XIII

AN EGYPTIAN'S HEAVEN

In this chapter I want to tell you a little about what the Egyptians
thought of heaven--what it was, where it was, how people got there after
death, and what kind of a life they lived when they were there. They had
some very quaint and curious ideas about the heavens themselves. They
believed, for instance, that the blue sky overhead was something like a
great iron plate spread over the world, and supported at the four
corners, north, south, east, and west, by high mountains. The stars were
like little lamps, which hung down from this plate. Right round the
world ran a great celestial river, and on this river the sun sailed day
after day in his bark, giving light to the world. You could only see him
as he passed round from the east by the south to the west, for after
that the river ran behind high mountains, and the sun passed out of
sight to sail through the world of darkness.

Behind the sun, and appearing after he had vanished, came the moon,
sailing in its own bark. It was protected by two guardian eyes, which
watched always over it (Plate 13), and it needed the protection, for
every month it was attacked by a great enemy in the form of a sow. For a
fortnight the moon sailed on safely, and grew fuller and rounder; but at
the middle of the month, just when it was full, the sow attacked it,
tore it out of its place, and flung it into the celestial river, where
for another fortnight it was gradually extinguished, to be revived again
at the beginning of the next month. That was the Egyptians' curious way
of accounting for the waxing and waning of the moon, and many of their
other ideas were just as quaint as this.

I do not mean to say anything of what they believed about God, for they
had so many gods, and believed such strange things about them, that it
would only confuse you if I tried to make you understand it all. But the
most important thing in all the Egyptian religion was the belief in
heaven, and in the life which people lived there after their life on
earth was ended. No other nation of these old times ever believed so
firmly as did the Egyptians that men were immortal, and did not cease to
be when they died, but only began a new life, which might be either
happy or miserable, according to the way in which they had lived on
earth.