ths of the annual
interest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for his services and
the remaining fourth to be expended in the publishment and
gratuitous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which is always
to be furnished by the lecturer for such purpose. The same
lecture to be named and known as the "the Ingersoll lecture on
the Immortality of Man."

CONTENTS

I. Introduction
II. Sources of the Material
III. The Ideas of the Primitive Race
IV. The Early Dynastic Period
V. The Old Empire
VI. The Middle Empire
VII. The New Empire
VIII. The Ptolemaic-Roman Period
IX. Summary

I. INTRODUCTION

Of the nations which have contributed to the direct stream of
civilization, Egypt and Mesopotamia are at present believed to be
the oldest. The chronological dispute as to the relative
antiquity of the two countries is of minor importance; for while
in Babylonia the historical material is almost entirely
inscriptional, in Egypt we know the handicrafts, the weapons, the
arts, and, to a certain extent, the religious beliefs of the race
up to a period when it was just emerging from the Stone Age. In a
word, Egypt presents the most ancient race whose manner of life
is known to man. From the beginning of its history--that is,
from about 4500 B.C.--we can trace the development of a
religion one of whose most prominent elements was a promise of a
life after death. It was still a great religion when the
Christian doctrine of immortality was enunciated. In the early
centuries of the Christian era, it seemed almost possible that
the worship of Osiris and Isis might become the religion of the
classical world; and the last stand made by civilized paganism
against Christianity was in the temple of Isis at Philae in the
sixth century after Christ.

It is clear that a religion of such duration must have offered
some of those consolations to man that have marked all great
religions, chief of which is the faith in a spirit, in something
that preserves the personality of the man and does not perish
with the body. This faith was, in fact, one of the chief elements
in the Egyptian religion--the element best known to us through
the endless cemeteries which fill the desert from one end of
Egypt to the other, and through the funerary inscriptions.

It is necessary, however, to correct the prevailing impression
that religion played the greatest part in Egyptian life or even a
great