meaning of such scenes, it was easy to convert the foes of R[=a], the
Sun-god, into the souls of the damned, and to look upon the burning up
of such foes--who were after all only certain powers of nature
personified--as the well-merited punishment of those who had done evil
upon the earth. How far the Copts reproduced unconsciously the views
which had been held by their ancestors for thousands of years cannot be
said, but even after much allowance has been made for this possibility,
there remains still to be explained a large number of beliefs and views
which seem to have been the peculiar product of the Egyptian Christian
imagination.

It has been said above that the idea of the judgment of the dead is of
very great antiquity in Egypt; indeed, it is so old that it is useless
to try to ascertain the date of the period when it first grew up. In the
earliest religious texts known to us, there are indications that the
Egyptians expected a judgment, but they are not sufficiently definite to
argue from; it is certainly doubtful if the judgment was thought to be
as thorough and as searching then as in the later period. As far back as
the reign of Men-kau-R[=a], the Mycerinus of the Greeks, about B.C.
3600, a religious text, which afterwards formed chapter 30B of the Book
of the Dead, was found inscribed on an iron slab; in the handwriting of
the god Thoth, by the royal son or prince Herut[=a]t[=a]f. [Footnote:
See _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, Translation, p. 80.] The original
purpose of the composition of this text cannot be said, but there is
little doubt that it was intended, to benefit the deceased in the
judgment, and, if we translate its title literally, it was intended to
prevent his heart from "falling away from him in the underworld." In the
first part of it the deceased, after adjuring his heart, says, "May
naught stand up to oppose me in the judgment; may there be no opposition
to me in the presence of the sovereign princes; may there be no parting