accepted in religious writings as early as the IVth dynasty, about B.C.
3600, but we have to wait nearly two thousand years before we find it in
picture form. Certain scenes which are found in the Book of the Dead as
vignettes accompanying certain texts or chapters, _e.g._, the Fields of
Hetep, or the Elysian Fields, are exceedingly old, and are found on
sarcophagi of the XIth and XIIth dynasties; but the earliest picture
known of the Judgment Scene is not older than the XVIIIth dynasty. In
the oldest Theban papyri of the Book of the Dead no Judgment Scene is
forthcoming, and when we find it wanting in such authoritative documents
as the Papyrus of Nebseni and that of Nu, [Footnote: British Museum, No.
10,477.] we must take it for granted that there was some reason for its
omission. In the great illustrated papyri, in which, the Judgment Scene
is given in full, it will be noticed that it comes at the beginning of
the work, and that it is preceded by hymns and by a vignette. Thus, in
the Papyrus of Ani, [Footnote: British Museum, No. 10,470.] we have a
hymn to R[=a] followed by a vignette representing the sunrise, and a
hymn to Osiris; and in the Papyrus of Hunefer, [Footnote 2: British
Museum, No. 9901.] though the hymns are different, the arrangement is
the same. We are justified, then, in assuming that the hymns and the
Judgment Scene together formed an introductory section to the Book of
the Dead, and it is possible that it indicates the existence of the
belief, at least during the period of the greatest power of the priests
of Amen, from B.C. 1700 to B.C. 800, that the judgment of the dead for
the deeds done in the body preceded the admission of the dead into the
kingdom of Osiris. As the hymns which accompany the Judgment Scene are
fine examples of a high class of devotional compositions, a few
translations from some of them are here given.

HYMN TO R[=A]. [Footnote: See _The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p.
7.]