serfs of the new-comers, to cultivate their fields, to confine the Nile
within artificial boundaries, and to carry out those engineering works
which have made the valley of the Nile what it is to-day.

The Pharaonic Egyptians are the Egyptians of history. They were
acquainted with the art of writing, they mummified their dead, and they
possessed to a high degree the faculty of organisation. The gods they
worshipped were beneficent deities, forms of the Sun-god from whom their
kings derived their descent. It was a religion which easily passed into
a sort of pantheistic monotheism in the more cultivated minds, and it
was associated with a morality which is almost Christian in its
character. A belief in a future world and a resurrection of the flesh
formed an integral part of it; hence came the practice of embalming the
body that it might be preserved to the day of resurrection; hence too
the doctrine of the dead man's justification, not only through his own
good works, but through the intercession of the Sun-god Horus as well.
Horus was addressed as "the Redeemer;" he had avenged the death of his
father Osiris upon his enemy Set, the lord of evil, and through faith in
him his followers were delivered from the powers of darkness. Horus,
however, and Osiris were but forms of the same deity. Horus was the
Sun-god when he rises in the morning; Osiris the Sun-god as he journeys
at night through a world of darkness; and both were identical with Tum,
the Sun-god of the evening. The gods who watched over the great cities
of Egypt, some of which had been the capitals of principalities, were
identified with the Sun-god in these his various forms. Thus Ptah of
Memphis became one with Osiris; so also did Ra, the Sun-god of
Heliopolis, while in those later days when Thebes rose to sovereign
power its local god Amon was united with Ra.

Along with this higher and spiritual religion went--at least in