happiness, judging from the description of it in the PER-T EM HRU,
or Book of the Dead. When Ani the scribe arrived there he said,
"What is this to which I have come? There is neither water nor air
here, its depth is unfathomable, it is as dark as the darkest night,
and men wander about here helplessly. A man cannot live here and be
satisfied, and he cannot gratify the cravings of affection" (Chapter
CLXXV). In the Tuat there was neither tree nor plant, for it was the
"land where nothing grew"; and in primitive times it was a region
of destruction and death, a place where the dead rotted and decayed,
a place of abomination, and horror and terror, and annihilation. But
in very early times, certainly in the Neolithic Period, the Egyptians
believed in some kind of a future life, and they dimly conceived that
the attainment of that life might possibly depend upon the manner of
life which those who hoped to enjoy it led here. The Egyptians "hated
death and loved life," and when the belief gained ground among them
that Osiris, the God of the Dead, had himself risen from the dead,
and had been acquitted by the gods of heaven after a searching trial,
and had the power to "make men and women to be born again," and
"to renew life" because of his truth and righteousness, they came
to regard him as the Judge as well as the God of the Dead. As time
went on, and moral and religious ideas developed among the Egyptians,
it became certain to them that only those who had satisfied Osiris
as to their truth-speaking and honest dealing upon earth could hope
for admission into his kingdom.

When the power of Osiris became predominant in the Under World, and
his fame as a just and righteous judge became well established among
the natives of Lower and Upper Egypt, it was universally believed
that after death all men would appear before him in his dread Hall of
Judgment to receive their reward or their sentence of doom. The writers