of the Pyramid Texts, more than fifty-five centuries ago, dreamed of
a time when heaven and earth and men did not exist, when the gods had
not yet been born, when death had not been created, and when anger,
speech (?), cursing and rebellion were unknown. [5] But that time was
very remote, and long before the great fight took place between Horus
and Set, when the former lost his eye and the latter was wounded in
a vital part of his body. Meanwhile death had come into the world,
and since the religion of Osiris gave man a hope of escape from death,
and the promise of everlasting life of the peculiar kind that appealed
to the great mass of the Egyptian people, the spread of the cult of
Osiris and its ultimate triumph over all forms of religion in Egypt
were assured. Under the early dynasties the priesthood of Anu (the On
of the Bible) strove to make their Sun-god Ra pre-eminent in Egypt,
but the cult of this god never appealed to the people as a whole. It
was embraced by the Pharaohs, and their high officials, and some of
the nobles, and the official priesthood, but the reward which its
doctrine offered was not popular with the materialistic Egyptians. A
life passed in the Boat of Ra with the gods, being arrayed in light
and fed upon light, made no appeal to the ordinary folk since Osiris
offered them as a reward a life in the Field of Reeds, and the Field of
Offerings of Food, and the Field of the Grasshoppers, and everlasting
existence in a transmuted and beautified body among the resurrected
bodies of father and mother, wife and children, kinsfolk and friends.

But, as according to the cult of Ra, the wicked, the rebels, and the
blasphemers of the Sun-god suffered swift and final punishment, so
also all those who had sinned against the stern moral Law of Osiris,
and who had failed to satisfy its demands, paid the penalty without
delay. The Judgment of Ra was held at sunrise, and the wicked were
thrown into deep pits filled with fire, and their bodies, souls,