in fine linen and spices, just as the Egyptians embalmed their own dead.

Mummies, as we call these embalmed Egyptian corpses, are often found
now, laid up in beautiful tombs, cut out in the rock, and painted in
colours still fresh with picture writing, called hieroglyphics, telling
in tokens all the history of the person whose body they contained. The
kings built tombs for themselves, like mountains, square at the bottom,
but each course of stones built within the last till they taper to a
point at the top. These are called pyramids, and have within them very
small narrow passages, leading to a small chamber, just large enough to
hold a king's coffin.

They had enormous idols hewn out of stone. The head of one, which you
may see in the British Museum, is far taller than the tallest man, and
yet the face is really handsome, and there are multitudes more, both of
them and of their temples, still remaining on the banks of the Nile.
The children of Israel, being chiefly shepherds, kept apart from the
Egyptians at first; but as time went on they learnt some of their
habits, and many of them had begun to worship their idols and forget the
truth, when their time of affliction came. The King of Egypt, becoming
afraid of having so numerous and rich a people settled in his dominions,
tried to keep them down by hard bondage and heavy labour. He made them
toil at his great buildings, and oppressed them in every possible
manner; and when he found that they still throve and increased, he made
the cruel decree, that every son who was born to them should be cast
into the river.

But man can do nothing against the will of God, and this murderous
ordinance proved the very means of causing one of these persecuted
Hebrew infants to be brought up in the palace of Pharaoh, and instructed