Lecture VIII. The Sacred Books. 171
in Egyptian religious thought that it would have been needful
to incorporate into it the ideas of a rival theology. But the
incorporation had taken place long before the Pyramid texts were
compiled, perhaps before the day when Menes united the two
kingdoms of Egypt into one.
There are yet other evidences of a composite theology in the
Book of the Dead. In one chapter we have the old doctrine of
the Ka confined to the dark and dismal tomb in which its body
lies; in another we see the soul flying whithersoever it will on
the wings of a bird, sitting on the branches of a tree under the
shade of the foliage, or perched on the margin of flowing water.
But such theological inconsistencies probably go back to the age
when the book was first composed. The conceptions of the Ka
and of the soul, however inconsistent they may be, belong to
so early a period, that they lay together at the foundation of [186]
Egyptian religious thought long before the days when an official
form of religion had come into existence, or the Book of the
Dead had been compiled.
In some instances it is possible to fix approximately the period
to which particular portions of the book belong. Professor
Maspero has shown that the 64th chapter, once considered one
of the oldest, is in reality one of the latest in date. It sums up
the different formulæ which enabled the soul of the dead man to
quit his body in safety; and accordingly its title, which, however,
varies in different recensions, is a repetition of that prefixed to
the earlier part of the work, and declares that it makes“known
in a single chapter the chapters relating togoing forth from day.”
According to certain papyri, it was“discovered”either in the
reign of Usaphaes of the First Dynasty or in that of Men-kau-Ra
of the Fourth Dynasty, under the feet of Thoth in the temple
of Eshmunên, written in letters of lapis-lazuli on a tablet of
alabaster. The details of the“discovery”are not sufficiently
uniform to allow us to put much confidence in them; the tradition
proves, however, that the Egyptians considered the chapter to be