The Egyptian Book Of The Dead.

THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD .

BY THE EDITOR .

MR . POOLE , of the British Museum , has delivered recently a lecture on the Egyptian "Book of the Dead , " which is voted so interesting and important for Masonic students that we give a condensed report of it below . It is well known that Dr . Buck translated it for the fifth volume of the late Chevalier Bunsen ' s great work , but that is now both dear and scarce . Lepsius , the great German Egyp tian investigator , has issued it in "hieroglyphics , " and

M . Naville , in France , has published over two portions , and in " Texta de Ravise " some very interesting remarks , contained in the " Congres Provincial des Mentalistes Francais , " 1880 . The Society for Biblical Archaeology , of which our Bro . W . H . Rylands is the accomplished secretary , has just published in Vol . X . Egyptian Texts , " Records of the Past , " translations of portion ' s of the " Book of the Dead , " " The Book of Hades , " p . 79 , and the " Address of Horns to Osiris " p . 61 . To these we refer later .

Mr . Poole thus treats the subject : IN the Litany of Ra all other divinities disappear in the all-pervading splendour of the one whose leading form was the sun . The Litany of Ra first appears in the Tombs of the Kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty . It may be significant that in time it thus immediatel y follows the heresy of the end of the previous dynastyby which King Khu-en-aten

, , who , be it remembered , was maternally of foreign descent , substituted for the Egyptian reli gion the material worship of the sun , not as Ra , but as Aten , the Disk . The Litany of Ra appears at an opportune moment . The disk worshi p has gone , but in its stead a philosophy is taught wliich restores to the chief object of nature in the visible universe that empire which seemed just to have been lost for ever .

Our knowledge of the Litany of Ra is due to M . Naville , who has published it with an admirable translation and commentary , and at the close of the work a summary of its contents , thus giving us after the maimer of De Rouge that which is wanting in too many works of the same nature , the final judgment of the scholar most competent to pronounce it . This essay covers the whole of one distinct subject in the complex contents of the Egyptian religion , which will

never be understood until its difficulties have been removed one by one in a series of such exhaustive essays . ( E . Naville , " La Litanie du Soleil , " p . 122 , et seq . ) Clearly the Litany of Ra displays an esoteric philosophy . It is the introduction to the mysterious scenes of the Tombs of the Kings . As proper to these sepulchres it is the royal philosophy , the wisdom which was known to the

initiated , and above all to the King as High Priest . It is not an essay , but a series of prayers ; therefore it does not state , but implies , a philosophy . That system is wholly pantheistic . The doctrine of the Litany of Ra treats of the universe under that name . Ra , the sun , is but an emanation . The object of its jn-ayers is that the king , alread y an image of Ra on earth , should in the after world be identified with Ba , become one and the same . As there is nothing but Ra , all nature presents his manifestations , and the doctrine becomes purely pantheistic . Good and ill