There are mummies of children in this Egyptian museum. There are some also in London, but I know of none anywhere else. The children were embalmed for the same reason as the grown-ups, the parents believing that they could have no union with their little ones unless they met them in their original bodies after the resurrection. The faces on some of these are gilded, while the pictures on the bandages represent the children offering sacrifices to the gods. Above the feet is sometimes seen the funeral boat, showing the little child lying upon its bier, and upon other parts of the coffin are tiny people who seem to be engaged in propelling the boat. This probably represents the ferry of the dead to their tombs in the mountains on the banks of the Nile. In other cases the caskets of the children are beautifully decorated and some are even plated with gold.
I mused long over two statues as old as any in the world. These are life-size sitting figures, representing Prince Ra-Hotep and his wife, the Princess Nefert, who lived something like four thousand years before Christ, and whose statues are as perfect now as when they were made, before the Pyramids were built. The Prince has African features, and his light attire reminds one of the inhabitants of the valley of the Congo. The Princess is dressed in a sheet, and looks as though she were just out of her bath. Her husband evidently cut her hair, and it takes considerable imagination to believe that she can be so old and still look so young. There is no doubt of her age, however, for the scientists say that she has seen over six thousand years, and the scientists know.
One of the most important records of the customs and beliefs of the Pharaohs concerning the dead has been taken away from Egypt. This is a papyrus manuscript which is now in the British Museum. It is known as the Book of the Dead and contains two hundred chapters. It is written in hieroglyphics, but many of the passages have been translated. It sets forth that every man was believed to consist of seven different parts of which the actual body was only one and the other parts related to the soul and its transmigration. Upon the preservation of the body depended the bringing together of these seven parts in the after life. On this account corpses were mummified, and for the same reason they were hidden away in tombs under the desert and in the great Pyramids, which their owners believed would be inaccessible to the men of the future.
This Book of the Dead contains, also, some of the Egyptian ideals of right living, reminding one of the Psalm which, in Rouse’s version, begins:
That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinner’s way.
Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair,
But placeth his delight