Mummies
Later on in the story, many great people, as well as the kings, were mummied, and yet later again it became quite common with all classes. Sacred animals, such as the cats in Bubastis, hawks in the temples of Horus, and even crocodiles and quite large creatures, have been found, mummied, in great numbers. The art and trade of making mummies was a very important one, and grew to greater perfection as the artists began to learn more of the preserving power of chemicals. Generally, they are the mummies of royal personages that have come down to us in the best preservation, no doubt because the greatest care and expense were given to their embalming. One of the best is of that famous king Tethmosis III. who was the greatest hero of that greatest eighteenth dynasty up, or down, to which we have now brought our story.
I have said, and you will be ready to agree with it, that all this care for the dead body shows what high value the Egyptians placed on the corpse, although life and the soul had left it. But they had the idea that the soul could be brought back again, by incantations, to go into the body again through the mouth, and so make the mouth and the legs and other parts move, almost as they did before death. That idea explains perhaps why they took so much pains about keeping the body perfect. It may explain why the wicked Seth, in his malice, cut up the body of Osiris, whom he had murdered, and scattered the pieces in fourteen different places, and also why the faithful Isis collected them and put them all together again.
The Egyptians, like other ancient people and like many savage races to-day, believed that a man possessed and had in his body, but capable of separation from it, two souls, or spirits, and perhaps more, and though that is an idea so very different from ours it is not very difficult for us to understand a way in which it might have come into their minds.
It has been thought likely by many who have given much learned and deep attention to the subject, that the idea arose from what people saw in dreams. They would know, perhaps, that a friend of theirs had gone away on a journey, yet they might go to sleep, and see, in a dream, the friend beside them. What were they likely to think? They had not our knowledge about dreams, and did not know that all that they saw in them came from their own fancy. They would be very likely to think, then, that their friend, in his soul or spirit with something that looked like his body, really had come and had stood beside them, although what we should call his real self was far away. They would say, then, that he had a second self, or spirit, which could be in one place and doing one thing while his other self was in another place and doing quite a different thing. Thus they might get the idea of one kind of soul and body which would be different from the man whom they actually saw and spoke to when they were awake.
And then, when a friend had died, had gone through that great change which we call death, they would often, still in dreams, see him again, as he had been in life, though they knew that his body had not moved from the place where it had been buried. Other friends might be able to assure them as to this. Therefore they might say, "Here is another self or spirit of my friend, who is dead, which I saw come and do this or that. It is the soul not of a living man, but of a dead man." Thus the idea might arise of a second soul different from that which was seen while the friend was alive.
You must understand that I am not saying that it certainly was thus that the idea of more than one soul arose; but it may have been in this way. It is a way in which we can easily see that it might have come into their minds.
Many of the old writings and inscriptions give instructions about the prayers and ceremonies and forms of words to be used for bringing back the soul into the dead body, and these, of course, were best understood by the priests. This, again, helped to make the priests very important persons. The greatest people in the land performed the priests' duties; and some of what we may call professed priests, those whose whole business was the performance of these rites and ceremonies, became the greatest people. Also some of these very same people acted as judges and decided points of law, and gave punishments for the breaking of the laws. You may realise, then, how extensive their power was.
Laws