![]() To be sure, the kings no longer held such absolute control of the state that they could make it but a highly organized agency for the construction of the gigantic royal tomb but the official class in charge of such work did not hesitate to compare it with Gizeh itself. "There is no tomb for one hostile to his majesty īut his body shall be thrown to the waters." 1īy the many, tomb-building was resumed and carried on as of old. Even Ipuwer had said to the king: "It is, moreover, good when the hands of men build pyramids, lakes are dug, and groves of sycomores of the gods are planted." 1 In the opinion of the prosperous official class the loss of the tomb was the direst possible consequence of unfaithfulness to the king, and a wise man said to his children: ![]() As the felicity of the departed was democratized, the common people took up and continued the old mortuary usages, and the development and elaboration of such customs went on without heeding the eloquent silence and desolation that reigned on the pyramid plateau and in the cemeteries of the fathers. These tendencies were undoubtedly the accompaniment of unrelieved pessimism and hopelessness, on the one hand, as well as of a growing belief in the necessity of moral worthiness in the hereafter, on the other they were revolutionary views which did not carry with them any large body of the Egyptian people. The scepticism toward preparations for the hereafter involving a massive tomb and elaborate mortuary furniture, the pessimistic recognition of the futility of material equipment for the dead, pronounced as we have seen these tendencies to be in the Feudal Age, were, nevertheless, but an eddy in the broad current of Egyptian life. 257 LECTURE VIII POPULARIZATION OF THE OLD ROYAL HEREAFTER-TRIUMPH OF OSIRIS-CONSCIENCE AND THE BOOK OF THE DEAD-MAGIC AND MORALS Sacred Texts Egyptian Index Previous Nextĭevelopment of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, by James Henry Breasted,, at Popularization of the Old Royal Hereafter-Triumph of Osiris-Conscience and the Book of the Dead-Magic and Morals Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt: Lecture VIII.
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