=12.= =Service books= are represented by the =Book of Overthrowing Āpepi=, a work which contains a series of spells and incantations that were recited in the great temple of Ȧmen-Rā at Karnak (Thebes) on certain days of the month. These were directed against Āpepi, the great foe of the Sun-god, and enemy of all goodness and truth, who took the form of a monster serpent, and waged war against all the gods daily. The rubrics contained directions for ceremonies, in which wax-figures were burned in the temple fires, whilst the priests recited the spells in the Book. There is a complete copy of the work in the British Museum (No. 10,188), which also contains a list of the accursed names of Āpepi, and the text of the hymn of praise which was sung when the arch-fiend was overthrown. =13.= =Exegesis= is represented by two valuable copies of a work which forms the XVIIth Chapter of the Book of the Dead in the Papyrus of Ani (No. 10,470), and the Papyrus of Nebseni (No. 9900). In it a text treating of the origin of the gods and their relation to Rā, and of the doctrine of the union of Rā and Osiris, etc., is dissected, and each sentence of the work is followed by a statement of the opinions of the various great religious Colleges of Egypt. =14.= An example of a rare class of work is found cut on a black stone slab in the Southern Egyptian Gallery (No. 797). The text states that it was copied from an inscribed board which had become worm-eaten in the reign of Shabaka, king of Egypt, about B.C. 700. From what is legible on the slab we are justified in assuming that the work contained a sort of philosophical statement of the religious beliefs of a priest who was trying to systematize certain of the old traditions of the country, and to evolve a system of belief which should be consonant with the special traditions current at Memphis at that time concerning the god Ptaḥ. =15.= Another most important section of religious literature consists of the funerary inscriptions cut on =sepulchral tablets=, or grave-stones, which form so large a portion of the Egyptian collections of the British Museum. In the vestibule and galleries is exhibited a splendid series of such monuments, the oldest dating from the IVth dynasty, about B.C. 3800, and the most recent from the first century A.D.; thus the series represents a period of about four thousand years. The value of these monuments is very great, for they not only give the various forms of the prayer to the gods for sepulchral offerings in the different periods of Egyptian history, but they afford a great deal of information about the attributes of the gods, and they illustrate the growth and decay of many forms of belief, details of ritual, etc. On =Plates III-VIII= are reproduced good typical examples of sepulchral tablets of the IVth, XIth, XIIth, XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXXth dynasties.