Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C. -- Fiction; German fiction -- Translations into English
[In the Ritual of the Dead (indeed in almost every Papyrus of the
Dead) we meet with a representation of the soul, whose heart is
being weighed and judged. The speech made by the soul is called the
negative justification, in which she assures the 42 judges of the
dead, that she has not committed the 42 deadly sins which she
enumerates. This justification is doubly interesting because it
contains nearly the entire moral law of Moses, which last, apart
from all national peculiarities and habits of mind, seems to contain
the quintessence of human morality--and this we find ready
paragraphed in our negative justification. Todtenbuch ed. Lepsius.
125. We cannot discuss this question philosophically here, but the
law of Pythagoras, who borrowed so much from Egypt, and the contents
of which are the same, speaks for our view. It is similar in form
to the Egyptian.]
"There you remind me," said Croesus "that I have undertaken to arrange
for your instruction in the Persian customs, religion and language. I
had intended to withdraw to Barene, the town which I received as a gift
from Cyrus, and there, in that most lovely mountain valley, to take my
rest; but for your sake and for the king's, I will remain here and
continue to give you instruction in the Persian tongue. Kassandane
herself will initiate you in the customs peculiar to women at the Persian
court, and Oropastes, the high-priest, has been ordered by the king to
make you acquainted with the religion of Iran. He will be your
spiritual, and I your secular guardian."
At these words Nitetis, who had been smiling happily, cast down her eyes
and asked in a low voice: "Am I to become unfaithful to the gods of my
fathers, who have never failed to hear my prayers? Can I, ought I to
forget them?"
"Yes," said Kassandane decidedly, "thou canst, and it is thy bounden
duty, for a wife ought to have no friends but those her husband calls
such. The gods are a man's earliest, mightiest and most faithful
friends, and it therefore becomes thy duty, as a wife, to honor them,
and to close thine heart against strange gods and superstitions,
as thou wouldst close it against strange lovers."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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