"He and I were boys, at Thebes, in the great temple together. All his lifetime we were friends. When he felt that his physical powers were failing, and that the end of his long and holy life was fast approaching, he sent unto me to come to him and spend his last days with him; and so it happened that I was at Alexandria when the ancient high-priest died. We did talk much and often of our long religious lives; much, of our learned ignorance; much, of the destiny of the human soul; much, of the truth. When I did ask of him whether he had any special request to make concerning his own funeral rites, he answered me in some such words as these: ’Nay, my brother. Let the obsequies be simply conducted, but in accordance with the rites and ceremonies prescribed for a priest’s funeral by ’The Book of the Dead.’ For although both thou and I be well aware that the sarcophagus is naught, and the mummy naught, and that no rites nor ceremonies which men can devise in any way concern the soul after death, yet, because the law and order system of Kem hath been for so many centuries built up on these vain things, I desire that the usual forms be all observed at mine own funeral. Although surely no high-priest of Egypt ought to think that it can make any difference to the soul how, or when, or by what means, a man may depart this life, or whether any funeral rites are paid or not; for thou knowest that the true purpose of religion is to control the living, and that the dead are far beyond the reach of human agencies.’ "’On what, then, dependeth thy soul’s condition in the other world?’ I said. "’Surely,’ he said, ’upon nothing that any priest can do or leave undone, but upon whether the man hath done his duties well according to the best of his faith and knowledge.’ "And afterward, and almost in the hour of his dissolution, I said unto him again, ’Brother, how farest thou?’ And he answered me, saying: ’The light of life within me burneth low and flickereth. It will soon go out. But I fare well and peacefully.’ "’And thou hast no fear of awful Ma-t, my brother, and of the silent hall wherein the Two Truths judge the dead?’