Among many books which the Egyptians once possessed, one still remains in its entirety. It is somewhat confusing in its style, and yet it is in the main to be understood. A copy of this Funeral Liturgy or Book of the Dead was placed in every mummy’s coffin. We give a very full abstract of it, because of its unusual importance in the religious history of the world. The Funeral Ritual is opened with a dialogue taking place at the very moment of death, when the soul separates from the body. The deceased, addressing the deity of Hades, enumerates all his titles to his favor, and asks for admittance into his dominions. The chorus of glorified souls interposes, as in the Greek tragedy, and supports the prayer of the deceased. The priest on earth in his turn speaks, and implores also the divine clemency. Finally Osiris, the god of the lower regions, answers the deceased, “Fear nothing in making thy prayer to me for the immortality of thy soul, and that I may give permission for thee to pass the threshold.” Reassured by the divine word, the soul of the deceased enters Kar-Neter, the land of the dead, and recommences his invocations. After this grand commencement, which we have epitomized, come many short chapters, much less important, relative also to the dead and to the preliminary ceremonies of his funeral. When at last the soul of the deceased has passed the gates of Kar-Neter, he penetrates into that subterranean region, and at his entry is dazzled by the glory of the sun, which he now for the first time sees in this lower hemisphere. He sings a hymn to the sun under the form of mixed litanies and invocations. After this hymn, a great vignette, representing the adoration and glorification of the sun in the heavens, on earth and in Hades, marks the end of the first part of the Ritual, serving as a sort of introduction. The second part traces the journeys and migrations of the soul in the lower region. Next come a series of prayers to be pronounced during the process of embalming, while the body is being rolled in its wrappers. These invocations are addressed to Thoth, the Egyptian Hermes, who, as among the Greeks, played the part of Psychopompe, or conductor of souls. They are of the highest interest, for in each allusion is made to the grand myth of Osiris and his contest with Typhon, of which Plutarch and Synesius have given us the most recent versions. The deceased, addressing the god, asks him to render to him again the service he once rendered on that solemn occasion to Osiris and his son Horus, “avenger of his father.”