The early religion of Egypt was founded on a personification of the laws of Nature, centred in a mysterious unity. Egyptian nature, however, supplied but few great objects of worship as symbols of divine power, the desert, a natural enemy, the fertilizing river, and the sun, the all-pervading presence, worshiped as the source of life, the lord of time, and author of eternity. Three great realms composed the Egyptian cosmos; the heavens, where the sun, moon, and stars paced their daily round, the abode of the invisible king, typified by the sun and worshiped as Ammon Ra, the earth and the under-world, the abode of the dead. Here, too, reigned the universal lord under the name of Osiris, whose material manifestation, the sun, as he passed beneath the earth, lightened up the under-world, where the dead were judged, the just recompensed, and the guilty punished. Innumerable minor divinities, which originally personified attributes of the one Supreme Deity, were represented under the form of such animals as were endowed with like qualities. Every god was symbolized by some animal, which thus became an object of worship; but by confounding symbols with realities this worship soon degenerated into gross materialism and idolatry. The most important religious work in this literature is the "Book of the Dead," a funeral ritual. The earliest known copy is in hieratic writing of the oldest type, and was found in the tomb of a queen, who lived probably about 3000 B.C. The latest copy is of the second century A.D., and is written in pure Coptic. This work, consisting of one hundred and sixty-six chapters, is a collection of prayers of a magical character, an account of the adventures of the soul after death, and directions for reaching the Hall of Osiris. It is a marvel of confusion and poverty of thought. A complete translation may be found in "Egypt's Place in Universal History," by Bunsen (second edition), and specimens in almost every museum of Europe. There are other theological remains, such as the Metamorphoses of the gods and the Lament of Isis, but their meaning is disguised in allegory. The hymns and addresses to the sun abound in pure and lofty sentiment. The epistolary writings are the best known and understood branch of Egyptian literature. From the Ramesid era, the most literary of all, we have about eighty letters on various subjects, interesting as illustrations of manners and specimens of style. The most important of these is the "Anastasi Papyri" in the British Museum, written about the time of the Exodus.