[89] “In this judgment the Egyptian introduced for the first time in the history of man the fully developed idea that the future destiny of the dead must be dependent entirely upon the ethical quality of the earthly life, the idea of future responsibility,--of which we found the first traces in the Old Kingdom” (Breasted, _A History of Egypt_ (1905), p. 173). Professor Breasted suggests a connection between the growth of the ideal of an ethical ordeal in the hereafter with the discontinuance of the building of immense pyramids. He says: “It is impossible to contemplate the colossal tombs of the Fourth Dynasty, so well known as the pyramids of Gizeh, and to contrast them with the comparatively diminutive royal tombs which follow in the next two dynasties, without ... discerning more than exclusively political causes behind this sudden and startling change.... The recognition of a judgment and the requirement of moral worthiness in the hereafter ... marked a transition from reliance on agencies external to the personality of the dead to dependence on inner values. Immortality began to make its appeal as a thing achieved in a man’s own soul” (_Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ (1912), pp. 178 f.). [90] _Records of the Past_, New Series, vol. iii. For extended comments on the maxims of Ptah-hotep, see Amélineau, _Essai sur l’évolution historique et philosophique des idées morales dans l’Egypt ancienne_ (1895), pp. 93 ff. [91] Budge, _Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life_ (1899), p. ii. [92] For other documents of this age which embody the same spirit of social justice as the precepts of Ptah-hotep, see Breasted, _Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt_ (1912), lect. vii. [93] Amélineau, _Essai_, pp. 140 f. [94] Alongside slavery proper there existed the system of serfdom, the nature of which is revealed by the history of the Children of Israel in Lower Egypt. The status of the Egyptian serf appears to have been somewhat like that of the Helots of Laconia in Greece. If we rightly interpret the Biblical account of the servitude of the Children of Israel, the number of serfs, if their increase seemed dangerous, was kept down by enforced infanticide (Ex. i. 7–22). [95] Laurent, _Études sur l’histoire de l’humanité_, t. i, p. 321. [96] Amélineau, _Essai_, p. 344. The monotheist Ikhnaton (Amenhotep IV), the reform Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, it is true, pursued throughout his reign a peace policy, but this policy manifestly was dictated by temperament, or the king’s preoccupation with religious affairs, and not by moral scruples. His reform was essentially a religious and not a social or moral one. Not one of the historical documents of the age contains a word in condemnation of war as inherently wrong (see Breasted, _Ancient Records of Egypt_ (1906), vol. ii, pp. 382–419), though in these “the customary glorying in war has almost disappeared” (Petrie, _A History of Egypt_ (1896), vol. ii, p. 218).