The moral standard of the Egyptians has been compared to that of the Romans after it had felt the influence of Stoicism and Christianity. Like the Roman ideal of excellence at its best, the Egyptian ideal tended to develop a strong and manly type of character, particularly in the ruling class. We think it not an illusion which causes us to see the influence of the ideal in the face of Rameses the Great. This face bears the stamp of strength, resolution, indomitable energy. We may believe that it was the moral ideal which had something to do in creating such a type of character as we see here, just as it was the primitive Roman ideal which helped to create that admirable type of character which lives in the legends of early Rome. Further, the moral ideal tended to ameliorate the autocratic government of the Pharaohs by holding constantly before the ruler the example of the righteous and beneficent king-gods Ra and Osiris. The influence of the ideal in this relation may be likened to the influence of the moral ideal of Christianity upon the government of the later Cæsars. Again, the practical moral ideal of Egypt, laying its emphasis upon the fundamental social virtues, helped to establish and maintain relations of justice and equity between man and man, and thus contributed to the general well-being of Egyptian society and to the stability of Egyptian institutions. Nor was the influence of the moral ideal of Egypt confined to the Egyptian land. For, as Amélineau truly says, the wonderful edifice of morality is the collective work of all peoples and all ages.[98] In the uprearing of this edifice Egypt played a great rôle. Her contributions to the morality of the first nations were as helpful, we may believe, as were those she made to the other domains--material, artistic, and intellectual--of the civilization of the early world. Later she made a rich bequest to European morality, a bequest only less important perhaps than that made by Judea. Her ideas of the future life, her meditations on death and the final judgment, reënforced the teachings of Christianity and thus contributed to create that deep conviction of a life hereafter and a coming retribution which for eighteen hundred years and more has furnished sanction and stimulus to the moral life of Christendom.[99] It is not without significance that Christian monasticism, with all its otherworldliness, had its beginnings in Egypt. “The first Christian monk [Pachomius] had been a pagan monk of Serapis.”[100] CHAPTER IV THE BABYLONIAN-ASSYRIAN CONSCIENCE [Sidenote: The importance of Babylonian-Assyrian morality for the history of comparative morals]