In fact the state of civilization in Egypt 6000 years ago appears to have been higher in all essential respects than it has ever been since, or is now, in any Asiatic and in many European countries. And it has every appearance of being indigenous, and having grown up on the soil. There are no traces in the oldest traditions of any foreign importation, such as we find in the early traditions of other countries. There is no fish-man who comes up out of the Persian Gulf and teaches the Chaldæans the first elements of civilization; no Cadmus who teaches the Greeks their first letters; no Manco-Capac who lands on the shore of Peru. On the contrary, all the Egyptian traditions are of Egyptian gods, like Osiris and Thoth, who reigned in the valley of the Nile, and invented hieroglyphics and other arts. These are lost in a fabulous antiquity, and the only trace of a link to connect the historical Egyptians with the neolithic races whose remains are found in abundance in the form of flint knives and arrows, and are brought up by borings through thick deposits of Nile mud, or the still older palæolithic savages, whose rude implements were found by General Pitt-Rivers and other explorers in quaternary gravels near Thebes of geological antiquity, is furnished by the use of a stone knife to make the first incision on the corpse in turning it into a mummy, and by the animal worship, which may have been a relic of primitive fetichism and totemism. The highly metaphysical nature of the Egyptian creed is another conclusive proof of the antiquity of the religion. Among existing races we find similar religions corresponding to similar stages of civilization. With the very rudest races, religion consists mainly of ghost worship and animism. Herbert Spencer has shown how dreams lead to the belief that man consists of two elements, a body and a spirit, or shadowy self, which wanders forth in sleep, meets with strange adventures, and returns when the body awakes. In the longer sleep of death, this shadowy self becomes a ghost which haunts its old abodes and former associates, mostly with an evil intent, and which has to be deceived or propitiated, to prevent it from doing mischief. Hence the sacrifices and offerings, and the many devices for cheating the ghost by carrying the dead body by devious paths to some safe locality. Hence also the superstitious dread of evil spirits, and the interment with the corpse of food and implements to induce the ghost to remain tranquilly in the grave, or to set out comfortably on its journey to another world.