“‘The Book of the Dead,’ as it is commonly called, is a group, or series, of ancient Egyptian writings representing the state and the needs and the progress of the soul after death. A copy of this funereal ritual, ‘more or less complete according to the fortune of the deceased, was deposited in the case of eveiy mummy. ‘As the Book of the Dead is the most ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most important of the sacred books of the Egyptians;’ it is, in fact, ‘according to Egyptian notions, essentially an inspired work;’ hence its contents have an exceptional dogmatic value. In this book there are several obvious references to the rite of blood-covenanting. Some of these are in a chapter of the ritual which was found transcribed in a coffin of the eleventh dynasty, thus carrying it back to a period prior to the days of the patriarchs. “‘Give me your arm; I am made as ye,’ says the departed soul, speaking to the gods. Then, in explanation of this statement, the pre-historic gloss of the ritual goes on to say: ‘The blood is that which proceeds from the member of the Sun after he goes along cutting himself,’ the covenant blood which unites the soul and the god is drawn from the flesh of Ra when he has cut himself in the rite of that covenant. By this covenant-cutting the deceased becomes one with the covenanting gods. Again, the departing soul, speaking as Osiris—or as the Osirian, which every mummy represents—says: ‘I am the soul in his two halves.’ This was at least two thousand years before the days of the Greek philosopher. How much earlier it was recognized does not appear. “Moreover, a ‘red talisman,’ or red amulet, stained with ‘the blood of Isis,’ and containing a record of the covenant, was placed at the neck of the mummy as an assurance of safety to his soul. ‘When this book [this amulet-record] has been made,’ says the ritual, ‘it causes Isis to protect him.’ ‘If this book is known,’ says Horus, ‘he [the deceased] is in the service of Osiris.... His name is like that of the gods.’” Dr. Trumbull properly remarks: “Thus in ancient Egypt, in ancient Canaan, in ancient Mexico, in modern Turkey, in modern Russia, in modern India, and in modern Otaheite, in Africa, in Asia, in America, in Europe, and in Oceanica, blood-giving was life-giving. Life-giving was love-showing. Love-showing was a heart-yearning after union in love and in life and in blood and in very being. That was the primitive thought in the primitive religions of all the world.