[55] For the foregoing particulars and some of the following, see Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_. [56] Ampère, _Voyage en Egypte et Nubie_. [57] Thebes was indeed always considered as two cities. Homer makes it plural, and it has ever since been so—_Thebæ_. [58] The Greek writer Diodorus Siculus says: ‘The Egyptians call their houses hostelries, since they can enjoy them for a brief space only; whereas their tombs are the eternal dwelling-places of the future.’ [59] For some parts of the description of the cities of Thebes, see Karl Oppel’s _Land der Pyramiden_. [60] Ebers, in his Egyptian novel of the time of Rameses II., _Uarda_. [61] Addressed to the departed seer. [62] I am not sure at how early a date the judgment scene is depicted in any existing funeral papyri; but I believe there is no doubt that neither that nor any ‘other world’ scene occurs in the tombs of the earlier dynasties, so far as they are yet known. [63] Notice the similarity of thought underlying this myth and that of Osiris and Set. [64] This idea of a sacred bark appears also in the form assigned to the sacred shrine, p. 177. [65] Max Müller, _Science of Religion_. [66] Take in illustration the symbols on any national flag. There is no intrinsic beauty in three coloured stripes, or in the grotesque figures of lions rampant. Yet for the sake of the nation of which they have become symbolic, men will die sooner than surrender the banners on which they are depicted. It is the same with the symbols of rival religions. How fierce the conflict waged by Saracen and Christian beneath the respective symbols of the Crescent and the Cross! [67] The biographer of Apollonius of Tyana records the following conversation. ‘The beasts and birds,’ says Apollonius, ‘may derive dignity from such representations, but the gods will lose theirs.’ ‘I think,’ says his opponent, ‘you slight our mode of worship before you have given it a fair examination. For surely what we are speaking of is wise, if anything Egyptian is so; the Egyptians do not venture to give any form to their deities, they only give them in symbols which have an occult meaning, that renders them venerable.’ Apollonius, however, is not convinced: he admits that the mind forms to itself an idea which it pictures better than any art can do, but he complains that the Egyptian custom takes from the gods the very power of appearing beautiful either to the eye or to the mind. Porphyry also regards the worship as symbolic; he says that ‘under the semblance of animals the Egyptians worship the universal power which the gods have revealed in the various forms of living nature.’ These quotations and those in the text are taken from Le Page Renout’s _Hibbert Lectures_. [68] We may, perhaps, except the Chinese.