All the blessings promised to the disciples of other creeds than the Osirian are now granted to the soul who has passed unscathed through the hall of judgment. Not only the fields of Alu are his, but the solar bark as well, to which the school of Heliopolis looked forward; even the old belief which confined the Ka to the narrow precincts of the tomb was not forgotten, and the 132nd chapter instructs the Osirian how to “wander at will to see his house.” Like Osiris himself, he can take part in the festival of the dead, and share in the offerings that are presented at it. Free access is allowed him to all parts of the other world: whatever heaven or hell had been imagined in the local sanctuaries of Egypt was open to him to visit as he would. The later chapters of the Book of the Dead take us back to the earth. They are concerned with the mummy and its resting-place, with the charms and amulets which preserved the body from decay, or enabled the soul to inspire it once more with life. They form a sort of appendix, dealing rather with the beliefs and superstitions of the people, than with the ideas of the theologians, about the gods and the future life.(159) The order in which I have referred to the chapters of the book are those of the Theban texts as edited by Dr. Naville. But it must not be supposed that it constitutes an integral part of the original work. As a matter of fact there are very few copies of the book, even among those which belong to the Theban period, in which anything like all the chapters is to be found. Indeed, it is difficult to say how many chapters a complete edition of it ought to contain. Pierret made them one hundred and sixty-five; the latest editors raise them to over two hundred. The reason of this is easy to explain. The separate chapters are for the most part intended for special purposes or special occasions, and each, therefore, has had a separate origin. They have been collected from all sides, and thrown together with very little attempt at arrangement or order. They belong to different periods of composition and different schools of religious thought: some of them mount back to the remotest antiquity, others are probably even later than the foundation of the united monarchy. Hence, as a rule, only a selection of them was inscribed on the rolls of papyrus that were buried with the dead, or on the coffin and sepulchral objects deposited in the tomb; it was only the most important of them that the Osirian was likely to need in the other world. Indeed, in some cases only the semblance of a text seems to have been thought necessary. The copies made for the dead usually abound with errors, and some have actually been found in which the text is represented by a number of unmeaning signs. The Book of the Dead, moreover, was continually growing. The oldest texts are the shortest and most simple, the latest are the longest and most crowded with chapters. As fresh prayers and formulæ for protecting the dead in the