Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/222

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RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS.
207

thee belongeth all that is upon earth; to thee all that is in heaven; to thee all that is in the waters; to thee belongeth all that is in life or in death; to thee all that is male or female. Thou art the sovereign king of the gods, the prince amid the company of the gods."

The text concludes with enumerating a multitude of localities in which Osiris is adored, and is more interesting from a geographical than from a religious point of view. In this composition (the manuscript of which belongs to the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty) the only passages which imply any ethical sympathy are these: "Thou art the lord of Maāt (here signifying righteousness), hating iniquity. … The goddess Maāt is with thee, and the whole day she never withdraweth herself from thee. Iniquity approacheth thee not wherever thou art."


Book of the Breaths of Life.

In the later periods, instead of the Book of the Dead, another work, more systematically composed and partly abridged from it, was buried with the dead and placed under the left arm near the heart. This book was called the Shāit en sensen, "Book of the Breaths of Life, made by Isis for her brother Osiris, for giving new life to his soul and body and renewing all his limbs, that he may reach the horizon with his father the Sun, that his soul may rise to heaven in the disk