ABSTRACT
Among no people, ancient or modern, has the idea of a life beyond the grave held so prominent a place as among the ancient Egyptians. In taking up the first of these two beliefs, the so-journ in the tomb, it will be necessary to understand the Egyptian notion of a person, and of those elements of the human personality which might survive death. The actual personality of the individual in life consisted, according to the Egyptian notion, in the visible body, and the invisible intelligence, the seat of the last being considered the “heart” or the “belly” which indeed furnished the chief designations for the intelligence. The maintenance of the departed, in theory at least through all time, was, however, a responsibility which the Egyptian dared not entrust exclusively to his surviving family or eventually to a posterity whose solicitude on his behalf must continue to wane and finally disappear altogether.
