FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS own ideas of heaven which one of their pictures of the future state represents as follows: In heaven the dead eat bread which never grows stale and drink wine which is never musty. They wear white apparel and sit upon thrones among the gods, who cluster around the tree of life near the lake in the field of peace. They wear the crowns which the gods give them, and no evil being or thing has any power to harm them in their new abode, where they will live with God forever.

According to one opinion, the Egyptian heaven was situated above the sky. It was separated from the earth by a great iron plate, to which lamps were fastened, these lamps being the stars. According to another theory, the heaven was in the delta, or in one of the oases. The sky was thought to be a cow, Hathor, whose four feet stood firm upon the soil; or else a vast face, in which the right eye was the sun and the left eye the moon. Some thought that the sky was the goddess Nut, whom the god of the atmosphere, Show, held aloof from her husband Keb, the earth, on whose back grew the plants and trees.

The ancient Egyptian idea of creation was that it began with the rising of the sun, which was brought about by a god, and men and women came from the tears which drop¬ ped from the eyes of that god. This is somewhat better than the old Chinese tradition of the world’s making. According to the latter, the god Pwanku chiselled out the universe, putting eighteen thousand years on the job. At the end of that time he died, and his head turned into mountains, his breath became the wind, and his voice the thunder. From his flesh came the fields, from his beard the stars, and from his skin and hair the trees. All miner¬ als originated from his teeth and bones. The rain is his 103