Excerpt from Popular Literature in Ancient Egypt

For many centuries past and until recently the civilised world was accustomed to regard the ancient Egyptians as a people leading a monoto nous and joyless life, unrippled by any passing breeze of ordinary human pleasure, and with minds entirely absorbed in meditations on death or in deep religious and philosophical specula tions. It was indebted for this picture in the first place to the allusions made by Greek authors to the wisdom of the Egyptians, while the austerity of Egyptian plastic representations Of gods and men, and the vital significance ascribed by this people to all rites and worship connected with the dead, pointed to the same conclusion. This view of the matter was confirmed by the tone of the pompous royal inscriptions and almost exclusively religious texts which were the earliest results of the deciphering of Egyptian.

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