Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/474 (page 35)
    That the treatment of the dead was intimately associated with religion may be accepted as true. The only natural supposition is that endorsed by the learned Lenormant; it is, that the dogma of the resurrection of the body origin- ated the mummy practice. The priests, so long ago, taught the Egyptians that their souls lived hereafter. They added, that the animal soul, belonging to the body, and independent of the soul proper, would be one day re-united to the spiritual essence. As the destruction of the corpse might cause, to say the very least, some inconvenience to the soul inhabiting it, and thus peril the happy re-union, it became an object of intense interest to preserve the corpse till the liberated higher soul had performed its purgatorial work, and made fit for its return to the partner-soul of the body.