Egyptian Religion by Budge, Sir Wallis - 1959

Bell Publishing, NY, 1959. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. "The most important of the religious writings of the Egyptians, [The Book of the Dead] goes back, back, before the Egyptian dynasties. Parts of it, at least, were four thousand or five thousand years old when Jesus lived. 'The Book of the Dead' is a great collection of texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes composed for the benefit of the dead - spells and incantations, hymns and litanies, magical formulae and names, words of power and prayers, cut or painted on the walls of pyramids and tombs, and painted on coffins and sarcophagi and rolls of papyri." [Dust Jacket] "[The Book of the Dead] comprises both the Egyptian's extraordinary monotheism, with its commanding moral stature, and his coarsely primitive superstition, which run intertwined like threads of gold and hemp from the beginning." [Dust Jacket] "Egyptians possessed... a religion and a system of morality, which... stand second to none among those which have been developed by the greatest nations of the world" [Pub. Info] Reprint of London 1900 edition. 1ST THUS.