"Thy fault will be expelled. Thy guilt will be wiped out by the weighing of the scales on the day of reckoning." This Biblical-sounding reference to Judgment Day is not what it seems to be a prediction by one of the gloomier Old Testament prophets. It is, instead, one of 1,185 hieroglyphic "spells," or sayings, which have been found on coffins that date back to the Middle Kingdom (2200-1800 B.C.) of ancient Egypt. Known collectively as the Coffin Texts, the spells contain the earliest known body of Egyptian teaching on ethics; what makes...
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