Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life
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Title: Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life
Author: Sir E. A. Wallis Budge
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EGYPTIAN IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE ***
BOOKS ON
EGYPT AND CHALDEA
BY
E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, M. A., LITT D., D. LIT.
_Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian
Antiquities in the British Museum_
AND
L. W. KING, M. A.
_Assistant in the Department of
Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities
in the British Museum_
Crown 8vo, 3S, 6d, net each
Vol I--EGYPTIAN RELIGION.
Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life By E. A. WALLIS BUDGE
Vol II--EGYPTIAN MAGIC.
By E. A. WALLIS BUDGE
Vol. III--EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE.
Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics By E. A. WALLIS BUDGE
Vol IV--BABYLONIAN RELIGION.
Babylonian Religion and Mythology. By L. W. King
Vol V--ASSYRIAN LANGUAGE.
Easy Lessons in the Cuneiform Texts By L. W. KING, M. A.
Vols VI, VII, VIII--THE BOOK OF THE DEAD.
an English Translation of the Chapters, Hymns, &c., of the Theban
Recension With Introduction, Notes, and numerous Illustrations By E. A.
WALLIS BUDGE, Litt. D.
Vols IX-XVI--A HISTORY OF EGYPT.
from the end of the Neolithic Period to the Death of Cleopatra VII, B.C.
30 By E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, Litt. D. 8 vols. Illustrated.
* * * * *
VOL. I.
EGYPTIAN IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE
PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
In the year 1894, Dr. Wallis Budge prepared for Messrs. Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trübner & Co. an elementary work on the Egyptian language,
entitled "First Steps in Egyptian," and two years later the companion
volume, "An Egyptian Reading Book," with transliterations of all the
texts printed in it, and a full vocabulary. The success of these works
proved that they had helped to satisfy a want long felt by students of
the Egyptian language, and as a similar want existed among students of
the languages written in the cuneiform character, Mr. L.W. King, of the
British Museum, prepared, on the same lines as the two books mentioned
above, an elementary work on the Assyrian and Babylonian languages
("First Steps in Assyrian"), which appeared in 1898. These works,
however, dealt mainly with the philological branch of Egyptology and
Assyriology, and it was impossible in the space allowed to explain much
that needed explanation in the other branches of those subjects--that is
to say, matters relating to the archaeology, history, religion, etc., of
the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. In answer to the numerous
requests which have been made, a series of short, popular handbooks on
the most important branches of Egyptology and Assyriology have been
prepared, and it is hoped that these will serve as introductions to the
larger works on these subjects. The present is the first volume of the
series, and the succeeding volumes will be published at short intervals,
and at moderate prices.
EGYPTIAN IDEAS
OF THE
FUTURE LIFE
BY
E.A. WALLIS BUDGE, M. A., LITT. D., D. LIT.
KEEPER Of THE EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES
OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
_THIRD EDITION_
1908
To SIR JOHN EVANS, K. C. B., D. C. L., F. R. S., ETC., ETC., ETC. IN
GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF MUCH FRIENDLY HELP AND ENCOURAGEMENT
PREFACE.
* * * * *
The following pages are intended to place before the reader in a handy
form an account of the principal ideas and beliefs held by the ancient
Egyptians concerning the resurrection and the future life, which is
derived wholly from native religious works. The literature of Egypt
which deals with these subjects is large and, as was to be expected, the
product of different periods which, taken together, cover several
thousands of years; and it is exceedingly difficult at times to
reconcile the statements and beliefs of a writer of one period with
those of a writer of another. Up to the present no systematic account of
the doctrine of the resurrection and of the future life has been
discovered, and there is no reason for hoping that such a thing will
ever be found, for the Egyptians do not appear to have thought that it
was necessary to write a work of the kind. The inherent difficulty of
the subject, and the natural impossibility that different men living in
different places and at different times should think alike on matters
which must, after all, belong always to the region of faith, render it
more than probable that no college of priests, however powerful, was
able to formulate a system of beliefs which would be received throughout
Egypt by the clergy and the laity alike, and would be copied by the
scribes as a final and authoritative work on Egyptian eschatology.
Besides this, the genius and structure of the Egyptian language are such
as to preclude the possibility of composing in it works of a
philosophical or metaphysical character in the true sense of the words.
In spite of these difficulties, however, it is possible to collect a
great deal of important information on the subject from the funereal and
religious works which have come down to us, especially concerning the
great central idea of immortality, which existed unchanged for thousands
of years, and formed the pivot upon which the religious and social life
of the ancient Egyptians actually turned. From the beginning to the end
of his life the Egyptian's chief thought was of the life beyond the
grave, and the hewing of his tomb in the rock, and the providing of its
furniture, every detail of which was prescribed by the custom of the
country, absorbed the best thoughts of his mind and a large share of his
worldly goods, and kept him ever mindful of the time when his mummified
body would be borne to his "everlasting house" in the limestone plateau
or hill.
The chief source of our information concerning the doctrine of the
resurrection and of the future life as held by the Egyptians is, of
course, the great collection of religious texts generally known by the
name of "Book of the Dead." The various recensions of these wonderful
compositions cover a period of more than five thousand years, and they
reflect faithfully not only the sublime beliefs, and the high ideals,
and the noble aspirations of the educated Egyptians, but also the
various superstitions and childish reverence for amulets, and magical
rites, and charms, which they probably inherited from their pre-dynastic
ancestors, and regarded as essentials for their salvation. It must be
distinctly understood that many passages and allusions in the Book of
the Dead still remain obscure, and that in some places any translator
will be at a difficulty in attempting to render certain, important words
into any modern European language. But it is absurd to talk of almost
the whole text of the Book of the Dead as being utterly corrupt, for
royal personages, and priests, and scribes, to say nothing of the
ordinary educated folk, would not have caused costly copies of a very
lengthy work to be multiplied, and illustrated by artists possessing the
highest skill, unless it had some meaning to them, and was necessary for
the attainment by them of the life which is beyond the grave. The
"finds" of recent years in Egypt have resulted in the recovery of
valuable texts whereby numerous difficulties have been cleared away; and
we must hope that the faults made in translating to-day may be corrected
by the discoveries of to-morrow. In spite of all difficulties, both
textual and grammatical, sufficient is now known of the Egyptian
religion to prove, with certainty, that the Egyptians possessed, some
six thousand years ago, a religion and a system of morality which, when
stripped of all corrupt accretions, stand second to none among those
which have been developed by the greatest nations of the world.
E. A. WALLIS BUDGE.
LONDON,
_August 21st_, 1899.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. THE BELIEF IN GOD ALMIGHTY
II. OSIRIS THE GOD OF THE RESURRECTION
III. THE "GODS" OF THE EGYPTIANS
IV. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD
V. THE RESURRECTION AND IMMORTALITY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
CHAPTER
I. THE CREATION
II. ISIS SUCKLING HORUS IN THE PAPYRUS SWAMP
III. THE SOUL OF OSIRIS AND THE SOUL OF R[=A] MEETING IN TATTU. R[=A],
IN THE FORM OF A CAT, CUTTING OFF THE HEAD OF THE SERPENT OF
DARKNESS
IV. THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD IN THE HALL OF MA[=A]TI
V. THE DECEASED BEING LED INTO THE PRESENCE OF OSIRIS
VI. THE SEKHET-AARU OR "ELYSIAN FIELDS"--
(1) FROM THE PAPYRUS OF NEBSENI
(2) FROM THE PAPYRUS OF ANI
(3) FROM THE PAPYRUS OF ANILAI
CHAPTER I.
THE BELIEF IN GOD ALMIGHTY.
A study of ancient Egyptian religious texts will convince the reader
that the Egyptians believed in One God, who was self-existent, immortal,
invisible, eternal, omniscient, almighty, and inscrutable; the maker of
the heavens, earth, and underworld; the creator of the sky and the sea,
men and women, animals and birds, fish and creeping things, trees and
plants, and the incorporeal beings who were the messengers that
fulfilled his wish and word. It is necessary to place this definition of
the first part of the belief of the Egyptian at the beginning of the
first chapter of this brief account of the principal religious ideas
which he held, for the whole of his theology and religion was based upon
it; and it is also necessary to add that, however far back we follow his
literature, we never seem to approach a time when he was without this
remarkable belief. It is true that he also developed polytheistic ideas
and beliefs, and that he cultivated them at certain periods of his
history with diligence, and to such a degree that the nations around,
and even the stranger in his country, were misled by his actions, and
described him as a polytheistic idolater. But notwithstanding all such
departures from observances, the keeping of which befitted those who
believed in God and his unity, this sublime idea was never lost sight
of; on the contrary, it is reproduced in the religious literature of all
periods. Whence came this remarkable characteristic of the Egyptian
religion no man can say, and there is no evidence whatsoever to guide us
in formulating the theory that it was brought into Egypt by immigrants
from the East, as some have said, or that it was a natural product of
the indigenous peoples who formed the population of the valley of the
Nile some ten thousand years ago, according to the opinion of others.
All that is known is that it existed there at a period so remote that it
is useless to attempt to measure by years the interval of time which has
elapsed since it grew up and established itself in the minds of men, and
that it is exceedingly doubtful if we shall ever have any very definite
knowledge on this interesting point.
But though we know nothing about the period of the origin in Egypt of
the belief in the existence of an almighty God who was One, the
inscriptions show us that this Being was called by a name which was
something like _Neter_, [Footnote: There is no _e_ in Egyptian, and this
vowel is added merely to make the word pronounceable.] the picture sign
for which was an axe-head, made probably of stone, let into a long
wooden handle. The coloured picture character shews that the axe-head
was fastened into the handle by thongs of leather or string, and judging
by the general look of the object it must have been a formidable weapon
in strong, skilled hands. A theory has recently been put forward to the
effect that the picture character represents a stick with a bit of
coloured rag tied to the, but it will hardly commend itself to any
archaeologist. The lines which cross the side of the axe-head represent
string or strips of leather, and indicate that it was made of stone
which, being brittle, was liable to crack; the picture characters which
delineate the object in the latter dynasties shew that metal took the
place of the stone axe-head, and being tough the new substance needed no
support. The mightiest man in the prehistoric days was he who had the
best weapon, and knew how to wield it with the greatest effect; when the
prehistoric hero of many fights and victories passed to his rest, his
own or a similar weapon was buried with him to enable him to wage war
successfully in the next world. The mightiest man had the largest axe,
and the axe thus became the symbol of the mightiest man. As he, by
reason of the oft-told narrative of his doughty deeds at the prehistoric
camp fire at eventide, in course of time passed from the rank of a hero
to that of a god, the axe likewise passed from being the symbol of a
hero to that of a god. Far away back in the early dawn of civilization
in Egypt, the object which I identify as an axe may have had some other
signification, but if it had, it was lost long before the period of the
rule of the dynasties in that country.
Passing now to the consideration of the meaning of the name for God,
_neter_, we find that great diversity of opinion exists among
Egyptologists on the subject. Some, taking the view that the equivalent
of the word exists in Coptic, under the form of _Nuti_, and because
Coptic is an ancient Egyptian dialect, have sought to deduce its meaning
by seeking in that language for the root from which the word may be
derived. But all such attempts have had no good result, because the word
_Nuti_ stands by itself, and instead of being derived from a Coptic root
is itself the equivalent of the Egyptian _neter_, [Footnote: The letter
_r_ has dropped out in Coptic through phonetic decay.] and was taken
over by the translators of the Holy Scriptures from that language to
express the words "God" and "Lord." The Coptic root _nomti_ cannot in
any way be connected with _nuti_, and the attempt to prove that the two
are related was only made with the view of helping to explain the
fundamentals of the Egyptian religion by means of Sanskrit and other
Aryan analogies. It is quite possible that the word _neter_ means
"strength," "power," and the like, but these are only some of its
derived meanings, and we have to look in the hieroglyphic inscriptions
for help in order to determine its most probable meaning. The eminent
French Egyptologist, E. de Rougé, connected the name of God, _neter_,
with the other word _neter_, "renewal" or "renovation," and it would,
according to his view, seem as if the fundamental idea of God was that
of the Being who had the power to renew himself perpetually--or in other
words, "self-existence." The late Dr. H. Brugsch partly accepted this
view, for he defined _neter_ as being "the active power which produces
and creates things in regular recurrence; which bestows new life upon
them, and gives back to them their youthful vigour." [Footnote:
_Religion und Mythologie_, p. 93.] There seems to be no doubt that,
inasmuch as it is impossible to find any one word which will render
_neter_ adequately and satisfactorily, "self-existence" and "possessing
the power to renew life indefinitely," may together be taken as the
equivalent of _neter_ in our own tongue, M. Maspero combats rightly the
attempt to make "strong" the meaning of _neter_ (masc.), or _neterit_
(fem.) in these words: "In the expressions 'a town _neterit_ 'an arm
_neteri_,' ... is it certain that 'a strong city,' 'a strong arm,' give
us the primitive sense of _neter_? When among ourselves one says 'divine
music,' 'a piece of divine poetry,' 'the divine taste of a peach,' 'the
divine beauty of a woman,' [the word] divine is a hyperbole, but it
would be a mistake to declare that it originally meant 'exquisite'
because in the phrases which I have imagined one could apply it as
'exquisite music,' 'a piece of exquisite poetry,' 'the exquisite taste
of a peach,' 'the exquisite beauty of a woman.' Similarly, in Egyptian,
'a town _neterit_ is 'a divine town;' 'an arm _netsri_' is 'a divine
arm,' and _neteri_ is employed metaphorically in Egyptian as is [the
word] 'divine' in French, without its being any more necessary to
attribute to [the word] _neteri_ the primitive meaning of 'strong,' than
it is to attribute to [the word] 'divine' the primitive meaning of
'exquisite.'" [Footnote: _La Mythologie Egyptienne_, p. 215.] It may be,
of course, that _neter_ had another meaning which is now lost, but it
seems that the great difference between God and his messengers and
created things is that he is the Being who is self-existent and
immortal, whilst they are not self-existent and are mortal.
Here it will be objected by those who declare that the ancient Egyptian
idea of God is on a level with that evolved by peoples and tribes who
stand comparatively little removed from very intelligent animals, that
such high conceptions as self-existence and immortality belong to a
people who are already on a high grade of development and civilization.
This is precisely the case with the Egyptians when we first know them.
As a matter of fact, we know nothing of their ideas of God before they
developed sufficiently to build the monuments which we know they built,
and before they possessed the religion, and civilization, and complex
social system which their writings have revealed to us. In the remotest
prehistoric times it is probable that their views about God and the
future life were little better than those of the savage tribes, now
living, with whom some have compared them. The primitive god was an
essential feature of the family, and the fortunes of the god varied with
the fortunes of the family; the god of the city in which a man lived was
regarded as the ruler of the city, and the people of that city no more
thought of neglecting to provide him with what they considered to be due
to his rank and position than they thought of neglecting to supply their
own wants. In fact the god of the city became the centre of the social
fabric of that city, and every inhabitant thereof inherited
automatically certain duties, the neglect of which brought stated pains
and penalties upon him. The remarkable peculiarity of the Egyptian
religion is that the primitive idea of the god of the city is always
cropping up in it, and that is the reason why we find semi-savage ideas
of God side by side with some of the most sublime conceptions, and it of
course underlies all the legends of the gods wherein they possess all
the attributes of men and women. The Egyptian in his semi-savage state
was neither better nor worse than any other man in the same stage of
civilization, but he stands easily first among the nations in his
capacity for development, and in his ability for evolving conceptions
concerning God and the future life, which are claimed as the peculiar
product of the cultured nations of our time.
We must now, however, see how the word for God, _neter_, is employed in
religious texts and in works which contain moral precepts. In the text
of Unas, [Footnote: Ed Maspero, _Pyramides de Saqqarah_; p. 25.] a king
who reigned about B.C. 3300, we find the passage:--"That which is sent
by thy _ka_ cometh to thee, that which is sent by thy father cometh to
thee, that which is sent by R[=a] cometh to thee, and it arriveth in the
train of thy R[=a]. Thou art pure, thy bones are the gods and the
goddesses of heaven, thou existest at the side of God, thou art
unfastened, thou comest forth towards thy soul, for every evil word (or
thing) which hath been written in the name of Unas hath been done away."
And, again, in the text of Teta, [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 113.] in the
passage which refers to the place in the eastern part of heaven "where
the gods give birth unto themselves, where that to which they give birth
is born, and where they renew their youth," it is said of this king,
"Teta standeth up in the form of the star...he weigheth words (_or_
trieth deeds), and behold God hearkeneth unto that which he saith."
Elsewhere [Footnote: Ed. Maspero, _Pyramides da Saqqarah_, p. 111.] in
the same text we read, "Behold, Teta hath arrived in the height of
heaven, and the _henmemet_ beings have seen him; the Semketet [Footnote:
The morning boat of the sun.] boat knoweth him, and it is Teta who
saileth it, and the M[=a]ntchet [Footnote: The evening boat of the sun.]
boat calleth unto him, and it is Teta who bringeth it to a standstill.
Teta hath seen his body in the Semketet boat, he knoweth the uraeus
which is in the M[=a]ntchet boat, and God hath called him in his
name...and hath taken him in to R[=a]." And again [Footnote: _Ibid_., p.
150.] we have: "Thou hast received the form (_or_ attribute) of God, and
thou hast become great therewith before the gods"; and of Pepi I., who
reigned about B.C. 3000, it is said, "This Pepi is God, the son of God."
[Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 222.] Now in these passages the allusion is to
the supreme Being in the next world, the Being who has the power to
invoke and to obtain a favourable reception for the deceased king by
R[=a], the Sun-god, the type and symbol of God. It may, of course, be
urged that the word _neter_ here refers to Osiris, but it is not
customary to speak of this god in such a way in the texts; and even if
we admit that it does, it only shows that the powers of God have been
attributed to Osiris, and that he was believed to occupy the position in
respect of R[=a] and the deceased which the supreme Being himself
occupied. In the last two extracts given above we might read "a god"
instead of "God," but there is no object in the king receiving the form
or attribute of a nameless god; and unless Pepi becomes the son of God;
the honour which the writer of that text intends to ascribe to the king
becomes little and even ridiculous.
Passing from religious texts to works containing moral precepts, we find
much light thrown upon the idea of God by the writings of the early
sages of Egypt. First and foremost among these are the "Precepts of
Kaqemna" and the "Precepts of Ptah-hetep," works which were composed as
far back as B.C. 3000. The oldest copy of them which we possess is,
unfortunately, not older than B.C. 2500, but this fact in no way affects
our argument. These "precepts" are intended to form a work of direction
and guidance for a young man in the performance of his duty towards the
society in which he lived and towards his God. It is only fair to say
that the reader will look in vain in them for the advice which is found
in writings of a similar character composed at a later period; but as a
work intended to demonstrate the "whole duty of man" to the youth of the
time when the Great Pyramid was still a new building, these "precepts"
are very remarkable. The idea of God held by Ptah-hetep is illustrated
by the following passages:--
1. "Thou shalt make neither man nor woman to be afraid, for God is
opposed thereto; and if any man shall say that he will live thereby,
He will make him to want bread."
2. "As for the nobleman who possesseth abundance of goods, he may act
according to his own dictates; and he may do with himself that which
he pleaseth; if he will do nothing at all, that also is as he
pleaseth. The nobleman by merely stretching out his hand doeth that
which mankind (_or_ a person) cannot attain to; but inasmuch as the
eating of bread is according to the plan of God, this cannot be
gainsaid."
3. "If thou hast ground to till, labour in the field which God hath
given thee; rather than fill thy mouth with that which belongeth to
thy neighbours it is better to terrify him that hath possessions [to
give them unto thee]."
4. "If thou abasest thyself in the service of a perfect man, thy
conduct shall be fair before God."
5. "If thou wouldst be a wise man, make thou thy son to be pleasing
unto God."
6. "Satisfy those who depend upon thee as far as thou art able so to
do; this should be done by those whom God hath favoured."
7. "If, having been of no account, thou hast become great; and if,
having been poor, thou hast become rich; and if thou hast become
governor of the city, be not hard-hearted on account of thy
advancement, because thou hast become merely the guardian of the
things which God hath provided."
8. "What is loved of God is obedience; God hateth disobedience."
9. "Verily a good son is of the gifts of God." [Footnote: The text was
published by Prisse d'Avennes, entitled _Facsimile d'un papyrus
égyptien en caractères hieratiques_, Paris, 1847. For a translation of
the whole work, see Virey, _études sur le Papyrus Prisse_, Paris,
1887.]
The same idea of God, but considerably amplified in some respects, may
be found in the _Maxims of Khensu-Hetep_, a work which was probably
composed during the XVIIIth dynasty. This work has been studied in
detail by a number of eminent Egyptologists, and though considerable
difference of opinion has existed among them in respect of details and
grammatical niceties, the general sense of the maxims has been clearly
established. To illustrate the use of the word _neter_, the following
passages have been chosen from it:[Footnote: They are given with
interlinear transliteration and translation in my _Papyrus of Ani_, p.
lxxxv. ff., where references to the older literature on the subject will
be found.]--
1. "God magnifieth his name."
2. "What the house of God hateth is much speaking. Pray thou with a
loving heart all the petitions which are in secret. He will perform
thy business, he will hear that which thou sayest and will accept
thine offerings."
3. "God decreeth the right."
4. "When thou makest an offering unto thy God, guard thou against the
things which are an abomination unto him. Behold thou his plans with
thine eye, and devote thyself to the adoration of his name. He giveth
souls unto millions of forms, and him that magnifieth him doth he
magnify."
5. "If thy mother raise her hands to God he will hear her prayers [and
rebuke thee]."
7. "Give thyself to God, and keep thou thyself daily for God."
Now, although the above passages prove the exalted idea which the
Egyptians held of the supreme Being, they do not supply us with any of
the titles and epithets which they applied to him; for these we must
have recourse to the fine hymns and religious meditations which form so
important a part of the "Book of the Dead." But before we quote from
them, mention must be made of the _neteru_, _i.e._, the beings or
existences which in some way partake of the nature or character of God,
and are usually called "gods." The early nations that came in contact
with the Egyptians usually misunderstood the nature of these beings, and
several modern Western writers have done the same. When we examine these
"gods" closely, they are found to be nothing more nor less than forms,
or manifestations, or phases, or attributes, of one god, that god being
R[=a] the Sun-god, who, it must be remembered, was the type and symbol
of God. Nevertheless, the worship of the _neteru_ by the Egyptians has
been made the base of the charge of "gross idolatry" which has been
brought against them, and they have been represented by some as being on
the low intellectual level of savage tribes. It is certain that from the
earliest times one of the greatest tendencies of the Egyptian religion
was towards monotheism, and this tendency may be observed in all
important texts down to the latest period; it is also certain that a
kind of polytheism existed in Egypt side by side with monotheism from
very early times. Whether monotheism or polytheism be the older, it is
useless in our present state of knowledge to attempt to enquire.
According to Tiele, the religion of Egypt was at the beginning
polytheistic, but developed in two opposite directions: in the one
direction gods were multiplied by the addition of local gods, and in the
other the Egyptians drew nearer and nearer to monotheism. [Footnote:
_Geschiedenis van den Godedienst in de Oudheid_, Amsterdam, 1893, p. 25.
A number of valuable remarks on this subject are given by Lieblein in
_Egyptian Religion_, p. 10.] Dr. Wiedemann takes the view that three
main elements may be recognized in the Egyptian religion: (1) A solar
monotheism, that is to say one god, the creator of the universe, who
manifests his power especially in the sun and its operations; (2) A cult
of the regenerating power of nature, which expresses itself in the
adoration of ithyphallic gods, of fertile goddesses, and of a series of
animals and of various deities of vegetation; (3) A perception of an
anthropomorphic divinity, the life of whom in this world and in the
world beyond this was typical of the ideal life of man [Footnote: _Le
Livre dei Moris_ (Review in _Muséon_, Tom. xiii. 1893).]--this last
divinity being, of course, Osiris. But here again, as Dr. Wiedemann
says, it is an unfortunate fact that all the texts which we possess are,
in respect of the period of the origin of the Egyptian religion,
comparatively late, and therefore in them we find these three elements
mixed together, along with a number of foreign matters, in such a way as
to make it impossible to discover which of them is the oldest. No better
example can be given of the loose way in which different ideas about a
god and God are mingled in the same text than the "Negative Confession"
in the hundred and twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of the Dead. Here,
in the oldest copies of the passages known, the deceased says, "I have
not cursed God" (1. 38), and a few lines after (1. 42) he adds, "I have
not thought scorn of the god living in my city." It seems that here we
have indicated two different layers of belief, and that the older is
represented by the allusion to the "god of the city," in which case it
would go back to the time when the Egyptian lived in a very primitive
fashion. If we assume that God (who is mentioned in line 38) is Osiris,
it does not do away with the fact that he was regarded as a being
entirely different from the "god of the city" and that he was of
sufficient importance to have one line of the "Confession" devoted to
him. The Egyptian saw no incongruity in setting references to the "gods"
side by side with allusions to a god whom we cannot help identifying
with the Supreme Being and the Creator of the world; his ideas and
beliefs have, in consequence, been sadly misrepresented, and by certain
writers he has been made an object of ridicule. What, for example, could
be a more foolish description of Egyptian worship than the following?
"Who knows not, O Volusius of Bithynia, the sort of monsters Egypt, in
her infatuation, worships. One part venerates the crocodile; another
trembles before an ibis gorged with serpents. The image of a sacred
monkey glitters in gold, where the magic chords sound from Memnon broken
in half, and ancient Thebes lies buried in ruins, with her hundred
gates. In one place they venerate sea-fish, in another river-fish;
there, whole towns worship a dog: no one Diana. It is an impious act to
violate or break with the teeth a leek or an onion. O holy nations!
whose gods grow for them in their gardens! Every table abstains from
animals that have wool: it is a crime there to kill a kid. But human
flesh is lawful food."
[Footnote: Juvenal, Satire XV. (Evans' translation in Bohn's Series, p.
180). Led astray by Juvenal, our own good George Herbert (_Church
Militant_) wrote:--
"At first he (_i.e._, Sin) got to Egypt, and did sow
Gardens of gods, which every year did grow
Fresh and fine deities. They were at great cost,
Who for a god clearly a sallet lost.
Ah, what a thing is man devoid of grace,
Adoring garlic with an humble face,
Begging his food of that which he may eat,
Starving the while he worshippeth his meat!
Who makes a root his god, how low is he,
If God and man be severed infinitely!
What wretchedness can give him any room,
Whose house is foul, while he adores his broom?"]
The epithets which the Egyptians applied to their gods also bear
valuable testimony concerning the ideas which they held about God. We
have already said that the "gods" are only forms, manifestations, and
phases of R[=a], the Sun-god, who was himself the type and symbol of
God, and it is evident from the nature of these epithets that they were
only applied to the "gods" because they represented some qualify or
attribute which they would have applied to God had it been their custom
to address Him. Let us take as examples the epithets which are applied
to H[=a]pi the god of the Nile. The beautiful hymn [Footnote: The whole
hymn has been published by Maspero in _Hymns au Nil_, Paris, 1868.] to
this god opens as follows:--
"Homage to thee, O H[=a]pi! Thou comest forth in this land, and dost
come in peace to make Egypt to live, O thou hidden one, thou guide of
the darkness whensoever it is thy pleasure to be its guide. Thou
waterest the fields which R[=a] hath created, thou makest all animals
to live, thou makest the land to drink without ceasing; thou
descendest the path of heaven, thou art the friend of meat and drink,
thou art the giver of the grain, and thou makest every place of work
to flourish, O Ptah! ... If thou wert to be overcome in heaven the
gods would fall down headlong, and mankind would perish. Thou makest
the whole earth to be opened (_or_ ploughed up) by the cattle, and
prince and peasant lie down to rest.... His disposition (_or_ form) is
that of Khnemu; when he shineth upon the earth there is rejoicing, for
all people are glad, the mighty man (?) receiveth his meat, and every
tooth hath food to consume."
After praising him for what he does for mankind and beasts, and for
making the herb to grow for the use of all men, the text says:--
"He cannot be figured in stone; he is not to be seen in the sculptured
images upon which men place the united crowns of the South and the
North furnished with uraei; neither works nor offerings can be made to
him; and he cannot be made to come forth from his secret place. The
place where he liveth is unknown; he is not to be found in inscribed
shrines; there existeth no habitation which can contain him; and thou
canst not conceive his form in thy heart."
First we notice that Hapi is addressed by the names of Ptah and Khnemu,
not because the writer thought these three gods were one, but because
Hapi as the great supplier of water to Egypt became, as it were, a
creative god like Ptah and Khnemu. Next we see that it is stated to be
impossible to depict him in paintings, or even to imagine what his form
may be, for he is unknown and his abode cannot be found, and no place
can contain him. But, as a matter of fact, several pictures and
sculptures of H[=a]pi have been preserved, and we know that he is
generally depicted in the form of two gods; one has upon his head a
papyrus plant, and the other a lotus plant, the former being the
Nile-god of the South, and the latter the Nile-god of the North.
Elsewhere he is portrayed in the form of a large man having the breasts
of a woman. It is quite clear, then, that the epithets which we have
quoted are applied to him merely as a form of God. In another hymn,
which was a favourite in the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, H[=a]pi is
called "One," and is said to have created himself; but as he is later on
in the text identified with R[=a] the epithets which belong to the
Sun-god are applied to him. The late Dr. H. Brugsch collected [Footnote:
_Religion and Mythologie_, pp. 96-99.] a number of the epithets which
are applied to the gods, from texts of all periods; and from these we
may see that the ideas and beliefs of the Egyptians concerning God were
almost identical with those of the Hebrews and Muhammadans at later
periods. When classified these epithets read thus:--
"God is One and alone, and none other existeth with Him; God is the
One, the One Who hath made all things.
"God is a spirit, a hidden spirit, the spirit of spirits, the great
spirit of the Egyptians, the divine spirit.
"God is from the beginning, and He hath been from the beginning; He
hath existed from of old and was when nothing else had being. He
existed when nothing else existed, and what existeth He created after
He had come into being. He is the father of beginnings.
"God is the eternal One, He is eternal and infinite; and endureth for
ever and aye; He hath endured for countless ages, and He shall endure
to all eternity.
"God is the hidden Being, and no man hath known His form. No man hath
been able to seek out His likeness; He is hidden, from gods and men,
and He is a mystery unto His creatures.
"No man knoweth how to know Him, His name remaineth hidden; His name
is a mystery unto His children. His names are innumerable, they are
manifold and none knoweth their number.
"God is truth, and He liveth by truth, and he feedeth thereon. He is
the King of truth, He resteth upon truth, He fashioneth truth, and He
executeth truth throughout all the world.
"God is life, and through Him only man liveth, He giveth life to man,
and He breatheth the breath of life into his nostrils.
"God is father and mother, the father of fathers, and the mother of
mothers. He begetteth, but was never begotten; He produceth, but was
never produced He begat Himself and produced Himself. He createth, but
was never created; He is the maker of His own form, and the fashioner
of His own body.
"God Himself is existence He liveth in all things, and liveth upon all
things. He endureth without increase or diminution, He multiplieth
Himself millions of times, and He possesseth multitudes of forms and
multitudes of members.
"God hath made the universe, and He hath created all that therein is:
He is the Creator of what is in this world, of what was, of what is,
and of what shall be. He is the Creator of the world, and it was He
Who fashioned it with His hands before there was any beginning; and He
stablished it with that which went forth from Him. He is the Creator
of the heavens and the earth; the Creator of the heavens, and the
earth, and the deep; the Creator of the heavens, and the earth, and
the deep, and the waters, and the mountains. God hath stretched out
the heavens and founded the earth. What His heart conceived came to
pass straightway, and when He had spoken His word came to pass, and it
shall endure for ever.
"God is the father of the gods, and the father of the father of all
deities; He made His voice to sound, and the deities came into being,
and the gods sprang into existence after He had spoken with His mouth.
He formed mankind and fashioned the gods. He is the great Master, the
primeval Potter Who turned men and gods out of His hands, and He
formed men and gods upon a potter's table.
"The heavens rest upon His head, and the earth supporteth His feet;
heaven hideth His spirit, the earth hideth His form, and the
underworld shutteth up the mystery of Him within it. His body is like
the air, heaven resteth upon His head, and the new inundation [of the
Nile] containeth His form.
"God is merciful unto those who reverence Him, and He heareth him that
calleth upon Him. He protecteth the weak against the strong, and He
heareth the cry of him that is bound in fetters; He judgeth between
the mighty and the weak, God knoweth him that knoweth Him, He
rewardeth him that serveth Him, and He protecteth him that followeth
Him."
We have now to consider the visible emblem, and the type and symbol of
God, namely the Sun-god R[=a], who was worshipped in Egypt in
prehistoric times. According to the writings of the Egyptians, there was
a time when neither heaven nor earth existed, and when nothing had being
except the boundless primeval [Footnote: See Brugsch, _Religion_, p.
101.] water, which was, however, shrouded with thick darkness. In this
condition the primeval water remained for a considerable time,
notwithstanding that it contained within it the germs of the things
which afterwards came into existence in this world, and the world
itself. At length the spirit of the primeval water felt the desire for
creative activity, and having uttered the word, the world sprang
straightway into being in the form which had already been depicted in
the mind of the spirit before he spake the word which resulted in its
creation. The next act of creation, was the formation of a germ, or egg,
from which sprang R[=a], the Sun-god, within whose shining form was
embodied the almighty power of the divine spirit.
Such was the outline of creation as described by the late Dr. H.
Brugsch, and it is curious to see how closely his views coincide with a
chapter in the _Papyrus of Nesi Amsu_ preserved in the British Museum.
[Footnote: No. 10,188. See my transcript and translation of the whole
papyrus in _Archaeologia_ vol. 52, London, 1801.] In the third section
of this papyrus we find a work which was written with the sole object of
overthrowing [=A]pep, the great enemy of R[=a], and in the composition
itself we find two versions of the chapter which describes the creation
of the earth and all things therein. The god Neb-er-tcher is the
speaker, and he says:--
"I evolved the evolving of evolutions. I evolved myself under the form
of the evolutions of the god Khepera, which were evolved at the
beginning of all time. I evolved with the evolutions of the god
Khepera; I evolved by the evolution of evolutions--that is to say, I
developed myself from the primeval matter which I made, I developed
myself out of the primeval matter. My name is Ausares (Osiris), the
germ of primeval matter. I have wrought my will wholly in this earth,
I have spread abroad and filled it, I have strengthened it [with] my
hand. I was alone, for nothing had been brought forth; I had not then
emitted from myself either Shu or Tefnut. I uttered my own name, as a
word of power, from my own mouth, and I straightway evolved myself. I
evolved myself under the form of the evolutions of the god Khepera,
and I developed myself out of the primeval matter which has evolved
multitudes of evolutions from the beginning of time. Nothing existed
on this earth then, and I made all things. There was none other who
worked with me at that time. I performed all evolutions there by means
of that divine Soul which I fashioned there, and which had remained
inoperative in the watery abyss. I found no place there whereon to
stand. But I was strong in my heart, and I made a foundation for
myself, and I made everything which was made. I was alone. I made a
foundation for my heart (_or_ will), and I created multitudes of
things which evolved themselves like unto the evolutions of the god
Khepera, and their offspring came into being from the evolutions of
their births. I emitted from myself the gods Shu and Tefnut, and from
being One I became Three; they [Illustration: THE CREATION. The god Nu
rising out of the primeval water and bearing in his hands the boat of
R[=a], the Sun-god, who is accompanied by a number of deities. In the
upper portion of the scene is the region of the underworld which is
enclosed by the body of Osiris, on whose head stands the goddess Nut
with arms stretched out to receive the disk of the sun.] sprang from
me, and came into existence in this earth. ...Shu and Tefnut brought
forth Seb and Nut, and Nut brought forth Osiris, Horus-khent-an-maa,
Sut, Isis, and Nephthya at one birth."
The fact of the existence of two versions of this remarkable Chapter
proves that the composition is much older than the papyrus [Footnote:
About B.C. 300.] in which it is found, and the variant readings which
occur in each make it certain that the Egyptian scribes had difficulty
in understanding what they were writing. It may be said that this
version of the cosmogony is incomplete because it does not account for
the origin of any of the gods except those who belong to the cycle of
Osiris, and this objection is a valid one; but in this place we are only
concerned to shew that R[=a], the Sun-god, was evolved from the primeval
abyss of water by the agency of the god Khepera, who brought this result
about by pronouncing his own name. The great cosmic gods, such as Ptah
and Khnemu, of whom mention will be made later, are the offspring of
another set of religious views, and the cosmogony in which these play
the leading parts is entirely different. We must notice, in passing,
that the god whose words we have quoted above declares that he evolved
himself under the form, of Khepera, and that his name is Osiris, "the
primeval matter of primeval matter," and that, as a result, Osiris is
identical with Khepera in respect of his evolutions and new births. The
word rendered "evolutions" is _kheperu_, literally "rollings"; and that
rendered "primeval matter" is _paut_, the original "stuff" out of which
everything was made. In both versions we are told that men and women
came into being from the tears which fell from the "Eye" of Khepera,
that is to say from the Sun, which, the god says, "I made take to up its
place in my face, and afterwards it ruled the whole earth."
We have seen how R[=a] has become the visible type and symbol of God,
and the creator of the world and of all that is therein; we may now
consider the position which he held with, respect to the dead. As far
back as the period of the IVth dynasty, about B.C. 3700, he was regarded
as the great god of heaven, and the king of all the gods, and divine
beings, and of the beatified dead who dwelt therein. The position of the
beatified in heaven is decided by R[=a], and of all the gods there
Osiris only appears to have the power to claim protection for his
followers; the offerings which the deceased would make to R[=a] are
actually presented to him by Osiris. At one time the Egyptian's greatest
hope seems to have been that he might not only become "God, the son of
God," by adoption, but that R[=a] would become actually his father. For
in the text of Pepi I, [Footnote: Ed. Maspero, line 570.] it is said:
"Pepi is the son of R[=a] who loveth him; and he goeth forth and raiseth
himself up to heaven. R[=a] hath begotten Pepi, and he goeth forth and
raiseth himself up to heaven. R[=a] hath conceived Pepi, and he goeth
forth and raiseth himself up to heaven. R[=a] hath given birth, to
Pepi, and he goeth forth and raiseth himself up to heaven."
Substantially these ideas remained the same from the earliest to the
latest times, and R[=a] maintained his position as the great head of the
companies, notwithstanding the rise of Amen into prominence, and the
attempt to make Aten the dominant god of Egypt by the so-called "Disk
worshippers." The following good typical examples of Hymns to R[=a] are
taken from the oldest copies of the Theban Recension of the Book of the
Dead.
I. FROM THE PAPYRUS OF ANI. [Footnote: See _The Chapters of Coming Forth
by Day_, p. 3.]
"Homage to thee, O thou who hast come as Khepera, Khepera the creator
of the gods. Thou risest and thou shinest, and thou makest light to be
in thy mother Nut (_i.e._, the sky); thou art crowned king of the
gods. Thy mother Nut doeth an act of homage unto thee with both her
hands. The laud of Manu (_i.e._, the land where the sun sets)
receiveth thee with satisfaction, and the goddess Ma[=a]t embraceth
thee both, at morn and at eve. [Footnote: _i.e._, Ma[=a]t, the goddess
of law, order, regularity, and the like, maketh the sun to rise each
day in his appointed place and at his appointed time with absolute and
unfailing regularity.] Hail, all ye gods of the Temple of the Soul,
[Footnote: _i.e._, the soul referred to above in the account of the
creation; see p. 24.] who weigh heaven and earth in the balance, and
who provide divine food in abundance! Hail, Tatunen, thou One, thou
Creator of mankind and Maker of the substance of the gods of the south
and of the north, of the west and of the east! O come ye and acclaim
R[=a], the lord of heaven and the Creator of the gods, and adore ye
him in his beautiful form as he cometh in the morning in his divine
bark.
"O R[=a], those who dwell in the heights and those who dwell in the
depths adore thee. The god Thoth and the goddess Ma[=a]t have marked
out for thee [thy course] for each and every day. Thine enemy the
Serpent hath been given over to the fire, the serpent-fiend Sebau hath
fallen down headlong; his arms have been bound in chains, and thou
hast hacked off his legs; and the sons of impotent revolt shall
nevermore rise up against thee. The Temple of the Aged One [Footnote:
_i.e._, R[=a] of Heliopolis.] (_i.e._, R[=a]) keepeth festival, and
the voice of those who rejoice is in the mighty dwelling. The gods
exult when they see thy rising, O R[=a], and when thy beams flood the
world with light. The Majesty of the holy god goeth forth and
advanceth even unto the land of Manu; he maketh brilliant the earth at
his birth each day; he journeyeth on to the place where he was
yesterday."
II. FROM THE PAPYRUS OF HUNEFER. [Footnote: From the Papyrus of Hunefer
(Brit. Mus. No. 9901).]
"Homage to thee, O thou who art R[=a] when thou risest and Temu when
thou settest. Thou risest, thou risest, thou shinest, thou shinest, O
thou who art crowned king of the gods. Thou art the lord of heaven,
thou art the lord of earth; thou art the creator of those who dwell in
the heights, and of those who dwell in the depths. Thou art the One
God who came into being in the beginning of time. Thou didst create
the earth, thou didst fashion man, thou didst make the watery abyss of
the sky, thou didst form Hapi (_i.e._, the Nile), thou didst create
the great deep, and thou dost give life unto all that therein is. Thou
hast knit together the mountains, thou hast made mankind and the
beasts of the field to come into being, thou hast made the heavens and
the earth. Worshipped be thou whom the goddess Maat embraceth at morn
and at eve. Thou dost travel across the sky with thy heart swelling
with joy; the great deep of heaven is content thereat. The
serpent-fiend Nak [Footnote: A name of the Serpent of darkness which
R[=a] slew daily.] hath fallen, and his arms are cut off. The Sektet
[Footnote: The boat in which R[=a] sailed from noon to sunset.] boat
receiveth fair winds, and the heart of him that is in the shrine
thereof rejoiceth.
"Thou art crowned Prince of heaven, and thou art the One [dowered with
all sovereignty] who appearest in the sky. R[=a] is he who is true of
voice. [Footnote: _i.e._, whatsoever R[=a] commandeth taketh place
straightway; see the Chapter on the Judgment of the Dead, p. 110.]
Hail, thou divine youth, thou heir of everlastingness, thou
self-begotten One! Hail, thou who didst give thyself birth! Hail, One,
thou mighty being, of myriad forms and aspects, thou king of the
world, prince of Annu (Heliopolis), lord of eternity, and ruler of
everlastingness! The company of the gods rejoice when thou risest and
dost sail across the sky, O thou who art exalted in the Sektet boat."
"Homage to thee, O Amen-R[=a], [Footnote: On the god Amen, see the
chapter, "The Gods of the Egyptians."] who dost rest upon Maat;
[Footnote: _i.e._, "thy existence, and thy risings and settings are
ordered and defined by fixed, unchanging, and unalterable law."] thou
passest over heaven and every face seeth thee. Thou dost wax great as
thy Majesty doth advance, and thy rays are upon all faces. Thou art
unknown, and no tongue can declare thy likeness; thou thyself alone
[canst do this]. Thou art One... Men praise thee in thy name, and they
swear by thee, for thou art lord over them. Thou hearest with thine
ears, and thou seest with thine eyes. Millions of years have gone over
the world. I cannot tell the number of those through which thou hast
passed. Thy heart hath decreed a day of happiness in thy name of
'Traveller.' Thou dost pass over and dost travel through untold spaces
[requiring] millions and hundreds of thousands of years [to pass
over]; thou passest through them in peace, and thou steerest thy way
across the watery abyss to the place which thou lovest; this thou
doest in one little moment of time, and then thou dost sink down and
dost make an end of the hours."
III. FROM THE PAPYRUS OF ANI. [Footnote: Plate 20.]
The following beautiful composition, part hymn and part prayer, is of
exceptional interest.
"Hail, thou Disk, thou lord of rays, who risest on the horizon day by
day! Shine thou with thy beams of light upon the face of Osiris Ani,
who is true of voice; for he singeth hymns of praise unto thee at
dawn, and he maketh thee to set at eventide with words of adoration,
May the soul of Ani come forth with thee into heaven, may he go forth
in the M[=a]tet boat, may he come into port in the Sektet boat, and
may he cleave his path among the never-resting stars in the heavens.
"Osiris Ani, being in peace and triumph, adoreth his lord, the lord of
eternity, saying, 'Homage to thee, O Heru-Khuti (Harmachis), who art
the god Khepera, the self-created one; when thou risest on the horizon
and sheddest thy beams of light upon the lands of the North and of the
South, thou art beautiful, yea beautiful, and all the gods rejoice
when they behold thee, the king of heaven. The goddess Nebt-Unnut is
stablished upon thy head; and her uraei of the South and of the North
are upon thy brow; she taketh up her place before thee. The god. Thoth
is stablished in the bows of thy boat to destroy utterly all thy foes.
Those who are in the Tuat (underworld) come forth to meet thee, and
they bow low in homage as they come towards thee, to behold thy
beautiful form. And I have come before thee that I may be with thee to
behold thy Disk each day. May I not be shut up [in the tomb], may I
not be turned back, may the limbs of my body be made new again when I
view thy beauties, even as [are those of] all thy favoured ones,
because I am one of those who worshipped thee upon earth. May I come
unto the land of eternity, may I come even unto the everlasting land,
for behold, O my lord, this hast thou ordained for me.'
"'Homage to thee, O thou who risest in thy horizon as R[=a], thou
restest upon Ma[=a]t, [Footnote: _i.e._, unchanging and unalterable
law.] Thou passest over the sky, and every face watcheth thee and thy
course, for thou hast been hidden from their gaze. Thou dost show
thyself at dawn and at eventide day by day. The Sektet boat, wherein,
is thy Majesty, goeth forth with might; thy beams are upon [all]
faces; thy rays of red and yellow cannot be known, and thy bright
beams cannot be told. The lands of the gods and the eastern lands of
Punt [Footnote: _i.e._, the east and west coasts of the Red Sea, and
the north-east coast of Africa.] must be seen ere that which, is
hidden [in thee] may be measured. [Footnote: I am doubtful about the
meaning of this passage.] Alone and by thyself thou, dost manifest
thyself [when] thou comest into being above Nu. May I advance, even as
thou dost advance; may I never cease [to go forward], even as thy
Majesty ceaseth not [to go forward], even though it be for a moment;
for with strides dost thou in one brief moment pass over spaces which
[man] would need hundreds of thousand; yea, millions of years to pass
over; [this] thou doest, and then thou dost sink to rest. Thou puttest
an end to the hours of the night, and thou dost count them, even thou;
thou endest them in thine own appointed season, and the earth,
becometh light, Thou settest thyself before thy handiwork in the
likeness of R[=a]; thou risest in the horizon.'
"Osiris; the scribe Ani, declareth his praise of thee when thou
shinest, and when thou risest at dawn he crieth in his joy at thy
birth, saying:--
"'Thou art crowned with the majesty of thy beauties; thou mouldest thy
limbs as thou dost advance, and thou bringest them forth without
birth-pangs in the form of R[=a], as thou dost rise up in the
celestial height. Grant thou that I may come unto the heaven which is
everlasting, and unto the mountain where dwell thy favoured ones. May
I be joined unto those shining beings, holy and perfect, who are in
the underworld; and may I come forth with them to behold thy beauties
when thou shinest at eventide, and goest to thy mother Nut. Thou dost
place thyself in the west, and my hands adore [thee] when thou settest
as a living being. [Footnote: _i.e._, "because when thou settest thou
dost not die."] Behold, thou art the everlasting creator, and thou art
adored [as such when] thou settest in the heavens. I have given my
heart to thee without wavering, O thou who art mightier than the
gods.'
"A hymn of praise to thee, O thou who risest like unto gold, and who
dost flood the world with light on the day of thy birth. Thy mother
giveth thee birth, and straightway thou dost give light upon the path
of [thy] Disk, O thou great Light who shinest in the heavens. Thou
makest the generations of men to flourish through the Nile-flood, and
thou dost cause gladness to exist in all lands, and in, all cities,
and in all temples. Thou art glorious by reason of thy splendours, and
thou makest strong thy KA (_i.e._ Double) with, divine foods, O thou
mighty one of victories, thou Power of Powers, who dost make strong
thy throne against evil fiends--thou who art glorious in Majesty in
the Sektet boat, and most mighty in the [=A]tet [Footnote: The Sun's
evening and morning boats respectively.] boat!" This selection may be
fittingly closed by a short hymn [Footnote: From the Papyrus of Nekht
(Brit. Mus. No. 10,471).] which, though, of a later date, reproduces
in a brief form all the essentials of the longer hymns of the XVIIIth
dynasty (about B.C. 1700 to 1400).
"Homage to thee, O thou glorious Being, thou who art dowered [with all
sovereignty]. O Temu-Harma-chis, [Footnote: The evening and morning
sun respectively.] when thou risest in the horizon of heaven, a cry of
joy cometh forth, to thee from the mouth of all peoples, O thou
beautiful Being, thou dost renew thyself in thy season in the form of
the Disk within thy mother Hathor; [Footnote: Like Nut, a goddess of
the sky, but particularly of that portion of it in which the sun
rises.] therefore in every place every heart swelleth with joy at thy
rising for ever. The regions of the North and South come to thee with
homage, and send forth, acclamations at thy rising in the horizon of
heaven; thou illuminest the two lands with rays of turquoise light.
Hail, R[=a], thou who art R[=a]-Harmachis, thou divine man-child, heir
of eternity, self-begotten and self-born, king of the earth, prince of
the underworld, governor of the regions of Aukert (_i.e._ the
underworld)! Thou didst come forth, from the water, thou hast sprung
from the god Nu, who cherisheth thee and ordereth thy members. Hail,
god of life, thou lord of love, all men live when thou shinest; thou
art crowned king of the gods. The goddess Nut doeth homage unto thee,
and the goddess Ma[=a]t embraceth thee at all times. Those who are in
thy following sing unto thee with joy and bow down their foreheads to
the earth when they meet thee, thou lord of heaven, thou lord of
earth, thou king of Right and Truth, thou lord of eternity, thou
prince of everlastingness, thou sovereign of all the gods, thou god of
life, thou creator of eternity, thou maker of heaven, wherein thou art
firmly established. The company of the gods rejoice at thy rising, the
earth is glad when it beholdeth thy rays; the peoples that have been
long dead come forth with cries of joy to see thy beauties every day.
Thou goest forth each day over heaven and earth, and art made strong
each day by thy mother Nut. Thou passest through the heights of
heaven, thy heart swelleth with joy; the abyss of the sky is content
thereat. The Serpent-fiend hath fallen, his arms are hewn off, and the
knife hath cut asunder his joints, R[=a] liveth in Ma[=a]t the
beautiful. The Sektet boat draweth on and cometh into port; the South
and the North, the West and the East, turn, to praise thee, O thou
primeval substance of the earth who didst come into being of thine own
accord, Isis and Nephthys salute thee, they sing unto thee songs of
joy at thy rising in the boat, they protect thee with their hands. The
souls of the East follow thee, the souls of the West praise thee. Thou
art the ruler of all the gods, and thou hast joy of heart within thy
shrine; for the Serpent-fiend Nak hath been condemned to the fire, and
thy heart shall be joyful for ever."
From the considerations set forth in the preceding pages, and from the
extracts from religious texts of various periods, and from the hymns
quoted, the reader may himself judge the views which the ancient
Egyptian held concerning God Almighty and his visible type and symbol
R[=a], the Sun-god. Egyptologists differ in their interpretations of
certain passages, but agree as to general facts. In dealing with the
facts it cannot be too clearly understood that the religious ideas of
the prehistoric Egyptian were very different from those of the cultured
priest of Memphis in the IInd dynasty, or those of the worshippers of
Temu or Atum, the god of the setting sun, in the IVth dynasty. The
editors of religious texts of all periods have retained many grossly
superstitious and coarse beliefs, which they knew well to be the
products of the imaginations of their savage, or semi-savage ancestors,
not because they themselves believed in them, or thought that the laity
to whom they ministered would accept them, but because of their
reverence for inherited traditions. The followers of every great
religion in the world have never wholly shaken off all the superstitions
which they have in all generations inherited from their ancestors; and
what is true of the peoples of the past is true, in a degree, of the
peoples of to-day. In the East the older the ideas, and beliefs, and
traditions, are, the more sacred they become; but this has not prevented
men there from developing high moral and spiritual conceptions and
continuing to believe in them, and among such must be counted the One,
self-begotten, and self-existent God whom the Egyptians worshipped.
CHAPTER II.
OSIRIS THE GOD OF THE RESURRECTION.
The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed
that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation
at the hands of the powers of evil, that after a great struggle with
these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the
underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered
death the righteous also might conquer death; and they raised Osiris to
such an exalted position in heaven that he became the equal and, in
certain cases, the superior of R[=a], the Sun-god, and ascribed to him
the attributes which belong unto God. However far back we go, we find
that these views about Osiris are assumed to be known to the reader of
religious texts and accepted by him, and in the earliest funeral book
the position of Osiris in respect of the other gods is identical with
that which he is made to hold in the latest copies of the Book of the
Dead. The first writers of the ancient hieroglyphic funeral texts and
their later editors have assumed so completely that the history of
Osiris was known unto all men, that none of them, as far as we know,
thought it necessary to write down a connected narrative of the life and
sufferings upon earth of this god, or if they did, it has not come down
to us. Even in the Vth dynasty we find Osiris and the gods of his cycle,
or company, occupying a peculiar and special place in the compositions
written for the benefit of the dead, and the stone and other monuments
which belong to still earlier periods mention ceremonies the performance
of which assumed the substantial accuracy of the history of Osiris as
made known to us by later writers. But we have a connected history of
Osiris which, though not written in Egyptian, contains so much that is
of Egyptian origin that we may be sure that its author drew his
information from Egyptian sources: I refer to the work, _De Iside et
Osìride_, of the Greek writer, Plutarch, who flourished about the middle
of the first century of our era. In it, unfortunately, Plutarch
identifies certain of the Egyptian gods with the gods of the Greeks, and
he adds a number of statements which rest either upon his own
imagination, or are the results of misinformation. The translation
[Footnote: _Plutarchi de Iside et Osirids liber: Graece et Anglice_. By
S. Squire, Cambridge, 1744.] by Squire runs as follows:--
"Rhea, [Footnote: _i.e._, Nut.] say they, having accompanied Saturn
[Footnote: _i.e._, Seb.] by stealth, was discovered by the Sun,
[Footnote: _i.e._, R[=a].] who hereupon denounced a curse upon her,
'that she should not he delivered in any month or year'--Mercury,
however, being likewise in love with the same goddess, in recompense
of the favours which he had received from her, plays at tables with
the Moon, and wins from her the seventieth part of each of her
illuminations; these several parts, mating in the whole five days, he
afterwards joined together, and added to the three hundred and sixty,
of which the year formerly consisted, which days therefore are even
yet called by the Egyptians the Epact or superadded, and observed by
them as the birthdays of their gods. For upon the first of them, say
they, was OSIRIS born, just at whose entrance into the world a voice
was heard, saying, 'The lord of all the earth is born.' There are some
indeed who relate this circumstance in a different manner, as that a
certain person, named Pamyles, as he was fetching water from the
temple of Jupiter at Thebes, heard a voice commanding him to proclaim
aloud that 'the good and great king Osiris was then born'; and that
for this reason Saturn committed the education of the child to him,
and that in memory of this event the Pamylia were afterwards
instituted, a festival much resembling the Phalliphoria or Priapeia of
the Greeks. Upon the second of these days was AROUERIS [Footnote:
_i.e._, Hera-ur, "Horus the Elder."] born, whom some call Apollo, and
others distinguish by the name of the elder Orus. Upon the third Typho
[Footnote: _i.e._, Set.] came into the world, being born neither at
the proper time, nor by the proper place, but forcing his way through
a wound which he had made in his mother's side. ISIS was born upon the
fourth of them in the marshes of Egypt, as NEPTHYS was upon the last,
whom some call Teleute and Aphrodite, and others Nike--Now as to the
fathers of these children, the two first of them are said to have been
begotten by the Sun, Isis by Mercury, Typho and Nepthys by Saturn; and
accordingly, the third of these superadded days, because it was looked
upon as the birthday of Typho, was regarded by the kings as
inauspicious, and consequently they neither transacted any business on
it, or even suffered themselves to take any refreshment until the
evening. They further add, that Typho married Nepthys; and that Isis
and Osiris, having a mutual affection, loved each other in their
mother's womb before they were born, and that from this commerce
sprang Aroueris, whom the Egyptians likewise call the elder Orus, and
the Greeks Apollo.
"Osiris, being now become king of Egypt, applied himself towards
civilizing his countrymen, by turning them from their former indigent
and barbarous course of life; he moreover taught them how to cultivate
and improve the fruits of the earth; he gave them a body of laws to
regulate their conduct by, and instructed them in that reverence and
worship which they were to pay to the gods. With the same good
disposition he afterwards travelled over the rest of the world
inducing the people everywhere to submit to his discipline; not indeed
compelling them by force of arms, but persuading them to yield to the
strength of his reasons, which were conveyed to them in the most
agreeable manner, in hymns and songs, accompanied by instruments of
music: from which last circumstance the Greeks conclude him to have
been the same with their Dionysius or Bacchus--During Osiris' absence
from his kingdom, Typho had no opportunity of making any innovations
in the state, Isis being extremely vigilant in the government, and
always upon her guard. After his return, however, having first
persuaded seventy-two other persons to join with him in the
conspiracy, together with a certain queen of Ethiopia named Aso, who
chanced to be in Egypt at that time, he contrived a proper stratagem
to execute his base designs. For having privily taken the measure of
Osiris' body, he caused a chest to be made exactly of the same size
with it, as beautiful as may be, and set off with all the ornaments of
art. This chest he brought into his banqueting-room; where, after it
had been much admired by all who were present, Typho, as it were in
jest, promised to give it to any one of them whose body upon trial it
might be found to fit. Upon this the whole company one after another,
go into it; but as it did not fit any of them, last of all Osiris lays
himself down in it, upon which the conspirators immediately ran
together, clapped the cover upon it, and then fastened it down on the
outside with nails, pouring likewise melted lead over it. After this
they carried it away to the river side, and conveyed it to the sea by
the Tanaïtic mouth of the Nile; which, for this reason, is still held
in the utmost abomination by the Egyptians, and never named by them
but with proper marks of detestation. These things, say they, were
thus executed upon the 17th [Footnote: In the Egyptian calendar this
day was marked triply unlucky.] day of the month Athyr, when the sun
was in Scorpio, in the 28th year of Osiris' reign; though there are
others who tell us that he was no more than 28 years old at this time.
"The first who knew the accident which had befallen their king were
the Pans and Satyrs who inhabited the country about Chemmis
(Panopolis); and they immediately acquainting the people with the news
gave the first occasion to the name Panic Terrors, which has ever
since been made use of to signify any sudden affright or amazement of
a multitude. As to Isis, as soon as the report reached her she
immediately cut off one of the locks of her hair, [Footnote: The hair
cut off as a sign of mourning was usually laid in the tomb of the
dead.] and put on mourning apparel upon the very spot where she then
happened to be, which accordingly from this accident has ever since
been called Koptis, or _the city of mourning_, though some are of
opinion that this word rather signifies _deprivation_. After this she
wandered everywhere about the country full of disquietude and
perplexity in search, of the chest, inquiring of every person she met
with, even, of some children whom she chanced to see, whether they
knew what was become of it. Now it happened that these children had
seen what Typho's accomplices had done with the body, and accordingly
acquainted her by what mouth of the Nile it had been conveyed into the
sea--For this reason therefore the Egyptians look upon children as
endued with a kind of faculty of divining, and in consequence of this
notion are very curious in observing the accidental prattle which they
have with one another whilst they are at play (especially if it be in
a sacred place), forming omens and presages from it--Isis, during this
interval, having been informed that Osiris, deceived by her sister
Nepthys who was in love with him, had unwittingly united with her
instead of herself, as she concluded from the melilot-garland,
[Footnote: _i.e._, a wreath of clover.] which he had left with her,
made it her business likewise to search out the child, the fruit of
this unlawful commerce (for her sister, dreading the anger of her
husband Typho, had exposed it as soon as it was born), and
accordingly, after much pains and difficulty, by means of some dogs
that conducted her to the place where it was, she found it and bred it
up; so that in process of time it became her constant guard and
attendant, and from hence obtained the name of Anubis, being thought
to watch and guard the gods, as dogs do mankind.
"At length she receives more particular news of the chest, that it had
been carried by the waves of the sea to the coast of Byblos,
[Footnote: Not the Byblos of Syria (Jebêl) but the papyrus swamps of
the Delta.] and there gently lodged in the branches of a bush of
Tamarisk, which, in a short time, had shot up into a large and
beautiful tree, growing round the chest and enclosing it on every
side, so that it was not to be seen; and farther, that the king of the
country, amazed at its unusual size, had cut the tree down, and made
that part of the trunk wherein the chest was concealed, a pillar to
support; the roof of his house. These things, say they, being made
known to Isis in an extraordinary manner by the report of Demons, sue
immediately went to Byblos; where, setting herself down by the side of
a fountain, she refused to speak to anybody, excepting only to the
queen's women who chanced to be there; these indeed she saluted and
caressed in the kindest manner possible, plaiting their hair for them,
and transmitting into them part of that wonderfully grateful odour
which issued from her own body. This raised a great desire in the
queen their mistress to see the stranger who had this admirable
faculty of transfusing so fragrant a smell from herself into the hair
and skin of other people. She therefore sent for her to court, and,
after a further acquaintance with her, made her nurse to one of her
sons. Now the name of the king who reigned at this time at Byblos, was
Meloarthus, as that of his queen was Astarte, or, according to others,
Saosis, though some call her Nemanoun, which answers to the Greek name
Athenais.
"Isis fed the child by giving it her finger to suck instead of the
breast; she likewise put him every night into the fire in order to
consume his mortal part, whilst transforming herself into a swallow,
she hovered round the pillar and bemoaned her sad fate. Thus continued
she to do for some time, till the queen, who stood watching her,
observing the child to be all in a flame, cryed out, and thereby
deprived him of that immortality which would otherwise have been
conferred upon him. The Goddess upon this, discovering herself,
requested that the pillar, which supported the roof, might be given
her; which she accordingly took down, and then easily cutting it open,
after she had taken, out what she wanted, she wrapped up the remainder
of the trunk in fine linnen, and pouring perfumed oil upon it,
delivered it again into the hands of the king and queen (which piece
of wood is to this day preserved in the temple of Isis, and worshipped
by the people of Byblos). When this was done, she threw herself upon
the chest, making at the same time such a loud and terrible
lamentation over it, as frightened the younger of the king's sons, who
heard her, out of his life. But the elder of them she took with, her
and set sail with the chest for Egypt; and it being now about morning,
the river Phaedrus sending forth a rough and sharp air, she in her
anger dried up its current.
"No sooner was she arrived at a desart place, where she imagined
herself to be alone, but she presently opened the chest, and laying
her face upon her dead husband's, embraced his corpse, and wept
bitterly; but, perceiving that the little boy had silently stolen
behind her, and found out the occasion of her grief, she turned
herself about on the sudden, and in her anger gave him so fierce and
stern a look that he immediately died of the affright. Others indeed
say that his death did not happen in this manner, but, as was hinted
above, that he fell into the sea, and afterwards received the greatest
honours on account of the Goddess; for that the Maneros, [Footnote: A
son of the first Egyptian king, who died in his early youth; see
Herodotus, ii. 79.] whom the Egyptians so frequently call upon in
their banquets, is none other than this very boy. This relation is
again contradicted by such as tell us that the true name of the child
was Palaestinus, or Pelusius, and that the city of this name was built
by the Goddess in memory of him; adding farther, that the Maneros
above mentioned is thus honoured by the Egyptians at their feasts,
because he was the first who invented music. There are others, again,
who affirm that Maneros is not the name of any particular person, but
a mere customary form, and complimental manner of greeting made use of
by the Egyptians one towards another at their more solemn feasts and
banquets, meaning no more by it, than to wish, that what they were
then about might prove fortunate and happy to them, for that this is
the true import of the word. In like manner, say they, the human
skeleton, which at these times of jollity is carried about in a box,
and shewn to all the guests, is not designed, as some imagine, to
represent the particular misfortunes of Osiris, but rather to remind
them of their mortality, and thereby to excite them freely to make use
of and to enjoy the good things which are set before them, seeing they
must quickly become such as they there saw; and that this is the true
reason of introducing it at their banquets--but to proceed in the
narration.
"Isis intending a visit to her son Orus, who was brought up at Butus,
deposited the chest in the meanwhile in a remote and unfrequented
place: Typho however, as he was one night hunting by the light of the
moon, accidentally met with it; and knowing the body which was
enclosed in it, tore it into several pieces, fourteen, in all,
dispersing them up and down, in different parts of the country--Upon
being made acquainted with this event, Isis once more sets out in
search of the scattered fragments of her husband's body, making use of
a boat made of the reed Papyrus in order the more easily to pass thro'
the lower and fenny parts of the country--For which, reason, say they,
the crocodile never touches any persons, who sail in this sort of
vessels, as either fearing the anger of the goddess, or else
respecting it on account of its having once carried her. To this
occasion therefore is it to be imputed, that there are so many
different sepulchres of Osiris shewn, in Egypt; for we are told, that
wherever Isis met with any of the scattered limbs of her husband, she
there buried it. There are others however who contradict this
relation, and tell us, that this variety of Sepulchres was owing
rather to the policy of the queen, who, instead of the real body, as
was pretended, presented these several cities with the image only of
her husband: and that she did this, not only to render the honours,
which would by this means be paid to his memory, more extensive, but
likewise that she might hereby elude the malicious search of Typho;
who, if he got the better of Orus in the war wherein they were going
to be engaged, distracted by this multiplicity of Sepulchres, might
despair of being able to find the true one--we are told moreover, that
notwithstanding all her search, Isis was never able to recover the
member of Osiris, which having been thrown into the Nile immediately
upon its separation from the rest of the body, had been devoured by
the Lepidotus, the Phagrus, and the Oxyrynchus, fish which of all
others, for this reason, the Egyptians have in more especial
avoidance. In order however to make some amends for the loss, Isis
consecrated the Phallus made in imitation of it, and instituted a
solemn festival to its memory, which is even, to this day observed by
the Egyptians.
"After these things, Osiris returning from the other world, appeared
to his son Orus, encouraged him to the battle, and at the same time
instructed him in the exercise of arms. He then asked him, 'what he
thought was the moat glorious action a man could perform?' to which
Orua replied, 'to revenge the injuries offered to his father and
mother.' He then asked him, 'what animal he thought most serviceable
to a soldier?' and being answered 'a horse'; this raised the wonder of
Osiris, so that he farther questioned him, 'why he preferred a horse
before a lion?' because, adds Orus, 'tho' the lion be the more
serviceable creature to one who stands in need of help, yet is the
horse [Footnote: The horse does not appear to have been known in Egypt
before the XVIIIth dynasty; this portion of Plutarch's version of the
history of Osiris must, then, be later than B.C. 1500.] more useful in
overtaking and cutting off a flying adversary.' These replies much
rejoiced Osiris, as they showed him that his son was sufficiently
prepared for his enemy--We are moreover told, that among the great
numbers who were continually deserting from Typho's party was his
concubine Thueris, and that a serpent pursuing her as she was coming
over to Orus, was slain by her soldiers--the memory of which action,
say they, is still preserved in that cord which is thrown into the
midst of their assemblies, and then chopt into pieces--Afterwards it
came to a battle between, them which lasted many days; but victory at
length inclined to Orus, Typho himself being taken prisoner. Isis
however, to whose custody he was committed, was so far from putting
him to death, that she even loosed his bonds and set him at liberty.
This action of his mother so extremely incensed Orus, that he laid
hands upon her, and pulled off the ensign of royalty which she wore on
her head; and instead thereof Hermes clapt on an helmet made in the
shape of an oxe's head--After this, Typho publicly accused Orus of
bastardy; but by the assistance of Hermes (Thoth) his legitimacy was
fully established by the judgment of the Gods themselves--After this;
there were two other battles fought between them, in both of which
Typho had the worst. Furthermore, Isis is said to have accompanied
with Osiris after his death, and in consequence hereof to have brought
forth Harpocrates, who came into the world before his time, and lame
in his lower limbs."
When we examine this story by the light of the results of hieroglyphic
decipherment, we find that a large portion of it is substantiated by
Egyptian texts: _e.g._, Osiris was the son of Seb and Nut; the Epact is
known in the Calendars as "the five additional days of the year"; the
five gods, Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys, were born on the days
mentioned by Plutarch; the 17th day of Athyr (Hathor) is marked as
triply unlucky in the Calendars; the wanderings and troubles of Isis are
described, and "lamentations" which she is supposed to have uttered are
found in the texts; lists of the shrines of Osiris are preserved in
several inscriptions; the avenging of his father by Horus is referred to
frequently in papyri and other documents; the conflict between Set and
Horus is described fully in a papyrus in the British Museum (No.
10,184); a hymn in the papyrus of Hunefer relates all that Thoth
performed for Osiris; and the begetting of Horus by Osiris after death
is mentioned in a hymn to Osiris dating from the XVIIIth dynasty in the
following passage:--
"Thy sister put forth her protecting power for thee, she scattered
abroad those who were her enemies, she drove away evil hap, she
pronounced mighty words of power, she made cunning her tongue, and her
words failed not. The glorious Isis was perfect in command and in
speech, and she avenged her brother. She sought him without ceasing,
she wandered round and round the earth uttering cries of pain, and she
rested (_or_ alighted) not until she had found him. She overshadowed
him with her feathers, she made air (_or_ wind) with her wings, and
she uttered cries at the burial of her brother. She raised up the
prostrate form of him whose heart was still, she took from him of his
essence, she conceived and brought forth a child, she suckled it in
secret, and none knew the place thereof; and the arm of the child hath
waxed strong in the great house of Seb. The company of the gods
rejoice, and are glad at the coming of Osiris's son Horus, and firm of
heart and triumphant is the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris."
[Footnote: This remarkable hymn was first made known by Chabas, who
published a translation of it, with notes, in _Revue Archéologique_,
Paris, 1857, t. xiv. p. 65 ff.]
[Illustration: 1. Isis suckling her child Horus in the papyrus swamps.
2. Thoth giving the emblem of magical protection to Isis. 3. Amen-R[=a]
presenting the symbol of "life" to Isis. 4. The goddess Nekhebet
presenting years, and life, stability, power, and sovereignty to the son
of Osiris. 5. The goddess Sati presenting periods of years, and life,
stability, power, and sovereignty to the son of Osiris.]
What form the details of the history of Osiris took in the early
dynasties it is impossible to say, and we know not whether Osiris was
the god of the resurrection to the predynastic or prehistoric Egyptians,
or whether that _rôle_ was attributed to him after Mena began to rule in
Egypt. There is, however, good reason for assuming that in the earliest
dynastic times he occupied the position of god and judge of those who
had risen from the dead by his help, for already in the IVth dynasty,
about B.C. 3800, king Mea-kau-R[=a] (the Mycerinus of the Greeks) is
identified with him, and on his coffin not only is he called "Osiris,
King of the South and North, Men-kau-R[=a], living for ever," but the
genealogy of Osiris is attributed to him, and he is declared to be "born
of heaven, offspring of Nut, flesh and bone of Seb." It is evident that
the priests of Heliopolis "edited" the religious texts copied and
multiplied in the College to suit their own views, but in the early
times when they began their work, the worship of Osiris was so
widespread, and the belief in him as the god of the resurrection so
deeply ingrained in the hearts of the Egyptians, that even in the
Heliopolitan system of theology Osiris and his cycle, or company of
gods, were made to hold a very prominent position. He represented to men
the idea of a man who was both god and man, and he typified to the
Egyptians in all ages the being who by reason of his sufferings and
death as a man could sympathize with them in their own sickness and
death. The idea of his human personality also satisfied their cravings
and yearnings for intercourse with a being who, though he was partly
divine, yet had much in common with themselves. Originally they looked
upon Osiris as a man who lived on the earth as they lived, who ate and
drank, who suffered a cruel death, who by the help of certain gods
triumphed over death, and attained unto everlasting life. But what
Osiris did they could do, and what the gods did for Osiris they must
also do for them, and as the gods brought about his resurrection so they
must bring about theirs, and as they made him the ruler of the
underworld so they must make them to enter his kingdom and to live there
as long as the god himself lived. Osiris, in some of his aspects, was
identified with the Nile, and with R[=a], and with several other "gods"
known to the Egyptians, but it was in his aspect as god of the
resurrection and of eternal life that he appealed to men in the valley
of the Nile; and for thousands of years men and women died believing
that, inasmuch as all that was done for Osiris would be done for them
symbolically, they like him would rise again, and inherit life
everlasting. However far back we trace religious ideas in Egypt, we
never approach a time when it can be said that there did not exist a
belief in the Resurrection, for everywhere it is assumed that Osiris
rose from the dead; sceptics must have existed, and they probably asked
their priests what the Corinthians asked Saint Paul, "How are the dead
raised up? and with what body do they come?" But beyond doubt the belief
in the Resurrection was accepted by the dominant classes in Egypt. The
ceremonies which the Egyptians performed with the view of assisting the
deceased to pass the ordeal of the judgment, and to overcome his enemies
in the next world, will be described elsewhere, as also will be the form
in which the dead were raised up; we therefore return to the theological
history of Osiris.
The centre and home of the worship of Osiris in Egypt under the early
dynasties was Abydos, where the head of the god was said to be buried.
It spread north and south in the course of time, and several large
cities claimed to possess one or other of the limbs of his body. The
various episodes in the life of the god were made the subject of solemn
representations in the temple, and little by little the performance of
the obligatory and non-obligatory services in connection with them
occupied, in certain temples, the greater part of the time of the
priests. The original ideas concerning the god were forgotten and new
ones grew up; from being the _example_ of a man who had risen from the
dead and had attained unto life everlasting, he became the _cause_ of
the resurrection of the dead; and the power to bestow eternal life upon
mortals was transferred from the gods to him. The alleged dismemberment
of Osiris was forgotten in the fact that he dwelt in a perfect body in
the underworld, and that, whether dismembered or not, he had become
after his death the father of Horus by Isis. As early as the XIIth
dynasty, about B.C. 2500, the worship of this god had become almost
universal, and a thousand years later Osiris had become a sort of
national god. The attributes of the great cosmic gods were ascribed to
him, and he appeared to man not only as the god and judge of the dead,
but also as the creator of the world and of all things in it. He who was
the son of R[=a] became the equal of his father, and he took his place
side by side with him in heaven.
We have an interesting proof of the identification of Osiris with R[=a]
in Chapter XVII. of the Book of the Dead. It will be remembered that
this Chapter consists of a series of what might almost be called
articles of faith, each of which is followed by one or more explanations
which represent one or more quite different opinions; the Chapter also
is accompanied by a series of Vignettes. In line 110 it is said, "I am
the soul which dwelleth in the two _tchafi_, [Footnote: _i.e._, the
souls of Osiris and R[=a].] What is this then? It is Osiris when he
goeth into Tattu (_i.e._, Busiris) and findeth there the soul of R[=a];
there the one god embraceth the other, and souls spring into being
within the two _tchafi_." In the Vignette which illustrates this passage
the souls of R[=a] and Osiris are seen in the forms of hawks standing on
a pylon, and facing each other in Tattu; the former has upon his head a
disk, and the latter, who is human-headed, the white crown. It is a
noticeable fact that even at his meeting with R[=a] the soul of Osiris
preserves the human face, the sign of his kinship with man.
Now Osiris became not only the equal of R[=a], but, in many respects, a
greater god than he. It is said, that from the nostrils of the head of
Osiris, which was buried at Abydos, came forth the scarabaeus [Footnote:
See von Berginaun in _Aeg Zeitschrift_, 1880, p. 88 ff.] which was at
once the emblem and type of the god Khepera, who caused all things to
come into being, and of the resurrection. In this manner Osiris became
the source and origin of gods, men, and things, and [Illustration: The
soul of R[=a] (1) meeting the soul of Osiris (2) in Tattu. The cat
(_i.e._, R[=a]) by the Persea tree (3) cutting off the head of the
serpent which typified night.] the manhood of the god was forgotten. The
next step was to ascribe to him the attributes of God, and in the
XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties he seems to have disputed the sovereignty of
the three companies of gods, that is to say of the trinity of trinities
of trinities, [Footnote: Each company of the gods contained three
trinities or triads.] with Amen-R[=a], who by this time was usually
called the "king of the gods." The ideas held concerning Osiris at this
period will best be judged by the following extracts from contemporary
hymns:--
"Glory [Footnote: See _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_ (translation),
p. 11.] be to thee, O Osiris, Un-nefer, the great god within Abtu
(Abydos), king of eternity, lord of everlastingness, who passest
through millions of years in thy existence. The eldest son of the womb
of Nut, engendered by Seb the Ancestor [of the gods], lord of the
crowns of the South and of the North, lord of the lofty white crown;
as prince of gods and men he hath received the crook and the whip, and
the dignity of his divine fathers. Let thy heart, which dwelleth in
the mountain of Ament, be content, for thy son Horus is stablished
upon thy throne. Thou art crowned lord of Tattu (Busiris) and ruler in
Abydos."
"Praise [Footnote: _Ibid._, p. 34.] be unto thee, O Osiris, lord of
eternity, Un-nefer, Heru-Khuti (Harmachis) whose forms are manifold,
and whose attributes are great, who art Ptah-Seker-Tem in Annu
(Heliopolis), the lord of the hidden place, and the creator of
Het-ka-Ptah (Memphis) and of the gods [therein], the guide of the
underworld, whom [the gods] glorify when thou settest in Nut. Isis
embraceth thee in peace, and she driveth away the fiends from the
mouth of thy paths. Thou turnest thy face upon Amentet, and thou
makest the earth to shine as with refined copper. The dead rise up to
see thee, they breathe the air and they look upon thy face when the
disk riseth on its horizon; their hearts are at peace, inasmuch as
they behold thee, O thou who art eternity and everlastingness."
In the latter extract Osiris is identified with the great gods of
Heliopolis and Memphis, where shrines of the Sun-god existed in almost
pre-dynastic times, and finally is himself declared to be "eternity and
everlastingness"; thus the ideas of resurrection and immortality are
united in the same divine being. In the following Litany the process of
identification with the gods is continued:--
1. "Homage to thee, O thou who art the starry deities in Annu, and the
heavenly beings in Kher-aba; [Footnote: A district near Memphis.] thou
god Unti, [Footnote: A god who walks before the boat of the god, Af,
holding a star in each hand.] who art more glorious than the gods who
are hidden in Annu. O grant thou unto me a path whereon I may pass in
peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken lies wittingly, nor
have I done aught with deceit."
2. "Homage to thee, O An in Antes, Harmachis; thou stridest over
heaven with, long strides, O Harmachis. O grant thou unto me a path,"
etc. [Footnote: This petition is only written once, but it is intended
to be repeated after each of the nine sections of the Litany.]
3. "Homage to thee, O soul of everlastingness, thou Soul who dwellest
in Tattu, Un-nefer, son of Nut; thou art lord of Akert (_i.e._, the
underworld). O grant thou unto me a path," etc.
4. "Homage to thee in thy dominion over Tattu; the Ureret crown is
stablished upon thy head; thou art the One who maketh the strength
which protecteth himself, and thou dwellest in peace in Tattu. O grant
thou unto me a path," etc.
5. "Homage to thee, O lord of the Acacia [Footnote: This tree was in
Heliopolis, and the Cat, _i.e._, the Sun, sat near it. (See p. 63).]
tree, the Seker boat [Footnote: The ceremony of setting the Seker boat
on its sledge was performed at dawn.] is set upon its sledge; thou
turnest back the Fiend, the worker of Evil, and thou causest the
Utchat (_i.e._, the Eye of Horus or R[=a]), to rest upon its seat. O
grant thou unto me a path," etc.
6. "Homage to thee, O thou who art mighty in thine hour, thou great
and mighty Prince, dweller in An-rut-f, [Footnote: The place where
nothing grows--the underworld.] lord of eternity and creator of
everlastingness, thou art the lord of Suten-henen _(_i.e._,
Heracleopolis Magna). O grant," etc.
7. "Homage to thee, O thou who restest upon Right and Truth, thou art
lord of Abydos, and thy limbs are joined unto Ta-tchesert (_i.e._, the
Holy Land, the underworld); thou art he to whom fraud and guile are
hateful. O grant," etc.
8. "Homage to thee, O thou who art within thy boat; thou bringest
H[=a]pi (_i.e._, the Nile) forth from his source; the light shineth
upon thy body, and thou art the dweller in Nekhen. O grant," etc.
9. "Homage to thee, O creator of the gods, thou king of the South and
of the North, O Osiris, victorious one, ruler of the world in thy
gracious seasons; thou art the lord of the celestial world. O grant,"
etc.
And, again: "R[=a] setteth as Osiris with all the diadems of the divine
spirits and of the gods of Amentet. He is the one divine form, the
hidden one of the Tuat, the holy Soul at the head of Amentet, Un-nefer,
whose duration of life is for ever and ever." [Footnote: See _Chapters
of Coming Forth by Day_, p. 334.] We have already referred to the help
which Thoth gave to Isis when he provided her with the words which
caused her dead husband to live again, but the best summary of the good
deeds which this god wrought for Osiris is contained in a hymn in the
_Papyrus of Hunefer_, [Footnote: _Ibid_., p. 343.] where the deceased
is made to say:--
"I have come unto thee, O son of Nut, Osiris, Prince of
everlastingness; I am, in the following of the god Thoth, and I have
rejoiced at everything which he hath done for thee. He brought the
sweet air into thy nostrils, and life and strength to thy beautiful
face; and the north wind which cometh forth from Temu for thy
nostrils, O lord of Ta-tchesert. He made the god Shu to shine upon
thy body; he illumined thy path with rays of light; he destroyed for
thee the faults and defects of thy members by the magical power of the
words of his mouth; he made Set and Horus to be at peace for thy sake;
he destroyed the storm-wind and the hurricane; he made the two
combatants (_i.e._, Set and Horus) to be gracious unto thee and the
two lauds to be at peace before thee; he did away the wrath which was
in their hearts, and each became reconciled unto his brother (_i.e._,
thyself).
"Thy son Horus is triumphant in the presence of the full assembly of
the gods, the sovereignty over the world hath been given unto him, and
his dominion extendeth unto the uttermost parts of the earth. The
throne of the god Seb hath been adjudged unto him, together with the
rank which was created by the god Temu, and which hath been stablished
by decrees [made] in the Chamber of Archives, and hath been inscribed
upon an iron tablet according to the command of thy father Ptah-Tanen
when he sat upon the great throne. He hath set his brother upon that
which the god Shu beareth up (_i.e._, the heavens), to stretch out the
waters over the mountains, and to make to spring up that which groweth
upon the hills, and the grain (?) which shooteth upon the earth, and
he giveth increase by water and by land. Gods celestial and gods
terrestrial transfer themselves to the service of thy son Horus, and
they follow him into his hall [where] a decree is passed that he shall
be lord over them, and they do [his will] straightway.
"Let thy heart rejoice, O lord of the gods, let thy heart rejoice
greatly; Egypt and the Red Land are at peace, and they serve humbly
under thy sovereign power. The temples are stablished upon their own
lands, cities and nomes possess securely the goods which they have in
their names, and we will make unto thee the divine offerings which we
are bound to make, and offer sacrifices in thy name for ever.
Acclamations are made in thy name, libations are poured out to thy KA,
and sepulchral meals [are brought unto thee] by the spirits who are in
thy following, and water is sprinkled ... on each side of the souls of
the dead in this land. Every plan for thee which hath been decreed by
the commands of R[=a] from the beginning hath been perfected. Now
therefore, O son of Nut, thou art crowned as Neb-er-tcher is crowned
at his rising. Thou livest, thou art stablished, thou renewest thy
youth, and thou art true and perfect; thy father R[=a] maketh strong
thy members, and the company of the gods make acclamations unto thee.
The goddess Isis is with thee and she never leaveth thee; [thou art]
not overthrown by thine enemies. The lords of all lands praise thy
beauties, even as they praise R[=a] when he riseth at the beginning of
each day. Thou risest up like an exalted being upon thy standard, thy
beauties lift up the face [of man] and make long [his] stride. The
sovereignty of thy father Seb hath, been given unto thee, and the
goddess Nut, thy mother, who gave birth to the gods, brought thee
forth as the firstborn, of five gods, and created thy beauties and
fashioned thy members. Thou art established as king, the white crown
is upon thy head, and thou hast grasped in thy hands the crook and
whip; whilst thou wert in the womb, and hadst not as yet come forth
therefrom upon the earth, thou wert crowned lord of the two lands, and
the 'Atef' crown of R[=a] was upon thy brow. The gods come unto thee
bowing low to the ground, and they hold thee in fear; they retreat and
depart when, they see thee with the terror of R[=a], and the victory
of thy Majesty is in their hearts. Life is with thee, and offerings of
meat and drink follow thee, and that which is thy due is offered up
before thy face."
In one paragraph of another somewhat similar hymn [Footnote: See
_Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p. 342.] other aspects of Osiris are
described, and after the words "Homage to thee, O Governor of those who
are in Amentet," he is called the being who "giveth birth unto men and
women a second time," [Footnote: The words are _mes tememu em nem_.]
_i.e._, "who maketh mortals to be born again." As the whole paragraph
refers to Osiris "renewing himself," and to his making himself "young
like unto R[=a] each and every day," there can be no doubt that the
resurrection of the dead, that is to say, their birth into a new life,
is what the writer means by the second birth of men and women. From this
passage also we may see that Osiris has become the equal of R[=a], and
that he has passed from being the god of the dead to being the god of
the living. Moreover, at the time when the above extracts were copied
Osiris was not only assumed to have occupied the position which R[=a]
formerly held, but his son Horus, who was begotten after his death, was,
by virtue of his victory over Set, admitted to be the heir and successor
of Osiris. And he not only succeeded to the "rank and dignity" of his
father Osiris, but in his aspect of "avenger of his father," he
gradually acquired the peculiar position of intermediary and intercessor
on behalf of the children of men. Thus in the Judgment Scene he leads
the deceased into the presence of Osiris and makes an appeal to his
father that the deceased may be allowed to enjoy the benefits enjoyed by
all those who are "true of voice" and justified in the judgment. Such an
appeal, addressed to Osiris in the presence of Isis, from the son born
under such remarkable circumstances was, the Egyptian thought, certain
of acceptance; and the offspring of a father, after the death of whose
body he was begotten, was naturally the best advocate for the deceased.
But although such exalted ideas of Osiris and his position among the
gods obtained generally in Egypt during the XVIIIth dynasty (about B.C.
1600) there is evidence that some believed that in spite of every
precaution the body might decay, and that it was necessary to make a
special appeal unto Osiris if this dire result was to be avoided. The
following remarkable prayer was first found inscribed upon a linen
swathing which had enveloped the mummy of Thothmes III., but since that
time the text, written in hieroglyphics, has been found inscribed upon
the _Papyrus of Nu_, [Footnote: Brit. Mus., No. 10,477, sheet 18. I have
published the text in my _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, pp.
398-402.] and it is, of course, to be found also in the late papyrus
preserved at Turin, which the late Dr. Lepsius published so far back as
1842. This text, which is now generally known as Chapter CLIV of the
Book of the Dead, is entitled "The Chapter of not letting the body
perish." The text begins:--
"Homage to thee, O my divine father Osiris! I have come to thee that
thou mayest embalm, yea embalm these my members, for I would not
perish and come to an end, [but would be] even like unto my divine
father Khepera, the divine type of him that never saw corruption.
Come, then, and make me to have the mastery over my breath, O thou
lord of the winds, who dost magnify those divine beings who are like
unto thyself. Stablish thou me, then, and strengthen me, O lord of the
funeral chest. Grant thou that I may enter into the land of
everlastingness, even as it was granted unto thee, and unto thy father
Temu, O thou whose body did not see corruption, and who thyself never
sawest corruption. I have never wrought that which thou hatest, nay, I
have uttered acclamations with those who have loved thy KA. Let not my
body turn into worms, but deliver me [from them] even as thou didst
deliver thyself. I beseech thee, let me not fall into rottenness as
thou dost let every god, and every goddess, and every animal, and
every reptile to see corruption when the soul hath gone forth from
them after their death. For when the soul departeth, a man seeth
corruption, and the bones of his body rot and become wholly
loathsomeness, the members decay piecemeal, the bones crumble into an
inert mass, the flesh turneth into foetid liquid, and he becometh a
brother unto the decay which cometh upon him. And he turneth into a
host of worms, and he becometh a mass of worms, and an end is made of
him, and he perisheth in the sight of the god Shu even as doth every
god, and every goddess, and every feathered fowl, and every fish, and
every creeping thing, and every reptile, and every animal, and every
thing whatsoever. When the worms see me and know me, let them fall
upon their bellies, and let the fear of me terrify them; and thus let
it be with every creature after [my] death, whether it be animal, or
bird, or fish, or worm, or reptile. And let life arise out of death.
Let not decay caused by any reptile make an end [of me], and let not
them come against me in their various forms. Do not thou give me over
unto that slaughterer who dwelleth in his torture-chamber (?), who
killeth the members of the body and maketh them to rot, who worketh
destruction upon many dead bodies, whilst he himself remaineth hidden
and liveth by slaughter; let me live and perform his message, and let
me do that which is commanded by him. Gave me not over unto his
fingers, and let him not gain, the mastery over me, for I am under thy
command, O lord of the gods.
"Homage to thee; O my divine father Osiris, thou hast thy being with
thy members. Thou didst not decay, thou didst not become worms, thou
didst not diminish, thou didst not become corruption, thou didst not
putrefy, and thou didst not turn into worms."
The deceased then identifying himself with Khepera, the god who created
Osiris and his company of gods, says:--
"I am the god Khepera, and my members shall have an everlasting
existence. I shall not decay, I shall not rot, I shall not putrefy, I
shall not turn into worms, and I shall not see corruption under the
eye of the god Shu. I shall have my being, I shall have my being; I
shall live, I shall live; I shall germinate, I shall germinate, I
shall germinate; I shall wake up in peace. I shall not putrefy; my
bowels shall not perish; I shall not suffer injury; mine eye shall not
decay; the form of my countenance shall not disappear; mine ear shall
not become deaf; my head shall not be separated from my neck; my
tongue shall not be carried away; my hair shall not be cut off; mine
eyebrows shall not be shaved off, and no baleful injury shall come
upon me. My body shall be stablished, and it shall neither fall into
ruin, nor be destroyed on this earth."
Judging from such passages as those given above we might think that
certain of the Egyptians expected a resurrection of the physical body,
and the mention of the various members of the body seems to make this
view certain. But the body of which the incorruption and immortality are
so strongly declared is the S[=A]HU; or spiritual body, that sprang into
existence out of the physical body, which had become transformed by
means of the prayers that had been recited and the ceremonies that had
been performed on the day of the funeral, or on that wherein it was laid
in the tomb. It is interesting to notice that no mention is made of meat
or drink in the CLIVth Chapter, and the only thing which the deceased
refers to as necessary for his existence is air, which he obtains
through, the god Temu, the god who is always depicted in human form; the
god is here mentioned in his aspect of the night Sun as opposed to R[=a]
the day Sun, and a comparison of the Sun's daily death with the death of
the deceased is intended to be made. The deposit of the head of the God-man
Osiris at Abydos has already been mentioned, and the belief that it
was preserved there was common throughout Egypt. But in the text quoted
above the deceased says, "My head shall not be separated from my neck,"
which seems to indicate that he wished to keep his body whole,
notwithstanding that Osiris was almighty, and could restore the limbs
and reconstitute the body, even as he had done for his own limbs and
body which had been hacked to pieces by Set. Chapter XLIII of the Book
of the Dead [Footnote: See _The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p.
98.] also has an important reference to the head of Osiris. It is
entitled "The Chapter of not letting the head of a man be cut off from
him in the underworld," and must be of considerable antiquity. In it the
deceased says: "I am the Great One, the son of the Great One; I am Fire,
and the son of the Fire, to whom was given his head after it had been
cut off. The head of Osiris was not taken away from him, let not the
head of the deceased be taken away from him. I have knit myself together
(_or_ reconstituted myself); I have made myself whole and complete; I
have renewed my youth; I am Osiris, the lord of eternity."
From the above it would seem that, according to one version of the
Osiris story, the head of Osiris was not only cut off, but that it was
passed through the fire also; and if this version be very ancient, as it
well may be and probably is, it takes us back to prehistoric times in
Egypt when the bodies of the dead were mutilated and burned. Prof.
Wiedemann thinks [Footnote: See J. de Morgan, _Ethnographie
Préhistorique_, p. 210.] that the mutilation and breaking of the bodies
of the dead were the results of the belief that in order to make the KA,
or "double," leave this earth, the body to which it belonged must be
broken, and he instances the fact that objects of every kind were broken
at the time when they were placed in the tombs. He traces also a
transient custom in the prehistoric graves of Egypt where the methods of
burying the body whole and broken into pieces seem to be mingled, for
though in some of them the body has been broken into pieces, it is
evident that successful attempts have been made to reconstitute it by
laying the pieces as far as possible in their proper places. And it may
be this custom which is referred to in various places in the Book of the
Dead, when the deceased declares that he has collected his limbs "and
made his body whole again," and already in the Vth dynasty King Teta is
thus addressed--"Rise up, O thou Teta! Thou hast received thy head, thou
hast knitted together thy bones, [Footnote: _Recueil de Travaux_, tom.
v. p. 40 (I. 287).] thou hast collected thy members."
The history of Osiris, the god of the resurrection, has now been traced
from the earliest times to the end of the period of the rule of the
priests of Amen (about B.C. 900), by which time Amen-R[=a] had been
thrust in among the gods of the underworld, and prayers were made, in
some cases, to him instead of to Osiris. From this time onwards Amen
maintained this exalted position, and in the Ptolemaic period, in an
address to the deceased Ker[=a]sher we read. "Thy face shineth before
R[=a], thy soul liveth before Amen, and thy body is renewed before
Osiris." And again it is said, "Amen is nigh unto thee to make thee to
live again.... Amen cometh to thee having the breath of life, and he
causeth thee to draw thy breath within thy funeral house." But in spite
of this, Osiris kept and held the highest place in the minds of the
Egyptians, from first to last, as the God-man, the being who was both
divine and human; and no foreign invasion, and no religious or political
disturbances, and no influence which any outside peoples could bring to
bear upon them, succeeded in making them regard the god as anything less
than the cause and symbol and type of the resurrection, and of the life
everlasting. For about five thousand years men were mummified in
imitation of the mummied form of Osiris; and they went to their graves
believing that their bodies would vanquish the powers of death, and the
grave, and decay, because Osiris had vanquished them; and they had
certain hope of the resurrection in an immortal, eternal, and spiritual
body, because Osiris had risen in a transformed spiritual body, and had
ascended into heaven, where he had become the king and the judge of the
dead, and had attained unto everlasting life therein.
The chief reason for the persistence of the worship of Osiris in Egypt
was, probably, the fact that it promised both resurrection and eternal
life to its followers. Even after the Egyptians had embraced
Christianity they continued to mummify their dead, and for long after
they continued to mingle the attributes of their God and the "gods" with
those of God Almighty and Christ. The Egyptians of their own will never
got away from the belief that the body must be mummified if eternal life
was to be assured to the dead, but the Christians, though preaching the
same doctrine of the resurrection as the Egyptians, went a step further,
and insisted that there was no need to mummify the dead at all. St.
Anthony the Great besought his followers not to embalm his body and keep
it in a house, but to bury it and to tell no man where it had been
buried, lest those who loved him should come and draw it forth, and
mummify it as they were wont to do to the bodies of those whom they
regarded as saints. "For long past," he said, "I have entreated the
bishops and preachers to exhort the people not to continue to observe
this useless custom"; and concerning his own body, he said, "At the
resurrection of the dead I shall receive it from the Saviour
incorruptible." [Footnote: See Rosweyde, _Vitae Patrum_, p. 59; _Life of
St. Anthony_, by Athanusius (Migne), _Patrologiae_, Scr. Graec, tom. 26,
col. 972.] The spread of this idea gave the art of mummifying its
death-blow, and though from innate conservatism, and the love of having
the actual bodies of their beloved dead near them, the Egyptians
continued for a time to preserve their dead as before, yet little by
little the reasons for mummifying were forgotten, the knowledge of the
art died out, the funeral ceremonies were curtailed, the prayers became
a dead letter, and the custom of making mummies became obsolete. With
the death of the art died also the belief in and the worship of Osiris,
who from being the god of the dead became a dead god, and to the
Christians of Egypt, at least, his place was filled by Christ, "the
firstfruits of them that slept," Whose resurrection and power to grant
eternal life were at that time being preached throughout most of the
known world. In Osiris the Christian Egyptians found the prototype of
Christ, and in the pictures and statues of Isis suckling her son Horus,
they perceived the prototypes of the Virgin Mary and her Child. Never
did Christianity find elsewhere in the world a people whose minds were
so thoroughly well prepared to receive its doctrines as the Egyptians.
This chapter may be fittingly ended by a few extracts from, the _Songs
of Isis and Nephthys_, which were sung in the Temple of Amen-R[=a] at
Thebes by two priestesses who personified the two goddesses. [Footnote
1: See my _Hieratic Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu (Archaeologia, vol. III_)]
"Hail, thou lord of the underworld, thou Bull of those who are
therein, thou Image of R[=a]-Harmachis, thou Babe of beautiful
appearance, come thou to us in peace. Thou didst repel thy disasters,
thou didst drive away evil hap; Lord, come to us in peace. O Un-nefer,
lord of food, thou chief, thou who art of terrible majesty, thou God,
president of the gods, when thou dost inundate the land [all] things
are engendered. Thou art gentler than the gods. The emanations of thy
body make the dead and the living to live, O thou lord of food, thou
prince of green herbs, thou mighty lord, thou staff of life, thou
giver of offerings to the gods, and of sepulchral meals to the blessed
dead. Thy soul flieth after R[=a], thou shinest at dawn, thou settest
at twilight, thou risest every day; thou shalt rise on the left hand
of Atmu for ever and ever. Thou art the glorious one, the vicar of
R[=a]; the company of the gods cometh to thee invoking thy face, the
flame whereof reacheth unto thine enemies. We rejoice when thou
gatherest together thy bones, and when thou hast made whole thy body
daily. Anubis cometh to thee, and the two sisters (_i.e._, Isis and
Nephthys) come to thee. They have obtained beautiful things for thee,
and they gather together thy limbs for thee, and they seek to put
together the mutilated members of thy body. Wipe thou the impurities
which are on them upon our hair and come thou to us having no
recollection, of that which hath caused thee sorrow. Come thou in thy
attribute of 'Prince of the earth,' lay aside thy trepidation and be
at peace with us, O Lord. Thou shalt be proclaimed heir of the world,
and the One god, and, the fulfiller of the designs of the gods. All
the gods invoke thee, come therefore to thy temple and be not afraid.
O R[=a] (_i.e._, Osiris), thou art beloved of Isis and Nephthys; rest
thou in thy habitation forever."
CHAPTER III.
THE "GODS" OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Throughout this book we have had to refer frequently to the "gods" of
Egypt; it is now time to explain who and what they were. We have already
shown how much the monotheistic side of the Egyptian religion resembles
that of modern Christian nations, and it will have come as a surprise to
some that a people, possessing such exalted ideas of God as the
Egyptians, could ever have become the byword they did through their
alleged worship of a multitude of "gods" in various forms. It is quite
true that the Egyptians paid honour to a number of gods, a number so
large that the list of their mere names would fill a volume, but it is
equally true that the educated classes in Egypt at all times never
placed the "gods" on the same high level as God, and they never imagined
that their views on this point could be mistaken. In prehistoric times
every little village or town, every district and province, and every
great city, had its own particular god; we may go a step farther, and
say that every family of any wealth and position had its own god. The
wealthy family selected some one to attend to its god, and to minister
unto his wants, and the poor family contributed, according to its means,
towards a common fund for providing a dwelling-house for the god, and
for vestments, etc. But the god was an integral part of the family,
whether rich or poor, and its destiny was practically locked up with
that of the family. The overthrow of the family included the overthrow
of the god, and seasons of prosperity resulted in abundant offerings,
new vestments; perhaps a new shrine, and the like. The god of the
village, although he was a more important being, might be led into
captivity along with the people of the village, but the victory of his
followers in a raid or fight caused the honours paid to him to be
magnified and enhanced his renown.
The gods of provinces or of great cities were, of course, greater than
those of villages and private families, and in the large houses
dedicated to them, _i.e._, temples, a considerable number of them,
represented by statues, would be found. Sometimes the attributes of one
god would be ascribed to another, sometimes two or more gods would be
"fused" or united and form one, sometimes gods were imported from remote
villages and towns and even from foreign countries, and occasionally a
community or town would repudiate its god or gods, and adopt a brand new
set from some neighbouring district Thus the number of the gods was
always changing, and the relative position of individual gods was always
changing; an obscure and almost unknown, local god to-day might through a
victory in war become the chief god of a city, and on the other hand, a
god worshipped with abundant offerings and great ceremony one month
might sink into insignificance and become to all intents and purposes a
dead god the next. But besides family and village gods there were
national gods, and gods of rivers and mountains, and gods of earth and
sky, all of which taken together made a formidable number of "divine"
beings whose good-will had to be secured, and whose ill-will must be
appeased. Besides these, a number of animals as being sacred to the gods
were also considered to be "divine," and fear as well as love made the
Egyptians add to their numerous classes of gods.
The gods of Egypt whose names are known to us do not represent all those
that have been conceived by the Egyptian imagination, for with them as
with much else, the law of the survival of the fittest holds good. Of
the gods of the prehistoric man we know nothing, but it is more than
probable that some of the gods who were worshipped in dynastic times
represent, in a modified form, the deities of the savage, or
semi-savage, Egyptian that held their influence on his mind the longest.
A typical example of such a god will suffice, namely Thoth, whose
original emblem was the dog-headed ape. In very early times great
respect was paid to this animal on account of his sagacity,
intelligence, and cunning; and the simple-minded Egyptian, when he heard
him chattering just before the sunrise and sunset, assumed that he was
in some way holding converse or was intimately connected with the sun.
This idea clung to his mind, and we find in dynastic times, in the
vignette representing the rising sun, that the apes, who are said to be
the transformed openers of the portals of heaven, form a veritable
company of the gods, and at the same time one of the most striking
features of the scene. Thus an idea which came into being in the most
remote times passed on from generation to generation until it became
crystallized in the best copies of the Book of the Dead, at a period
when Egypt was at its zenith of power and glory. The peculiar species of
the dog-headed ape which is represented in statues and on papyri is
famous for its cunning, and it was the words which it supplied to Thoth,
who in turn transmitted them to Osiris, that enabled Osiris to be "true
of voice," or triumphant, over his enemies. It is probably in this
capacity, _i.e._, as the friend of the dead, that the dog-headed ape
appears seated upon the top of the standard of the Balance in which the
heart of the deceased is being weighed against the feather symbolic of
Ma[=a]t; for the commonest titles of the god are "lord of divine books,"
"lord of divine words," _i.e._, the formulae which make the deceased to
be obeyed by friend and foe alike in the next world. In later times,
when Thoth came to be represented by the ibis bird, his attributes were
multiplied, and he became the god of letters, science, mathematics,
etc.; at the creation he seems to have played a part not unlike that of
"wisdom" which is so beautifully described by the writer of Proverbs
(see Chap. VIII. vv. 23-31).
Whenever and wherever the Egyptians attempted to set up a system of gods
they always found that the old local gods had to be taken into
consideration, and a place had to be found for them in the system. This
might be done by making them members of triads, or of groups of nine
gods, now commonly called "enneads"; but in one form or other they had
to appear. The researches made during the last few years have shown that
there must have been several large schools of theological thought in
Egypt, and of each of these the priests did their utmost to proclaim the
superiority of their gods. In dynastic times there must have been great
colleges at Heliopolis, Memphis, Abydos, and one or more places in the
Delta, not to mention the smaller schools of priests which, probably
existed at places on both sides of the Nile from Memphis to the south.
Of the theories and doctrines of all such schools and colleges, those of
Heliopolis have survived in the completest form, and by careful
examination of the funeral texts which were inscribed on the monuments
of the kings of Egypt of the Vth and VIth dynasties we can say what
views they held about many of the gods. At the outset we see that the
great god of Heliopolis was Temu or Atmu, the setting sun, and to him
the priests of that place ascribed the attributes which rightly belong
to R[=a], the Sun-god of the day-time. For some reason or other they
formulated the idea of a company of the gods, nine in number, which was
called the "great company _(paut)_ of the gods," and at the head of this
company they placed the god Temu. In Chapter XVII of the Book of the
Dead [Footnote: See _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p. 49.] we find
the following passage:--
"I am the god Temu in his rising; I am the only One. I came into being
in Nu. I am R[=a] who rose in the beginning."
Next comes the question, "But who is this?" And the answer is: "It is
R[=a] when at the beginning he rose in the city of Suten-henen
(Heracleopolis Magna) crowned like a king in rising. The pillars of the
god Shu were not as yet created when he was upon the staircase of him
that dwelleth in Khemennu (Hermopolis Magna)." From these statements we
learn that Temu and R[=a] were one and the same god, and that he was the
first offspring of the god Nu, the primeval watery mass out of which all
the gods came into being. The text continues: "I am the great god Nu who
gave birth to himself, and who made his names to come into being and to
form the company of the gods. But who is this? It is R[=a], the creator
of the names of his members which came into being in the form of the
gods who are in the train of R[=a]." And again: "I am he who is not
driven back among the gods. But who is this? It is Tem, the dweller in
his disk, or as others say, it is R[=a] in his rising in the eastern
horizon of heaven." Thus we learn further that Nu was self-produced, and
that the gods are simply the names of his limbs; but then R[=a] is Nu,
and the gods who are in his train or following are merely
personifications of the names of his own members. He who cannot be
driven back among the gods is either Temu or R[=a], and so we find that
Nu, Temu, and R[=a] are one and the same god. The priests of Heliopolis
in setting Temu at the head of their company of the gods thus gave
R[=a], and Nu also, a place of high honour; they cleverly succeeded in
making their own local god chief of the company, but at the same time
they provided the older gods with positions of importance. In this way
worshippers of R[=a], who had regarded their god as the oldest of the
gods, would have little cause to complain of the introduction of Temu
into the company of the gods, and the local vanity of Heliopolis would
be gratified.
But besides the nine gods who were supposed to form the "great company"
of gods of the city of Heliopolis, there was a second group of nine gods
called the "little company" of the gods, and yet a third group of nine
gods, which formed the least company. Now although the _paut_ or company
of nine gods might be expected to contain nine always, this was not the
case, and the number nine thus applied is sometimes misleading. There
are several passages extant in texts in which the gods of a _paut_ are
enumerated, but the total number is sometimes ten and sometimes eleven.
This fact is easily explained when we remember that the Egyptians
deified the various forms or aspects of a god, or the various phases in
his life. Thus the setting sun, called Temu or Atmu, and the rising sun,
called Khepera, and the mid-day sun, called R[=a], were three forms of
the same god; and if any one of these three forms was included in a
_paut_ or company of nine gods, the other two forms were also included
by implication, even though the _paut_ then contained eleven, instead of
nine gods. Similarly, the various forms of each god or goddess of the
_paut_ were understood to be included in it, however large the total
number of gods might become. We are not, therefore, to imagine that the
three companies of the gods were limited in number to 9 x 3, or
twenty-seven, even though the symbol for god be given twenty-seven times
in the texts.
We have already alluded to the great number of gods who were known to
the Egyptians, but it will be readily imagined that it was only those
who were thought to deal with man's destiny, here and hereafter, who
obtained the worship and reverence of the people of Egypt. These were,
comparatively, limited in number, and in fact may be said to consist of
the members of the great company of the gods of Heliopolis, that is to
say, of the gods who belonged to the cycle of Osiris. These may be
briefly described as follows:--
1. TEMU or ATMU, _i.e._, the "closer" of the day, just as Ptah was the
"opener" of the day. In the story of the creation he declares that he
evolved himself under the form of the god Khepera, and in hymns he is
said to be the "maker of the gods", "the creator of men", etc., and he
usurped the position of R[=a] among the gods of Egypt. His worship
must have been already very ancient at the time of the kings of the
Vth dynasty, for his traditional form is that of a man at that time.
2. SHU was the firstborn son of Temu. According to one legend he
sprang direct from the god, and according to another the goddess
Hathor was his mother; yet a third legend makes him the son of Temu by
the goddess Ius[=a]set. He it was who made his way between the gods
Seb and Nut and raised up the latter to form the sky, and this belief
is commemorated by the figures of this god in which he is represented
as a god raising himself up from the earth with the sun's disk on his
shoulders. As a power of nature he typified the light, and, standing
on the top of a staircase at Hermopolis Magua, [Footnote: See above,
pp. 69 and 89.] he raised up the sky and held it up during each day.
To assist him in this work he placed a pillar at each of the cardinal
points, and the "supports of Shu" are thus the props of the sky.
3. TEFNUT was the twin-sister of Shu; as a power of nature she
typified moisture or some aspect of the sun's heat, but as a god of
the dead she seems to have been, in some way, connected with the
supply of drink to the deceased. Her brother Shu was the right eye of
Temu, and she was the left, _i.e._, Shu represented an aspect of the
Sun, and Tefnut of the Moon. The gods Temu, Shu, and Tefnut thus
formed a trinity, and in the story of the creation the god Temu says,
after describing how Shu and Tefnut proceeded from himself, "thus from
being one god I became three."
4. SEB was the son of the god Shu. He is called the "Erp[=a]," _i.e._,
the "hereditary chief" of the gods, and the "father of the gods,"
these being, of course, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. He was
originally the god of the earth, but later he became a god of the dead
as representing the earth wherein the deceased was laid. One legend
identifies him with the goose, the bird which, in later times was
sacred to him, and he is often called the "Great Cackler," in allusion
to the idea that he made the primeval egg from which the world came
into being.
5. NUT was the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and
Nephthys. Originally she was the personification of the sky, and
represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of
the universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the
primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb
became the earth and Nut the sky. These deities were supposed to unite
every evening, and to remain embraced until the morning, when the god
Shu separated them, and set the goddess of the sky upon his four
pillars until the evening. Nut was, naturally, regarded as the mother
of the gods and of all things living, and she and her husband Seb were
considered to be the givers of food, not only to the living but also
to the dead. Though different views were current in Egypt as to the
exact location of the heaven of the beatified dead, yet all schools of
thought in all periods assigned it to some region in the sky, and the
abundant allusions in the texts to the heavenly bodies--that is, the
sun, moon, and stars--which the deceased dwells with, prove that the
final abode of the souls of the righteous was not upon earth. The
goddess Nut is sometimes represented as a female along whose body the
sun travels, and sometimes as a cow; the tree sacred to her was the
sycamore.
6. Osiris was the son of Seb and Nut, the husband of Isis and the
father of Horus. The history of this god is given elsewhere in this
book so fully that it is only necessary to refer briefly to him. He
was held to be a man although of divine origin; he lived and reigned
as a king on this earth; he was treacherously murdered by his brother
Set, and his body was cut up into fourteen pieces, which were
scattered about Egypt; after his death, Isis, by the use of magical
formulae supplied to her by Thoth, succeeded in raising him to life,
and he begot a son called Horus; when Horus was grown up, he engaged
in combat with Set, and overcame him, and thus "avenged his father";
by means of magical formulae, supplied to him by Thoth, Osiris
reconstituted and revivified his body, and became the type of the
resurrection and the symbol of immortality; he was also the hope, the
judge, and the god of the dead, probably even in pre-dynastic times.
Osiris was in one aspect a solar deity, and originally he seems to
have represented the sun after it had set; but he is also identified
with the moon. In the XVIIIth dynasty, however, he is already the
equal of R[=a], and later the attributes of God and of all the "gods"
were ascribed to him.
7. Isis was the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus; as a nature
goddess she had a place in the boat of the sun at the creation, when
she probably typified the dawn. By reason of her success in
revivifying her husband's body by means of the utterance of magical
formulae, she is called the "lady of enchantments." Her wanderings in
search of her husband's body, and the sorrow which she endured in
bringing forth and rearing her child in the papyrus swamps of the
Delta, and the persecution which she suffered at the hands of her
husband's enemies, form the subject of many allusions in texts of all
periods. She has various aspects, but the one which appealed most to
the imagination of the Egyptians, was that of "divine mother"; in this
character thousands of statues represent her seated and suckling her
child Horus whom she holds upon her knees.
8. Set was the son of Seb and Nut, and the husband of Nephthys. At a
very early period he was regarded as the brother and friend of "Horus
the Elder," the Aroueris of the Greeks, and Set represented the night
whilst Horus represented the day. Each of these gods performed many
offices of a friendly nature for the dead, and among others they set
up and held the ladder by which the deceased made his way from this
earth to heaven, and helped him to ascend it. But, at a later period,
the views of the Egyptians concerning Set changed, and soon after the
reign of the kings called "Seti," _i.e._, those whose names were based
upon that of the god, he became the personification of all evil, and
of all that is horrible and terrible in nature, such as the desert in
its most desolate form, the storm and the tempest, etc. Set, as a
power of nature, was always waging war with Horus the Elder, _i.e._,
the night did battle with the day for supremacy; both gods, however,
sprang from the same source, for the heads of both are, in one scene,
made to belong to one body. When Horus, the son of Isis, had grown up,
he did battle with Set, who had murdered Horus's father Osiris, and
vanquished him; in many texts these two originally distinct fights are
confused, and the two Horus gods also. The conquest of Set by Horus in
the first conflict typified only the defeat of the night by the day,
but the defeat of Set in the second seems to have been understood as
the victory of life over death, and of good over evil. The symbol of
Set was an animal with a head something like that of a camel, but it
has not yet been satisfactorily identified; figures of the god are
uncommon, for most of them were destroyed by the Egyptians when they
changed their views about him.
9. NEPHTHYS was the sister of Isis and her companion in all her
wanderings and troubles; like her she had a place in the boat of the
Sun at creation, when she probably typified the twilight or very early
night. She was, according to one legend, the mother of Anubis by
Osiris, but in the texts his father is declared to be R[=a]. In
funeral papyri, stelae, etc., she always accompanies Isis in her
ministrations to the dead, and as she assisted Osiris and Isis to
defeat the wickedness of her own husband (Set), so she helped the
deceased to overcome the powers of death and the grave.
Here then we have the nine gods of the divine company of Heliopolis, but
no mention is made of Horus, the son of Isis, who played such an
important part in the history of his father Osiris, and nothing is said
about Thoth; both gods are, however, included in the company in various
passages of the text, and it may be that their omission from it is the
result of an error of the scribe. We have already given the chief
details of the history of the gods Horus and Thoth, and the principal
gods of the other companies may now be briefly named.
NU was the "father of the gods," and progenitor of the "great company
of the gods"; he was the primeval watery mass out of which all things
came.
PTAH was one of the most active of the three great gods who carried
out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of
the primeval, creative Power; he was self-created, and was a form of
the Sun-god R[=a] as the "Opener" of the day. From certain allusions
in the Book of the Dead he is known to have "opened the mouth"
[Footnote: "May the god Ptah open my mouth"; "may the god Shu open my
mouth with his implement of iron wherewith he opened the mouth of the
gods" (Chap. XXIII.)] of the gods, and it is in this capacity that he
became a god of the cycle of Osiris. His feminine counterpart was the
goddess SEKHET, and the third member of the triad of which he was the
chief was NEFER-TEMU.
PTAH-SEKER is the dual god formed by fusing Seker, the Egyptian name
of the incarnation of the Apis Bull of Memphis, with Ptah.
PTAH-SEKER-AUSAR was a triune god who, in brief, symbolized life,
death, and the resurrection.
KHNEMU was one of the old cosmic gods who assisted Ptah in carrying
out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of
the primeval, creative Power, he is described as "the maker of things
which are, the creator of things which shall be, the source of created
things, the father of fathers, and the mother of mothers." It was he
who, according to one legend, fashioned man upon a potter's wheel.
KHEPERA was an old primeval god, and the type of matter which contains
within itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new
existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual
body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a
beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was
supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day
certain of the inhabitants of the Sûdân, pound the dried scarabaeus or
beetle and drink it in water, believing that it will insure them a
numerous progeny. The name "Khepera" means "he who rolls," and when
the insect's habit of rolling along its ball filled with eggs is taken
into consideration, the appropriateness of the name is apparent. As
the ball of eggs rolls along the germs mature and burst into life; and
as the sun rolls across the sky emitting light and heat and with them
life, so earthly things are produced and have their being by virtue
thereof.
R[=A] was probably the oldest of the gods worshipped in Egypt, and his
name belongs to such a remote period that its meaning is unknown. He
was in all periods the visible emblem of God, and was the god of this
earth to whom offerings and sacrifices were made daily; time began
when R[=a] appeared above the horizon at creation in the form of the
Sun, and the life of a man was compared to his daily course at a very
early date. R[=a] was supposed to sail over heaven in two boats, the
[=A]TET or M[=A] TET boat in which he journeyed from sunrise until
noon, and the SEKTET boat in which he journeyed from noon until
sunset. At his rising he was attacked by [=A]pep, a mighty "dragon" or
serpent, the type of evil and darkness, and with this monster he did
battle until the fiery darts which he discharged into the body of
=Apep scorched and burnt him up; the fiends that were in attendance
upon this terrible foe were also destroyed by fire, and their bodies
were hacked in pieces. A repetition of this story is given in the
legend of the fight between Horus and Set, and in both forms it
represented originally the fight which was supposed to go on daily
between light and darkness. Later, however, when Osiris had usurped
the position of R[=a], and Horus represented a divine power who was
about to avenge the cruel murder of his father, and the wrong which
had been done to him, the moral conceptions of right and wrong, good
and evil, truth and falsehood were applied to light and darkness, that
is to say, to Horus and Set.
As R[=a] was the "father of the gods," it was natural that every god
should represent some phase of him, and that he should represent every
god. A good illustration of this fact is afforded by a Hymn to R[=a], a
fine copy of which is found inscribed on the walls of the sloping
corridor in the tomb of Seti I., about B.C. 1370, from which we quote
the following:--
11. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost enter
into the habitations of Ament, behold [thy] body is Temu.
12. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost enter
into the hidden place of Anubis, behold, [thy] body is Khepera.
13. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, whose duration
of life is greater than that of the hidden forms, behold [thy] body is
Shu.
14. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, .... behold
[thy] body is Tefnut.
15. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who bringest
forth, green things in their season, behold [thy] body is Seb.
16. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, thou mighty
being who dost judge,... behold [thy] body is Nut.
17. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, the lord....
behold [thy] body is Isis.
18. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, whose head
giveth light to that which is in front of thee, behold [thy] body is
Nephthys.
19. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, thou source of
the divine members, thou One, who bringest into being that which hath
been begotten, behold [thy] body is Horus.
20. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost dwell
in and illumine the celestial deep, behold [thy] body is Nu."
[Footnote: For the text see _Annales du Musée Guimet: Le Tombeau de
Seti 1_. (ed. Lefébure), Paris, 1886, pl. v.]
In the paragraphs which follow R[=a] is identified with a large number
of gods and divine personages whose names are not of such common
occurrence in the texts as those given above, and in one way or another
the attributes of all the gods are ascribed to him. At the time when the
hymn was written it is clear that polytheism, not pantheism as some
would have it, was in the ascendant, and notwithstanding the fact that
the Theban god Amen was gradually being forced to the headship of the
companies of the gods of Egypt, we find everywhere the attempt being
made to emphasize the view that every god, whether foreign or native,
was an aspect or form of R[=a].
The god Amen just referred to was originally a local god of Thebes,
whose shrine was either founded or rebuilt as far back as the XIIth
dynasty, about B.C. 2500. This "hidden" god, for such is the meaning of
the name Amen, was essentially a god of the south of Egypt, but when the
Theban kings vanquished their foes in the north, and so became masters
of the whole country, Amen became a god of the first importance, and the
kings of the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth dynasties endowed his temples on a
lavish scale. The priests of the god called Amen "the king of the gods,"
and they endeavoured to make all Egypt accept him as such, but in spite
of their power they saw that they could not bring this result about
unless they identified him with the oldest gods of the land. They
declared that he represented the hidden and mysterious power which
created and sustains the universe, and that the sun was the symbol of
this power; they therefore added his name to that of R[=a], and in this
form he gradually usurped the attributes and powers of Nu, Khnemu, Ptah,
H[=a]pi, and other great gods. A revolt headed by Amen-hetep, or
Amenophis IV. (about B.C. 1500), took place against the supremacy of
Amen in the middle of the XVIIIth dynasty, but it was unsuccessful. This
king hated the god and his name so strongly that he changed his own name
into that of "Khu-en-Aten," _i.e._, "the glory of the solar Disk," and
ordered the name of Amen to be obliterated, wherever possible, on
temples and other great monuments; and this was actually done in many
places. It is impossible to say exactly what the religious views of the
king were, but it is certain that he wished to substitute the cult of
Aten, a form of the Sun-god worshipped at Annu (_i.e._, On or
Heliopolis) in very ancient times, for that of Amen. "Aten" means
literally the "Disk of the Sun," and though it is difficult to
understand at this distance of time in what the difference between the
worship of R[=a] and the worship of "R[=a] in his Disk" consisted, we
may be certain that there must have been some subtle, theological
distinction between them. But whatever the difference may have been, it
was sufficient to make Amenophis forsake the old capital Thebes and
withdraw to a place [Footnote: The site is marked by the ruins of Tell
el-Amarna.]some distance to the north of that city, where he carried on
the worship of his beloved god Aten. In the pictures of the Aten worship
which have come down to us the god appears in the form of a disk from
which proceed a number of arms and hands that bestow life upon his
worshippers. After the death of Amenophis the cult of Aten declined, and
Amen resumed his sway over the minds of the Egyptians.
Want of space forbids the insertion here of a full list of the titles of
Amen, and a brief extract from the Papyrus of the Princess Nesi-Khensu
[Footnote: For a hieroglyphic transcript of the hieratic text, see
Maspero, _Mémoires_, tom. i., p. 594 ff.] must suffice to describe the
estimation in which the god was held about B.C. 1000. In this Amen is
addressed as "the holy god, the lord of all the gods, Amen-R[=a], the
lord of the thrones of the world, the prince of Apt (_i.e._, Karnak),
the holy soul who came into being in the beginning, the great god who
liveth by right and truth, the first ennead who gave birth unto the
other two enneads, [Footnote: _i.e._, the great, the little, and the
least companies of the gods; each company (_paut_) contained nine gods.]
the being in whom every god existeth, the One of One, the creator of the
things which came into being when the earth took form in the beginning,
whose births are hidden, whose forms are manifold, and whose growth
cannot be known. The holy Form, beloved and terrible and mighty.... the
lord of space, the mighty One of the form of Khepera, who came into
existence through Khepera, the lord of the form of Khepera; when he came
into being nothing existed except himself. He shone upon the earth from
primeval time, he the Disk, the prince of light and radiance.... When
this holy god moulded himself, the heavens and the earth were made by
his heart (_or_ mind).... He is the Disk of the Moon, the beauties
whereof pervade the heavens and the earth, the untiring and beneficent
king whose will germinateth from rising to setting, from whose divine
eyes men and women come forth, and from whose mouth the gods do come,
and [by whom] food and meat and drink are made and provided, and [by
whom] the things which exist are created. He is the lord of time, and he
traverseth eternity; he is the aged one who reneweth his youth.... He is
the Being who cannot be known, and he is more hidden than all the
gods.... He giveth long life and multiplieth the years of those who are
favoured by him, he is the gracious protector of him whom he setteth in
his heart, and he is the fashioner of eternity and everlastingness. He
is the king of the North and of the South, Amen-R[=a], king of the gods,
the lord of heaven, and of earth, and of the waters and of the
mountains, with whose coming into being the earth began its existence,
the mighty one, more princely than, all the gods of the first company."
In the above extract, it will be noticed that Amen is called the "One of
One," or the "One One," a title which has been explained as having no
reference whatever to the unity of God as understood in modern times:
but unless these words are intended to express the idea of unity, what
is their meaning? It is also said that he is "without second," and thus
there is no doubt whatever that when the Egyptians declared their god to
be One, and without a second, they meant precisely what the Hebrews and
Arabs meant when they declared their God to be One. [Footnote: See
Deut., vi. 4; and _Koran_, chapter cxii.] Such a God was an entirely
different Being from the personifications of the powers of nature and
the existences which, for want of a better name, have been called
"gods."
But, besides R[=a], there existed in very early times a god called
HORUS, whose symbol was the hawk, which, it seems, was the first living
thing worshipped by the Egyptians; Horus was the Sun-god, like R[=a],
and in later times was confounded with Horus the son of Isis. The chief
forms of Horus given in the texts are: (1) HERU-UR (Aroueris), (2)
HERU-MERTI, (3) HERU-NUB, (4) HERU-KHENT-KHAT, (5) HERU-KHENT-AN-MAA, (6)
HERU-KHUTI, (7) HERU-SAM-TAUI, (8) HERU-HEKENNU, (9) HERU-BEHUTET.
Connected with one of the forms of Horus, originally, were the four gods
of the cardinal points, or the "four, spirits of Horus," who supported
heaven at its four corners; their names were HAPI, TUAMUTEE, AMSET, and
QEBHSENNUF, and they represented the north, east, south, and west
respectively. The intestines of the dead were embalmed and placed in
four jars, each being under the protection, of one of these four gods.
Other important gods of the dead are: (1) ANUBIS, the son of R[=a] or
Osiris, who presided over the abode of the dead, and with AP-UAT shared
the dominion of the "funeral mountain"; the symbol of each of these gods
is a jackal. (2) HU and SA, the children of Temu, or R[=a], who appear
in the boat of the sun at the creation, and later in the Judgment Scene.
(3) The goddess MA[=A]T, who was associated with Thoth, Ptah, and Khnemu
in the work of creation; the name means "straight," hence what is right,
true, truth, real, genuine, upright, righteous, just, steadfast,
unalterable, and the like. (4) The goddess HET-HERT (Hathor), _i.e._,
the "house of Horus," which was that part of the sky where the sun rose
and set. The sycamore tree was sacred to her, and the deceased prays to
be fed by her with celestial food from out of it (5) The goddess
MEH-URT, who represented that portion of the sky in which the sun takes
his daily course; here it was, according to the view held at one period
at least, that the judgment of the deceased was supposed to take place.
(6) NEITH, the mother of SEBEK, who was also a goddess of the eastern
portion of the sky. (7) SEKHET and BAST, who are represented with the
heads of a lion and a cat, and who were symbols of the destroying,
scorching power of the sun, and of the gentle heat thereof,
respectively. (8) SERQ, who was a form of Isis. (9) TA-URT (Thoueris),
who was the genetrix of the gods. (10) UATCHET, who was a form of
Hather, and who had dominion over the northern sky, just as NEKHEBET was
mistress of the southern sky. (11) NEHEB-KA, who was a goddess who
possessed magical powers, and in some respects resembled Isis in her
attributes. (12) SEBAK, who was a form of the Sun-god, and was in later
times confounded with Sebak, or Sebek, the friend of Set. (13) AMSU (or
MIN or KUEM), who was the personification of the generative and
reproductive powers of nature. (14) BEB or BABA, who was the "firstborn
son of Osiris." (15) H[=a]pi, who was the god of the Nile, and with whom
most of the great gods were identified.
The names of the beings who at one time or another were called "gods" in
Egypt are so numerous that a mere list of them would fill scores of
pages, and in a work of this kind would be out of place. The reader is,
therefore, referred to Lanzone's _Mitologia Egizia_, where a
considerable number are enumerated and described.
CHAPTER IV.
THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD.
The belief that the deeds done in the body would be subjected to an
analysis and scrutiny by the divine powers after the death of a man
belongs to the earliest period of Egyptian civilization, and this belief
remained substantially the same in all generations. Though we have no
information as to the locality where the Last Judgment took place, or
whether the Egyptian soul passed into the judgment-hall immediately
after the death of the body, or after the mummification was ended and
the body was deposited in the tomb, it is quite certain that the belief
in the judgment was as deeply rooted in the Egyptians as the belief in
immortality. There seems to have been no idea of a general judgment when
all those who had lived in the world should receive their reward for the
deeds done in the body; on the contrary, all the evidence available goes
to show that each soul was dealt with individually, and was either
permitted to pass into the kingdom of Osiris and of the blessed, or was
destroyed straightway. Certain passages in the texts seem to suggest the
idea of the existence of a place for departed spirits wherein the souls
condemned in the judgment might dwell, but it must be remembered that it
was the enemies of R[=a], the Sun-god, that inhabited this region; and
it is impossible to imagine that the divine powers who presided over the
judgment would permit the souls of the wicked to live after they had
been condemned and to become enemies of those who were pure and blessed.
On the other hand, if we attach any importance to the ideas of the Copts
upon this subject, and consider that they represent ancient beliefs
which they derived from the Egyptians traditionally, it must be admitted
that the Egyptian underworld contained some region wherein the souls of
the wicked were punished for an indefinite period. The Coptic lives of
saints and martyrs are full of allusions to the sufferings of the
damned, but whether the descriptions of these are due to imaginings of
the mind of the Christian Egyptian or to the bias of the scribe's
opinions cannot always be said. When we consider that the Coptic hell
was little more than a modified form of the ancient Egyptian Amenti, or
Amentet, it is difficult to believe that it was the name of the Egyptian
underworld only which was borrowed, and that the ideas and beliefs
concerning it which were held by the ancient Egyptians were not at the
same time absorbed. Some Christian writers are most minute in their
classification of the wicked in hell, as we may see from the following
extract from the life of Pisentios, [Footnote: Ed. Amélineau, Paris,
1887, p. 144 f.] Bishop of Keft, in the VIIth century of our era. The
holy man had taken refuge in a tomb wherein a number of mummies had been
piled up, and when he had read the list of the names of the people who
had been buried there he gave it to his disciple to replace. Then he
addressed his disciple and admonished him to do the work of God with
diligence, and warned him that every man must become even as were the
mummies which lay before them. "And some," said he, "whose sins have
been many are now in Amenti, others are in the outer darkness, others
are in pits and ditches filled with fire, and others are in the river of
fire: upon these last no one hath bestowed rest. And others, likewise,
are in a place of rest, by reason of their good works." When the
disciple had departed, the holy man began to talk to one of the mummies
who had been a native of the town of Erment, or Armant, and whose father
and mother had been called Agricolaos and Eustathia. He had been a
worshipper of Poseidon, and had never heard that Christ had come into
the world. "And," said he "woe, woe is me because I was born into the
world. Why did not my mother's womb become my tomb? When, it became
necessary for me to die, the Kosmokratôr angels were the first to come
round about me, and they told me of all the sins which I had committed,
and they said unto me, 'Let him that can save thee from the torments
into which thou shalt be cast come hither.' And they had in their hands
iron knives, and pointed goads which were like unto sharp spears, and
they drove them into my sides and gnashed upon me with their teeth. When
a little time afterwards my eyes were opened I saw death hovering about
in the air in its manifold forms, and at that moment angels who were
without pity came and dragged my wretched soul from my body, and having
tied it under the form of a black horse they led me away to Amonti. Woe
be unto every sinner like unto myself who hath been born into the world!
O my master and father, I was then delivered into the hands of a
multitude of tormentors who were without pity and who had each a
different form. Oh, what a number of wild beasts did I see in the way!
Oh, what a number of powers were there that inflicted punishment upon
me! And it came to pass that when I had been cast into the outer
darkness, I saw a great ditch which was more than two hundred cubits
deep, and it was filled with reptiles; each reptile had seven heads, and
the body of each was like unto that of a scorpion. In this place also
lived the Great Worm, the mere sight of which terrified him that looked
thereat. In his mouth he had teeth like unto iron stakes, and one took
me and threw me to this Worm which never ceased to eat; then immediately
all the [other] beasts gathered together near him, and when he had
filled his mouth [with my flesh], all the beasts who were round about me
filled theirs." In answer to the question of the holy man as to whether
he had enjoyed any rest or period without suffering, the mummy replied:
"Yea, O my father, pity is shown unto those who are in torment every
Saturday and every Sunday. As soon as Sunday is over we are cast into
the torments which we deserve, so that we may forget the years which we
have passed in the world; and as soon as we have forgotten the grief of
this torment we are cast into another which is still more grievous."
Now, it is easy to see from the above description of the torments which
the wicked were supposed to suffer, that the writer had in his mind some
of the pictures with which we are now familiar, thanks to the excavation
of tombs which has gone on in Egypt during the last few years; and it is
also easy to see that he, in common with many other Coptic writers,
misunderstood the purport of them. The outer darkness, _i.e._, the
blackest place of all in the underworld, the river of fire, the pits of
fire, the snake and the scorpion, and such like things, all have their
counterparts, or rather originals, in the scenes which accompany the
texts which describe the passage of the sun through the underworld
during the hours of the night. Having once misunderstood the general
meaning of such scenes, it was easy to convert the foes of R[=a], the
Sun-god, into the souls of the damned, and to look upon the burning up
of such foes--who were after all only certain powers of nature
personified--as the well-merited punishment of those who had done evil
upon the earth. How far the Copts reproduced unconsciously the views
which had been held by their ancestors for thousands of years cannot be
said, but even after much allowance has been made for this possibility,
there remains still to be explained a large number of beliefs and views
which seem to have been the peculiar product of the Egyptian Christian
imagination.
It has been said above that the idea of the judgment of the dead is of
very great antiquity in Egypt; indeed, it is so old that it is useless
to try to ascertain the date of the period when it first grew up. In the
earliest religious texts known to us, there are indications that the
Egyptians expected a judgment, but they are not sufficiently definite to
argue from; it is certainly doubtful if the judgment was thought to be
as thorough and as searching then as in the later period. As far back as
the reign of Men-kau-R[=a], the Mycerinus of the Greeks, about B.C.
3600, a religious text, which afterwards formed chapter 30B of the Book
of the Dead, was found inscribed on an iron slab; in the handwriting of
the god Thoth, by the royal son or prince Herut[=a]t[=a]f. [Footnote:
See _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, Translation, p. 80.] The original
purpose of the composition of this text cannot be said, but there is
little doubt that it was intended, to benefit the deceased in the
judgment, and, if we translate its title literally, it was intended to
prevent his heart from "falling away from him in the underworld." In the
first part of it the deceased, after adjuring his heart, says, "May
naught stand up to oppose me in the judgment; may there be no opposition
to me in the presence of the sovereign princes; may there be no parting
of thee from me in the presence of him that keepeth the Balance!... May
the officers of the court of Osiris (in Egyptian _Shenit_), who form the
conditions of the lives of men, not cause my name to stink! Let [the
judgment] be satisfactory unto me, let the hearing be satisfactory unto
me, and let me have joy of heart at the weighing of words. Let not that
which is false be uttered against me before the Great God, the Lord of
Amentet."
Now, although the papyrus upon, which this statement and prayer are
found was written about two thousand years after Men-kau-R[=a] reigned,
there is no doubt that they were copied from texts which were themselves
copied at a much earlier period, and that the story of the finding of
the text inscribed upon an iron slab is contemporary with its actual
discovery by Herut[=a]t[=a]f. It is not necessary to inquire here
whether the word "find" (in Egyptian _qem_) means a genuine discovery or
not, but it is clear that those who had the papyrus copied saw no
absurdity or impropriety in ascribing the text to the period of
Men-kau-R[=a]. Another text, which afterwards also became a chapter of
the Book of the Dead, under the title "Chapter of not letting the heart
of the deceased be driven away from him in the underworld," was
inscribed on a coffin of the XIth dynasty, about B.C. 2500, and in it we
have the following petition: "May naught stand up to oppose me in
judgment in the presence of the lords of the trial (literally, 'lords of
things'); let it not be said of me and of that which I have done, 'He
hath done deeds against that which is very right and true'; may naught
be against me in the presence of the Great God, the Lord of Amentet."
[Footnote: _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p. 78.] From these
passages we are right in assuming that before the end of the IVth
dynasty the idea of being "weighed in the balance" was already evolved;
that the religious schools of Egypt had assigned to a god the duty of
watching the balance when cases were being tried; that this weighing in
the balance took place in the presence of the beings called _Shenit_,
who were believed to control the acts and deeds of men; that it was
thought that evidence unfavourable to the deceased might be produced by
his foes at the judgment; that the weighing took place in the presence
of the Great God, the Lord of Amentet; and that the heart of the
deceased might fail him either physically or morally. The deceased
addresses his heart, calling it is "mother," and next identifies it with
his _ka_ or double, coupling the mention of the _ka_ with the name of
the god Khnemu: these facts are exceedingly important, for they prove
that the deceased considered his heart to be the source of his life and
being, and the mention of the god Khnemu takes the date of the
composition back to a period coaeval with the beginnings of religious
thought in Egypt. It was the god Khnemu who assisted Thoth in performing
the commands of God at the creation, and one very interesting sculpture
at Philae shows Khnemu in the act of fashioning man upon a potter's
wheel. The deceased, in mentioning Khnemu's name, seems to invoke his
aid in the judgment as fashioner of man and as the being who is in some
respects responsible for the manner of his life upon earth.
In Chapter 30A there is no mention made of the "guardian of the
balance," and the deceased says, "May naught stand up to oppose me in
judgment in the presence of the lords of things!" The "lords of things"
may be either the "lords of creation," _i.e._, the great cosmic gods, or
the "lords of the affairs [of the hall of judgment]," _i.e._, of the
trial. In this chapter the deceased addresses not Khnemu, but "the gods
who dwell in the divine clouds, and who are exalted by reason of their
sceptres," that is to say, the four gods of the cardinal points, called
Mestha, H[=a]pi Tuamutef, and Qebhsennuf, who also presided over the
chief internal organs of the human body. Here, again, it seems as if the
deceased was anxious to make these gods in some way responsible for the
deeds done by him in his life, inasmuch as they presided, over the
organs that were the prime movers of his actions. In any case, he
considers them in, the light of intercessors, for he beseeches them to
"speak fair words unto R[=a]" on his behalf, and to make him to prosper
before the goddess Nehebka. In this case, the favour of R[=a], the
Sun-god, the visible emblem of the almighty and eternal God, is sought
for, and also that of the serpent goddess, whose attributes are not yet
accurately defined, but who has much to do with the destinies of the
dead. No mention whatever is made of the Lord of Amentet--Osiris.
Before we pass to the consideration of the manner in which the judgment
is depicted upon the finest examples of the illustrated papyri,
reference must be made to an interesting vignette in the papyri of
Nebseni [Footnote: British Museum, No. 9900.] and Amen-neb. [Footnote 2:
British Museum, No. 0964.] In both of these papyri we see a figure of
the deceased himself being weighed in the balance against his own heart
in the presence of the god Osiris. It seems probable that a belief was
current at one time in ancient Egypt concerning the possibility of the
body being weighed against the heart, with the view of finding out if
the former had obeyed the dictates of the latter; be that as it may,
however, it is quite certain that this remarkable variant of the
vignette of Chapter 30B had some special meaning, and, as it occurs in
two papyri which date from the XVIIIth dynasty, we are justified in
assuming that it represents a belief belonging to a much older period.
The judgment here depicted must, in any case, be different from that
which forms such a striking scene in the later illustrated papyri of the
XVIIIth and following dynasties.
We have now proved that the idea of the judgment of the dead was
accepted in religious writings as early as the IVth dynasty, about B.C.
3600, but we have to wait nearly two thousand years before we find it in
picture form. Certain scenes which are found in the Book of the Dead as
vignettes accompanying certain texts or chapters, _e.g._, the Fields of
Hetep, or the Elysian Fields, are exceedingly old, and are found on
sarcophagi of the XIth and XIIth dynasties; but the earliest picture
known of the Judgment Scene is not older than the XVIIIth dynasty. In
the oldest Theban papyri of the Book of the Dead no Judgment Scene is
forthcoming, and when we find it wanting in such authoritative documents
as the Papyrus of Nebseni and that of Nu, [Footnote: British Museum, No.
10,477.] we must take it for granted that there was some reason for its
omission. In the great illustrated papyri, in which, the Judgment Scene
is given in full, it will be noticed that it comes at the beginning of
the work, and that it is preceded by hymns and by a vignette. Thus, in
the Papyrus of Ani, [Footnote: British Museum, No. 10,470.] we have a
hymn to R[=a] followed by a vignette representing the sunrise, and a
hymn to Osiris; and in the Papyrus of Hunefer, [Footnote 2: British
Museum, No. 9901.] though the hymns are different, the arrangement is
the same. We are justified, then, in assuming that the hymns and the
Judgment Scene together formed an introductory section to the Book of
the Dead, and it is possible that it indicates the existence of the
belief, at least during the period of the greatest power of the priests
of Amen, from B.C. 1700 to B.C. 800, that the judgment of the dead for
the deeds done in the body preceded the admission of the dead into the
kingdom of Osiris. As the hymns which accompany the Judgment Scene are
fine examples of a high class of devotional compositions, a few
translations from some of them are here given.
HYMN TO R[=A]. [Footnote: See _The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p.
7.]
"Homage to thee, O thou who risest in Nu, [Footnote: The sky
personified.] and who at thy manifestation dost make the world bright
with light; the whole company of the gods sing hymns of praise unto
thee after thou hast come forth. The divine Merti [Footnote:
Literally, the Two Eyes, _i.e._, Isis and Nephthys.] goddesses who
minister unto thee cherish thee as King of the North and South, thou
beautiful and beloved Man-child. When, thou risest men and women live.
The nations rejoice in thee, and the Souls of Annu [Footnote: _i.e._,
R[=a], Shu and Tefnut.] (Heliopolis) sing unto thee songs of joy. The
Souls of the city of Pe, [Footnote: Part of the city of Buto
(Per-Uatchit). The souls of Pe were Horus, Mestha, H[=a]pi.] and the
Souls of the city of Nekhen [Footnote: _i.e._, Horus, Tuamutef, and
Qebhsennuf.] exalt thee, the apes of dawn adore thee, and all beasts
and cattle praise thee with one accord. The goddess Seba overthroweth
thine enemies, therefore hast thou rejoicing in thy boat; thy mariners
are content thereat. Thou hast attained unto the [= A]tet boat,
[Footnote: _i.e._, the boat in which the sun travels until noon.] and
thy heart swelleth with joy. O lord of the gods, when thou didst
create them they shouted for joy. The azure goddess Nut doth compass
thee on every side, and the god Nu floodeth thee with his rays of
light. O cast thou thy light upon me and let me see thy beauties, and
when thou goest forth over the earth I will sing praises unto thy fair
face. Thou risest in heaven's horizon, and thy disk is adored when it
resteth upon the mountain to give life unto the world."
"Thou risest, thou risest, and thou comest forth from the god Nu. Thou
dost renew thy youth, and thou dost set thyself in the place where
thou wast yesterday. O thou divine Child, who didst create thyself, I
am not able [to describe] thee. Thou hast come with thy risings, and
thou hast made heaven and earth resplendent with thy rays of pure
emerald light. The land of Punt [Footnote: _i.e._, the land on each
side of the Red Sea and North-east Africa.] is established [to give]
the perfumes which, thou smellest with thy nostrils. Thou risest, O
marvellous Being, in heaven, and the two serpent-goddesses, Merti, are
established upon thy brow. Thou art the giver of laws, O thou lord of
the world and of all the inhabitants thereof; all the gods adore
thee."
HYMN TO OSIRIS [Footnote: See _The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p.
11.]
"Glory be to thee, O Osiris Un-nefer, the great god within Abydos,
king of eternity and lord of everlastingness, the god who passest
through millions of years in thy existence. Thou art the eldest son of
the womb of Nut, thou wast engendered by Seb, the Ancestor of the
gods, thou art the lord of the Crowns of the North and of the South,
and of the lofty white crown. As Prince of the gods and of men thou
hast received the crook, and the whip, and the dignity of thy divine
fathers. Let thy heart which is in the mountain of Ament [Footnote:
_i.e._, the underworld.] be content, for thy son Horus is established
upon thy throne. Thou art crowned the lord of Tattu (Mendes) and ruler
in Abtu (Abydos). Through thee the world waxeth green in triumph
before the might of Neb-er-tcher. [Footnote: A name of Osiris.] Thou
leadest in thy train that which is, and that which is not yet, in thy
name of 'Ta-her-sta-nef;' thou towest along the earth in thy name of
'Seker;' thou art exceedingly mighty and most terrible in thy name of
'Osiris;' thou endurest for ever and for ever in thy name of
'Un-nefer.'"
"Homage to thee, O thou King of kings, Lord of lords, Prince of
Princes! From the womb of Nut thou hast ruled the world and the
underworld. Thy body is of bright and shining metal, thy head is of
azure blue, and the brilliance of the turquoise encircleth thee. O
thou god An, who hast had existence for millions of years, who
pervadest all things with thy body, who art beautiful in countenance
in the Land of Holiness (_i.e._, the underworld), grant thou to me
splendour in heaven, might upon earth, and triumph in the underworld.
Grant thou that I may sail down to Tattu like a living soul, and up to
Abtu like the phoenix; and grant that I may enter in and come forth
from the pylons of the lands of the underworld without let or
hindrance. May loaves of bread be given unto me in the house of
coolness, and offerings of food and drink in Annu (Heliopolis), and a
homestead for ever and for ever in the Field of Reeds [Footnote: A
division of the "Fields of Peace" or Elysian Fields.] with wheat and
barley therefor."
In the long and important hymn in the Papyrus of Hunefer [Footnote: See
_The Chapters of Coming Forth By Day_, pp. 343-346.] occurs the
following petition, which is put into the mouth of the deceased:--
"Grant that I may follow in the train of thy Majesty even as I did
upon earth. Let my soul be called [into the presence], and let it be
found by the side of the lords of right and truth. I have come into
the City of God, the region which existed in primeval time, with [my]
soul, and with [my] double, and with [my] translucent form, to dwell
in this land. The God thereof is the lord of right and truth, he is
the lord of the _tchefau_ food of the gods, and he is most holy. His
land draweth unto itself every land; the South cometh sailing down the
river thereto, and the North, steered thither by winds, cometh daily
to make festival therein according to the command of the God thereof,
who is the Lord of peace therein. And doth he not say, 'The happiness
thereof is a care unto me'? The god who dwelleth therein worketh right
and truth; unto him that doeth these things he giveth old age, and to
him that followeth after them rank and honour, until at length he
attaineth unto a happy funeral and burial in the Holy Land" (_i.e._,
the underworld).
The deceased, having recited these words of prayer and adoration to
R[=a], the symbol of Almighty God, and to his son Osiris, next "cometh
forth into the Hall of Ma[=a]ti, that he may be separated from every sin
which he hath done, and may behold the faces of the gods." [Footnote:
This quotation is from the title of Chapter CXXV. of the Book of the
Dead.] From the earliest times the Ma[=a]ti were the two goddesses Isis
and Nephthys, and they were so called because they represented the ideas
of straightness, integrity, righteousness, what is right, the truth, and
such like; the word Ma[=a]t originally meant a measuring reed or stick.
They were supposed either to sit in the Hall of Ma[=a]t outside the
shrine of Osiris, or to stand by the side of this god in the shrine; an
example of the former position will be seen in the Papyrus of Ani (Plate
31), and of the latter in the Papyrus of Hunefer (Plate 4). The original
idea of the Hall of Ma[=a]t or Ma[=a]ti was that it contained forty-two
gods; a fact which we may see from the following passage in the
Introduction to Chapter CXXV. of the Book of the Dead. The deceased says
to Osiris:--
"Homage to thee, O thou great God, thou Lord of the two Ma[=a]t
goddesses! I have come to thee, O my Lord, and I have made myself to
come hither that I may behold thy beauties. I know thee, and I know
thy name, and I know the names of the two and forty gods who live with
thee in this Hall of Ma[=a]ti, who live as watchers of sinners and who
feed upon their blood on that day when the characters (_or_ lives) of
men are reckoned up (_or_ taken into account) in the presence of the
god Un-nefer. Verily, God of the Rekhti-Merti (_i.e._, the twin
sisters of the two eyes), the Lord of the city of Ma[=a]ti is thy
name. Verily I have come to thee, and I have brought Ma[=a]t unto
thee, and I have destroyed wickedness."
The deceased then goes on to enumerate the sins or offences which he has
not committed; and he concludes by saying: "I am pure; I am pure; I am
pure; I am pure. My purity is the purity of the great Bennu which is in
the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), for, behold., I am the nostrils
of the God of breath, who maketh all mankind to live on the day when the
Eye of R[=a] is full in Annu (Heliopolis) at the end of the second month
of the season PERT. [Footnote: _i.e._, the last day of the sixth month
of the Egyptian year, called by the Copta Mekhir.] I have seen the Eye
of R[=a] when it was full in Annu; [Footnote: The allusion here seems to
be to the Summer or Winter Solstice.] therefore let not evil befall me
either in this land or in this Hall of Ma[=a]ti, because I, even I, know
the names of the gods who are therein."
Now as the gods who live in the Hall of Ma[=a]t with Osiris are two and
forty in number, we should expect that two and forty sins or offences
would be mentioned in the addresses which the deceased makes to them;
but this is not the case, for the sins enumerated in the Introduction
never reach this number. In the great illustrated papyri of the XVIIIth
and XIXth dynasties we find, however, that notwithstanding the fact that
a large number of sins, which the deceased declares he has not
committed, are mentioned in the Introduction, the scribes and artists
added a series of negative statements, forty-two in number, which they
set out in a tabular form. This, clearly, is an attempt to make the sins
mentioned equal in number to the gods of the Hall of Ma[=a]t, and it
would seem as if they preferred to compose an entirely new form of this
section of the one hundred and twenty-fifth chapter to making any
attempt to add to or alter the older section. The artists, then,
depicted a Hall of Ma[=a]t, the doors of which are wide open, and the
cornice of which is formed of uraei and feathers, symbolic of Ma[=a]t.
Over the middle of the cornice is a seated deity with hands extended,
the right over the Eye of Horus, and the left over a pool. At the end of
the Hall are seated the goddesses of Ma[=a]t, _i.e._, Isis and Nephthys,
the deceased adoring Osiris who is seated on a throne, a balance with
the heart of the deceased in one scale, and the feather, symbolic of
Ma[=a]t, in the other, and Thoth painting a large feather. In this Hall
sit the forty-two gods, and as the deceased passes by each, the deceased
addresses him by his name and at the same time declares that he has not
committed a certain sin. An examination of the different papyri shows
that the scribes often made mistakes in writing this list of gods and
list of sins, and, as the result, the deceased is made to recite before
one god the confession which strictly belongs to another. Inasmuch, as
the deceased always says after pronouncing the name of each god, "I have
not done" such and such a sin, the whole group of addresses has been
called the "Negative Confession." The fundamental ideas of religion and
morality which underlie this Confession are exceedingly old, and we may
gather from it with tolerable clearness what the ancient Egyptian
believed to constitute his duty towards God and towards his neighbour.
It is impossible to explain, the fact that forty-two gods only are
addressed, and equally so to say why this number was adopted. Some have
believed that the forty-two gods represented each a name of Egypt, and
much support is given to this view by the fact that most of the lists of
names make the number to be forty-two; but then, again, the lists do not
agree. The classical authors differ also, for by some of these writers
the names are said to be thirty-six in number, and by others forty-six
are enumerated. These differences may, however, be easily explained, for
the central administration may at any time have added to or taken from
the number of names for fiscal or other considerations, and we shall
probably be correct in assuming that at the time the Negative Confession
was drawn up in the tabular form in which we meet it in the XVIIIth
dynasty the names were forty-two in number. Support is also lent to this
view by the fact that the earliest form of the Confession, which forms
the Introduction to Chapter CXXV., mentions less than forty sins.
Incidentally we may notice that the forty-two gods are subservient to
Osiris, and that they only occupy a subordinate position in the Hall of
Judgment, for it is the result of the weighing of the heart of the
deceased in the balance that decides his future. Before passing to the
description of the Hall of Judgment where the balance is set, it is
necessary to give a rendering of the Negative Confession which,
presumably, the deceased recites before his heart is weighed in the
balance; it is made from the Papyrus of Nu. [Footnote: British Museum,
No. 10,477.]
1. "Hail Usekh-nemtet (_i.e._, Long of strides), who comest forth from
Anuu (Heliopolis), I have not done iniquity.
2. "Hail Hept-seshet (_i.e._, Embraced by flame), who comest forth
from Kher-[=a]ba, [Footnote: A city near Memphis.] I have not robbed
with violence.
3. "Hail Fenti (_i.e._, Nose), who comest forth from Khemennu
(Hermopolis), I have not done violence to any man.
4. "Hail [=A]m-khaibitu (_i.e._, Eater of shades), who comest forth
from the Qereret (_i.e._, the cavern where the Nile rises), I have not
committed theft.
5. "Hail Neha-bra (_i.e._, Stinking face), who comest forth from
Restau, I have slain neither man nor woman.
6. "Hail Rereti (_i.e._, Double Lion-god), who comest forth from
heaven, I have not made light the bushel.
7. "Hail Maata-f-em-seshet (_i.e._, Fiery eyes), who comest forth from
Sekhem (Letopolis), I have not acted deceitfully.
8. "Hail Neba (_i.e._, Flame), who comest forth and retreatest, I have
not purloined the things which belong unto God.
9. "Hail Set-qesu (_i.e._, Crusher of bones), who comest forth from
Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), I have not uttered falsehood.
10. "Hail Khemi (_i.e._, Overthrower), who comest forth from Shetait
(_i.e._, the hidden place), I have not carried off goods by force.
11. "Hail Uatch-nesert (_i.e._, Vigorous of Flame), who comest forth
from Het-ka-Ptah (Memphis), I have not uttered vile (_or_ evil) words.
12. "Hail Hra-f-ha-f (_i.e._, He whose face is behind him), who comest
forth from the cavern and the deep, I have not carried off food by
force.
13. "Hail Qerti (_i.e._, the double Nile source), who comest forth
from the Underworld, I have not acted deceitfully.
14. "Hail Ta-ret (_i.e._, Fiery-foot), who comest forth out of the
darkness, I have not eaten my heart (_i.e._ lost my temper and become
angry).
15. "Hail Hetch-abehu (_i.e._, Shining teeth), who comest forth from
Ta-she (_i.e._, the Fayyûm), I have invaded no [man's land].
16. "Hail [=A]m-senef (_i.e._, Eater of blood), who comest forth from
the house of the block, I have not slaughtered animals which are the
possessions of God.
17. "Hail [=A]m-besek (_i.e._, Eater of entrails), who comest forth
from M[=a]bet, I have not laid waste the lands which have been
ploughed.
18. "Hail Neb-Ma[=a]t (_i.e._, Lord of Ma[=a]t), who comest forth from
the city of the two Ma[=a]ti, I have not pried into matters to make
mischief.
19. "Hail Thenemi (_i.e._, Retreater), who comest forth from Bast
(_i.e._, Bubastis), I have not set my mouth in motion against any man.
20. "Hail [=A]nti, who comest forth from Annu (Heliopolis), I have not
given way to wrath without due cause.
21. "Hail Tututef, who comest forth from the home of Ati, I have not
committed fornication, and I have not committed sodomy.
22. "Hail Uamemti, who comest forth from the house of slaughter, I
have not polluted myself.
23. "Hail Maa-ant-f (_i.e._, Seer of what is brought to him), who
comest forth from the house of the god Amsu, I have not lain with the
wife of a man.
24. "Hail Her-seru, who comest forth from Nehatu, I have not made any
man to be afraid.
25. "Hail Neb-Sekhem, who comest forth from the Lake of Kaui, I have
not made my speech to burn with anger. [Footnote: Literally, "I have
not been hot of mouth."]
26. "Hail Seshet-kheru (_i.e._, Orderer of speech), who comest forth
from Urit, I have not made myself deaf unto the words of right and
truth.
27. "Hail Nekhen (_i.e._, Babe), who comest forth from the Lake of
Heq[=a] t, I have not made another person to weep.
28. "Hail Kenemti, who comest forth from Kenemet, I have not uttered
blasphemies.
29. "Hail An-hetep-f (_i.e._, Bringer of his offering), who comest
forth from Sau, I have not acted with violence.
30. "Hail Ser-kheru (_i.e._, Disposer of Speech), who comest forth
from Unsi, I have not hastened my heart. [Footnote: _i.e._, acted
without due consideration.]
31. "Hail Neb-hrau (_i.e._, Lord of Faces), who comest forth from
Netchefet, I have not pierced (?) my skin (?), and I have not taken
vengeance on the god.
32. "Hail Serekhi, who comest forth from Uthent, I have not multiplied
my speech beyond what should be said.
33. "Hail Neb-abui (_i.e._, Lord of horns), who comest forth from
Sauti, I have not committed fraud, [and I have not] looked upon evil.
34. "Hail Nefer-Tem, who comest forth from Ptah-het-ka (Memphis), I
have never uttered curses against the king.
35. "Hail Tem-sep, who comest forth from Tattu, I have not fouled
running water.
36. "Hail Ari-em-ab-f, who comest forth from Tebti, I have not exalted
my speech.
37. "Hail Ahi, who comest forth from Nu, I have not uttered curses
against God.
38. "Hail Uatch-rekhit [who comest forth from his shrine (?)], I have
not behaved with insolence.
39. "Hail Neheb-nefert, who comest forth from his temple, I have not
made distinctions. [Footnote: _i.e._, I have not been guilty of
favouritism.]
40. "Hail Neheb-kau, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not
increased my wealth except by means of such things as are mine own
possessions.
41. "Hail Tcheser-tep, who comest forth from thy shrine, I have not
uttered curses against that which belongeth to God and is with me.
42. "Hail An-[=a]-f (_i.e._, Bringer of his arm), [who comest forth
from Aukert], I have not thought scorn of the god of the city."
A brief examination of this "Confession" shows that the Egyptian code of
morality was very comprehensive, and it would be very hard to find an
act, the commission of which would be reckoned a sin when the
"Confession" was put together, which is not included under one or other
part of it. The renderings of the words for certain sins are not always
definite or exact, because we do not know the precise idea which the
framer of this remarkable document had. The deceased states that he has
neither cursed God, nor thought scorn of the god of his city, nor cursed
the king, nor committed theft of any kind, nor murder, nor adultery, nor
sodomy, nor crimes against the god of generation; he has not been
imperious or haughty, or violent, or wrathful, or hasty in deed, or a
hypocrite, or an accepter of persons, or a blasphemer, or crafty, or
avaricious, or fraudulent, or deaf to pious words, or a party to evil
actions, or proud, or puffed up; he has terrified no man, he has not
cheated in the market-place, and he has neither fouled the public
watercourse nor laid waste the tilled land of the community. This is, in
brief, the confession which the deceased makes; and the next act in the
Judgment Scene is weighing the heart of the deceased in the scales. As
none of the oldest papyri of the Book of the Dead supplies us with a
representation of this scene, we must have recourse to the best of the
illustrated papyri of the latter half of the XVIIIth and of the XIXth
dynasties. The details of the Judgment Scene vary greatly in various
papyri, but the essential parts of it are always preserved. The
following is the description of the judgment of Ani, as it appears in
his wonderful papyrus preserved in the British Museum.
In the underworld, and in that portion of it which is called the Hall of
Ma[=a]ti, is set a balance wherein the heart of the deceased is to be
weighed. The beam is suspended by a ring upon a projection from the
standard of the balance made in the form of the feather which is the
symbol of Ma[=a]t, or what is right and true. The tongue of the balance
is fixed to the beam, and when this is exactly level, the tongue is as
straight as the standard; if either end of the beam inclines downwards
the tongue cannot remain in a perpendicular position. It must be
distinctly understood that the heart which was weighed in the one scale
was not expected to make the weight which was in the other to kick the
beam, for all that was asked or required of the deceased was that his
heart should balance exactly the symbol of the law. The standard was
sometimes surmounted by a human head wearing the feather of Ma[=a]t;
sometimes by the head of a jackal, the animal sacred to Anubis; and
sometimes by the head of an ibis, the bird sacred to Thoth; in the
Papyrus of Ani a dog-headed ape, the associate of Thoth, sits on the top
of the standard. In some papyri (_e.g._, those of Ani [Footnote: About
B.C. 1500.] and Hunefer [Footnote: About B.C. 1370.]), in addition to
Osiris, the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, the gods of
his cycle or company appear as witnesses of the judgment. In the Papyrus
of the priestess Anhai [Footnote: About B.C. 1000.] in the British
Museum the great and the little companies of the gods appear as
witnesses, but the artist was so careless that instead of nine gods in
each group he painted six in one and five in the other. In the Turin
papyrus [Footnote: Written in the Ptolemaic period.] we see the whole of
the forty-two gods, to whom the deceased recited the [Illustration: The
weighing of the heart of the scribe Ani in the Balance in the presence
of the gods.] "Negative Confession," seated in the judgment-hall. The
gods present at the weighing of Ani's heart are--
1. R[=A]-HARMACHIS, hawk-headed, the Sun-god of the dawn and of noon.
2. TEMU, the Sun-god of the evening, the great god of Heliopolis. He
is depicted always in human form and with the face of a man, a fact
which proves that he had at a very early period passed through all the
forms in which gods are represented, and had arrived at that of a man.
He has upon his head the crowns of the South and North.
3. SHU, man-headed, the son of R[=a] and Hathor, the personification
of the sunlight.
4. TEFNUT, lion-headed, the twin-sister of Shu, the personification of
moisture.
5. SEB, man-headed, the son of Shu, the personification of the earth.
6. NUT, woman-headed, the female counterpart of the gods Nu and Seb;
she was the personification of the primeval water, and later of the
sky.
7. ISIS, woman-headed, the sister-wife of Osiris, and mother of Horus.
8. NEPHTHYS, woman-headed, the sister-wife of Osiris, and mother of
Anubis.
9. HORUS, the "great god," hawk-headed, whose worship was probably the
oldest in Egypt.
10. HATHOR, woman-headed, the personification of that portion of the
sky where the sun rose and set.
11. HU, man-headed, and
12. SA, also man-headed; these gods are present in the boat of R[=a]
in the scenes which depict the creation.
On one side of the balance kneels the god Anubis, jackal-headed, who
holds the weight of the tongue of the balance in his right hand, and
behind him stands Thoth, the scribe of the gods, ibis-headed, holding in
his hands a reed wherewith to write down the result of the weighing.
Near him is seated the tri-formed beast [=A]m-mit, the, "Eater of the
Dead," who waits to devour the heart of Ani should it be found to be
light. In the Papyrus of Neb-qet at Paris this beast is seen lying by
the side of a lake of fire, at each corner of which is seated a
dog-headed ape; this lake is also seen in Chapter CXXVI. of the Book of
the Dead. The gods who are seated before a table of offerings, and
Anubis, and Thoth, and [=A]m-mit, are the beings who conduct the case,
so to speak, against Ani. On the other side of the balance stand Ani and
his wife Thuthu with their heads reverently bent; they are depicted in
human form, and wear garments and ornaments similar to those which they
wore upon earth. His soul, in the form of a man-headed hawk standing
upon a pylon, is present, also a man-headed, rectangular object,
resting upon a pylon, which has frequently been supposed to represent
the deceased in an embryonic state. In the Papyrus of Anhai two of these
objects appear, one on each side of the balance; they are described as
Shai and Renenet, two words which are translated by "Destiny" and
"Fortune" respectively. It is most probable, as the reading of the name
of the object is _Meskhenet_, and as the deity Meskhenet represents
sometimes both Shai and Renenet, that the artist intended the object to
represent both deities, even though we find the god Shai standing below
it close to the standard of the balance. Close by the soul stand two
goddesses called Meskhenet and Renenet respectively; the former is,
probably, one of the four goddesses who assisted at the resurrection of
Osiris, and the latter the personification of Fortune, which has already
been included under the _Meskhenet_ object above, the personification of
Destiny.
It will be remembered that Meskhenet accompanied Isis, Nephthys, Heqet,
and Khnemu to the house of the lady Rut-Tettet, who was about to bring
forth three children. When these deities arrived, having changed their
forms into those of women, they found R[=a]-user standing there. And
when they had made music for him, he said to them, "Mistresses, there is
a woman in travail here;" and they replied, "Let us see her, for we know
how to deliver a woman." R[=a]-user then brought them into the house,
and the goddesses shut themselves in with the lady Rut-Tettet. Isis took
her place before her, and Nephthys behind her, whilst Heqet hastened the
birth of the children; as each child was born Meskhenet stepped up to
him and said, "A king who shall have dominion over the whole land," and
the god Khnemu bestowed health upon his limbs. [Footnote: See Erman,
_Westcar Papyrus_, Berlin, 1890, hieroglyphic transcript, plates 9 and
10.] Of these five gods, Isis, Nephthys, Meskhenet, Heqet, and Khnemu,
the first three are present at the judgment of Ani; Khnemu is mentioned
in Ani's address to his heart (see below), and only Heqet is
unrepresented.
As the weighing of his heart is about
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