delivered up, himself, his wives, his children, let him not be smitten to the death; moreover, let him not suffer in the eyes, in the mouth, in the feet; moreover, let not any crime be set up against him." This treaty was engraven for the Khetan prince on a silver tablet. In a volume of maxims we read: "Maltreat not an inferior. Let your wife find in you her protector, maltreat her not. Save not thine own life at the cost of another." On the tomb of a man at El-Kalb (4000 b.c.) it is recorded that he "never left home with anger in his heart."[1]
III. It was the opinion of Herodotus that the "Egyptians were the first people who affirmed the immortality of the soul."[2] No satisfactory explanation has been given of the silence of the Pentateuch on the immortality of the soul. No definite expression of the belief appears in the Hebrew Scriptures until the time of the Babylonish captivity, when the Jews came into contact with the Persians, who held it as a fixed article of faith. Certain it is that no nation kept more prominently before their minds the reality of the other world and the final judgment than did the ancient Egyptians. Birth into this world they called death into the land of darkness, death they spoke of as birth into the manifestation of light.[3]
There are a large number of papyri found in the tombs laid beside and upon the mummy, which are known as the "Book or Ritual of the Dead." The most complete of these books, the Turin papyrus, consists of one hundred and sixty-five chapters, each with a title of its contents, and with rubrics in red ink explanatory of its use; the whole being illustrated by descriptive vignettes. Generally we find only a few chapters, either in papyrus leaves or cut into the hard black granite or the pure alabaster sarcophagus. There is an unknown variety of texts, apparently expressing the doctrine prevailing at the time in that part of Egypt where it was written. The oldest are the most valuable, as they are the purer, and show the various additions which have been made in the way of paraphrase and explanation, and which have become in process of time incorporated as part of the text. Some chapters of the book declare that they were written by God himself, and that they reveal his will and the divine mysteries to man. One chapter, the sixty-fourth, states that it was written by the "finger of the god Thoth," the "manifester of truth and goodness;"[4] therefore the book was regarded as hermetic or inspired. It says of itself: "There is no book like it; man hath not spoken it, neither hath ear heard it."[5]
The "Book of the Dead " describes the passage of the deceased through the other world into the presence of the Eternal Judge, Osiris.
The story of Osiris is one of great interest. He is said to have been a divine being, who in ancient times descended to earth and took upon him the form and nature of man. A being perfectly good, he ameliorated mankind by persuasion and by good deeds. But at length he was killed by Typhon the Evil One. His wife Isis went through the world in search of him, asking the little children if they had seen her lord. He was raised to life again; and he made his son Horus his avenger on the Evil One. It is this sacrifice which Osiris had once accomplished in behalf of man on earth, which makes him the protector of man in the other world, the invisible place. The god-man becomes not only the guide of the deceased through the other world; he also clothes him with his own divine nature, so that throughout the books the deceased is described as Osiris M. or N., for he has put on, and become identified with, Osiris; and he sits on the throne of justice, the Judge Eternal. Finally he is represented as the mediator between God and man, and is thus at once the representative man and the savior of mankind.[6]
In one of the hymns to Osiris, his praise is sung as he walks the heaven in holiness and overthrows the impure upon earth. He judges the world according to his will; then his name becomes hallowed, his immutable laws are respected, the
- ↑ Deutsch, Lit. Rem. P. 179.
- ↑ ii. 123.
- ↑ The dying words of Edward the Confessor were the "hope that he was passing from the land of the dead into the land of the living."
- ↑ Champollion found a doorway in the Rameseum at Thebes adorned with figures of Thoth as god of letters, and Saf with the title Lady President of the Hall of Books. Lettres Egypt. xiv. Paris, 1868.
- ↑ This resembles Lao-tse's description of the law: "You look and you see it not, it is colorless; you listen and you hear it not, it is voiceless; you desire to handle it, you touch it not, it is formless." — Stanislaus Julien, Lao-tse-King.
- ↑ Aug. Mariette Bey, Notice des Monum. à Boulaq, 1872, pp. 1055 sq. I may notice here that Osiris, Isis, and Horus form one of those triads which are found in most great theologies: "Le point de depart de la mythologie égyptienne est une triade." (Champollion, Lettres, xi.) Isis the mother with Horus the child in her arms — the merciful who would save the worshipper from Osiris the stern judge — became as popular a worship in Egypt in the time of Augustus, as that of the Virgin and Child in Italy and Spain to-day. Juvenal mentions that the painters of Rome almost earned a livelihood by painting the goddess Isis.
