THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT.
The hopes and fears of the Egyptians with reference to the world beyond the grave are revealed to us in various books or collections of writings which have been preserved to us by the tombs.
Most of the evidence upon which the preceding Lectures are based has been taken from inscriptions sculptured or painted upon monuments of stone. But from the very earliest times to which it is possible to go back, the Egyptians were acquainted with the use of the pen and of papyrus as a material for writing upon. Leather skins are also recorded to have been used for certain documents, and some of these have actually been preserved. But the durability and other qualities of the papyrus recommended it for ordinary use beyond all other writing materials. The age of some of the papyri now in our museums must necessarily seem fabulous to those whose experience has been limited to Greek or Latin manuscripts, which are considered as of most venerable antiquity if they were written in the fourth or fifth century after Christ, and, unless like the rolls of Herculaneum they can plead special reasons, are justly liable to suspicion if they lay claim to higher antiquity. There is probably not a Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament which is a thousand years old. The oldest existing Sanskrit manuscripts were written only a few centuries ago. Some of our Egyptian papyri are not less than four thousand years old. You must bear in mind the difference of the conditions under which the oldest manuscripts of each country have been preserved. The climate and the insects of India are absolutely destructive of all organic substances. The Hebrew Biblical manuscripts of olden times have been intentionally destroyed, either out of reverence for a roll which was no longer in a condition suitable for use, or because the text of it, as being at variance with the Masoretic recension, was considered to be erroneous. The causes which have led to the destruction of Greek and Latin manuscripts, especially of the classical literature, are so obvious, that we can only wonder and be thankful that so much has been preserved. But the Egyptian manuscripts which we now possess—very few, alas! in comparison with the myriads which have perished—have been preserved by being kept from the air and damp in a perfectly dry climate, hermetically sealed in earthen or wooden vessels or under mummy coverings, sometimes at a depth of ninety feet within the living rock, and still further protected by a thick covering of the pure, dry sands of the desert.
The literature which has thus been preserved and recovered is naturally for the most part of a religious character.
It is perhaps necessary that I should apologize for using the term literature in speaking of compositions written in the hieroglyphic character. It is, I know, hard to make strangers to the writing understand that signs representing birds or beasts may be and are as purely alphabetic letters as our A, B, C. Such, however, is the fact, and every simple sound in the language, whether vowel or consonant, had its corresponding letter.[1] The language had no medial sounds, so that if a g or a d had to be transcribed from a foreign language, a k or a t had to be substituted. But it was from the alphabetic signs of the Egyptians that the Phœnicians derived their own, and from the Phœnician alphabet all those of Europe and Asia were derived: Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Sanskrit and Zend. The Egyptian writing, it is true, was not confined to alphabetic characters. Some signs are syllabic, but these might at will be exchanged for the equivalent combination of alphabetic ones, just as the Greek abbreviations which are so puzzling to some persons, either in the manuscripts or in the Aldine and other old editions of the classics, give place at the present day to the simple letters. And just as some persons saw considerable advantage in the use of Greek abbreviations, every Egyptologist will tell you that, each syllabic character being necessarily confined to a limited number of words, he is able to detect at a glance over a page the presence of a word he is looking for. But syllabic signs were not used, any more than Greek abbreviations, in consequence of a want of signs to express purely alphabetic values. In this matter Egyptian orthography differs essentially from Chinese or Assyrian. It may, however, be objected that Egyptian writing admits a certain number of ideographic signs commonly called determinatives, which are not pronounced; a sign, for instance, representing two legs is placed after words signifying motion. But if we compare our own writing either with Sanskrit or with ancient Greek or Latin manuscripts, we shall find plenty of ideographic signs in it. What else are notes of exclamation or of interrogation? What are inverted commas and vacant spaces between the words? Capital letters are to this day determinatives of proper names in English and French, and of substantives in German orthography. Our ideography is undoubtedly much simpler than the Egyptian, but it is quite as real. An English or French sentence written without it would be simply unintelligible to the ordinary English or French reader. I cannot therefore see what there is in the system of Egyptian writing which is to prevent the Maxims of Ptahhotep, written in the age of the Pyramids, or the tales in the Berlin papyri, written more than two thousand years before Christ, from being considered literature as truly as they would be if they were now written in English, French or Italian.
The majority of the manuscripts which have been recovered from the tombs contain chapters of the collection generally known under the title of the Book of the Dead. These chapters, though apparently handed down at first by tradition, were committed to writing at a very early period. The vignettes which are found on so many copies, and which represent the burial procession, suggested to Champollion the name of the "Funeral Ritual." Lepsius, however, pointed out the fact that the chapters are supposed to be recited by the deceased person himself in the nether world. M. de Rougé, though not objecting to the title "Book of the Dead," proposed by Lepsius as more appropriate, nevertheless defended the use of the term "Ritual" on the ground that many chapters contain prescriptions for parts of the funeral, and certain prayers are formally mentioned as intended to be recited during the burial. Although the prayers are as a rule put into the mouth of the departed, they were certainly recited for him by those present. On the first vignette of the book, a priest is seen reading the formulary out of a book which he holds in his hands. And rubrics at the end of several chapters attach important advantages in the next world to the accomplishment of what has been prescribed in the foregoing text.
It is not only in papyrus rolls that the Book of the Dead has been preserved. Many of the chapters are inscribed upon coffins, mummies, sepulchral wrappings, statues and the walls of tombs. Tombs of the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty, like those of Bekenrenef or Petamonemapt, may be said to contain entire recensions of the book. The chambers of the latter of these tombs occupy together nearly an acre and a quarter of ground excavated in the rock, and every square inch of their high walls is covered with beautifully sculptured inscriptions from the Book of the Dead and other religious texts.
The Egyptian title of the work is, "Book of the peri em hru," three very simple words, perfectly unambiguous when taken singly, but by no means easy of explanation when taken together without a context. Peri signifies "coming forth," hru is day, and em is the preposition signifying "from," but susceptible, like the same preposition in many other languages, of a great variety of uses. I will not take up your time with a discussion of the matter, but will simply tell you that peri em hru most probably means "coming forth by day," and that the sense of this expression can only be gathered from a study of the contents of the book so entitled.
It is a very curious fact that, out of the many manuscripts which are extant, no two contain exactly the same chapters or follow exactly the same arrangement. The papyrus of Turin, the facsimile of which is published by Lepsius, contains 165 chapters; and it is the longest known. A very considerable number of chapters, however, which are found in other manuscripts, are not included in it. None of the copies therefore contains the entire collection of chapters. The date of the Turin papyrus is not known, but it certainly is not anterior to the twenty-sixth dynasty. The more ancient manuscripts contain much fewer chapters, and their order is quite different. The antiquity of the chapters in the long recensions is not at all inferior to that of those in the shortest recensions, and the chapters omitted by the Turin manuscript are as old as any. The oldest chapters of all are omitted. There is a great uniformity in the style and the grammatical forms of the language as compared with other productions of Egyptian literature, especially those more recent than the twelfth dynasty. Nothing can exceed the simplicity and the brevity of the sentences. And yet the difficulties which a translator has to overcome are very great.
In the first place, the text is extremely corrupt. This unsatisfactory condition of the text is owing to different causes. The reasons which writers on Hebrew, Greek or Latin palaeography have enumerated for the purpose of accounting for mistakes in manuscripts, apply with much greater force to the funereal manuscripts of the Egyptians; for as these were not intended to be seen by any mortal eye, but to remain for ever undisturbed in the tomb, the unconscientious scribe had no such check upon his carelessness as if his work were liable to be subjected to the constant inspection of the living. But the most conscientious scribe might easily admit numerous errors. Many of our finest manuscripts in hieroglyphic characters are evidently copied from texts written in the cursive or, as it is called, the hieratic character. Many of the errors of the manuscripts are to be traced to a confusion between signs which resemble each other in hieratic but not in hieroglyphic writing.
Besides the errors of copyists, there are different readings, the origin of which is to be traced to the period during which the chapters were handed down by word of mouth only. There are copies which bear evidence that a critical choice has been made between the different readings of a passage; but the common practice was to admit the inconsistent readings into the text itself, the first being followed by the words ki t'et, "otherwise said." This practice is of the most remote antiquity. The different readings of the seventeenth chapter according to the Turin text are already found in the text of that chapter which Sir Gardner Wilkinson copied from the sarcophagus of a queen of the eleventh dynasty.
Some of these variants have unquestionably arisen from the difficulty of understanding the ancient texts. I have no doubt whatever that some of the chapters of the Book of the Dead were as obscure to Egyptians living under the eleventh dynasty as they are to ourselves. The Book of the Dead is mythological throughout, and the true sense of a mythology dies away with the stage of culture which has produced it. A critical collation of a sufficient number of copies of each chapter will in time restore the text to as accurate a standard as could be attained in the most flourishing days of the Egyptian empire. This revision of the text, which, for want of the requisite leisure, I was sorrowfully compelled to decline when it was proposed to me by Dr. Lepsius at the Congress of Orientalists in 1874, is now being actively conducted by a most competent scholar, M. Naville, of Geneva. The most accurate knowledge of the Egyptian vocabulary and grammar will, however, not suffice to pierce the obscurity arising from what M. de Rougé called symbols or allegories, which are in fact simply mythological allusions. The difficulty is not in literally translating the text, but in understanding the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar words. Dr. Birch's translation,[2] though made about thirty years ago, before some of the most important discoveries of the full meanings of words, may still be considered extremely exact as a rendering of the corrupt Turin text, and to an Englishman gives nearly as correct an impression of the original as the text itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been carefully taught the mysteries of his religion. Many parts of this translation, however, when most faithful to the original, must, in consequence of that very fidelity, be utterly unintelligible to an English reader.
The Book of the Dead, I repeat, is essentially mythological, and, like all other Egyptian books of the kind, it assumes the reader's thorough knowledge of the myths and legends. It is perhaps hopeless to expect that the legends will be recovered; the allusions to them will no doubt always remain obscure. But the mythical personages who are constantly mentioned are the very gods about whom I spoke in the last Lecture: Rā and his family and the dragon Apap, Seb and his family, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set and Nephthys. Thoth is one of the most important names which occur. If the explanation which I gave of these personages is borne in mind, one great difficulty in the interpretation of the Book of the Dead will be overcome. The subject always is the contest between Darkness and light. Ptah, "the Opener," or "the Artist,"[3] and Chnemu, "the Builder,"[4] are only names of the Sun. Tmu,[5] "the Closer," whose name occurs more frequently, is also one of the principal designations of the Sun. The fifteenth chapter gives an instance of the very different mythological treatment which the same physical phenomenon may receive, according as it is looked at from different points of view. Osiris, Horus and even Rā, suffer death or dismemberment; but Tmu is daily received into the arms of his mother Nut as he sinks into the west, and the arms of his father Tanen close over him. Neith, the great goddess of Sais, is rarely mentioned. She was the mother of the sun-god Rā, and is commonly supposed to represent Heaven; but some expressions[6] which are hardly applicable to Heaven render it more probable that she is one of the many names of the Dawn. The goddess Sechet is the raging heat of the Sun.[7]
The gods of Thebes are conspicuous by their absence from the Book of the Dead, or at least from almost every chapter. Amon, the great god of Thebes, is named once only, and that in a chapter where the text is extremely doubtful. Chonsu, the moon-god, is only once named. But even the frequent occurrence of these gods would not introduce a different series of conceptions.
The Beatification of the Dead is, however, the main subject of every chapter. The everlasting life promised to the faithful may be considered in three of its aspects.
1. The blessed is represented as enjoying an existence similar to that which he had led upon earth. He has the use of all his limbs, he eats and drinks, and satisfies every one of his physical wants, exactly as in his former life. His bread is made of the corn of Pe, a famous town of Egypt, and the beer he drinks is made from the red corn of the Nile. The flesh of cattle and fowl is given to him, and refreshing waters are poured out to him under the boughs of sycamores which shade him from the heat. The cool breezes of the north wind breathe upon him. The gods themselves provide him with food: he eats from the table of Osiris at Ristat, and from the tables of the sun-god Rā. He is given to drink out of vessels of milk or wine; cakes and flesh are provided for him from the divine abode of Anubis. The gods of Heliopolis themselves bring the divine offerings. He eats the bread which the goddess Taït herself has cooked, and he breathes the sweet odour of flowers. He washes his feet in silver basins which the god Ptah of Memphis, the inventor of all arts, has himself sculptured. Fields also are allotted to him in the lands of Aarru and Hotep, and he cultivates them. It is characteristic of an industrious and agricultural population that part of the bliss of a future state should consist in such operations as ploughing and hoeing, sowing and reaping, rowing on the canals and collecting the harvests daily. Warriors and kings who in the course of ages had risen to the head of a mighty empire, still looked forward towards these delights with the same religious faith which inspired them when, on the great panegyrical festival of the ithyphallic Amon, they received the iron sickle from the hands of a priestly ministrant, cut the ears of cORN, and presented them as an offering to the god presiding over vegetation and increase.[8] We are told that the height of the corn in the fields of Aarru is seven cubits, and that that of the ears is two (in some readings, four) cubits. This blissful place is surrounded by a wall of steel, and it is from its gate that the sun comes forth in the eastern sky.
2. But the happy dead is not confined to this locality, or to the human form, or to an earthly mode of existence. He has the range of the entire universe in every shape and form that he desires. This is repeatedly stated in the Book of the Dead, and twelve of the chapters consist of formulas through which certain transformations are operated. The forms assumed, according to these chapters, are the turtle-dove, the serpent Sata,[9] the bird called Bennu (which has generally, but, I think, upon insufficient grounds, been thought to have given rise to the story of the Phœnix), the crocodile Sebek, the god Ptah, a golden hawk, the chief of the principal gods, a soul, a lotus-flower and a heron. Brugsch has found a monument according to which these transformations correspond to the twelve successive hours of the day. There is, however, no evidence as to the date at which such a correspondence was first imagined, or of the general recognition of this correspondence. And the transformations to which these chapters refer are far from exhausting the list of possible ones. No limit whatever is imposed on the will of the departed.
The subject has often been misunderstood through a confusion between Egyptian notions and either Pythagorean or Hindu notions. The Pythagoreans held the notion of the metempsychosis, and the legendary history of their founder represented him as having travelled in the East, and as having been initiated by Egyptian priests into their mysteries. The Pythagorean doctrines about the destinies of the human soul have, in consequence of this unauthenticated history, been transferred to the Egyptians, even by scholars who might have known better. There is really no connection, either doctrinally or historically, between the two systems. Nothing in the Pythagorean system is foreign to previously existing Hellenic modes of thought, or which requires in any way to be accounted for by foreign influence, and its metempsychosis is essentially based upon the notions of expiation and purification. Men were supposed to be punished in various forms of a renewed life upon earth, for sins committed in a previous state of existence. There is not a trace of any such conception to be found in any Egyptian text which has yet been brought to light. The only transformations after death depend, we are expressly told, simply on the pleasure of the deceased or of his "genius."
Nor is there any trace to be found of the notion of an intermediate state of purification between death and final bliss. Certain operations have to be performed, certain regions have to be traversed, certain prayers to be recited, but there is no indication of anything of an expiatorial nature. If the judgment in the Hall of Law is favourable, the departed comes forth triumphantly as a god whom nothing can harm; he is identified with Osiris and with every other divinity. The nether world, and indeed the universe at large, is full of terrible and hostile forces; but through his identification with the great gods and his uttering words of power in their name, he passes unhurt in any direction that he pleases.
3. The identification of the departed with Osiris is first found explicitly asserted on the wooden coffin (now in the British Museum) of king Menkaurā of the third pyramid. The inscription, which, with different names and other variations, occurs on a good many coffins, is as follows: "Osiris, king Men-kau-Rā, living eternally, born of Heaven, issue of the goddess Nut, heir of Seb! She stretches herself out, thy mother Nut, above thee in her name of Heavenly Mystery. She hath granted that thou shouldest become a god without an opponent, king Men-kau-Rā, living eternally!"
On two royal coffins of the eleventh dynasty, the goddesses Isis and Nephthys are quoted as addressing their brother Osiris.[10]
The rituals of this early period do not actually insert the name of Osiris before the name of the departed, but all later rituals do so, except in the more recent periods, when women were called Hathor instead of Osiris. And throughout the Book of the Dead in the earliest forms known to us, the identification with Osiris or assimilation to him is taken for granted, and all the deities of the family of Osiris, or whose acts have relation to Osiris, are supposed to perform for the deceased whatever the legend records as having been done for Osiris.
Thus in the eighteenth chapter (which, if we may judge from the innumerable copies of it, must have been considered one of the most important of all) the deceased is brought before a series of divinities in succession, the gods of Heliopolis, Abydos, Tattu and other localities, and at each station the litany begins: "O Tehuti, who causest Osiris to triumph against his opponents, cause the Osiris (such a one) to triumph against his opponents, even as thou hast made Osiris to triumph against his opponents." He then repeats the names of the divinities of the place, generally in conjunction with some allusion to the legendary history of Osiris. In the next chapter, which is another recension of the eighteenth, and is entitled the "Crown of Triumph," the deceased is declared triumphant for ever and ever, and all the gods in heaven and earth repeat this "in presence of Osiris, presiding in Amenti, Unnefer, the son of Nut, on the day that he triumphed over Set and his associates, before the great gods of Heliopolis on the night of the battle in which the rebels were overthrown, before the great gods of Abydos on the night wherein Osiris triumphed over his opponents, before the great gods of the western horizon on the day of the festival of 'Come thou to me.'" It ends: "Horus has repeated this declaration four times, and all his enemies fall prostrate before him annihilated. Horus, the son of Isis, repeats it millions of times, and all his enemies fall annihilated. They are carried off to the place of execution in the East; their heads are cut off, their necks are broken, their thighs are severed, and delivered up to the great destroyer who dwells in Aati; they shall not come forth from the custody of Seb for ever."
The term maā-χeru is always added to the name of the faithful departed, and used to be translated "the justified." The sense of "véridique," truthful of speech, veracious, has been defended by some French scholars; but the real sense is "triumphant;" literally, "one whose word is law," not merely truth.[11]
But, as I have said, it is not only to Osiris that the deceased is assimilated. In the forty-second chapter every limb is assimilated to a different deity: the hair to Nu, the face to Rā, the eyes to Hathor, the ears to Apuat, the nose to the god of Sechem, the lips to Anubis, the teeth to Selket, and so on, the catalogue ending with the words, "There is not a limb in him without a god, and Tehuti is a safeguard to all his members." Later on, it is said, "Not men, nor gods, nor the ghosts of the departed, nor the damned, past, present or future, whoever they be, can do him hurt. He it is who cometh forth in safety; 'Whom men know not' is his name. The 'Yesterday which sees endless years' is his name, passing in triumph by the roads of heaven. The deceased is the Lord of eternity; he is reckoned even as Chepera; he is the master of the kingly crown." And as Osiris himself is identified with many other gods, so the deceased person is perpetually introduced speaking of himself in the person of Rā, Tmu, Chnemu, Seb, Horus and many others. The allusions are often simple enough, as when it is said, "I am Horus, and I am come to see my father Osiris;" or even, "I am he who resides in the middle of the eye;" for in all mythologies the Sun is spoken of as the eye, either of heaven[12] or of some deity. But a god is sometimes named who is never mentioned elsewhere, and whose name was so little familiar to the copyists of the book that they write it in very different ways. Our ignorance here is of very trifling importance.
The preliminaries to the beatification of the dead consisted in the removal of all physical or moral obstacles originating either in himself or in others. Those things of which death had deprived him are restored to him. His soul, his ka and his shadow are given back to him. There is a chapter, with a vignette, representing the soul uniting itself to the body, and the text promises that they shall never again be separated. The use of his mouth, hands and other limbs are given to him. There is a series of chapters relating to the restoration and protection of the heart, two forms of which, the ab and the hāti, are distinctly and repeatedly mentioned. The next eleven chapters have reference to combats which the deceased has to encounter with strange animals—crocodiles, serpents, tortoises—and to the sacred words in virtue of which he may confidently rely upon success. The chapter for repelling all reptiles is a short one. "O serpent Rerek! advance not! the gods Seb and Shu are my protection; stop! thou who hast eaten the rat which the sun-god abhors, and hast chewed the bones of a rotten cat."
Another series of eleven chapters is intended to secure the Osiris against other dangers in the nether world, such as having his head cut off, dying the second death, suffering corruption, being turned away from one's house, going to the Nemmat, an infernal block for the execution of the wicked, going headlong in the cherti-nutar, eating or drinking filth. The next series of chapters in the Turin manuscript gives the deceased power over air and water, and some chapters are but different recensions of one text, the well-known vignette of which represents the Osiris receiving the water poured out to him by a hand coming out of a tree. The chapter begins, "O sycamore of the goddess Nut! let there be given to me the water which is in thee."
The 149th chapter gives an account of the terrible nature of certain divinities and localities which the deceased must encounter—gigantic and venomous serpents, gods with names significant of death and destruction, waters and atmospheres of flames. But none of these prevail over the Osiris; he passes through all things without harm; unhurt he breathes the fiery atmosphere and drinks the waters of flame; and he lives in peace with the fearful gods who preside over these abodes. Some of these gods remind one of the demons in the Inferno of Dante. But though ministers or angels of divine justice, their nature is not evil. Some of the invocations contained in the seventeenth chapter will give some idea of the terrors of the Egyptian nether world.
"O Rā, in thine egg, radiant in thy disk shining forth from the horizon, swimming over the steel firmament, sailing over the pillars of Shu, thou who hast no second among the gods, who producest the winds by the flames of thy mouth, and who enlightenest the worlds with thy splendours, save the departed from that god whose nature is a mystery and whose eyebrows are as the arms of the balance on the night when Aauit was weighed."
"O Lord of the great dwelling,[13] supreme king of the gods, save the Osiris from that god who has the face of a hound and the eyebrows of a man, who feeds upon the accursed."
"O Lord of victory in the two worlds, … save the Osiris from that god who seizes upon souls, devours hearts and feeds upon carcases."
"O Scarabaeus god in thy bark, whose substance is self-originated, save the Osiris from those watchers to whom the Lord of spirits has entrusted the observation of his enemies, and from whose observation none can escape. Let me not fall under their swords nor go to their block of execution, let me not remain in their abodes, let me not rest upon their beds [of torment], let me not fall into their nets. Let nought befal me which the gods abhor."
These trials which the departed undergo, and which are triumphantly overcome by the Osiris, sufficiently show the fete which the wicked must expect. This fate is called "the second death."
The faithful dead expect to be protected from the dangers of their new existence, partly indeed by the virtue of amulets and talismans to which the gods have given power, partly also by the knowledge of religious formulas (such as the chapters of the Book of the Dead) or of divine names, but chiefly by the conformity of their conduct with the standard of law by which they are judged by Osiris in the Amenti.
The use of amulets was certainly carried to the most extravagant excess, and the Book of the Dead even in its earliest form shows the importance attached to such things. In the thirty-second chapter, the deceased drives off the infernal crocodiles by pointing to the potent talismans upon his person. "Back! Crocodile of the West!" he says, "who livest upon the Achemu who are at rest; what thou abhorrest is upon me; I have eaten the head of Osiris; I am Set. Back! Crocodile of the West! there is an asp upon me; I shall not be given to thee; dart not thy flame upon me. Back! Crocodile of the East! who feedest upon impurities; what thou abhorrest is upon me; I have passed; I am Osiris;" and so on. Directions are given in the rubrics of certain characters for the construction of these talismans, such as the Tat of gold (ch. 155), emblematic of the vertebræ of Osiris; the buckle of red quartz (ch. 156), which the text connects with the blood of Isis and the magic words of Osiris; and the golden vulture (ch. 157), which has reference to some parts of the history of Isis and Horus. The most important probably of these talismans was the scarabaeus which had the thirtieth chapter inscribed upon it. The rubric directs it to be placed upon the heart of the deceased person. An immense number of these scarabaei have been found with the chapter inscribed upon them; there is probably no chapter of which the text can be restored with greater difficulty. Its antiquity is extreme, and the different readings already abounded at the time of the eleventh dynasty.
The belief in the magic power of sacred words, whether religious formulas or the names of gods, was also acknowledged and was the source of a frightful amount of superstition. The rubric at the end of the first chapter is a specimen of what occurs in others. "If this chapter be known upon earth or if it be written upon his coffin, he will come forth every day that he pleases, and enter his house without being prevented; there shall be given to him bread and beer, and flesh upon the tables of Rā; he will work in the fields of Aarru, and there shall be given to him the wheat and barley which are there, for he shall flourish as though he were upon earth." Another rubric says: "If this chapter be recited over him, he will go forth over the earth, and he will pass through every kind of fire, no evil thing being able to hurt him."
The power of the book of Tehuti (that is, of the Book of the Dead), it is said in one place, is the cause of the triumph of Osiris over his ghostly enemies. And in very many places the Osiris bases his claims on the simple feet of knowing the names of the gods whom he addresses, or of the localities in the divine world which he inhabits.
The superstitious repetition of names (many of which perhaps never had any meaning at all) is particularly conspicuous in numerous documents much more recent than the Book of the Dead; from the time, in fact, of the eighteenth dynasty down to Christian times. But the last chapters of the Turin copy of the Book of the Dead, which, though really no portion of it, are probably very ancient, already indulge in this gross superstition. "Iruka is thy name, Markata is thy name, Ruta is thy name, Nasakaba is thy name, Tanasatanasa is thy name, Sharusatakata is thy name."
From rubbish like this, which is only worthy of the spells of vulgar conjurors, it is pleasant to pass to the moral doctrines of the Book of the Dead, which are the same which were recognized in the earliest times. No one could pass to the blissful dwellings of the dead who had failed at the judgment passed in presence of Osiris. No portion of the Book of the Dead is so generally known as the picture which represents the deceased person standing in the presence of the goddess Maāt, who is distinguished by the ostrich-feather upon her head; she holds a sceptre in one hand and the symbol of life[14] in the other. The man's heart, which represents his entire moral nature, is being weighed in the balance in presence of Osiris, seated upon his throne as judge of the dead. The second scale contains the image of Maāt. Horus is watching the indicator of the balance, and Tehuti, the god of letters, is writing down the result. Forty-two divinities are represented in a line above the balance. These gods correspond to the same number of sins which it is their office to punish. It is with reference to these sins and the virtues to which they are opposed that the examination of the deceased chiefly consists.
The hundred and twenty-fifth chapter is entitled, "Book of entering into the Hall of the Two-fold Maāt:[15] the person parts from his sins that he may see the divine faces." The deceased begins: "Hail to you, ye lords of the Two-fold Maāt, and hail to thee, great god, lord of the Two-fold Maāt! I have come to thee, my lord, I have brought myself to see thy glories. … I know thy name, and I know the names of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in the Hall of the Two-fold Maāt, who live by the punishment of the wicked, and devour their blood on that day of weighing the words in presence of Unnefer, the triumphant." A good deal which follows in the Turin copy is not contained in all the manuscripts. But the following extracts deserve mention. "I have brought you Law,[16] and subdued for you iniquity. I am not a doer of fraud and iniquity against men. I am not a doer of that which is crooked in place of that which is right. I am not cognizant of iniquity; I am not a doer of evil. I do not force a labouring man to do more than his daily task. … I do not calumniate a servant to his master; I do not cause hunger; I do not cause weeping; I am not a murderer; I do not give order to murder privily; I am not guilty of fraud against any one; I am not a falsifier of the measures in the temples. … I do not add to the weight of the scale; I do not falsify the indicator of the balance; I do not withhold milk from the mouth of the suckling." The catalogue of the forty-two sins, each of which has an avenging deity, includes some of those I have quoted and omits others. The sins are not catalogued according to any scientific arrangement. Besides the crimes of violence and theft, different sins against chastity are mentioned; not only evil-speaking and lying, but exaggeration, chattering and idle words are condemned; he who reviles the king, his father or his god, the evil listener and he who turns a deaf ear to the words of truth or justice, he who causes pain of mind to another, or who in his heart thinks meanly of God—all these fail to satisfy the conditions of admission into the ranks of the triumphant dead.
The 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead certainly contains the oldest known code of private and public morality. The fifteenth chapter, which is a hymn to the rising and to the setting Sun, is the most ancient piece of poetry in the literature of the world.[17] The seventeenth chapter is not less remarkable. It consists, as Bunsen says,[18] "of short and obscure ejaculations, and of glosses and commentaries upon this text;" "of an original sacred hymn, interspersed with such glosses or scholia as must have been collected by a vast number of interpreters. This is identical with saying that the record was at that time no longer intelligible. Yet the text of the whole chapter is written, not only in the Turin papyrus, but on the coffin of the eleventh dynasty. Add to this that the text thus confounded in every verse with its glosses is written so confusedly, both on the coffin and in the papyrus, that the scholia are jumbled into wrong spaces. … Suppose a psalm of the Hebrew text to have been copied on a royal monument with a whole catena of commentaries and glossaries, but copied uno tenore, without distinction of text and notes. Such exactly is the state of the Egyptian record." Since Bunsen wrote, considerable light has been thrown upon the chapter. M. de Rougé has translated the chapter, after having carefully collated all the manuscripts accessible to him, and has learnedly commented upon both the original texts and the glosses.[19] Lepsius has greatly added to our knowledge by publishing two texts of the chapter copied from coffins of the ancient empire, with his learned annotations.[20] The whole of the chapter is important, but the most interesting portion is the beginning of it, which may be thus translated: "I am Tmu, who have made heaven, and have created all the things which are; and I exist alone, rising out of Nu. I am Rā with his diadem, when he began the kingdom which he made." The gloss asks, "What is this?" and the answer is, that "Rā began to exercise his sovereignty when as yet there was no firmament, and when he was on the height of Am-chemun, for then he established the children of inertness[21] upon the height of Am-chemun." The meaning of this is, that there was a time of chaos when no distinction as yet existed between earth and sky. But the kingdom of Rā was already established, and in his reign the firmament was raised, and certain personages, called the children of inertness, were established (as gods, according to one reading) on the height of Am-chemun, where Rā himself had resided before. Chemun is the Egyptian name of Hennopolis, but it also signifies the number Eight. The "children of inertness" are the elementary forces of nature, which according to Egyptian ideas were eight in number. These elements, born out of chaos or inertness, henceforth became active, and were made to rule the world under Rā as the demiurgus.[22]
The text proceeds—"I am the great God, self-existent;" but a longer recension adds, "that is to say the Water, that is to say Nu, the father of the gods." According to a gloss, the self-existent god is Rā Nu, the father of the gods, and other glosses speak of Rā as "creating his name as lord of all the gods, or as producing his limbs, which become the gods who are in his company." Besides this cosmology, the chapter contains a number of interesting details on the mythology and on the symbolism which is connected with it; as, for instance, that the ithyphallic god Amesi is Horus, the avenger of his father, and that the two feathers upon his head are the twin sisters Isis and Nephthys.[23]
The sixty-fourth chapter is scarcely less interesting; but in spite of the excellent labours of M. Guyesse, who has carefully edited and translated several recensions of it, much remains to be done before it can be made thoroughly intelligible, not only to the public at large, but to professional scholars. Tradition, as represented by the rubrics of the chapter, assigned the discovery of this document either to the time of king Menkaurā, according to some manuscripts, or to that of king Septi of the first dynasty. The chapter is twice copied on the sarcophagus of the queen of the eleventh dynasty, and in one of the copies king Septi's name is given; the other copy follows the tradition in favour of king Menkaurā, though the scribe has blundered about the name, and inserted that of Mentuhotep, which is the royal name to which the coffin itself belongs. The 130th chapter is also said to have been found in the palace of king Septi. It is very doubtful whether these traditions rest upon any authentic basis.
ֺAs the Book of the Dead is the most ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most important of the sacred books of the Egyptians. Other works are interesting to the archaeologist, and require to be studied by those who desire to have minute and accurate knowledge of the entire mythology, but they are extremely wearisome and repulsive to all whose aim extends beyond mere erudition. I am not now referring to hymns and other private compositions (found in papyri or on the walls of tombs and temples), some of which I shall have occasion to speak of in the next Lecture, but to the books which were evidently recognized as having public and, if I may say so, canonical authority. Those which are best known have reference to the passage of the sun through the twelve hours of the night. That part of the world which is below the earth and visited by the sun after his setting, is called the Tuat, The bark of the sun is represented as proceeding over a river called the Uranes, through fields cultivated by the departed. The whole space is divided into twelve parts, separated by gates. The "Book of that which is in the Tuat" contains a short description of these twelve divisions, their names, the names of the hours of the night, of the gates and of the gods belonging to each locality, and it states the advantages to be derived from a knowledge of these names, and also from the due observance upon earth by the living of the rites due to the departed. It is said, for instance, that if these rites are conducted em ser maāt, "with the strict accuracy of Law," the honours paid to him on earth are transmitted to him in the lower world. If he knows the names of the gods he encounters, no harm will come to him. The papyri which contain this composition are always illustrated; the text is indeed in great part simply descriptive of the picture to which it refers.
Very similar in its nature is the composition which covers the beautiful alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., now in the Soane Museum. Other copies of it are known to us. Perhaps the most interesting part of this text is the scene which recognizes men of foreign and hostile races, the Tamehu, the Aamu, and the Negroes, men of the Red land (Tesheret) as well as those of the Black land (Kamit, Egypt), as created and protected by the gods of Egypt. M. Léfébure has translated this text, and part of his translation has already appeared in the "Records of the Past."[24]
Notes edit
- ↑ This is the case with the most ancient hieroglyphic writing known to us. If some scholars, like Dr. Hincks, have maintained that all the alphabetic signs were formerly syllabic, this is pure speculation, and may be true or false without interfering with the fact stated in the text.
- ↑ Published in the fifth volume of Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in Universal History."
- ↑ The Egyptian Ptah, like the Hebrew כָּתַח [(aperuit, and in the Pihel terram aperuit aratro, aravit et (quod huic simile est) sculpsit, insculpsit tum ligno, tunc gemmis, etiam de ornandis lapidibus ad aedificandum. Gresenius] combines the sense of opening, or rather laying open, with that of artistic work. The primitive meaning is opening, and there are well-known instances of it in old Egyptian, but it no longer exists in Coptic, which has only retained the sense of sculpere. It was because the Sun was the Opener that he was considered the Artist, especially in Memphis, the seat of the arts, of which he was the chief divinity.
- ↑ The word is used as a common noun, and as the name of a profession. See Brugsch, "Bau u. Maasse des Tempels von Edfu," in the Zeitschr. 1872, p. 5.
- ↑ Otherwise written Atmu, the prosthetic vowel being prefixed as a support to the two consonants at the beginning of a word. For the meaning "shut," "close," of the word tmu, see Brugsch's Lexicon. It is preserved in Coptic.
- ↑ For instance, the verb uben, expressive of an act of Neith (Todt. 114, 1, 2), is inapplicable to Heaven, and is never used except for the sunrise.
- ↑ This is universally allowed, but the etymology of Sechet is doubtful. Seχ in old Egyptian signifies "wound." The Coptic has the word sesh-ef, in the Thebaic version of the Bible, corresponding to the Greek ἀναξηραίνειν. Her lion form is symbolic of solar heat.
- ↑ There are two representations of this, one at the Memnonium (Denkm. iii. pl. 163, 164), and another at Medinet Abu (Denkm, iii. pl. 212, 213).
- ↑ The later texts show that Sata is Horus Sam-taui, who comes out of the lotus-flower in the middle of the solar bark. See picture in Mariette, Dendera, II. pl. 48, 49. In one of the crypts of Dendera he is called "the living soul of Atmu," Elsewhere, Dendera, III. pl. 45, he is called "the soul rising out of the lotus in the Māat," the morning boat of the sun.
- ↑ See Birch, "On the Formulas of Three Royal Coffins," in the Zeitschr. 1869, p. 49.
- ↑ The sense "triumphant" is manifest from a multitude of passages, and is not denied; but it cannot be etymologically derived when māat is taken for Truth, and the whole compound is translated "véridique."
- ↑ "Heaven's eye" is a frequent expression in Shakespeare, and the Friar in "Romeo and Juliet" says:
- "Now ere the Sun advance his burning eye."
Τον πανόπτην κύκλον ἡλίου. Æsch. Prom. 92. Ὦ χρυσέας ἁμέρας βλέφαρον. Soph. Antig. 103. Ἄλιον, Ἄλιον αἰτῶ τοῦτο … ὦ κρατιστεύων κατ' ὄμμα. Trach. 96. Ἀλλὰ σὺ γὰρ δὴ πᾶσαν χθόνα καὶ κατὰ πόντον αἰθέρος ἐκ δίης καταδέρκεαι ἀκτίνεσσι. Homer, Hymn. in Dem. 69.
From the Latin poets I will only quote Ovid's
Omnia qui video, per quem videt omnia tellus, Mundi oculus. Met. iv. 227. - ↑ "The great dwelling" is the universe, as the Hall (useχet) of Seb is the earth, the Hall of Nut is the heaven, and the Hall of the two-fold Maāt is the nether world.
- ↑ Let me protest in this place against the stupid and utterly unfounded identification of this symbol of life with phallic emblems. When the Egyptians meant to represent anything phallic, they did so in such a way as to leave no doubt as to their meaning.
- ↑ Maāt is here and elsewhere put in the dual. The reason of this is not quite clear. The word used to be translated "the two Truths;" according to M. de Rougé, "la double Justice." Dr. Ludwig Stern argues from the analogy of other Eastern expressions that the dual form here signifies "Right and Wrong." I rather adhere to M. Grébaut's view, that the realm of Maāt, being traversed by the sun, is thereby divided, like heaven and earth, into two parts.
- ↑ The kings of Egypt are constantly represented with the image or emblem of Maāt in their hands as a religious offering.
- ↑ M. Léfébure has published a critical edition, with a translation and commentary.
- ↑ "Egypt's Place in Universal History," Vol. V. pp. 89, 90.
- ↑ "Etudes sur la Rituel Funéraire des anciens Egyptiens," 1860.
- ↑ "Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs," 1867.
- ↑ "Fils de la révolte," according to M. de Rougé. There are two words which are sometimes confounded, even in Egyptian texts, beshet and betesh. They may be etymologically connected by metathesis (the first is even sometimes written shebet), for both mean "stretch out;" the former, however, in active opposition, the second in helplessness. Betesh has some of the meanings of the Hebrew ֺשבח, cessavit, desiit; hence desidia, interpellatio operis.
- ↑ See the excellent article of M. Naville in the Zeitschrift, 1874, p. 57.
- ↑ There are other glosses at variance with this interpretation.
- ↑ See also his paper on "Les quatie races au Jugement Dernier," in the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Literature.