The History of Antiquity (Vol. 1-6). Duncker Max
in Memphis; his clothing was white;[119] his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the second beholding of light. In this form of Osiris the Greeks recognised the Dionysus of their Mysteries, whom they could also compare with Osiris as the giver of fruits.[120]
The Egyptians, says Herodotus, were the first to maintain that the soul of man was immortal.[121] Plutarch, as we have already seen, informs us that to the Egyptian Osiris was the embodiment not only of all that is in heaven, but also of all that is in the under world. "His soul," he continues, "was regarded by the Egyptians as eternal and indestructible, and, according to the doctrine of the priests, Osiris ruled over the dead, as Hades and Pluto among the Greeks. In reality, he was free and untouched by everything subject to change and death. When men are delivered from the body, and from pain, and pass into the eternal and invisible world, where pain is unknown, then Osiris becomes their king and leader. They are his retainers, who desire him, and are spectators of a beauty inconceivable and inexpressible to men. This is the explanation of the story most suitable to the deities."[122]
The inscriptions on the sarcophagi, the wraps round the corpses, but above all a papyrus roll placed in the coffin with the dead body, the so-called "Book of the Dead," enable us to ascertain with considerable accuracy the views of the Egyptians on the fate of the soul after death. The greater part of the known manuscripts of this book belong to the seventh or sixth century B.C. The contents show that rubrics and prayers of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next world. All the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of these manuscripts all the names under which Osiris can be invoked—and they are more than a hundred—are gathered together. But fragments of this Book of the Dead, or, more strictly, this Book of the Resurrection, which forms the core of the Egyptian doctrine of the world to come, are found hewn in sarcophagi—already with a triple commentary—which belong to a date previous to the year 2000 B.C.
After death the soul of man descends with the setting sun under the earth into the nether world. Here, on the day of the "valuation of words," the day of "justification," the soul is examined, and its actions weighed in the hall of double justice, i.e. the justice which rewards and the justice which punishes. Osiris, with a crown upon his head, and holding in his hand a crosier and a whip, sits upon a throne surrounded by the water of life, out of which spring up lotus-flowers. Beside him sit forty-two spirits; Anubis, the god with a jackal's head, the leader and keeper of the dead, and Horus, with a hawk's head, are busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. The god with the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the weighing. As Osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by Horus and Thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. The deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates forty-two errors into which he has not fallen. He has done no wickedness; he has not stolen, nor slain any one intentionally; he has not allowed his devotions to be seen; he has not been guilty of hypocrisy, or lying; he has not stolen the property of the gods, or the sacrificial food; he has not calumniated any one, or fallen into drunkenness or adultery; he has not turned away his ear from the words of truth; he has been no idle talker; he has not slighted the king or his father; he has not contemned the gods, or torn from the dead their linen wraps.
The departed spirit was not allowed to enter the other world in ignorance: he must know what awaits him there; the path which he has to tread, and the prayers which opened for him the gates of the various regions, which gave him power to overcome whatever spirits and monsters might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of Ra. He must know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he has sprung, and which he now again assumes. As in him divinity has been made human, so is he now in turn deified. To secure this knowledge for the dead, the book is placed in his coffin, the important passages were written on the wraps, and engraved on the coffin.
If the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was pure,[123] he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of life and the sky—Hathor and Nut—poured out upon him the water of life. His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the serpent Apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach the fields of the sun-god.[124] Here the blessed planted the heavenly wheat—of which the ears were two cubits in length—wandered at will in shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water.
Arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various existences—that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it sprang. Hence to the Egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the "entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."[125] The first chapter of the Book of the Dead was to be pronounced by the deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance there. "By learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be thrust back. Food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the table of Ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of Aanro (Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."[126] On a sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead. "I am Tum (p. 51), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name, the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday; I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the gods. I know the name of that great god who is there. Glory of Ra is his name. I am the great Bennu which is worshipped in On. I am Chem in his manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; I have arrived at my land, I have arrived at my dwelling-place."[127] "The sun-mountain (horizon) of his father Tum is meant,"—so run the commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that the great god, existing by his own power, is Osiris; and the great Bennu also is Osiris (p. 69). By Chem is meant Chemhor, i.e., the Horus, who by his own power renews his own youth every day. On the cover of the sarcophagus we find the formula, "When this chapter has been pronounced, he (the dead man) enters into the western land at the time of his resurrection: if entirely unacquainted with it, he cannot enter; for him, as for one uninitiated, there is no resurrection."[128]
Thus we must assume that the Egyptians believed in man's return to his divine origin in the sense that a soul which was not found wanting in weight, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received, after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead, and allowed to be absorbed into the divine power, but was so far deified that