61177240 Ancient Kemet and the Immortal Black Soul

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^ PRINCETON, N. J.

Shelf

BL 2450 .15 W5 1895Wiedemann, Alfred, 1856-1936.The ancient Egyptiandoctrine of the immortality


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THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANDOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY


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a


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THEAncient Egyptian Doctrine

OF THE

Immortality of the Soul

ALFRED WIEDEMANN, D.PH.PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BONN

AUTHOR OF'.EGYPTISCHE GESCHICHTE," "DIE RELIGION DER ALTEN ^GYPTER,"" HERODOT'S ZVVEITES EUCH "

Saith %\otni^-ont EUustmtions

LONDONH. GREVEL & CO.

33, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.1895


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Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.


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PREFACE.IN writing this treatise my object has been to

give a clear exposition of the most importantshape which the doctrine of immortality assumed inEgypt. This particular form of the doctrine wasonly one of many different ones that were held.The latter, however, were but occasional manifesta-tions, whereas the system here treated of was thepopular belief among all classes of the Egyptianpeople, from early to Coptic times. By far thegreater part of the religious papyri and tomb textsand of the inscriptions of funerary stelae are devotedto it ; the symbolism of nearly all the amulets isconnected with it ; it was bound up with thepractice of mummifying the dead ; and it centredin the person of Osiris, the most popular of allthe gods of Egypt.


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Vlll PREFACE.Even in Pyramid times Osiris had already attained

pre-eminence ; he maintained this position through-out the whole duration of Egyptian national life,and even survived its fall. From the fourth centuryB.C. he, together with his companion deities, enteredinto the religious life of the Greeks ; and homagewas paid to him by imperial Rome. Throughoutthe length and breadth of the Roman Empire, evento the remotest provinces of the Danube and theRhine, altars were raised to him, to his wife Isis, andto his son Harpocrates ; and wherever his w^orshipspread, it carried with it that doctrine of immor-tality which was associated with his name. ThisOsirian doctrine influenced the systems of Greekphilosophers ; it made itself felt in the teachings ofthe Gnostics ; w^e find traces of it in the writingsof Christian apologists and the older fathers of theChurch, and through their agency it has affectedthe thoughts and opinions of our own time.The cause of this far-reaching influence lies both

in the doctrine itself, which was at once the mostprofound and the most attractive of all the teachingsof the Egyptian religion ; and also in the comfort


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PREFACE. IXand consolation to be derived from the patheticallyhuman story of its founder, Osiris. He, the sonof the gods, had sojourned upon earth and bestowedupon men the blessings of civilisation. At lengthhe fell a prey to the devices of the Wicked One,and was slain. But the triumph of evil and of deathwas only apparent : the work of Osiris endured, andhis son followed in his footsteps and broke the powerof evil. Neither had his being ended with death,for on dying he had passed into the world to come,henceforth to reign over the dead as " The GoodBeing." Even as Osiris, so must each man die, nomatter how noble and how godly his life ; never-theless his deeds should be established for ever, hisname should endure, and the life which is eternalawaited him beyond the tomb. To the Egyptian,nature on every hand presented images of the lifeof Osiris. To him that life was reflected in thestruggle between good and evil, in the contest be-tween the fertilising Nile and the encroaching desert,no less than in the daily and yearly courses of thesun. In earlier times Osiris was occasionally con-founded with the Sun god ; later, the two deities

b


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X PREFACE.were habitually merged in one another. The deathand resurrection of Osiris occurred at the end of themonth Khoiakthat is to say, at the winter solstice,concurrently with the dying of the Sun of the OldYear and the rising of the Sun of the New. Thenew phoenix was supposed to make his appear-ance in March ; and this bird, although usuallyassociated with the Sun, was often representativeof Osiris. And the epithets and titles of the Sungod were similarly bestowed upon Osiris.-j All the Osirian doctrines were readily apprehendedin spite of their deep import^ and they steadily tendedtowards the evolution of a high form of monotheisticbelief. To no close student of these doctrines canthe fact seem strange that Egypt should have beenthe first country in which Christianity permeated thewhole body of the people. The Egyptian couldrecognise his old beliefs in many a Christian theme,and so much did the figure of Christ remind himof Osiris and his son Horus, that to him Christbecame a hero who traversed the Nile valley evenas Horus had done, overcoming His enemies, theevil demons and the wicked. In Egypt the Osirian


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PREFACE. XIfaith and dogma were the precursors of Christianity,the foundations upon which it was able to build ;and, altogether apart from their intrinsic worth andfar-reaching influence, it is this which constitutestheir significance in the history of the world.

For the choice of the illustrations, as well as forthe English version, I am gratefully indebted tomy translator.

ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

Bonn, March 1895.


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THEANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE

OF THE

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.T ITTLE as we know of the ancient Egyptian-L/ religion in its entirety, and of its motleymixture of childishly crude fetichism and deepphilosophic thought, of superstition and true religiousworship, of polytheism, henotheism, and pantheism,one dogma stands out clearly from this confusion,one article of belief to which the Egyptian religionowes its unique position among all other religionsof antiquitythe doctrine of the immortality of thehuman soul. It is true that other ancient religionsattained to a similar dogma, for the belief wasearly developed among Semites, Indo-germanians,

I I


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2 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFTuranians, and Mongolians ; but in all these cases itappears as the outcome of a higher conception ofman and God and of their reciprocal relationship,and, when attained to, brought about the abandon-ment of grossly material forms of thought. But inEgypt we have the unique spectacle of one of themost elaborated forms of the doctrine of immortalityside by side with the most elementary conception ofhigher beings ever formulated by any people. Wedo not know whether the belief in immortality whichprevailed in the valley of the Nile is as old as theEgyptian religion in general, although at first sight itappears to be so. The oldest of the longer religioustexts which have come down to us are found in thewall inscriptions of pyramids of kings of the Fifthand Sixth Dynasties (according to Manetho's schemeof the dynasties), and must be dated to at least3000 B.C. In these texts the doctrine of immortalityappears as a completed system with a long historyof development behind it.

In that system, all the stages through which thisdoctrine of the Egyptian religion had successivelypassed are preserved ; for the Egyptians were soimmoderately conservative in everything that theycould not make up their minds to give up their


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 3old ideas of deity, even after having advanced tohigher and purer ones. The older ideas were allcarefully retained, and we find various systems ofreligion which in point of time had followed eachother on Egyptian soil afterwards existing side byside. There is no trace of any struggle for thevictory between these systems ; each new order ofthought was taken as it arose into the circle of theolder ones, however heterogeneous it might be tothe rest. The consequence was that in Egypt therewas no religious progress in our sense of the term.With us it is essential that old and outworn formsof belief should be cast off; with them a newdoctrine could achieve no greater success than to wina place among the older conceptions of the EgyptianPantheon.Each single divinity, each religious belief, eachamulet, has in itself a clear and intelligible signifi-cance ; and where this is apparently otherwise it isnot because the point was obscure to the Egyptianmind, but because we have not yet succeeded inmaking it clear to ourselves. When we abandonthe consideration of single points and try to imaginehow the different detached notions were combined bythe people into one belief, and what picture they had


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4 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFreally formed of their Heaven and Pantheonthenwe have set ourselves an impossible task. Manydivinities have precisely the same character andperform the same functions ; whole circles of ideasare mutually exclusive ; yet all existed together andwere accepted and believed in at one and the sametime.

In these circumstances any discussion of Egyptianreligious ideas must begin by dealing with isolatedfacts ; each divinity, each idea, each smallest amuletmust be carefully examined by itself and treated ofin the light of the texts specially referring to it.Generations of Egyptians pondered on each singlepoint seeking to elucidate it. With anxious fearpriests and laymen strove to acquire the use of allthe formulae by the help of which man hoped toappease the gods, overcome demons, and attain tobliss, and all sought to provide themselves with everyamulet possessing efficacy for the world to come andimport for man's etern^^ welfare. But great as musthave been the expenditure of thought which producedand developed their various religious doctrines, theEgyptians never succeeded in welding their differentbeliefs and practices into one consistent whole.

In most religions the c^ods of life are distinct from


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 5the gods of death, but such a distinction scarcelyexisted at all in Egypt. There the same beings whowere supposed to determine the fate of man in thisworld were supposed to determine it also in the worldto come ; only in the case of certain deities sometimesthe one and sometimes the other side of the divineactivity was brought into special prominence. Theexercise of their different functions by the gods wasnot in accordance with any fixed underlying principle,was not any essential outcome of their characters, butrather a matter of their caprice and inclination. Incourse of time the Egyptian idea of these functionschanged, and was variously apprehended in differentplaces. It seems to us at first as though the relationof the gods to the life beyond had nearly everywherebeen regarded as more important than their relationto this life. But this impression is owing to the factthat our material for the study of the Egyptianreligion is almost exclusively derived from tombsand funerary temples, while tjie number of Egyptianmonuments unconnected with the cult of the dead iscomparatively small.On this account it has been supposed that both in

their religion and in their public life the Egyptiansturned all their thoughts towards death and what lay


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6 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFbeyond it. But a close examination of the monu-ments has proved that they had as full an enjoymentof the life here as other nations of antiquity, and thatthey are not to be regarded as a stiff and spiritlessrace of men whose thoughts were pedantically turnedtowards the contemplation of the next world.Had this been the case, the Egyptians would have

come to hold a pessimistic view of the life here andhereafter something like that prevailing in India, andhave striven to escape from the monotony and dulnessof existence by seeking some means to end it. Butthis is the reverse of what happened in the valley ofthe Nile. The most ardent wish of its inhabitantswas to remain on earth as long as possible, to attainto the age of one hundred and ten years, and tocontinue to lead after death the same life which theyhad been wont to lead while here. They picturedthe after-life in the most material fashion ; they couldimagine no fairer existence than that which they ledon the banks of the Nile. How simple and at thesame time how complicated were their conceptionscan best be shown by some account of their ideason the immortality of the soul and its constitutionas a combination of separate parts set forth inancient Egyptian documents.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 7When once a man was dead, when his heart had

ceased to beat and warmth had left his body, ahfeless hull was all that remained of him upon earth.The first duty of the survivors was to preserve thisfrom destruction, and to that end it was handed overto a guild whose duty it was to carry out its embalm-ment under priestly supervision. This was doneaccording to old and strictly established rules. Theinternal and more corruptible parts were taken away,and the rest of the body i.e., the bony frameworkand its coveringwas soaked in natron and asphalt,smeared with sweet-smelling unguents, and madeincorruptible. The inside of the body was filled withlinen bandaging and asphalt, among which wereplaced all kinds of amulets symbolising immor-talityheart-shaped vases, snake-heads in carnelian,scarabaei, and little glazed-ware figures of divinities.By their mystic power these amulets were intendedto further and assist the preservation of the corpse,for which physical provision had already been madeby embalmment. In about seventy days, when thework of embalmment was completed, the body waswrapped in linen bandages, placed in a coffin, andso returned to the family.The friends and relatives of the deceased then


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8 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFcarried the dead in solemn procession across theriver to his last resting-place, which he had providedfor himself in the hills forming the western boundaryof the valley of the Nile. Mourning-women accom-panied the procession with their wailing ; priestsburnt incense and intoned prayers, and other priestsmade offerings and performed mysterious ceremoniesboth during the procession and at the entrance tothe tomb.* The mummy was then lowered intothe vault, which was closed and walled up, furtherofferings were made, and afterwards the mournerspartook of the funeral feast in the ante-chamber ofthe tomb. Harpers were there who sang of thedead man and of his worth, and exhorted hisrelations to forget their grief and again to rejoicein life, so long as it should be granted unto them

* The whole process of embalmment is briefly described inthe Rhind Papynis, edited by Birch, London, 1863, and byBrugsch, Leipzig, 1865. The procedure of the taricheiits isdescribed in a Vienna papyrus, edited by Bergmann, Vienna,1887, and the conclusion of their operations in a Paris papyrusand a Bulaq papyrus, edited by Maspero, Pap. du Louvre,Paris, 1875. For the transport of the mummy, see Dumichen,Kal. hisch.^ pi. 35 sqq. The minutely ordered ritual for theceremonies at the door of the tomb was published and investi-gated in Schiaparelli's admirable work, // Libro del Funcrali,Turin, 1881 1890.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 9to enjoy the light of the sun ; for when Hfe is pastman knows not what shall follow it ; beyond thegrave is darkness and long sleep. Gayer and gayergrew the banquet, often degenerating into an orgy ;when at length all the guests had withdrawn, thetomb was closed, and the dead was left alone.Afterwards it was only on certain feast days thatthe relatives made pilgrimages to the city of thedead, sometimes alone and sometimes accompaniedby priests. On these occasions they again enteredthe ante-chamber of the tomb, and there offeredprayers to the dead, or brought him offerings,either in the shape of real foods and drinks,or else under the symbolic forms of little claymodels of oxen, geese, cakes of bread, and thelike. Otherwise the tomb remained unvisited. Howit there fared with the dead could only be learnedfrom the doctrines and mysteries of religion ; todescend into the vault and disturb the peace ofthe mummy was accounted a heavy crime againstboth gods and men.And yet how much an Egyptian could have wished

to look behind the sealed walls of the sepulchralchamber and see what secret and mysterious thingsthere befell the dead ! For their existence had not


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10 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFterminated with death ; their earthly being onlyhad come to an end, but they themselves hadentered on a new, a higher and an eternal life. Theconstituent parts, whose union in the man had madea human life possible, separated at the moment ofhis death into those which were immortal and thosewhich were mortal. But while the latter formeda unity, and constituted the corruptible bodyonly ( ) Kha), on which the above-mentionedrites of embalmment were practised, each of theformer were distinct even when in combination.These " living, indestructible " parts of a man, whichtogether almost correspond to our idea of the soul,had found their common home in his living body ;but on leaving it at his death each set out aloneto find its own way to the gods. If all succeededin doing so, and it was further proved that thedeceased had been good and upright, they againbecame one with him, and so entered into thecompany of the blessed, or even of the gods.The most important of all these component parts ** On these component parts cf. Wiedemann in the Proceed-

ings of the Orientalist Congress at St. Etienne, II. (1878), p. 159etseq. Many parallel texts to the additional chapter of The Bookof the Dead, there referred to, may be found in Von Bergmann'sSarlcophag des Panchejnisis, I., p. 22; II., p. 74 et seq.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. I Iwas the so-called [_j , Ka, the divine counterpart ofthe deceased, holding the same relation to him asa word to the conception which it expresses, or astatue to the living man. It was his individualityas embodied in the man's name ; the picture of himwhich was, or might have been, called up in theminds of those who knew him at the mention ofthat name.* Among other races similar thoughtshave given rise to higher ideas, and led to a philo-sophic explanation of the distinction between per-sonalities and persons, such as that contained inthe Platonic Ideas. But the Egyptian was incapableof abstract thought, and was reduced to forminga purely concrete conception of this individuality,which is strangely impressive by reason of itsthorough sensuousness. He endowed it with amaterial form completely corresponding to that ofthe man, exactly resembling him, his second self,his Double, his Doppelgdnger.\Many scenes, dating from the eighteenth century* On this account Ka was sometimes used as interchangeable

with Ren ( ^^; )name.t There is no modern word which exactly expresses the

Egyptian idea of the Ka ; Maspero's translation of " Double,Doppclga?iger" \s \.\\e best hitherto proposed; Meyer's transla-tion of " Ghosr {Gesch. ^g., p. 83) is altogether misleading.


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12 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFB.C. and onwards, represent different kings appearing

pig^ I. Hatshcpsu, accompanied by her Ka, making perfume-offerings. {Froiu the temple of Dcr el Bahri.) *

* The illustration is taken from Lepsius, Dciikmalcr, III. 21.Here the solar cartouche, or throne-name, of Thothmes II., and his


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 1before divinities, while behind the king stands hisKa, as a Httle man with the king's features (fig. i),or as a staff with two hands (fig. 2),* and surmountedby certain symbols of royalty, or by the king's head.In these scenes the Personality accompanies thePerson, following him as a shadow follows a man.But even as early as the time of Amenophis III.,

about 1500 B.C., the Egyptians had carried the ideastill further, and had completely dissevered the Per-Horus- or Ka-name, are palimpsests effacing the names of QueenHatshepsu Ramaka, the builder of the temple. The figures inthis scene originally represented the Queen and her Ka ; but asshe is always portrayed in male attire throughout the temple, itwas only necessary to change her names in order to appropriateher figure as that of a king. The first satisfactory explanation ofthe Horus- or KA-name was given by Petrie in A Season inEgypt, pp. 21, 22; cf. Maspero, Etudes Egyptologiqnes, II.,p. 273 et scq. He shows that the rectangular parallelogramin which the Horus-name is written is the exact equivalent ofthe square panel over the false door in the tomb, by which theKa was supposed to pass from the sepulchral vault into theupper chamber, or tomb-chapel, where offerings were providedfor it. A private person had but one name, which was also thename of his Ka. But, on ascending the throne, the king tookfour new names in addition to the one which he had hithertoborne, and among them a name for his Ka.

* We have a crude representation of this Ka sign, dating fromthe reign of Amenemhat I., of the Twelfth Dynasty ; see Petrie,Taiiis I. (S2cond Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. L,No. 3.


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14 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFsonality from the Person, the king being frequentlyrepresented as appearing j^before his own Personahty,

Fig. 2.The Ka of Rameses II., represented b}' the two-handed sta'standing behind the king while he slab's his enemies before RaHarmakhis. {From Abu Simbel.) *

which bears the insignia of divinity, the staff ofcommand, and the .symbol of life, the Ir dnkh (fig. 3).

* Lepsius, Dcnk?nalcr, III. 186. The hands of the Ka-staff have doubtless a common origin with those of the Ka-signLJ .


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 1To it the king presents offerings of every kind andprefers his petition for gifts of the gods in exchange

Fig. 3.Amenophis III. making offerings to his Ka. {From histemple at Soleb. ) *

His Personality replies : " I give unto thee all Life,all Stability, all Power, all Health, and all Joy(enlargement of heart) ; I subdue for thee the

* Lepsius, Denk7nalet\ III. 87.


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1 6 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFpeoples of Nubia (Khent), so that thou mayest cutoff their heads." In bas-reliefs of the same periodwhich represent the birth of Amenophis III.,* hisKa is born at the same time as the king, andboth are presented to Amen Ra, as two boys exactlyalike (fig. 4), and blessed by him. About this timethe kings began to build temples to their ownPersonalities, and appointed priests to them ; andfrom time to time the sovereign would visit histemple to implore from himself his own protection,and still greater gifts. So long as the king walkedthe earth, so long his " living Ka, lord of Upper andLower Egypt, tarried in his dwelling, in the Abodeof Splendour (SPn ^^ Duaty \\ for his Kawas himself, independent of him, superior to him,and yet his counterpart and bound up with him.The disjunction of the Personality from the Person

was not, however, rigorously and systematicallyinsisted upon ; the two were indeed separate, butwere so far one as to come into being only throughand with each other. A man lived no longer than

* In the course of his excavations at Der el Bahri, for theEgypt Exploration Fund, M. Naville discovered the originals ofthese scenes in a series of bas-reliefs representing the birthof Queen Hatshepsii which were plagiarised by Amenophis III.t Lepsius, Dcnk??ialer, III. 21, 129.


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Emm


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 1his Ka remained with him, and it never left himuntil the moment of his death. But there was thisdifference in their reciprocal relations : the Ka couldlive without the body, but the body could not livewithout the Ka. Yet this does not imply that theKa was a higher, a spiritual being ; it was materialin just the same way as the body itself, needingfood and drink for its well-being, and sufferinghunger and thirst if these were denied it. In thisrespect its lot was the common lot of Egyptiangods ; they also required bodily sustenance, andwere sorely put to it if offerings failed them andtheir food and drink were unsupplied.

After a man's death his Ka became his Personalityproper ; prayers and offerings were made to thegods that they might grant bread and wine, meatand milk, and all good things needful for thesustenance of a god to the Ka of the deceased.^

* Such prayers were also inscribed on funerary stelae in orderthat passers-by might repeat them for the benefit of the dead.These inscriptions vary but little. The prayer on the funerarytablet of Khemnekht (now in the Agram Museum) dates fromthe Thirteenth Dynasty, and runs as follows : " O every scribe,every Kherheb (lector, priestly reciter), all ye who pass by thisstele, who love and honour your gods, and would have youroffices to flourish (shine) for your children, say ye : ' Let royalofferings be brought unto Osiris for the Ka of the priest


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20 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFOfferings were also made to the Ka itself, and itwas believed that from time to time it visited thetomb in order to accept the food there providedfor it. On such occasions it became incorporatein the mummy, which began to live and grow(c:^^ "(^

^=^^^ rfid), or renew itself as do plants andtrees (*^^^~^^n i ^'^^^/)' ^'^'^ became, as the texts oc-^^AAAA ^casionally express it, " the living Ka in its coffin."The rich founded endowments whose revenues wereto be expended to all time in providing their Kaswith food offerings, and bequeathed certain sumsfor the maintenance of priests to attend to this

;

large staffs of officials were kept up to provide thenecessaries of life for the Personalities of the dead.*

Khemnekht.' " For an account of the development of the formulaeon funerary stelae, see Wiedemann, Observations siir guelquessteles funeraires egyptieimes^ Le Miiseon X., 42, 199 et seq.

* The particulars above summarised may be verified fromcontracts which a prince [erpd-ha) of Siut concluded with thepriests of Anubis under the Tenth or Eleventh Dynasty (discussedby Maspero, Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology,VII., p. 6 et seq., Etudes de Mythologie, I., p. 62 et seq., andErman, ^g. Zeitschr., 1882, p. 159 ff., the best publication ofthese inscriptions being that by Griffith, Insc?iptio?is of Siutand Der Rifeh, London, 1889, Similar contracts were made evenin the times of the pyramid-building kings : cf. ^.-.; Lepsius,Denkvu'iler, II. 3-7; De Roug6, Inscriptions hicroglyphiques, pi. I.;Mariette, Les Mastabahs, p. 316 et seq.)


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 21The Ka was represented by statues of the deadman which were placed within his tomb, and some-times in temples also by gracious permission of thesovereign.* Wherever one of these statues stood,there might the Ka sojourn and take part in Feastsof Offerings and the pleasures of earthly life ; thereeven seems to have been a belief that it might beimprisoned in a statue by means of certain magicformulae. Royal statues in the temples were destinedto the use of the royal Kas, the many statues ofthe same king in one temple being apparently allintended for his own Ka service, tThe Egyptians, holding the belief that the statue

of a human being represented and embodied a humanKa, concluded that the statues of the gods representedand embodied divine Kas, and were indeed neithermore nor less than the Kas of the gods. Thus theidea of divinity became entirely anthropomorphic,and, just as the king built his temple not to himselfbut to his Personality, so also sanctuaries weresometimes dedicated not to a god himself but to

* As in the case of statues found in the temple of Ptah atMemphis (Mariette, Mon. div., pi. 27 b), and in that of Amon atKarnak (Mariette, Karfiak, pi. 8 f; cf. Lepsius, Aiiswahl, pi. 11).

t This striking theory was first broached by Maspero, Rcc. deTrav., 1., p. 154; EUidcs de Mythologie, 1. p. 80.


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22 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFhis Personality. For example, the chief temple of

Memphis was not for the service of the god Ptah,the maker of the world, whom the Greeks com-pared to Hephaestos,but rather for that of hisKa. Ptah was not alone among the gods in thisrespect. The pyramid texts show that even in thetimes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties Thot, Set,Horus, and other gods were recognised as havingKas ; that is to say, each was supposed to bepossessed of his own Personality in addition to him-self* It was believed that the divine Ka, this imagewhich had the greater likeness to man, stood nearerto man than the god himself, and hence in thecase of votive stelae dedicated to the incarnation ofPtah in the sacred Apis-bull of Memphis, prayerfor the divine favour and blessings is not as a ruleaddressed to the Apis, but to its Ka. It is a veryremarkable fact that in several inscriptions t the god

We find occasional mention of the Ka of the East and theKa of the West (Wilkinson, Manners and Customs, 2nd ed.,III., pp. 200, 201), which are to be considered as being the Kasof the deities of the East and of the West, and not as Kas oftlie abstract conceptions of East and West.

t Lefsius, Denk??ialer, III. 194, 1. 13; Dumichen, Tcmpel-ijischriften, I., pi. 29 ; Von Bergmann, Hicrogl. Insch., pi. 331)1. 61, col. 2 ; Renouf, Transactions of the Society of Biblical


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 23Ra is credited with no less than seven Bas andfourteen Kas, corresponding to the various quahtiesor attributes pertaining to his own being, and whichhe could communicate to the person of the king

;

such as : wealth, stability, majesty, glory, might, vic-tory, creative power, etc.*Thus the apprehension of the Ka, of a man's Per-

sonality, as his Doppelgdnger, or Double, found evenin some of the oldest texts, acquired a far-reachingsignificance which extended not only to the doctrineof human immortality but also to the conception ofthe relations of gods to men.As we have already stated, each man had a Ka

so long as he was alive, but at his death it left himand led an independent existence. Only after longwanderings did he meet it again in the world to come,and we still possess the prayer with which he was togreet it, beginning with the words, " Hail to thee whowast my Ka during life ! I come unto thee," etc.f _^.A?'ch(Eology, VI., pp. 504 ct seq. ; Brugsch, Dictio7iary, Supplt.,pp. 997 et seq., 1230.

* Cf. I Chron. xxix. 11, 12; Isa. xi. 2.t This prayer is contained in that part of The Book of the

Dead, chap, cv., entitled Chapter whereby the Ka of a perso7i issatisfied in the Nether world: "Hail to thee who wast my Kaduring hfe ! Lo ! I come unto tliee, I arise resplendent, I labour,I am strong, I am hale {var., I pass on), I bring grains of incense,


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24 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OEThe second immortal part of man was his heart

([] JO ab)* The heart was removed from the body

by the embahners, and the texts give no definite ex-planation as to what became of it. During certainI am purified thereby, I purify thereby that which goeth forthfrom thee. This conjuration of evil which I say; this wardingoff of evil which I perform ; (this conjuration) is not madeagainst me (?) " The conjuration runs as follows: "I am thatamulet of green felspar, the necklace of the god Ra, which isgiven (var., which I gave) unto them who are upon the horizon.They flourish, I flourish, my Ka flourishes even as they, myduration of life flourishes even as they, my Ka has abundanceof food even as they. The scale of the balance rises, Truthrises high to the nose of the god Ra in that day on which myKa is where I am (?) My head and my arm are made (?) towhere I am (?) I am he whose eye seeth, whose ears hear ;I am not a beast of sacrifice. The sacrificial formulae proceedwhere I am, for the upper ones "otherwise said, " for the upperones of heaven." The funerary papyrus of Sutimes (Naville,Todtenbiich, I., pi. 117) contains the following addition at theend of this chapter: ' I enter (?) unto thee (to the Ka ?).I am pure, the Osiris is justified against his enemies." Theaccompanying vignette for this chapter shows the deceasedas worshipping or sacrificing before the KA-sign on a standard.Occasionally we find the Ka sign represented as enclosing *pictures of offerings, a form explained by the common doublemeaning of the word Ka, which signifies both " Double "


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 2'Jperiods of Egyptian history, but still comparativelyrarely, it was enclosed, as were the rest of the viscera,in special alabaster, limestone, or wooden vases, ofwhich four were placed with the mummy in its grave.These vases are generally but most erroneously called" Canopic " vases. They usually date from the timesof the New Empire, but we have some few datingfrom the Ancient Empire. In other cases the viscerawere replaced within the body after its embalmment,and with them waxen images of the four genii ofthe dead as their guardian divinities. But for themost part documents do not afford us any informa-tion as to what was done with the material heart.Perhaps the priests took measures for its disappear-ance in order to furnish some tangible foundationfor their doctrine concerning the heart. Certainstatements of Greek writers seem to imply somesuch proceeding. According to these authorities theviscera, which must have included the heart, werecast into the Nile, because they were designated asthe source of all human error. Porphyry gives useven the form of the prayer which was repeatedwhen the chest containing the intestines was pre-sented before the Sun ; and if the text of thisprayer has not hitherto been confirmed from original


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28 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFdocuments it is yet so thoroughly Egyptian in cha-racter that its authenticity cannot be doubted/'^

* Plutarch, Scptem sap. conviv., p. 159 B: "We then, saidI ' (Diales), " render these tributes to the belly (r^ yaa-rpl). Butif Solon or any one else has any allegation to make we willlisten." " By all means/' said Solon, " lest we should appearmore senseless than the Eg3'ptians, who cutting up the deadbody showed [the entrails] to the sun, then cast them into theriver, but of the rest of the body, as now become pure, theytook care. For in reality this [the belly] is the pollution of ourflesh, and the Hell, as in Hades,full of dire streams, and ofwind and fire confused together, and of dead things."Plutarch, De esu carnw7?i orat., ii., p. 996, 38: "As theEgyptians, taking out from the dead the belly {Tr]v KoCkiav) and

cutting it up before the sun, cast it away, as the cause of allthe sins which the man has committed ; in like manner that weourselves, cutting out gluttony and bloodthirstiness, should purifythe rest of our life."Porphyry,/)^ abst, iv., 10: "When they embalm those of

the noble that have died, together with their other treatment ofthe dead body, they take out the belly (rj)i/ Koi\iav\ and putit into a coffer, and holding the coffer to the sun they protest, oneof the embalmers making a speech on behalf of the dead. Thisspeech, which Euphantus translated from his native language,is as follows : " O Lord, the Sun, and all ye gods who give lifeto men, receive me and make me a companion to the eternalgods. For the gods, whom my parents made known to me,as long time as I have had my life in this world I have continuedto reverence, and those who gave birth to my body I have everhonoured. And for the rest of men, I have neither slain any,nor defrauded any of anything entrusted to me, nor committedany other wicked act, but if I haply in my life have sinned at


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 29But the immortal heart of a man, which stood in

a similar relationship to his material heart as his Kato the whole body, left him at death and journeyedon alone through the regions of the other world tillit reached the " Abode of Hearts." Its first meetingwith the deceased to whom it had belonged was inthe Hall of Judgment, where it stood forth as hisaccuser ; for in it all his good and evil thoughts hadfound expression during his lifetime. They had notoriginated there, for the heart was essentially divineand pure, but it had of necessity harboured andknown them,* and therefore it was called upon totestify concerning the man's former thoughts anddeeds before Osiris, judge of the dead.

In the meantime the mummy was without heart,and had become lifeless and dead ; for to pierce theheart of anything was equivalent to utterly destroyingall, by either eating or drinking what was unlawful, not on myown account did I sin, but on account of these (showing thecoffer in which the belly [r; yaaTrjp] lay).*' And having said thesethings he throws it into the river ; but the rest of the body, aspure, he embalms. Thus they thought that they needed toexcuse themselves to the Deity on account of what they hadeaten and drunk, and therefore to reproach the belly."

* It was in this sense that the Egyptians regarded the heartas the seat of the feelings, and spoke of the heart as rejoicing,as mourning, as weeping.


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30 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFit. The Osiris, too (to which we shall presentlyreturn), would have shared the fate of the mummyhad the device not been conceived of providing thelatter with an artificial heart in place of its ownoriginal one, which had returned to the gods. Theprovisional heart was represented by an artificial

Fig. 6.A heart scarab.*scarabseus, generally made of hard greenish stonein the image of the beetle, which was a symbol ofgenesis and resurrection (fig. 6). Underneath it wasmade flat, and inscribed with magic formulae,! thatit might be the substitute for the dead man's heart,,

* The illustration is taken from photographs of a scarab inthe Edwards collection at University College, London.

t For the translation of chap. xxxb. of The Booix of the Dead,which formed the usual inscriptions on heart scarabs, see p. 53.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 3and also ensure his resurrection by virtue of itsform. But when his own heart was restored to himthe scaraba::us lost its significance. Like all the restof the amulets which the Egyptians gave to theirdead, its efficacy only availed for the space of timeintervening between death and the reunion of those

ik.

Fig. 7.The Ba as a bird.elements which death had separated. When oncethe resurrection had taken place there was no furtherneed of amulets, nor any hurt through lack of them.

Another immortal part of man was the


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y- THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFand with whom it abode when not united to the man.But, nevertheless, the Ba was neither immaterial norable to dispense with food and drink.* It bore theform of a human-headed bird (fig. 7), sometimes withhands (figs. 10, 14); or of a ram-headed scarabaeus(fig. 8). From the fifteenth to the eleventh century

B.C. it was preferably repre-sented under the second formwhich is really nothing morethan its hieroglyphic symbol.The phonetic value of theram, ^^^, is ba, and of thescarabaeus, ^, kJieper, whichlatter means to be, to becomeand the composite figure of theram-headed scarabsus signifies,

Fig. 8.Ram-headed therefore, something like " heaeus.t \\\vo has become a soul."

It is otherwise with the first image, which reallyrepresents the soul as it was imagined by the Egyptians.We have sculptured figures and drawings (fig. 9)

* The possession of the formula in chap, cxlviii. of The Bookof the Dead, from line 8, ensured abundance (of food) to theBa of the dead.

t Illustrations 7 and 8 are taken from photographs of objectsin the Edwards Museum at University College.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 33showing the Httle soul perched by the sarcophagus,touching the mummy, and bidding it farewell beforerising to the gods.* In other scenes the soul is

Fig. 9.The Ba visiting the mummy on its funeral couch. {From" The Book of the Dead:')

depicted as it comes flying from heaven with thesign of life in its hand, and approaching the grave

* See The Book ofthe Dead, Naville's edition, pis. 4, 97, loi,104; Lepsius' edition, pis. 33, etc., etc.

3


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34 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF

Io a j to visit the mummy ; or as flying downinto the vault with the offerings whichit had found at the door of the tomb,bringing bread in one hand and a jar ofwater in the other, as food and drinkfor the body which once invested it(fig. 10).

This conception of the soul as a kindof bird is noteworthy when comparedwith the ideas which other nations haveformed of it. The Greeks sometimesrepresented the etScoXov, or soul, as asmall winged human figure (fig. ii); inRoman times it was imagined as a butter-fly (fig. 12); and in mediaeval reliefs and

pictures wesee it leavingthe mouth ofthe dead manas a child (fig.13), or a littlenaked man.*

Fig. 10.The Ba flying down the shaft of the * See, e.g.,tomb and bringing offerings to the mummy, illustration and(From " The Book of the Dead'') _ , ^^ ' Orcagna s fresco

of the Triumph of Death, in the Campo Santo of Pisa.


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Fig 13.The soul of a man leaving him at his death in the form ofa naked child, and received by an angel. {From the porch of thecathedral church of St. Trophimus, at Aries.)


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 41The latter form recalls that of the Egyptian Ka,although the idea which it embodies reminds onerather of the Ba.The ^ ^ X _i^ 2 |> Sahu, also was considered as

immortal. This is invariably depicted as a swathedmummy, and represented the form which the manwore upon earth. Originally it was related to theKa, but whereas the latter was a complete Per-sonality, the Sahu was nothing but a hull,a formwithout contents. Yet this also was of the gods andimperishable, returning to its heavenly home whendeath had set it free. Since the body, or Kha,*had also the same form, it naturally came aboutthat when the mummy was mentioned in religioustexts as reanimated by the Ka it was frequentlyconfounded with the Sahu. In this sense it is saidthat " the Sahu lives in the Sarcophagus (or in theunderworld), it grows (r/id), it renews itself (^renpy fBut in more precise texts the two things are keptdistinct, as, e.g., " the Ba (soul) sees its Kha, it restsupon its Sahu.J At such times the Ba had power

* See p. 10.t Von Bergmann, Sarkophag dcs PaneheiJiisis, I., pp. 11, 15,

24; PiERRET, hisc. du Lotrure, II., p. 23 ; Mariette, Denderah,iv., 62^.

t The Book of the Dead, Ixxxix. 6.


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42 THE ANCIENT EGVrTIAN DOCTRINE OFover the Sahu, and, as is said on the Sarcophagusof Panehemisis, " the SAllU hves at the commandof the Ba." *

In close connection with the SAHU was the?^^(j(j J^ y, Khaib, the shadow, representedas a fan, or sunshade (fig. 14), in scenes professingto portray the next world, tAs all earthly forms must needs have their

shadows, such was also the case with things in theworld to come ; there, too, the sun shone and allthe optical phenomena of earth were repeated. But,not content to accept this as a simple fact, theEgyptians ascribed separate existences both to theshadows of the dead and to those of gods and genii.According to Egyptian belief a shadow might live onindependently, apart from its owner, and this wasexactly what it was supposed to do at the momentwhen death had taken place ; then the Khaib wentforth alone to appear in the realm of the gods.This Ancient Egyptian idea of the independentexistence of a man's shadow recalls to our minds

* Von Bergmann, Sarkophag des Pmiehcmisis, I., p. 37, wherethe translation is not quite accurately given.

t In Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology, VIII.,p. 386 et seq., Birch has collected passages bearing on thispoint.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 43Chamisso's story of Peter Schlemihl, published in1823.*The Ka, the Ab, the Ba, the SAhu, and the Khaib

constituted the chief elements of that which wasimmortal in man, but others were also occasionallyincluded, especially one which was called the Khu,

IWmWMMH

Fig. 14. Ba and Khaib. {From ^*The Book of the Dead.'')

^^ f^, i.e. the Luminous. f To these, however,there is less frequent reference ; they were of import-

* On primitive beliefs as to a man's shadow being a vital partof himself, see Frazer, The Golde?i Bough, Vol. I., pp. 141-44.

t See Masplro, Recneil de Travaiix relatifs a VEgypt, HI.,p. 105 et seq. ; and Histoire A7icie7i7ie des Peiiples de rOrie?it,Vol. I., p. 114. In The Book of the Dead, chap. Ixxxix., 3, theKhu is mentioned in connection with the Ba ; in chap, cxlix., 40,with the Khaib; and in chap, xcii., 5, with both.


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44 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFance in local cults only, and were either includedamong the parts already mentioned or were sovaguely defined that they may be safely left outof account in treating of the soul as conceived bythe Egyptians without danger of our conceptionbeing falsified by the omission.

When the immortal was thus resolved into itscomponent parts at death, what then became ofthe human individuality which had resulted fromtheir combined action, and how could its differentparts find each other again in the next world, inorder to form the new man of the resurrection ?The Egyptians had evolved a very simple solutionof this problem, although one which, accordingto our mode of thought, stands in direct con-tradiction to their doctrine of the soul. It wasassumed that in addition to his immortal elementsthe man as a person of a particular appearance andcharacter was also endowed with a kind of deathless-ness, which seems to have held good only for atime, and not for ever. To this conception of adead man, in whom soul and life were lacking butwho in the interim still possessed existence, feeling,and thought, the Egyptians gave the name of OsiRIS.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 45Osiris was the first divine King of Egypt who

reigned in true human likeness ; he civiHsed theEgyptians, instructed them in agriculture, gave themlaws, and taught them true religion. After a longand blessed reign he fell a prey to the machinationsof his brother Set (Typhon), and having been slainwas constrained to descend into the underworld,where he evermore lived and reigned as judge andking of the dead. His fate of death was the fateof all men. Every one, when his earthly pilgrimagewas ended, must descend into the underworld bythe gates of death ; but each man hoped to rise again,even as Osiris had risen, to lead henceforth the lifeof the blessed. In this hope men called their deadOsiris, just as Germans speak of their dead as" blessed,"hoping that blessedness may indeed betheir lot. Death had not changed Osiris ; as hehad been king on earth, so he was king in theworld beyond death. In the same w^ay man, too,remained that which he had been here ; deathmerely made a break in his life, without alteringany of his conditions of existence.The relation subsisting between a man's OsiRIS

and his mummy was not clearly apprehended, evenby the Egyptians themselves. Identical they were


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46 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFnotthat fact is obviously implied by the texts,which never once substitute the mummy for theOSIRIS ; men knew also from experience that nomummy had ever left its place of embalmment, orthe tomb, to journey on into the next world. Yet

Pig, i^.Hypocephalus, from a drawing by Dr. W, H, Ry lands.mummy and OsiRIS were nevertheless not entirelydifferent and distinct ; both had the same appearanceand the same character. Moreover, the texts describethe Osiris as resembling the mummy in appearancewhile really differing from it, and the embalmersequipped the mummy as though it were called upon


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 47to journey forth as the OsiRlS. The inherent contra-diction in all this arose principally from the factthat the Egyptian hoped and believed that shortlyafter death he would arise again, complete in fleshand blood as he had lived upon earth ; whereasexperience contradicted his creed, for it showed himthat the mummy never did and never could leave theearth. He extricated himself from the dilemma byproviding the mummy with a Doppelgdnger : its ownperfect counterpart, yet not itself. When once wehave familiarised ourselves with this singular ideawe find in it a simple key to all the riddles ofthe Osiris.The mummy was provided with an artificial heart

in the shape of a scaraba^us,* because the OsiRIScould not live without one, and also with variousamulets, by virtue of every one of which demons ofthe next world could be overcome. A stuccoed discof papyrus, linen, or bronze, which, by the figures andformulae inscribed upon it, had mystic power to pre-serve the needful warmth of life to the Osiris (fig. 15),was placed under the head of the mummy.f The soles

* See p. 30.t A certain part in the religious life of our own time has been

played by a similar " Hypocephalus," viz., the Mormon Scriptures


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48 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFof the feet which had trodden the mire of earthwere removed in order that the OsiRIS might treadthe Hall of Judgment with pure feet ; and the godswere prayed to grant milk to the OsiRIS that hemight bathe his feet in it and so assuage the painwhich the removal of the soles must needs havecaused him. And, finally, the soles which had beenexcised were placed w^ithin the mummy in order thatthe Osiris might find them to hand for the completionof his Personality.* That nothing might be wantingto this Personality, the gods were besought that themummy should not suffer earthly corruption, and itwas held to be of supreme importance that flesh andbones, muscles and limbs should all remain in place.With the mummy were also placed The Book of theDeadly as well as other religious and mystic texts neededby the OsiRIS for his guidance through the regionsbeyond the grave, and from which he might learnthe prayers which had to be spoken in due orderand place according to strict prescriptions. In short,(cf. Joseph Smith, A Pearl of Great Price, 1851, p, 7). Forparticulars of the Hypocephalus of the illustration see P?'oceedingsof the Society of Biblical Archceology, Vol. VI., p. 52, and plate.

* See Ebers, yEg. Zeitschr., 1867, p. 108; 1871, p. 48;Wiedemann, Proceedings of the Orientalist Co?igress at St.Etieniie, II., p. 155.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 49the mummy was treated precisely as though itwere an OsiRIS. But the difference was great : themummy remained within the sarcophagus in thesepulchral chamber, while the OsiRIS proceeded onhis way.The journey of the OSIRIS, treated at wearisome

length, forms the favourite subject of Egyptiantexts, and to this is devoted the largest and bestknown work in the religious literature of the nation :the compilation called by us The Book of the Dead.This book contains no systematic account of thejourney, such as the analogy of similar literatures mightlead us to expect, but exhibits it in a series of discon-nected stages by giving the prayers which the OsiRISmust repeat when passing through different parts ofthe underworld, or on encountering certain genii there.A chapter is devoted to each prayer, but the chaptersdo not follow each other in the order in which theprayers were to be used. The Egyptians neverattained to any clear idea of the Osirian underworld ;the same confusion and obscurity reigned over it asover their whole conception of the unseen world andof deity. They pondered deeply over a series ofseparate problems without being able to unite theresults into one consistent whole, which should

4


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50 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFcommand acceptance, or to form any definite andpermanent topography of the regions beyond thetomb. Hence there is no fixed sequence for thechapters of TJie Book of the Dead; the order variesmaterially in the different manuscripts to which weare indebted for our knowledge of the work. Thenumber of chapters in the different copies also varies ;while in some it is small, in others, as in the Ptolemaiccopy for a certain Aufankh, published by Lepsius,it reaches to one hundred and sixty-five. Since therewas no fixed rule as to order or number, priest orscribe might make a selection of such chapters as heor the family of the deceased held to be the mostessential, and each was at liberty to form for himselfa more or less modified conception of the character-istics of the underworld.We cannot here follow the OsiRIS through all the

details of his journey, but must be content to knowthat according to the account in Tlie Book of theDead he issued victorious from all his trials, over-came all enemies whom he encountered, and wasushered at length into the Hall of the Double Truth,and received by the goddess of Truth. Here alsohe found the chief gods of the Osirian cycle gatheredtogether, and the forty-two assessors of Divine Justice


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. $1near the canopy under which the god Osiris wasenthroned. Then the deceased spoke, and proceededto recite the " Negative Confession "a denial ofsins of commission declaring that he had not beenguilty of certain definite sins, and denying one oranother particular form of guilt to each of theassessors. He had not done evil, had not robbed,nor murdered, nor lied, not caused any to weep,not injured the property of the gods, and so on.*

* The ' Negative Confession " forms chap. cxxv. of T/ie Bookof the Dead, and varies slightly in different copies. The fol-lowing is Renouf's translation of the chapter as it appears ina Nineteenth Dynasty papyrus (see The Papyrus of Ani, London,1890):"I am not a doer of what is wrong. I am not aplunderer. I am not a robber. I am not a slayer of men. Ido not stint the quantity of corn. I am not a niggard. I do notseize the property of the gods. I am not a teller of lies. I amnot a monopoliser of food. I am no extortioner. I am notunchaste. I am not the cause of others' tears. I am not adissembler. I am not a doer of violence. I am not ofdomineering character. I do not pillage cultivated land. Iam not an eavesdropper. I am not a chatterer. I do notdismiss a case through self-interest. I am not unchaste withwomen or men. I am not obscene. I am not an exciterof alarms. I am not hot in speech. I do not turn a deaf earto the words of righteousness. I am not foul-mouthed. I amnot a striker. I am not a quarreller. I do not revoke mypurpose. I do not multiply clamour in reply to words. I amnot evil-minded or a doer of evil. I am not a reviler of the


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52 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFThe judges heard all in silence, giving no signeither of approval or disapproval ; but when theconfession was ended the heart of the deceased wasbrought forward and laid in the scales against the

\i*


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 53while Thot, the scribe of the gods, stood by ready-to record the result (fig. 16).*

This was the time for the deceased anxiously tocall upon his heart in the prescribed formula fromThe Book of the Dcad,-\ not to bear witness

* On the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, see Wiedemann, LaDcesse Mad, in the Atinales du Musee Guimet, x., pp. 561 eiseq. With regard to the meaning of the Egyptian name andword Aladt, which is generally translated " truth, or justice,"Renouf has said : " The Egyptians recognised a divinity in thosecases only where they perceived the presence of a fixed Law,either of permanence or change. The earth abides for ever,and so do the heavens. Day and night, months, seasons, andyears succeed each other with unfailing regularity ; the starsare not less constant in their course, some of them rising andsetting at fixed intervals, and others eternally circling roundthe pole in an order which never is disturbed. This regularity,which is the constitutive character of the Egyptian divinity, wascalled ^=/7 vji Aladt. The gods were said to be nebu madt,' possessors of madt,' or dnchiu e7n madt, ' subsisting by orthrough madt! Madt is in fact the Law and Order by whichthe universe exists. Truth and justice are but forms of Madt asapplied to human action." Papyrus of Ant, Introduction, p. 2.

t This prayer is contained in chap. xxx. of The Book of theDead:" Chapter whereby the heart of a person is not kept back froin

him in the Ncthcrwordd.Heart mine which is that of my mother.Whole heart mine which is that of my birth,Let there be no estoppel against me through evidence, let no


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54 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFagainst him, for "the heart of a man is his owneod,"* and must now determine his everlastingfate. If his heart were content with him, and thescales turned in his favour, then the god Thotcommanded that his heart should be restored tohim to be set again in its place. This was done,and forthwith the immortal elements which deathhad separated began to reunite. His Ka, and allthe remaining parts of himself, were now restoredto the justified OSIRIS, who was thus built up intothe complete man who had once walked the earth,and who now entered upon a new life, the ever-lasting life of the righteous and the blessed. He

hindrance be made to me by the divine Circle ; fall thounot against me in presence of him who is at the Balance.

Thou art my genius (Ka), who art by me (in my Kha-t), theArtist who givest soundness to my limbs.

Come forth to the bliss towards which we are bound ;Let not those Ministrants who deal with a man according to

the course of his life give a bad odour to my name.Pleasant for us, pleasant for the listener, is the joy of the

Weighing of the Words.Let not lies be uttered in presence of the great god, Lord of

the Amenti.Lo ! how great art thou (as the triumphant one)."Rciioiifs translation.* As stated on the mummy case of Panehemisis, ed. Von

Bergmann, I., p. 29.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 55was joyfully admitted by the gods Into their circle,and was henceforth as one of them.

TJie Book of the Dead, and cognate religious texts,always assume that judgment goes in favour of thedeceased, that his heart approves him, and thathe becomes one of the blessed. Nowhere are weclearly informed as to the fate of the condemnedwho could not stand before the god Osiris. We aretold that the enemies of the gods perish, that they aredestroyed or overthrown ; but such vague expres-sions afford no certainty as to how far the Egyptiansin general believed in the existence of a hell as aplace of punishment or purification for the wicked ;*or whether, as seems more probable, they held somegeneral belief that when judgment was pronouncedagainst a man his heart and other immortal partswere not restored to him. For such a man nore-edification and no resurrection was possible. Theimmortal elements were divine, and by nature pureand imperishable ; but they could be preserved

* The conception of a kind of hell is certainly found in thebook Am Ditat (cf. Jequier, Le livre de ce qtiil y a dansVHades, Paris, 1894, p. 127); such allusions are, however, ex-ceptional, and Egyptian belief in a hell appears to have existedat times only, and to have been confined to certain classes ofsociety.


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56 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFfrom entering the OsiRIS, from re-entering the hullof the man who had proved himself unworthy ofthem. The soul, indeed, as such did not die,although personal annihilation was the lot of theevil-doer in whom it had dwelt. But it was thehope of continued individuality which their doctrineheld out to the Egyptians ; this it was which they

a.

-^^w

jxntwxmtmmmFig. 17.The Blessed Dead ploughing and sowing by the watersof the celestial Nile. (^Froni " The Book of the DeadT^promised to the good and in all probability deniedto the wicked.

After judgment the righteous entered into blessed-ness, unchanged in appearance as in nature ; theonly difference being that, while the existence whichthey had led upon earth had been limited in itsduration, the life of the world to come was eternal.But the future blessedness for which the Egyptian

v^


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 57hoped was far from being a passive state of blisssuch as is promised by most of the higher rehgions,

an absorption into the All or into the Godhead, a

dreamy state of floating in everlasting repose, content,and unimpassioncd joy. The average Egyptian


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58 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFexpected to lead as active a life in the world

to come as he had ledhere. Although withthe Godhead, he countedon retaining his inde-pendent individuality inall respects and onworking and enjoyinghimself even as he haddone on earth. He ex-pected his chief employ-ment to be agriculture,the occupation whichmust have seemed mostnatural to a people al-most entirely dependentupon the produce ofthe fields. A vignettebelonging to chap. ex.of Th: Book of theDead represents thedead at work in the

fields of the Blessed,* ploughing with oxen, casting* The " fields of Aalu " ; cf. the " Elysian fields " of the

Greeks.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 59the seed-corn into the furrows (fig. 17), cuttingthe ripe ears with sickles, driving oxen to treadout the grain from the straw (fig. 18), and finallypiling up the corn in heaps against it was requiredto serve for the making of bread. For change and

ill

pjg^ 20.The Blessed Dead making offerings to the celestial Nile-god.{From " The Book of the Dead:')

recreation they sailed upon the canals of the next worldin their boats (fig. 19), played at draughts with theirown souls, or made offerings to the gods, especiallyto the celestial Nile, which gave water to their fieldsand fertility to their seed (fig. 20). All went on exactlyas here, excepting that the work of the blessed was


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6o THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OEinvariably crowned with success. The Nile alwaysoverflowed the fields to best advantage, the corngrew five ells high and its ears were two ells long,the harvest never failed to be abundant, the weatherwas always favourable, the fresh and pleasant northwind was always blowing, the foe was always con-quered, and the gods graciously accepted all offeringsand requited the givers wnth rich gifts of all kinds.In short, the life of the dead in the kingdom of thegods was an idealised earthly life, although notalways a very moral life according to our standards.

But this belief in the life of the next world as theexact counterpart of this implied a danger whichinvolved the Egyptian in heavy cares. The deadlived, therefore they must of necessity eat and drink,for without these processes the continuation of lifewas inconceivable ; if the dead were without foodthey would be starved. The inscription of thesepulchral pyramid of Unas, an Egyptian king ofthe Fifth Dynasty, gives expression to this fear." Evil is it for Unas," says that text, " to be hungryand have nothing to eat ; evil is it for Unas to bethirsty and have nothing to drink." The necessitiesof life were, indeed, partly ensured to the dead bymeans of the offerings m:idc to them by their sur-


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 6lvivors on recurrent feast-days, and partly mysteriouslycreated for their use in the next world by the repeti-tion of ma^^ic formulae in this.* But if the offerings

Fig. 21.Ancient kingdom KA-statues of servants potters andbread-makers. (^Originals in the Ghizeh Museum})

ceased, or if no one took the trouble to repeat theformulc-E, the dead were left to their own resources,and must work, and till the land, and earn theirown living.

* See p. lo.


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62 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFSuch enforced labour could hardly have appeared

very attractive to Egyptians of the upper classes,and so an expedient suggested by the conditions oftheir earthly life was devised for evading it on theirbehalf. The rich man who had servants to work forhim in this world was desirous of securing like servicefor himself in the world to come. In the time of theAncient Empire it seems to have been taken forgranted that those who were servants in this lifewould be servants also in the life beyond. With thisselfish end in view the rich of those times had placedwithin their own sepulchral chambers KA-statues oftheir servants in order to ensure immortal life to themalso (fig. 2i). As the old Germans were followedinto the next world by their slaves and horses ; asother uncivilised nations sent the servants of the deadto the realm of death after their masters,* so in

* From scenes in the tomb of Mentuherkhepeshf at Thebes,dating from the beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty, we haveevidence that Egyptian funeral ceremonies occasionally includedhuman sacrifice at the gate of the tomb, the object of suchsacrifice being doubtless that of sending servants to the dead.But the practice would seem to have been ver}^ exceptional, atany rate after Egypt had entered upon her long period ofgreatness. See Maspero, Memoires de la Mission Archcologique(ill Caire, V., p. 452; cf. Wiedemann, in Le Mnscon^ XIII., p. 457ct seq. ; see also Griffith, TJie To?fib ofPaiieri^ pp. 20, 21, in theEleventh Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 63Ancient Egypt a certain portion of mankind wasset apart to serve the rest through all eternity. Butas Egyptian civilisation advanced and a more humanestate of feeling dawned, these views were modified,and the thought gained ground that all Egyptianswere equal in the presence of death and of the gods.So the rich man was obliged to renounce his hope offinding his servants again at his service beyond thetomb, and was face to face with the old fear of beingreduced to heavy toil through the possible negligenceof his successors.A most singular expedient was adopted to avertthis danger : little images of clay, or wood, or stone,or even of bronze, were made in human likeness,inscribed with a certain formula,* and placed withinthe tomb, in the hope that they would there attainto life and become the useful servants of the blesseddead ; they are the so-called USHABTIU (or Respond-ents), of which hundreds and thousands of specimens

* Chapter vi. of The Book of the Dead consists of this formula,which there reads : " O Ushabti there ! Should I be called andappointed to do any of the labours that are done in the Nether-world by a person according to his abilities, lo ! all obstacleshave been beaten down for thee ; be thou counted for me atevery moment, for planting the fields, for watering the soil, forconveying the sands of East and West. Here am I, whither-soever thou callest me!" Rcjioh/'s T?'a?islatio7i.


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64 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFmay be found in collections of Egyptian antiquities(see Frontispiece *). These " servants for the under-world," or " servants to the OsiRIS," as the texts callthem, owed their very being and life to the dead, andstood to him in the same relation as man to God.And as men seek to testify their gratitude to theCreator by doing Him service, so it was hoped thatthese little figures would show their thankfulness bytheir diligence, and spare their master and makerall toil.

Many other customs arose out of similar ideas tothose which gave rise to the institution of USHABTIU.Articles of personal adornment and for toilet use,wreaths, weapons, carriages, playthings, and toolswere given to the dead, and a whole set of householdfurniture was often laid away in the grave in orderthat the OsiRIS should not be obliged to set to workat once to make or collect these things for himself onhis entrance into the next world ; for this purposechoice was often made of such objects as the manhad used and valued in his lifetime. All this care,

* The frontispiece represents one of 399 Ushabtiu made for apriest named Horut'a, who lived during the Twenty-sixth Dynast}'.These Ushabtiu were found at Hawara by Petrie : see Kahim,Gio'ob, and Ilazvafa, pp. 9, 19.


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 6$however, was bestowed not simply in the interest ofthose who had entered upon the Hfe everlasting butalso in that of those who were left behind. Amongother powers possessed by the dead was that of goingto and fro upon earth ; and, to prevent their exerciseof it, all things whose lack might impel them torevisit the scenes of their earthly lives were placedwithin the tombs, for their visits might not be alto-gether pleasant for survivors withholding any partof the goods which belonged to the dead. Butthese facts must not lead us to conclude that thetomb was the permanent dwelling of the dead, andthat the objects placed within it were really intendedfor his use there, and for all time.As the amulets laid in and about the mummy were

for the use of the OsiRIS, so the furniture and imple-ments placed near the coffin were intended not somuch for the mummy lying in its tomb as for theOsiris dwelling with the gods. Each of these objectshad its heavenly counterpart, even as the mummywas represented by the OsiRIS.*

* Professor Petrie, speaking of his discovery that it was theEgyptian custom to place masonic deposits of miniature modeltools, etc., underneath the foundations of temples, and giving anaccount of the foundation deposits which he found beneath thepyramid temple of Usertesen II., at Illahun, says : "The reason

5


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66 THE ANCIENT ECxYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFIt was thus that the Egyptians sought to make

themselves homes in the next world, and to secure allthe comforts and pleasures of their earthly life inthe life which was to come. Nevertheless, the piousEgyptian did not expect to remain for ever as anOsiris, or as a god in human likeness : he ratherhoped for ever-increasing freedom, for the power oftaking other shapes and transforming himself at willinto quadrupeds ; or into birdssuch as the swallowor the heron ; or into plantsmore especially thelotus ; or even into gods.*

This is no doctrine of compulsory transmigrationsuch as used to be freely ascribed to the Egyptianson the strength of the statements made by Hero-dotus t ; there is no question here of souls beingfor burying such objects is yet unexplained ; but it seems notunlikely that they were intended for the iise of the Kas of thebuilders, like the models placed in tombs for the Kas of thedeceased. Whether each building had a Ka, which neededghostly repair by the builders' Kas, is also to be considered "

{Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, p. 22). We know that eachbuilding had its guardian spirit in the form of a serpent (cf. therepresentation of one dating from the time of Amenophis III., inGhizeh, No. 217, published by Mariette, Mon. Div., pi. 63 b).

* The Book of the Dead, chaps. Ixxvi.Ixxxviii.t " The Egyptians were also the first to broach the opinion that

the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body dies itenters into an animal which is born at the same moment, thence


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 67forced to assume fresh forms in which their purifica-tion is gradually worked out and their perfectionachieved. To the Egyptian transmigration was notthe doom of imperfect souls, but a privilege re-served for such as had already attained perfection.Again and again the texts assert that the blessedmay assume any form and visit any place at will ;body and place can no longer enthral him. Hemay travel round the heavens with the Sun-god Ra,or arise from the shades with Osiris in the " divinenight " of the 26th of the month Khoiak {i.e. at thewinter solstice) ; he is even as a god, nay, he ishimself a god, able to live in and by Truth, actuallytaking it, indeed, as food and drink.The power of the soul to incarnate itself at pleasure

became one of the chief reasons for embalming thebody. As we have seen, the preservation of thebody was held to be necessary because the mummypassing on (from one animal into another) until it has circledthrough all creatures of the earth, the water, and the air, afterwhich it enters again into a new-born human frame. The wholeperiod of the transmigration is (they say) three thousand years.There are Greek writers, some of an earlier, some of a later date,who have borrowed this doctrine from the Egyptians, and put itforward as their own." Herodotus, II., 123. See Wiede-mann, Herodots Zweites Buck, p. 457 et seq.


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68 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFwas supposed to be the material form of which theOsiris was the essential reality. But this temporaryneed might have been met in simpler fashion, sincethe journey of the Soul to the Hall of Judgmentwas accomplished in a comparatively short time.There was, however, a further need for which pro-vision had to be made. The soul might sometimesvisit the mummy, again take up its abode in itsformer body, and, animating it anew, return to earthunder that form and thus revisit the spots whereonce it had dwelt. To this end it required an earthlyand tangible body, and this was supplied by themummy. If the mummy were destroyed, then thesoul not only lost one of the forms in which it mightincarnate itself, but that one with which its interestswere naturally most closely connectedthat one whichlinked it to earth and best enabled it to exhort thesurvivors to remember the funerary offerings, and tosee how it fared with those whom it had been obligedto leave behind. The destruction of the mummydid not involve the destruction of the soul, but itnarrowed the soul's circle of activity and limited itsmeans of transmigration.

This doctrine gave rise to the necromantic theorythat a soul might be compelled by means of magic


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 69formulae to re-enter its body, and to speak throughthe dead h'ps. The magician who had broughtthis about could then stipulate for all kinds offavours before restoring the soul to freedom. Itis true that such an attempt was reckoned highlydangerous ; and, according to a tale dating fromPtolemaic times, a royal prince named Setna,* whohad succeeded in the undertaking, paid heavily forhaving sought to make the spirits of the dead subjectto him, when, through his own imprudence, he wasoverpowered by those whom he had invoked.

The above sketch of the eschatology of the AncientEgyptians is drawn from their own religious texts.As to the origin of that system and the transforma-tions which it had undergone before reaching theform under which it is known to us we are as yetentirely ignorant ; but it is obvious that it must havedeveloped gradually and assimilated many originallyheterogeneous doctrines. For instance, the Ka andthe Osiris must surely once have had the samesignificance, and not have been considered as two

* For the "Story of Setna " see VoL II. of Professor Petrie'sEgyptian Tales.


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70 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OFdifferent factors of the dead man's being until timehad brought about the fusion of two theologicalsystemsin one of which the Ka was regarded, asthe spiritual Doppdgdnger, or Double, while in theother it was named the OsiRIS. All attemptsat solving these and similar problems connectedwith this subject are, as yet, mere hypotheses.As far back as Egyptian history has been tracedthe people appear to have been in possession notonly of written characters, national art and insti-tutions, but also of a complete system of religion.As in all other departments of Egyptian life andthought, so with the Egyptian religionwe cannottrace its beginnings. In the earliest glimpse of itafforded by the Egyptian texts it appears as perfectin all its essential parts ; nor were after-times ableto effect much change in it by the addition of newfeatures. What greatly intensifies the deep historicalinterest of Egyptian eschatology is that it testifiesnot only to the fact that a whole nation believed inthe immortality of the soul four thousand years beforethe birth of Christ, but also that this nation hadeven then succeeded in clearly picturing the futurelife to themselves after a fashion which may indeedoften seem strange and incomprehensible to modern


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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. /Iminds but to which we cannot deny a certain con-sistency and a deep spiritual connotation.We shall not here discuss the many analogies sub-

sisting between Egyptian belief and the religioussystems of other nations and times, nor yet itsgreat differences from them ; and it is for thesciences of anthropology and comparative religionto determine to what extent the Egyptian doctrineof immortality originated in Egypt itself, and howmuch was brought there by the Egyptians fromthe common home which they had shared with theSemites and Indo-europeans.

Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Vine}', Ld., London and Aylesbury.


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