$Unique_ID{bob00794}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter I: Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{god
osiris
dead
king
thee
thy
thou
body
sky
life}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of Egypt
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter I: Part II

     The image in the cella was of moderate dimensions, and generally made of
wood or with a wooden core.  From an inventory of the temple at Dendera we
learn that the principal image of Hathor was somewhat above four feet tall;
the deities associated with her in worship were only a cubit in height.  It
was thus possible to carry the images about in the festal processions.  The
image stood in a shrine, frequently cut out of a single block of stone, closed
by metal doors.  Every morning the shrine was opened by a priest, who, after
smoking out the demons by burning incense, performed the god's toilet and set
food and flowers before him, accompanying the several stages of a
circumstantial ritual with the recitation of the proper formulas.  The
specimens of these which have survived attach to the acts of the cultus an
occult mythical symbolism. Thus when the priest draws the bolt which fastens
the door of the shrine he says: "The finger of Set is withdrawn from the eye
of Horus which is excellent (bis).  I loosen the leather behind the god.  O
god, N. N., take thy two feathers and thy white crown out of thy Horus eye,
the right eye out of the right eye, the left eye out of the left eye.  Thy
beauty belongs to thee, O god, N. N.; thou naked one, clothe thyself," and so
on through the like dreary profundities.  The whole liturgy is magical, not
devotional.

     Among the priests one class, the Kherheb, had for their special business
to learn and recite these sacred texts in the daily service and on festivals;
their second title, "scribes of the divine books," shows that their wisdom was
probably had much the same character as the Indian Brahmanas, if we imagine
the latter with the poetic quotations from the Vedas and the nascent
philosophical ideas eliminated.  Besides these ministers of the word there was
another order called the "Pure Ones" (Ueb), indicated in the hieroglyphs by a
kneeling man over whom a jar of water is pouring itself.  In sacrificial
scenes one of these priests inspects the blood of the victims and pronounces
it clean, and it may be that they included among their functions the practical
application of the rules of clean and unclean.  They were divided into four
classes, each of which served for a quarter of the year, and during this term
had their living from the table of the god.  The permanent establishment of
the temples, even in the Middle Kingdom, was apparently not very numerous.  A
temple of Anubis endowed by Sesostris II had a high priest and a chief
Kherheb.  Nine other priests took regular turns there: a superintendent of
classes, a temple scribe, an ordinary Kherheb, and so forth, besides eight
minor officials.  The enormous multiplication of the clergy came in the days
of the Empire.

     The kings not only built or rebuilt many temples, but provided for their
support by gifts and endowments.  In the New Empire all worship was in theory
offered by the king; hence in sacrificial scenes he always takes the leading
part, and this tendency, which belongs to the logic of a state religion, ^1
doubtless began much earlier, at least in the capital.

[Footnote 1: Compare the imperial cultus in China, above, pp. 7 f.]

     In addition to the daily presentation of food to the god in his private
apartment, individuals brought their gifts to the great altar in the court,
and at the festivals sacrifices were made on a much larger scale.  The food,
after being set out on the table of the god, was consumed by the priests or
distributed among the worshipping people, and was doubtless believed to have
acquired by the god's partaking of it a divine - or, as we should say, a
magical - property, by virtue of which it conveyed all sorts of benefits
besides the stilling of hunger.

     The festivals, of which every god had his own calendar, were celebrated
not only with multiplied offerings and more elaborate ceremonials, but by
religious processions, in which the image of the god, in his ark (frequently
in the form of a boat), was carried on the shoulders of priests through the
streets of the city; sometimes he paid a visit of state to the temple of
another god in a neighbouring place.  Hymns in honour of the god were chanted
to the accompaniment of the sistrum - a kind of rattle - and castanets, often
in the hands of women; later a harp is included among the temple properties.
The dates of the festivals often had some connection with the myth of the god,
and it is probable that the celebration itself frequently included an acting
out of the myth by the priests or the people, whether symbolically or with
such violent realism as appears in the descriptions given by Greek travellers.

     In the oldest graves, dating probably from the fifth millennium before
the Christian era, the body is merely laid in a shallow pit in the sand beyond
the overflow of the Nile, and with it vessels of pottery or stone containing
food and water, household utensils, weapons and implements of the chase, and
toilet articles, especially a slate palette for triturating the malachite
face-paint.  Small clay models of boats and of houses are sometimes found, and
pottery or stone figurines representing wife and servants - usually without
feet, presumably to keep them from running away. The contents of these graves
thus give ample evidence that the earliest Egyptians shared the universal
belief that the dead survive, in a different mode of existence, indeed, but
with the same needs as in this life.

     With the progress of civilisation, more permanent and secure habitations
are provided for the dead.  The nobles and high officials of the Old Kingdom
are buried deep beneath the earth, a vertical shaft being sunk through the
overlying sand and gravel to the native rock below, in which a chamber is
excavated to receive the body.  On the surface a rectangular structure with
sloping sides is erected over the shaft, which passes up through it - an
architectural evolution from the heap of stones earlier reared to protect the
body from wild beasts and grave-robbers.  On one side of this structure - as a
rule on the east - is a false portal with no opening, through which the spirit
is imagined to be able to pass at will; before it stands the stone table, or
shelf, on which food and drink were laid from time to time for the use of the
dead.  The burial-chamber was furnished for all the needs of man, and when the
body had been laid to rest in it, the shaft was blocked up with stone and the
opening covered. In later forms of these so-called "mastaba" tombs accessible
chambers are made in the structure, and the blind door with the table for
offerings in front of it then takes its place at the inner end of a kind of
mortuary chapel.  The tombs of high officials often contain a large number of
chambers; that of a prime minister of a king of the Sixth Dynasty has no fewer
than thirty-one - a complete establishment.  The walls of the chambers are
often, as in the tomb just mentioned, covered with paintings representing the
herding of cattle and tilling the soil, harvest and vintage, butchering and
hunting, artisans and boatmen at their work, musicians playing and
ballet-girls dancing.  The primitive motive for these pictures is the same
that led to the depositing of pottery models and figurines in the tombs, they
magically take the place of the real things; but art has got far beyond the
purely utilitarian end and depicts these scenes with an obvious delight in the
representation itself.  Portrait statues of the dead, commonly in stone, were
also placed in an inner chamber of the tomb, a custom which greatly promoted
the development of the sculptor's art.  The motive was, however, not memorial;
the image of the man was another body in which the soul might have an
imperishable habitation.  The early kings were buried in similar tombs; in one
of them, at Abydos, not only the king found his last resting-place, but in
small chambers about him his wives, his guard, and even his dwarfs and his
dogs were laid.

     The royal pyramids differ only in form, not in purpose, from the
mastabas.  Access to the burial-chamber was made as difficult as possible by
blind passages and formidable obstructions in the true one, precautions which
proved ineffective to thwart the robbers, who, attracted by the wealth of
buried treasure, have everywhere anticipated the modern archaeologists.  The
pyramids enclose no mortuary chapels, in lieu of which a temple dedicated to
the king was erected before his pyramid.  Here a regular cultus was
maintained, and offerings of food, drink, clothing, perfumes, and ointments
were made in great variety and lavish profusion. In some cases a raised way
led from this temple to a landing on the bank of the river, where it
terminated in another temple.

     The conservation of the body was a matter of momentous concern, and the
embalmer's art was perfected to accomplish it.  The viscera having been
removed, the body was steeped in natron and asphalt, and when sufficiently
impregnated with these preservatives was wound, with various aromatics, in
endless coils of bandages, and laid in a sarcophagus.  Fashions changed in
mummies and coffins as in other things; but the object always was not merely
to prevent decay, but to keep as far as possible the form of the man as he had
been in life.  At the burial, the priests went through the motions of opening
the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose of the mummy, reciting meanwhile potent spells
to restore to the dead man the use of his senses. In the pyramid ritual the
assurance is given that the king's heart (the seat of intelligence) has not
been taken from him, or, if it has, that a god will put it back in his body.
The priest presents food and drink in which are magical virtues, and bids the
king stand upon his feet and partake of this imperishable bread and beer.  Yet
the dead in their tombs were dependent for their well-being on the continued
care of the living, and, lest posterity or piety should fail, endowments were
created to provide in perpetuity for the maintenance of the tomb and the
offerings to the manes of the founder.

     As among numerous other peoples, the soul was associated with the breath
which leaves the body in the last expiration, and it is frequently pictured as
a human-headed bird hovering over the mummy, or perching in a tree near by,
curiously surveying its own funeral.  The name ba properly belongs to the
departed soul, like in Homer; in the living man the Egyptians spoke of the
mind (heart, inwards), the Homeric.  Another word, ka, is commonly understood
to mean "soul," specifically the body-soul, or ghostly double of a man; but it
seems rather to correspond to the Roman genius, a spirit companion and
guardian from birth to death and in the other life.

     By the side of the primitive belief that the dead inhabit the tombs and
lead there an existence as closely resembling their former life as the dead
can be like the living, we find in the age of the pyramid-builders various
notions of an abode of the dead remote from the dwellings of men. The vaguest
notion of this kind is expressed in the phrase, "those whose places are
hidden"; they are gone to "the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no
traveller returns."

     More frequently the land of the departed is in the west; the dead are
called "The People of the West," and the ruler of that realm, "First (or
Chief) of the People of the West" (Khent Amenti), who was early identified
with Anubis, the jackal god of desert cemeteries, guardian and guide of the
dead, who in turn was superseded by Osiris.  This land of the dead may have
been imagined as an oasis in the western desert over which the sun went down.

     Others imagined the dead dwelling in the "Field of Rushes" (Earu), the
scenery of which seems to have been suggested by that of parts of the Delta.
It was intersected by canals, which were opened at the time of inundation.
The inhabitants tilled the soil just as in this world, but the land was of
marvellous fertility and wheat grew higher than a man's head. To reach these
islands of the blest a river must be crossed.  The ferryman, whose name is
"Facing Backward," because he stands in the stern of the boat punting it
across the channel, will not take everybody for a passenger, but only him of
whom it is attested that he has done no evil, one who is "righteous before
heaven and earth and the island." The "Field of Rushes" amid the watercourses,
like the oasis in the western desert, was doubtless originally a region of
mythical terrestrial geography; but in the pyramid texts, as part of the
solarisation of the royal hereafter, the boatman is the ferryman of Re, the
sun god, and the islands of the blest have been transplanted to the sky.

     In several pyramid tombs of kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties
(between, say, 2625 and 2475 B. C.) the walls of the galleries and chambers
are covered with hieroglyphic texts, having chiefly to do with the post-mortem
fortunes of the king.  An analysis of these texts finds among them a ritual
for burial and for offerings at the tomb, magical formulas of various purport,
an ancient ritual of worship, hymns, fragments of myth, and prayers on behalf
of the dead king.

     The texts brought together in these inscriptions are diverse in age and
origin as well as in contents.  All the imaginations the Egyptians had
entertained of a happy hereafter are represented in them side by side or
confusedly mingled.  The characteristic conception, however, is that the dead
king ascends to the eastern sky and joins the rising sun: "This king Pepi
lives as lives he (sc. the sun god) who has entered the west of the sky, when
he rises in the east of the sky." He reaches this destination, now in the boat
of Re's ferryman, now by taking the wings of a bird, now he mounts up by a
ladder.  The gods salute him as "an imperishable glorious being," and he is
conducted to Re, the sun-god: "O Re-Atum!  thy son comes to thee, Unis comes
to thee.  Lift him up to thee, enfold thou him in thine embrace.  He is thy
bodily son forever." Taking his place in the barge of Re, he sails with him
across the sky, himself a great god.  A remarkable poem in the pyramid of Unis
pictures him as devouring the gods, small and great, thus appropriating the
magical power and knowledge of them all. ^1

[Footnote 1: Perhaps the cannibal image was suggested by disappearance of the
stars before the rising sun.]

     This future is the prerogative of royalty; it is as the "bodily son" of
Re that the portals of the firmament are thrown open to the king.  Only at a
much later time did common mortals presume to seek passage for themselves in
the solar barge, and then for a different voyage. ^2

[Footnote 2: See below, pp. 194 ff.]

     Another conception of the hereafter, which has a considerable place in
the pyramid texts and was destined in time to outgrow all others, is connected
with Osiris, who was originally, it seems, the god of Busiris, in the Delta,
but early made his way up the Nile, and had his most famous seat at Abydos.
Osiris was murdered by Set; but by the piety of his son Horus his dismembered
body was pieced together and restored to life, he was vindicated in judgment
of the charges his enemy brought against him, and became king of the realms of
the dead in the west, or of the nether world whose entrance was in the west -
such, in brief outline, is the oldest form of the myth.  In other versions, as
we shall see, the tragic story is told with more detail, the pathetic part of
Isis is enlarged, and Anubis, in his professional character, makes the mummy,
^3 but the essential features remain unchanged.

[Footnote 3: See below, pp. 191 ff.]

     Like corresponding myths among other peoples, the history of the god who
was dead and is alive again opened a door of hope for men.  The means by which
Osiris was restored to life must be equally potent for others; if then the
body is mummied in the same fashion, if the same rites are performed, the same
words recited at each stage in process, the dead man will be made to live
again, not, indeed, the life of the world, but such a life as Osiris himself
leads in the world over which he reigns.  In the pyramid texts, the king is
assimilated to Osiris, he receives his heart and limbs back as Osiris did: "As
he (Osiris) lives, this king lives; as he dies not, this king dies not; as he
perishes not, this king perishes not." The texts go further than this to an
outright identification of the king with Osiris: the body, flesh, and bones of
Osiris are those of the king. Osiris, his father, makes over his throne to the
king, who thus becomes the sovereign of the dead.  Like the ascent to the
heaven of Re, the Osiris future was originally for royalty only - the dead
king became the king of the dead; the common man could as little aspire to be
god of the dead as to be a sun-god in the sky.  But the chief thing in the
myth, after all, was not that Osiris reigned among the dead, but that he lived
again, and in this men of humbler rank might be like him.  In a later age they
even appropriated the identification, and every dead man was "Osiris
so-and-so."

     The two representations of the other life, the solar and the Osirian, are
not only evolved from wholly diverse - one might say antipodal - premises, but
were developed by the priesthood of two distinct religions, and doubtless
spread from different centres.  There are passages in the pyramid texts which
show that the compilers of that miscellany were aware that the conceptions are
not only diverse but incompatible.  In the dedication of a pyramid it was
adjured not to admit Osiris and his allied gods when they come "with an evil
coming." To a king, now become a star in the sky, it is said: "Thou lookest
down upon Osiris commanding the glorious dead.  There thou standest, being far
from him; for thou art not of them (the dead), thou belongest not among them."
The sun-god "has freed king Teti from Kherti, he has not given him to Osiris."
The Egyptians were, however, too much concerned to accumulate all possible
plans of salvation to be balked by contradictions, and they overcame the
antipathy of heaven for hades by transplanting Osiris and his realm to the
sky.  In one place the ascent of Osiris to heaven is described: "The sky
thunders, earth trembles for fear of thee, Osiris, when thou ascendest . . .
he goes to the sky among his brethren, the gods." He is even called "Lord of
the Sky." The dead king may, therefore, become a celestial Osiris.

     The harmony of Re and Osiris is more formally established.  Thus, when
the king has mounted to heaven by the ladder which Re and Horus provide for
him, "The gate of heaven will be open to thee, and the great bolts will be
drawn back for thee.  Re takes thee by the hand and leads thee into the
sanctuary of heaven and sets thee upon the throne of Osiris, upon this thy
throne, in order that thou mayest rule over the illuminated.  Thou sittest
like Osiris, with thy sceptre in thy hand, giving command to the living . .
. the servants of the god stand behind thee, the nobles of the god stand
before thee and cry: Come, thou god!  come, thou possessor of the throne of
Osiris. . . .  Thy son (i.e., the reigning king) sits upon thy throne,
provided with thy form.  He does what thou didst use to do before; he is the
first of the living, according to the command of Re.  He cultivates barley, he
cultivates spelt, and gives thee thereof (in funerary offerings). ^1 Thou
causest thy house behind thee to prosper and guardest thy children from harm."

[Footnote 1: One of the great blessings of being an Osiris is to enjoy a
filial piety like that of Horus.]

     It has been noted above that the ferryman "Facing Backwards" is sometimes
said to require a clean bill of moral health before he will allow passengers
to embark for the islands of the blest.  Inscriptions in royal and noble tombs
of the Old Kingdom frequently contain eulogies of the character of their
occupants.  Thus a nomarch of the twenty-seventh century B.C.:

     "I gave bread to all the hungry of the Horn-snake Mountain; ^2 I clothed
him who was naked therein.  I filled its shores with large cattle, and its
lowlands with small cattle.  I oppressed no man in possession of his property
so that he complained of me to the god of my city; I spake and told what was
good.  No one ever feared because of one stronger than he, so that he
complained to the god. . . .  I was a benefactor to the district in the folds
of the cattle, in the settlements of the fowlers. . . .  I speak no lie, for I
was one beloved of his father, praised of his mother, excellent in his
character to his brother, and amiable to [his sister]."

[Footnote 2: The domain of the deceased nomarch.]

     It was believed, moreover, that uprightness and goodness commended man to
the gods.  In a tomb of the twenty-sixth century we read: "I never spoke evil
of any one to his superior; I desired that it might be well with me in the
presence of the great god." But the general tenor of the texts shows that the
chief reliance was on the efficacy of forms of words, which, whether they take
the shape of petition or of command and threat, were conceived to be of
themselves potent to secure the desired end - to constrain the boatman to
ferry the king over the river, the gates of the sky to open, the sun-god to
take the king into his barge, and all the rest. Magical means of salvation
were greatly multiplied in the composite eschatology of the decadence, but the
character of the system was magical from the first.  The Osirian salvation
from the power of death, for example, is nothing but one of the commonest
types of magical deliverance through the performance of rites and the
repetition of words by which in the myth a god was delivered from the same
evil. ^1 The moral element in the doctrine is adventitious, and always
subordinate.

[Footnote 1: This association explains the fact that most of the Egyptian
myths that have come down to us have been preserved only in the context of a
magical ceremony.  The same thing is true of many Babylonian myths.]

     Abydos was the centre from which the Osirian theology was disseminated,
and the elaboration, if not the origination of it, may probably be attributed
to the priesthood of that city.  According to a common form of the myth, the
head of Osiris had been found and buried there.  The tomb of the god was shown
in the necropolis, ^2 and became, as a recent writer has said, the holy
sepulchre of Egypt, to which thousands made pilgrimage.  At the festivals,
scenes from the myth were acted out by the priests and people in a kind of
passion-play, and such a representation, more impressive than any teaching in
words, must have contributed greatly to spread the faith and give it
convincing power. Inasmuch as it behoved those who hoped for a new life like
that of Osiris to conform in all things to the example of the god, it was
deemed of great advantage to be buried near him, and for many centuries bodies
were brought from all parts of Egypt to be laid in the necropolis of Abydos.
High officials and nomarchs whose tombs were actually in the royal cemetery at
the capital or in the principal towns of their nomes, were sometimes
transported to Abydos and back before being finally laid to rest; and
multitudes who for other reasons could not be buried in the holy city caused
at least a stela bearing their names to be set up in its necropolis that they
might thus be in company with the god.

[Footnote 2: Excavation has shown that it was really the tomb of an ancient
Thinite king who had been dead and forgotten for many centuries before his
burial-place was usurped for Osiris.]