Alfred Wiedemann

“ LITTLE as we know of the ancient Egyptian religion in its entirety, and of its motley mixture of childishly crude fetichism and deep philosophic thought, of superstition and true religious worship, of polytheism, henotheism, and pantheism, one dogma stands out clearly from this confusion, one article of belief to which the Egyptian religion owes its unique position among all other religions of antiquity−-the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul. ”

“ Thus the apprehension of the Ka, of a man’s Personality, as his Doppelgänger, or Double, found even in some of the oldest texts, acquired a far-reaching significance which extended not only to the doctrine of human immortality but also to the conception of the 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 him and led an independent existence. ”

“ The Egyptians had evolved a very simple solution of this problem, although one which, according to our mode of thought, stands in direct contradiction to their doctrine of the soul. It was assumed that in addition to his immortal elements the man as a person of a particular appearance and character was also endowed with a kind of deathlessness, which seems to have held good only for a time, and not for ever. To this conception of a dead man, in whom soul and life were lacking but who in the interim still possessed existence, feeling, and thought, the Egyptians gave the name of Osiris. ”

“ To the Egyptian transmigration was not the doom of imperfect souls, but a privilege reserved for such as had already attained perfection. Again and again the texts assert that the blessed may assume any form and visit any place at will; body and place can no longer enthral him. He may travel round the heavens with the Sun-god Rā, or arise from the shades with Osiris in the “divine night” of the 26th of the month Khoiak (i.e. at the winter solstice) ; he is even as a god, nay, he is himself a god, able to live in and by Truth, actually taking it, indeed, as food and drink. ”

“ To the left, below the chariot of Selene and the draped figure of Night, lies the dead body of the man, whose soul hovers above him as a butterfly beside the inverted torch of the pensive winged boy representing either Sleep or Death. Fate sits with open scroll at the dead man's head, and above her his soul is again represented as a Psyche, carried away by Hermes. ”

“ With us it is essential that old and outworn forms of belief should be cast off; with them a new doctrine could achieve no greater success than to win a place among the older conceptions of the Egyptian Pantheon.
Each single divinity, each religious belief, each amulet, has in itself a clear and intelligible significance ”

“ To no close student of these doctrines can the fact seem strange that Egypt should have been the first country in which Christianity permeated the whole body of the people. The Egyptian could recognise his old beliefs in many a Christian theme, and so much did the figure of Christ remind him of Osiris and his son Horus, that to him Christ became a hero who traversed the Nile valley even as Horus had done, overcoming His enemies, the evil demons and the wicked. ”

“ As all earthly forms must needs have their shadows, such was also the case with things in the world to come; there, too, the sun shone and all the optical phenomena of earth were repeated. But, not content to accept this as a simple fact, the Egyptians ascribed separate existences both to the shadows of the dead and to those of gods and genii. According to Egyptian belief a shadow might live on independently, apart from its owner, and this was exactly what it was supposed to do at the moment when death had taken place; then the Khaïb went forth alone to appear in the realm of the gods. ”

“ But in Egypt we have the unique spectacle of one of the most elaborated forms of the doctrine of immortality side by side with the most elementary conception of higher beings ever formulated by any people. We do not know whether the belief in immortality which prevailed in the valley of the Nile is as old as the Egyptian religion in general, although at first sight it appears to be so. ”

“ The soul might sometimes visit the mummy, again take up its abode in its former body, and, animating it anew, return to earth under that form and thus revisit the spots where once it had dwelt. To this end it required an earthly and tangible body, and this was supplied by the mummy. ”

“ As the old Germans were followed into the next world by their slaves and horses; as other uncivilised nations sent the servants of the dead to the realm of death after their masters,47 so in 63 Ancient Egypt a certain portion of mankind was set apart to serve the rest through all eternity. But as Egyptian civilisation advanced and a more humane state of feeling dawned, these views were modified, and the thought gained ground that all Egyptians were equal in the presence of death and of the gods. ”

“ On these occasions they again entered the ante-chamber of the tomb, and there offered prayers to the dead, or brought him offerings, either in the shape of real foods and drinks, or else under the symbolic forms of little clay models of oxen, geese, cakes of bread, and the like. Otherwise the tomb remained unvisited. How it there fared with the dead could only be learned from the doctrines and mysteries of religion; to descend into the vault and disturb the peace of the mummy was accounted a heavy crime against both gods and men. ”

“ This particular form of the doctrine was only one of many different ones that were held. The latter, however, were but occasional manifestations, whereas the system here treated of was the popular belief among all classes of the Egyptian people, from early to Coptic times. By far the greater part of the religious papyri and tomb texts and of the inscriptions of funerary stelæ are devoted to it; the symbolism of nearly all the amulets is connected with it; it was bound up with the practice of mummifying the dead; and it centred in the person of Osiris, the most popular of all the gods of Egypt. ”

“ I am not sparing in offerings to the gods. I do not deprive the dead of the funeral cakes. I do not take away the cakes of the child, or profane the god of my locality. I do not kill sacred animals.”
41 On the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, see Wiedemann, La Déesse Maā, in the Annales du Musée Guimet, x., pp. 561 et seq. With regard to the meaning of the Egyptian name and word Maāt, which is generally translated “truth, or justice,” Renouf has said: “The Egyptians recognised a divinity in those cases only where they perceived the presence of a fixed Law, either of permanence or change. ”

“ As far back as Egyptian history has been traced the people appear to have been in possession not only of written characters, national art and institutions, but also of a complete system of religion. As in all other departments of Egyptian life and thought, so with the Egyptian religion—we cannot trace its beginnings. In the earliest glimpse of it afforded by the Egyptian texts it appears as perfect in all its essential parts ”

“ How simple and at the same time how complicated were their conceptions can best be shown by some account of their ideas on the immortality of the soul and its constitution as a combination of separate parts set forth in ancient Egyptian documents.
7
When once a man was dead, when his heart had ceased to beat and warmth had left his body, a lifeless hull was all that remained of him upon earth. The first duty of the survivors was to preserve this from destruction, and to that end it was handed over to a guild whose duty it was to carry out its embalmment under priestly supervision. ”

“ It seems to us at first as though the relation of the gods to the life beyond had nearly everywhere been regarded as more important than their relation to this life. But this impression is owing to the fact that our material for the study of the Egyptian religion is almost exclusively derived from tombs and funerary temples, while the number of Egyptian monuments unconnected with the cult of the dead is comparatively small. ”

“ And yet how much an Egyptian could have wished to look behind the sealed walls of the sepulchral chamber and see what secret and mysterious things there befell the dead! For their existence had not10 terminated with death; their earthly being only had come to an end, but they themselves had entered on a new, a higher and an eternal life. The constituent parts, whose union in the man had made a human life possible, separated at the moment of his death into those which were immortal and those which were mortal. ”

“ The Book of the Dead and cognate religious texts, always assume that judgment goes in favour of the deceased, that his heart approves him, and that he becomes one of the blessed. Nowhere are we clearly informed as to the fate of the condemned who could not stand before the god Osiris. We are told that the enemies of the gods perish, that they are destroyed or overthrown ”

“ Many divinities have precisely the same character and perform the same functions; whole circles of ideas are mutually exclusive; yet all existed together and were accepted and believed in at one and the same time. ”

“ The Egyptians, holding the belief that the statue of a human being represented and embodied a human Ka, concluded that the statues of the gods represented and embodied divine Kas, and were indeed neither more nor less than the Kas of the gods. Thus the idea of divinity became entirely anthropomorphic, and, just as the king built his temple not to himself but to his Personality, so also sanctuaries were sometimes dedicated not to a god himself but to 22his Personality. ”

“ What greatly intensifies the deep historical interest of Egyptian eschatology is that it testifies not only to the fact that a whole nation believed in the immortality of the soul four thousand years before the birth of Christ, but also that this nation had even then succeeded in clearly picturing the future life to themselves after a fashion which may indeed often seem strange and incomprehensible to modern71 minds but to which we cannot deny a certain consistency and a deep spiritual connotation. ”

“ Harpers were there who sang of the dead man and of his worth, and exhorted his relations to forget their grief and again to rejoice in life, so long as it should be granted unto them 9to enjoy the light of the sun; for when life is past man knows not what shall follow it; beyond the grave is darkness and long sleep. Gayer and gayer grew the banquet, often degenerating into an orgy; when at length all the guests had withdrawn, the tomb was closed, and the dead was left alone. ”

“ But while the latter formed a unity, and constituted the corruptible body only ( Kha) , on which the above-mentioned rites of embalmment were practised, each of the former were distinct even when in combination. These “living, indestructible” parts of a man, which together 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 alone to find its own way to the gods. ”

“ The power of the soul to incarnate itself at pleasure became one of the chief reasons for embalming the body. As we have seen, the preservation of the body was held to be necessary because the mummy 68was supposed to be the material form of which the Osiris was the essential reality. ”

“ Articles of personal adornment and for toilet use, wreaths, weapons, carriages, playthings, and tools were given to the dead, and a whole set of household furniture was often laid away in the grave in order that the Osiris should not be obliged to set to work at once to make or collect these things for himself on his entrance into the next world; for this purpose choice was often made of such objects as the man had used and valued in his lifetime. ”

“ After a man’s death his Ka became his Personality proper; prayers and offerings were made to the gods that they might grant bread and wine, meat and milk, and all good things needful for the sustenance of a god to the Ka of the deceased.12 20Offerings were also made to the Ka itself, and it was believed that from time to time it visited the tomb in order to accept the food there provided for it. ”

“ The dead lived, therefore they must of necessity eat and drink, for without these processes the continuation of life was inconceivable; if the dead were without food they would be starved. The inscription of the sepulchral pyramid of Ûnas, an Egyptian king of the Fifth Dynasty, gives expression to this fear. ”

“ The earth abides for ever, and so do the heavens. Day and night, months, seasons, and years succeed each other with unfailing regularity; the stars are not less constant in their course, some of them rising and setting at fixed intervals, and others eternally circling round the pole in an order which never is disturbed. ”

“ The relation subsisting between a man’s Osiris and his mummy was not clearly apprehended, even by the Egyptians themselves. Identical they were46 not—that fact is obviously implied by the texts, which never once substitute the mummy for the Osiris; men knew also from experience that no mummy had ever left its place of embalmment, or the tomb, to journey on into the next world. ”