Isaac Myer

“ The idea being to drive away evil spirits, supposed to be injurious to the passage of the soul of the dead, upon its journey through the under-world to the new birth and power of transformation, in the eternal heaven of the Egyptians. ”

“ The scarab was a symbol of the re-birth, resurrection and the eternal life of the soul, pronounced pure at the psychostasia; and we know from the Book of the Dead, that at the moment of resurrection, in analogy to the beginning of terrestrial life, it was the heart that was asserted to be given to the dead so as to receive the first vitality of the second birth, it was through the heart that the mummy would revive, thence the inscribed scarab was placed in the mummy in the place formerly occupied by its heart [67] when in terrestrial life. ”

“ I evolved Myself under the form of the evolutions of the god Khepera, and I developed Myself out of the primeval matter which has evolved multitudes of evolutions from the beginning of time. No-thing existed on this earth (before Me,) I made all things. There was none other who worked with Me at that time. I made all evolutions by means of that soul, which I raised up there from inertness out of the watery matter." [98] This is a most important papyrus for a knowledge of Ancient Egyptian philosophy. ”

“ In very ancient paintings especially those in the tombs of the kings of Thebes, the scarabæus plays a most remarkable part, as an emblem of the creating first source of life, which passes from it to the embryo, through the intermediary of a celestial generator, who is intended to represent the Makrokosm or great Ideal Man, as the demiurgos. We find the idea of the Makrokosm or great Ideal Man, [17] permeating those writings termed, the Books of Hermes Trismegistos, which have reached our day, and which, with some more recent matter, contain much very old, Egyptian philosophy. ”

“ The Ancient Egyptian believed, that as the setting of the sun was an actual separation of the body and soul of the sun-god; and its rising, a reunion of the two; so it happened to the future of the spiritual of man, and that after man's death on this earth, his spirit, as did that of the sun-god; would arise again to life, but it would be to a life of immortality in a higher sphere. I am inclined also to [99] think, that they believed the spiritual body of the new-born child came down from the sun-disk or from some very exalted sphere. ”

“ Nut was the goddess personifying the vault of heaven, the sky, and the space, in which the sun was supposed to have been born. The scarab it must be remembered was in the Egyptian thought, an androgyne.
In a papyrus now in Turin, Italy, we may read: "I am Khepera, the morning; Ra, the midday; Tum, the evening." It is said of Khepra as of Horus, that it produced the Ma, i.e., the law or harmony which uphold the universe, and it is merged with a form of Horus, under the [80] name of: "Harmakhis-Khepra who gives itself its form." ”

“ God and His universe, existence and change or transformation, death and dissolution, all which were only considered as regeneration and re-birth in another form. Thence becomes apparent to us, the great value and importance to the Egyptian people of the symbolism of the scarab, it was, to them, the emblematic synthesis of their religion as to-day to Christians, the Latin or the Greek cross, is the emblematic synthesis of Latin or Greek Christianity. ”

“ The promise of the resurrection of the soul was symbolized, by the Great Sphinx of Gizeh, old at the beginning of the Ancient Empire; by the Phœnix, and by the Scarab, the antiquity of the symbolism of which no Egyptologist has yet fathomed. We have it set forth in writing on the inscriptions of the earliest Dynasties. [70]
[83] On a stele found between the paws of the Great Sphinx of Gizeh is: "The majesty of this beautiful god speaks by its own mouth, as a father speaks to his child, saying: Look to me, let thine eye rest on me, my son Thutmes! ”

“ The Ka, they thought, never quitted the place where the mummy was except at some time to return. The Ba, and the Khu went away from it to follow [122] the gods, but they continually returned as would a traveler who re-entered his house after an absence. The tomb was the defunct's "eternal dwelling house" on earth, the houses of the living were only as inns or stopping places. In case of a judgment in favor of the Ba in the Hall of Osiris, the Khu united to the Ba, Khaibet, Ab, Ka, etc., rose up to the Egyptian heaven, and the whole united was able to make whatever transformations pleased it. ”

“ Dead as made by the deceased, is, that he may go out of the under-world to the higher regions of light, and have power to "go forth as a living soul, to take all the forms which may please him." Chabas says as to this: "We know that such was the principal beatitude of the elect in the Egyptian heaven; it allowed the faculty of transformation into all the universe under the form wished for." ”

“ The earliest shape of genuine seals known and used in Egypt, is that in the scarab form and that form is peculiarly Egyptian; cylinders however were sometimes used by that people in early times. The Egyptians at a time, to us beyond all positive history, took advantage of and used the intaglio seal, so as to secure, by its impression, the authenticity of personal acts whether done by the sovereign, his chancellor, or his treasurer, or by private individuals ”

“ There is however one thought which must strike the student of religions forcibly, that is the fact, that the idea of the re-birth and future eternal life of the pious and moral dead, existed among the Ancient Egyptians as an accepted dogma, long before the period in which Moses is said to have lived. ”

“ The deities go out of the mouth of their father Khepra, and are nourished by the maat, i.e., the Harmony or Law of the universe; [86] men go out of its eyes, that is from the light of the deity, and it is this light which vivifies the entire universe. The Hymn says: "O Form, ONE, [101] producing all things, the ONE, who art Alone; producing existences! Men come forth from Its two eyes, the gods come into existence from Its Word. ”

“ At least four species of beetles appear to have been held in veneration and were distinguished, by the absence or presence, of striated elytra. The Ateuchus sacer is the one commonly represented on the monuments. The number of the toes, thirty, symbolized the days of the month, and the movement of the ball, which it manufactured and in which was deposited its egg, symbolized among other things, the action of Ra, the Egyptian sun-deity, at midday.
[7] The Egyptian soldier wore the scarab as a charm or amulet, to increase bravery; [8] the women, to increase fertility. ”

“ However we of to-day all understand the emblem of the cross, and the Ancient Egyptians in their time, all understood the emblem of the scarab.
"Men are rarely conscious of the prejudices, which really incapacitate them, from forming impartial and true judgments on systems alien to their own habits of thought. And philosophers who may pride themselves on their freedom from prejudice, may yet fail to understand ”

“ We have not yet many religious texts of the Ancient Empire that have been fully studied and made known, but those that have been, exhibit an idealism as to the Supreme Deity and a belief in the immortality of the soul, based on the pious, ethical and charitable conduct of [xiii] man, which speak highly for an early very elevated thought in religious ideas. ”

“ Ptah the Creative Power, and also Khepera, a kosmogonic deity of the highest type, had the scarab assigned to them as an emblem. It was one of the forms symbolic of the Demiurge or Maker of our universe. It was also the emblem of Ptah Tore, of Memphis, another [15] symbolic form of the creative power. It was assigned as an emblem of Ptah-Sokari-Osiris, the pigmy deity of Memphis, being placed on his head, and this deity was sometimes represented under the form of a scarab. It was also an emblem of Ra, the sun deity; also, an emblem of the world or universe ”

“ Master (i.e., father) of the gods, Khepra in its boat, (it) sending forth the word (i.e., the creative word,) the gods came into existence. Hail god Tum, maker of intelligent beings, who determines their manner of [100] existence, artisan of their existences; (and who) distinguishes (their) colors, one from the other." [83] "Author of humanity, making the form of all things to become (or, former who produced every thing;) it is in thy name of Tum-Khepra." [84] "Khepra is father of the gods and the producer of the maat." ”

“ The work entitled, Hermes Trismegistos, contains a resumé of that idea, saying, among other things: "What was composed is divided. That division is not Death, it is the analysis of a combination; but the aim of that analysis is not destruction, it is the renewment. What is in effect the energy of life? ”

“ Idolatry made its greatest advance subsequent to the epoch of the Ancient Empire, and progressed until it finally merged itself into the animalism of the New Empire and the gross paganism of the Greeks and Romans. ”

“ We can from the foregoing assume with some certainty, that before the historical period in Ancient Egypt, a religious belief existed, funeral ceremonies, and an expectation of an eternal life of the soul after the death of the body of [xi] man on this earth; whether a belief in rewards or punishments to be suffered or enjoyed by the soul after such death, for actions done by man in this earthly life, existed at that time, we cannot as yet, with certainty, affirm ”

“ A collection of scarabs, inscribed with the names of kings, stands therefore to Egyptian history as a collection of coins stands to the history of the younger nations of the earth. The day must come when our Universities and other bodies of learned folk, will study the beginnings of things as they are presented in Egyptian history, and some knowledge of these curious little objects will become indispensable to an educated man * * * * The collection now arranged in the British Museum is second to none. ”

“ Literature was honored and books were composed on morals, some of which have reached our day. This was under the Ancient Empire during which existed the builders of the Pyramids." [64] The deities of literature and of libraries already existed, they were Thoth, the Greek Hermes; Atmu, of Thebes; Ma or Maat, goddess of the harmony of the entire universe, or its law of existence, and of righteousness; Pacht, the mistress of thoughts; Safekh, goddess of books, who presided [71] over the foundations of monuments and who was venerated at Memphis as early as the IVth Dynasty ”

“ O Khepra in thy boat! (i.e., as Harmakhis) the body of the gods is even thy body, or so to say, it is Eternity. Save Osiris * * * from those watching judges (i.e., Isis and Nephthys,) to whom the master of spells has entrusted, at his pleasure, the watching of his enemies—whom the [87] executioner will strike—and from whose observation none escape. ”

“ Dynasty nearly always have a scarab on the little finger of the left hand. [55]
Sometimes they were made of baked clay or cut in steatite, with the head of a hawk, cow, ram, dog, cat, lion, or even of a man, and such have been found buried with the mummies. Those found on the breasts of mummies embalmed most carefully and expensively, and in immediate contact with the flesh, have sometimes bodies of stone with extended wings, as if flying; these wings sometimes having been made of metal, frequently of gold, and at other times of cut stone. ”

“ There are also some of very large size; one made of basalt now in the British Museum, is five feet high.
The making of the shape of the scarab in cameo, in soft material was easily done, and the incising of its flat under surface with the hieroglyphics not difficult; the [22] artist most likely used, one or more instruments of different sizes, formed at the end like a very small chisel or bradawl, and gouged or punched out the figures and inscriptions desired, before the glazing or enameling was put on, this gave a flat appearance at the depth or bottom of the incised work. ”

“ The Etruscans have evidently borrowed the form without caring for the cult; there does not appear with them any mysterious, religious or astronomical meaning, nor the veneration for it, which existed among the old Egyptians; but no doubt, the representation was considered as a talisman or preservative amulet and was worn as such, but in many instances likely, only as a matter of ornament in dress. ”

“ We cannot accept the statements of most of the Greek authors upon this subject, for the study of the last few years of the Ancient Egyptian papyri and other remains, shows that they either did not know or they willfully misrepresented, Egyptian abstract thought; about the only works, outside of the papyri and the monuments, from which we can gather as to it with any sureness, meagre details; are the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistos; the Osiris and Isis, of Plutarch ”

“ At ancient Tanis (now called by the Arabs, San,) they are all of schist, rough and small, the glaze nearly always gone; within a short distance from there, at Nebesheh, they are usually of pottery with bright apple-green glazes; at Naukratis, the Ancient Egyptian name of which was Am and which was a city in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, they are mostly of soft glazed pottery, or, of a blue paste, and nearly all are small; in the ruins of this city was found a factory for making Greek scarabs in imitation of the Egyptian style. ”

“ All that is done and said upon earth has its source in the heights, from whence the essences are dispensed to us with measure and equilibrium; and there is not anything, which does not emanate from on high and which does not return thereto. ”

“ This was, likely, secretly taught by word of mouth as Qabbalah or Oral Tradition to the initiates, and was never put into writing. Some of these ideas we have just grasped, for instance, we now have some knowledge of the Egyptian divisions of the spiritual or immaterial part of man, of his psychology, and upon studying these divisions one can readily imagine, a secret religious philosophy accompanying those separations of the spiritual in man. ”

“ In spite of not being an artistic people producing works of originality, this people, the great mariners and merchants of antiquity, had in an eminent degree the genius of assimilation or adaptation, and manufactured cylinders, cones, spheroids, scarabs and signets of all kinds, at first for themselves, and afterwards as an article of sale to the people with whom they traded. ”

“ This was the first Theban Dynasty and is a very rare period for Egyptian cameo work, as they then [34] usually incised their engraving on precious stones and did not engrave them in relief. [28] The stone is a square sardonyx and is engraved in relief, with great fineness on one side, with a figure the name of which can be read Ha-ro-bes, the other side is incised and has the figure of a pharaoh killing a prisoner, whom he holds by the beard, with a mace; the cartouch reads, Ra-en-ma, i.e., Amen-em-hat IIIrd. The intaglio work on this side is not equal to that in cameo, on the other. ”

“ The Ka was a spiritual double of the man, a kind of prototype in the Upper World, of the man in the Lower World, our earth. [108]
VII. The Mummy or the Husk was called, Sahu. It was the body after embalmment. "His body is in the condition [119] of being true; it will not perish." [109] The Sahu was considered a true being as it was assumed that it would always remain the same. It was like the lower form of the Nephesh of the Hebrew Qabbalah. The atoms of the mummy-body were still intact held together by the cohesion of the particles. ”

“ Plutarch says: "The Egyptian warriors had a beetle carved upon their signets, because there is no such thing as a female beetle; for they are all males," etc.—Of Isis and Osiris §§ 10, 74, in Plutarch's Morals. ”