19 This prayer is contained in that part of The Book of the Dead, chap, CV., entitled Chapter whereby the Ka of a person is satisfied in the Nether world: “Hail to thee who wast my Ka during life! Lo! I come unto thee, I arise resplendent, I labour, I am strong, I am hale (var., I pass on), I bring grains of incense, I am purified thereby, I purify thereby that which goeth forth from thee. This conjuration of evil which I say; this warding off of evil which I perform; (this conjuration) is not made against me (?)” The conjuration runs as follows: “I am that amulet of green felspar, the necklace of the god Rā, which is given (var., which I gave) unto them who are upon the horizon. They flourish, I flourish, my Ka flourishes even as they, my duration of life flourishes even as they, my Ka has abundance of food even as they. The scale of the balance rises, Truth rises high to the nose of the god Rā in that day on which my Ka is where I am (?) My head and my arm are made (?) to where I am (?) I am he whose eye seeth, whose ears hear; I am not a beast of sacrifice. The sacrificial formulæ proceed where I am, for the upper ones”—otherwise said, “for the upper ones of heaven.” The funerary papyrus of Sûtimes (Naville, Todtenbuch, I., pl. 117) contains the following addition at the end of this chapter: “I enter (?) unto thee (to the Ka?). I am pure, the Osiris is justified against his enemies.” The accompanying vignette for this chapter shows the deceased as 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 double meaning of the word Ka, which signifies both “Double” and food.
20 In the religious texts the heart is called both abáb hati hāti. Sometimes, as in The Book of the Dead, chap. XXVI. et seq., the two were differentiated; but, generally speaking, the two terms appear to have been synonymous.
22 Plutarch, Septem sap. conviv., p. 159 B: “We then, said I” (Diales), “render these tributes to the belly (τῇ γαστρί). But if Solon or any one else has any allegation to make we will listen.” “By all means,” said Solon, “lest we should appear more senseless than the Egyptians, who cutting up the dead body showed [the entrails] to the sun, then cast them into the river, but of the rest of the body, as now become pure, they took care. For in reality this [the belly] is the pollution of our flesh, and the Hell, as in Hades,—full of dire streams, and of wind and fire confused together, and of dead things.”
Plutarch, De esu carnium orat., ii., p. 996, 38: “As the Egyptians, taking out from the dead the belly (τὴν κοιλίαν) and cutting it up before the sun, cast it away, as the cause of all the sins which the man has committed; in like manner that we ourselves, cutting out gluttony and bloodthirstiness, should purify the rest of our life.”
Porphyry, De abst., iv., 10: When they embalm those of the noble that have died, together with their other treatment of the dead body, they take out the belly (τὴν κοιλίαν), and put it into a coffer, and holding the coffer to the sun they protest, one of the embalmers making a speech on behalf of the dead. This speech, which Euphantus translated from his native language, is as follows: “O Lord, the Sun, and all ye gods who give life to men, receive me and make me a companion to the eternal gods. For the gods, whom my parents made known to me, as long time as I have had my life in this world I have continued to reverence, and those who gave birth to my body I have ever honoured. And for the rest of men, I have neither slain any, nor defrauded any of anything entrusted to me, nor committed any other wicked act, but if I haply in my life have sinned at all,: by either eating or drinking what was unlawful, not on my own account did I sin, but on account of these (showing the coffer in which the belly [ἡ γαστήρ] lay).” And having said these things he throws it into the river; but the rest of the body, as pure, he embalms. Thus they thought that they needed to excuse themselves to the Deity on account of what they had eaten and drunk, and therefore to reproach the belly.”
23 It was in this sense that the Egyptians regarded the heart as the seat of the feelings, and spoke of the heart as rejoicing, as mourning, as weeping.
24 The illustration is taken from photographs of a scarab in the Edwards collection at University College, London.
25 For the translation of chap, xxx b. of The Book of the Dead, which formed the usual inscriptions on heart scarabs, see p. 53.
26 The possession of the formula in chap, cxlviii. of The Book of the Dead, from line 8, ensured abundance (of food) to the Ba of the dead.
27 Illustrations 7 and 8 are taken from photographs of objects in the Edwards Museum at University College.
28 See The Book of the Dead, Naville's edition, pls. 4, 97, 101, 104; Lepsius' edition, pls. 33, etc., etc.
29 See, e.g., illustration and Orcagna's fresco of the Triumph of Death, in the Campo Santo of Pisa.
31 Von Bergmann, Sarkophag des Panehemisis, I., pp. 11, 15, 24; Pierret, Insc. du Louvre, II., p. 23; Mariette, Dendérah, iv., 62a.
32 The Book of the Dead, lxxxix. 6.
33 Von Bergmann, Sarkophag des Panehemisis, I., p. 37, where the translation is not quite accurately given.
34 In Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, VIII., p. 386 et seq., Birch has collected passages bearing on this point.
35 On primitive beliefs as to a man’s shadow being a vital part of himself, see Frazer, The Golden Bough, Vol. I., pp. 141-44.
36 See Maspero, Recueil de Travaux relatifs à Égypt, III., p. 105 et seq.; and Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient, Vol. I., p. 114. In The Book of the Dead, chap. lxxxix., 3, the Khû is mentioned in connection with the Ba; in chap. cxlix., 40, with the Khaïb; and in chap. xcii., 5, with both.
38 A certain part in the religious life of our own time has been played by a similar “Hypocephalus,” viz., the Mormon Scriptures (cf.: Joseph Smith, A Pearl of Great Price, 1851, p. 7). For particulars of the Hypocephalus of the illustration see Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, Vol. VI., p. 52, and plate.
39 See Ebers, Æg. Zeitschr., 1867, p. 108; 1871, p. 48; Wiedemann, Proceedings of the Orientalist Congress at St. Etienne, II., p. 155.
40 The “Negative Confession” forms chap. cxxv. of The Book of the Dead, and varies slightly in different copies. The following is Renouf’s translation of the chapter as it appears in a Nineteenth Dynasty papyrus (see The Papyrus of Ani, London, 1890):—“I am not a doer of what is wrong. I am not a plunderer. I am not a robber. I am not a slayer of men. I do not stint the quantity of corn. I am not a niggard. I do not seize the property of the gods. I am not a teller of lies. I am not a monopoliser of food. I am no extortioner. I am not unchaste. I am not the cause of others’ tears. I am not a dissembler. I am not a doer of violence. I am not of domineering character. I do not pillage cultivated land. I am not an eavesdropper. I am not a chatterer. I do not dismiss a case through self-interest. I am not unchaste with women or men. I am not obscene. I am not an exciter of alarms. I am not hot in speech. I do not turn a deaf ear to the words of righteousness. I am not foul-mouthed. I am not a striker. I am not a quarreller. I do not revoke my purpose, I do not multiply clamour in reply to words. I am not evil-minded or a doer of evil. I am not a reviler of the king. I put no obstruction upon the water. I am not a bawler. I am not a reviler of the God. I am not fraudulent. 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. 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. This regularity, which is the constitutive character of the Egyptian divinity, was called Maat Maāt. The gods were said to be nebû maāt, ‘possessors of maāt.’ or ānchiû em maāt, ‘subsisting by or through maāt.’ Maāt is in fact the Law and Order by which the universe exists. Truth and justice are but forms of Maāt as applied to human action.”—Papyrus of Ani, Introduction, p. 2.
42 This prayer is contained in chap. xxx. of The Book of the Dead:—
“Chapter whereby the heart of a person is not kept back from
him in the Netherworld.
43 As stated on the mummy case of Panehemisis, ed. Von Bergmann, I., p. 29.
44 The conception of a kind of hell is certainly found in the book Am Dûat (cf. Jéquier, Le livre de ce qu’il y a dans l'Hadès, Paris, 1894, p. 127); such allusions are, however, exceptional, and Egyptian belief in a hell appears to have existed at times only, and to have been confined to certain classes of society.
45 The “fields of Aalû”; cf. the “Elysian fields” of the Greeks.
47 From scenes in the tomb of Mentûherkhepeshf at Thebes, dating from the beginning of the Nineteenth Dynasty, we have evidence that Egyptian funeral ceremonies occasionally included human sacrifice at the gate of the tomb, the object of such sacrifice being doubtless that of sending servants to the dead. But the practice would seem to have been very exceptional, at any rate after Egypt had entered upon her long period of greatness. See Maspero, Mémoires de la Mission Archéologique du Caire, V., p. 452; cf. Wiedemann, in Le Muséon, XIII., p. 457 et seq.; see also Griffith, The Tomb of Paheri, pp. 20, 21, in the Eleventh Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
48 Chapter vi. of The Book of the Dead consists of this formula, which there reads: “O Ûshabti there! Should I be called and appointed to do any of the labours that are done in the Netherworld by a person according to his abilities, lo! all obstacles have been beaten down for thee; be thou counted for me at every moment, for planting the fields, for watering the soil, for conveying the sands of East and West, Here am I, whithersoever thou callest me!”—Renouf's Translation.
49 The frontispiece represents one of 399 Ûshabtiû made for a priest named Horût’a, who lived during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty. These Ûshabtiû were found at Hawara by Petrie: see Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, pp. 9, 19.
50 Professor Petrie, speaking of his discovery that it was the Egyptian custom to place masonic deposits of miniature model tools, etc., underneath the foundations of temples, and giving an account of the foundation deposits which he found beneath the pyramid temple of Ûsertesen II., at Illahûn, says: “The reason for burying such objects is yet unexplained; but it seems not unlikely that they were intended for the use of the Kas of the builders, like the models placed in tombs for the Kas of the deceased. Whether each building had a Ka, which needed ghostly repair by the builders’ Kas, is also to be considered” (Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, p. 22). We know that each building had its guardian spirit in the form of a serpent (cf. the representation of one dating from the time of Amenophis III, in Ghizeh, No. 217, published by Mariette, Mon. Div., pl. 63 b).
51 The Book of the Dead, chaps. lxxvi.-lxxxviii.
52 “The Egyptians were also the first to broach the opinion that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body dies it enters into an animal which is born at the same moment, thence passing on (from one animal into another) until it has circled through all creatures of the earth, the water, and the air, after which it enters again into a new-born human frame. The whole period 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 it forward as their own.”—Herodotus, II., 123. See Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch, p. 457 et seq.
53 For the “Story of Setna” see Vol. II. of Professor Petrie’s Egyptian Tales.
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