Egyptian Ideas of the Future LifeBudge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
ReligionComparative
Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life
Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
Egypt -- Religion; Eschatology, Egyptian; Future life
The deceased then goes on to enumerate the sins or offences which he has
not committed; and he concludes by saying: "I am pure; I am pure; I am
pure; I am pure. My purity is the purity of the great Bennu which is in
the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), for, behold., I am the nostrils
of the God of breath, who maketh all mankind to live on the day when the
Eye of R[=a] is full in Annu (Heliopolis) at the end of the second month
of the season PERT. [Footnote: _i.e._, the last day of the sixth month
of the Egyptian year, called by the Copta Mekhir.] I have seen the Eye
of R[=a] when it was full in Annu; [Footnote: The allusion here seems to
be to the Summer or Winter Solstice.] therefore let not evil befall me
either in this land or in this Hall of Ma[=a]ti, because I, even I, know
the names of the gods who are therein."
Now as the gods who live in the Hall of Ma[=a]t with Osiris are two and
forty in number, we should expect that two and forty sins or offences
would be mentioned in the addresses which the deceased makes to them;
but this is not the case, for the sins enumerated in the Introduction
never reach this number. In the great illustrated papyri of the XVIIIth
and XIXth dynasties we find, however, that notwithstanding the fact that
a large number of sins, which the deceased declares he has not
committed, are mentioned in the Introduction, the scribes and artists
added a series of negative statements, forty-two in number, which they
set out in a tabular form. This, clearly, is an attempt to make the sins
mentioned equal in number to the gods of the Hall of Ma[=a]t, and it
would seem as if they preferred to compose an entirely new form of this
section of the one hundred and twenty-fifth chapter to making any
attempt to add to or alter the older section. The artists, then,
depicted a Hall of Ma[=a]t, the doors of which are wide open, and the
cornice of which is formed of uraei and feathers, symbolic of Ma[=a]t.
Over the middle of the cornice is a seated deity with hands extended,
the right over the Eye of Horus, and the left over a pool. At the end of
the Hall are seated the goddesses of Ma[=a]t, _i.e._, Isis and Nephthys,
the deceased adoring Osiris who is seated on a throne, a balance with
the heart of the deceased in one scale, and the feather, symbolic of
Ma[=a]t, in the other, and Thoth painting a large feather. In this Hall
sit the forty-two gods, and as the deceased passes by each, the deceased
addresses him by his name and at the same time declares that he has not
committed a certain sin. An examination of the different papyri shows
that the scribes often made mistakes in writing this list of gods and
list of sins, and, as the result, the deceased is made to recite before
one god the confession which strictly belongs to another. Inasmuch, as
the deceased always says after pronouncing the name of each god, "I have
not done" such and such a sin, the whole group of addresses has been
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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