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
A brief examination of this "Confession" shows that the Egyptian code of
morality was very comprehensive, and it would be very hard to find an
act, the commission of which would be reckoned a sin when the
"Confession" was put together, which is not included under one or other
part of it. The renderings of the words for certain sins are not always
definite or exact, because we do not know the precise idea which the
framer of this remarkable document had. The deceased states that he has
neither cursed God, nor thought scorn of the god of his city, nor cursed
the king, nor committed theft of any kind, nor murder, nor adultery, nor
sodomy, nor crimes against the god of generation; he has not been
imperious or haughty, or violent, or wrathful, or hasty in deed, or a
hypocrite, or an accepter of persons, or a blasphemer, or crafty, or
avaricious, or fraudulent, or deaf to pious words, or a party to evil
actions, or proud, or puffed up; he has terrified no man, he has not
cheated in the market-place, and he has neither fouled the public
watercourse nor laid waste the tilled land of the community. This is, in
brief, the confession which the deceased makes; and the next act in the
Judgment Scene is weighing the heart of the deceased in the scales. As
none of the oldest papyri of the Book of the Dead supplies us with a
representation of this scene, we must have recourse to the best of the
illustrated papyri of the latter half of the XVIIIth and of the XIXth
dynasties. The details of the Judgment Scene vary greatly in various
papyri, but the essential parts of it are always preserved. The
following is the description of the judgment of Ani, as it appears in
his wonderful papyrus preserved in the British Museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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