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
In passing it must be mentioned that the religious ideas of the men who
were buried without mutilation of limbs, or stripping of flesh from the
body, or burning, must have been different from those of the men who
practised such things on the dead. The former are buried in the
ante-natal position of a child, and we may perhaps be justified in
seeing in this custom the symbol of a hope that as the child is born
from this position into the world, so might the deceased be born into
the life in the world beyond the grave; and the presence of amulets, the
object of which was to protect the body, seems to indicate that they
expected the actual body to rise again. The latter, by the mutilation of
the bodies and the burning of the dead, seem to show that they had no
hope of living again in their natural bodies, and how far they had
approached to the conception of the resurrection of a spiritual body we
shall probably never know. When we arrive at the IVth dynasty we find
that, so far from any practice of mutilation or burning of the body
being common, every text assumes that the body is to be buried whole;
this fact indicates a reversal of the custom of mutilation, or burning,
which must have been in use, however, for a considerable time. It is to
this reversal that we probably owe such passages as, "O flesh of Pepi,
rot not, decay not, stink not;" "Pepi goeth forth with his flesh;" "thy
bones shall not be destroyed, and thy flesh shall not perish,"
[Footnote: See _Recueil de Travaux_, tom. v. pp. 55, 185 (lines 160,
317, 353).] etc.; and they denote a return to the views and ways of the
earliest people known to us in Egypt.
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