The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic StudyKeary, C. F. (Charles Francis)
History
The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study
Keary, C. F. (Charles Francis)
Archaeology; History, Ancient; Mythology
So far as these ceremonies go, man began, we judge, by thinking first of
securing for the dead an everlasting habitation. And so he covered his
grave with an immense pile of earth.[91] The pile grew greater and
greater, and at last, as we saw, it took the shape of the pyramid. Then
came the entrance-chamber or _porch_ to the tomb, in which the survivors
offered sacrifices to the dead to keep him alive by the smell of the
burnt offering.
The Egyptians had very little power of abstracting the idea of the
immaterial soul from the material dead body. At any rate, they did not
(for a long time) conceive the soul as a purely immaterial being. They
thought of the immortal part of man as a sort of _double_ of the mortal
part. This double they called his _ka_. The _ka_ could not exist without
some material form, and therefore they took infinite pains to provide it
with a body of some kind. They mummified the dead body so as to make it
last as long as possible. But besides that, they made numerous images of
the dead; sometimes (if his state could afford it) large statues of
wood[92] or stone. And in addition to these they made a vast number of
smaller images, generally of pottery--those little mummy figures in blue
or green pottery,[93] of which we find such endless quantities buried in
the tombs. There was usually a secret chamber or passage practised in
the tomb to contain these mummied figures, and it was so arranged that
the scent of the sacrifice might come along it.[94]
All these ideas belong, we see, to the most _stationary_ notion of the
dead. If they were followed out logically, the soul would be considered
as tied for ever to the mummy, which lies below in a dark chamber, or to
the little images in their small passage within the wall of the tomb.
But the Egyptians did not carry out this idea logically. For we find
prayers upon the walls of their earliest tombs, that Osiris should give
to the dead, sheep, oxen, and farm-labourers, and ‘sport,’ or corn, and
wine, and dancers, and jesters--all the pleasures, in fact, which he had
had in life. Therefore the dead must really have been thought to have
the power of life and motion as he had enjoyed it upon earth,
inconsistent as such an idea is with the constant enchainment of the
_ka_ to some material belonging, to the mummy or to the image of
pottery.
[Sidenote: The journey of the dead.]
Wherefore it came about that the Egyptians began to have a sort of
notion of _two_ souls--one the half-material _ka_, which remained in the
tomb; the other of an immaterial nature, which moved about.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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