The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)Duncker, Max
History
The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)
Duncker, Max
History, Ancient
If the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was
pure,[123] he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from
the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of
life and the sky--Hathor and Nut--poured out upon him the water of life.
His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to
come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and
monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the
serpent Apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach
the fields of the sun-god.[124] Here the blessed planted the heavenly
wheat--of which the ears were two cubits in length--wandered at will in
shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water.
Arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various
existences--that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and
beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it
sprang. Hence to the Egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the
"entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."[125]
The first chapter of the Book of the Dead was to be pronounced by the
deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the
western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance
there. "By learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it
in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will
emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be
thrust back. Food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the
table of Ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of Aanro
(Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live
happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead
has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the
names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold
justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."[126] On a
sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased
utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length
and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead.
"I am Tum (p. 51), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first
sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name,
the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday;
I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the
gods. I know the name of that great god who is there. Glory of Ra is his
name. I am the great Bennu which is worshipped in On. I am Chem in his
manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; I
have arrived at my land, I have arrived at my dwelling-place."[127] "The
sun-mountain (horizon) of his father Tum is meant,"--so run the
commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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