The religions of ancient Egypt and BabyloniaSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Religion
The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Assyro-Babylonian religion; Egypt -- Religion
And the Osirian confession of faith was not a mere conventional formulary,
without influence on the life and conduct of those who professed it. There
are already allusions to it in the Pyramid texts, and in the tombs of a
later period the deceased rests his claim to be remembered upon the good
deeds he had done while on earth. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked,
and to deal justly, are duties which are constantly recognised in them. “I
loved my father,” says Baba at El-Kab, “I honoured my mother.... When a
famine arose, lasting many years, I distributed corn to the needy.” The
Egyptian sepulchres contain few records of war and battles; of deeds of
kindness and righteous dealing there is frequent mention.(148)
Of the fate of the wicked, of those whose hearts were overweighed in the
balance and who failed to pass the tribunal of Osiris, we know but little.
Typhon, in the form of a hideous hippopotamus, stood behind Thoth in a
corner of the hall, ready to devour their entrails. In the Book of the
Other World, of which I shall have to speak in another lecture, the
tortures of the lost are depicted quite in medieval style. We see them
plunged in water or burned in the fire, enclosed in vaulted chambers
filled with burning charcoal, with their heads struck from their necks or
their bodies devoured by serpents. But the Book of the Other World is the
ritual of a religious system which was originally distinct from the
Osirian, and it is probable that most Egyptians expected the final
annihilation of the wicked rather than their continued existence in an
eternal hell. The divine elements in man, which could not die, were
equally incapable of committing sin, and consequently would return to the
God who gave them, when the human individuality to which they had been
joined was punished for its offences in the flesh. The soul could remain
united only to that individuality which had been purified from all its
earthly stains, and had become as the god Osiris himself. The
individuality which was condemned in the judgment of Osiris perished
eternally, and in the mind of the Egyptian the individuality and the
individual were one and the same.
Lecture VIII. The Sacred Books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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