THE FUTURE LIFE
The various beliefs of the Egyptians regarding the future life are so
distinct from each other and so incompatible, that they may be
classified into groups more readily than the theology; thus they serve
to indicate the varied sources of the religion.
The most simple form of belief was that of the continued existence of
the soul in the tomb and about the cemetery. In Upper Egypt at present
a hole is left at the top of the tomb chamber; and I have seen a woman
remove the covering of the hole, and talk down to her deceased husband.
Also funeral offerings of food and drink, and even beds, are still
placed in the tombs. A similar feeling, without any precise beliefs,
doubtless prompted the earlier forms of provision for the dead. The
soul wandered around the tomb seeking sustenance, and was fed by the
{13} goddess who dwelt in the thick sycomore trees that overshadowed
the cemetery. She is represented as pouring out drink for the _ba_ and
holding a tray of cakes for it to feed upon. In the grave we find this
belief shown by the jars of water, wine, and perhaps other liquids, the
stores of corn, the geese, haunches and heads of oxen, the cakes, and
dates, and pomegranates which were laid by the dead. In an early
king's tomb there might be many rooms full of these offerings. There
were also the weapons for defence and for the chase, the toilet
objects, the stores of clothing, the draughtsmen, and even the
literature of papyri buried with the dead. The later form of this
system was the representation of all these offerings in sculpture and
drawing in the tomb. This modification probably belongs to the belief
in the _ka_, which could be supported by the _ka_ of the food and use
the _ka_ of the various objects, the figures of the objects being
supposed to provide the _kas_ of them. This system is entirely
complete in itself, and does not presuppose or require any theologic
connection. It might well belong to an age of simple animism, and be a
survival of that in later times.
The greatest theologic system was that of the kingdom of Osiris. This
was a counterpart of {14} the earthly life, but was reserved for the
worthy. All the dead belonged to Osiris and were brought before him
for judgment. The protest of being innocent of the forty-two sins was
made, and then the heart was weighed against truth, symbolised by the
ostrich feather, the emblem of the goddess of truth. From this
feather, the emblem of lightness, being placed against the heart in
weighing, it seems that sins were considered to weigh down the heart,
and its lightness required to be proved. Th[=o]th, the god who
recorded the weighing, then stated that the soul left the judgment hall
true of voice with his heart and members restored to him, and that he
should follow Osiris in his kingdom. This kingdom of Osiris was at
first thought of as being in the marshlands of the delta; when these
became familiar it was transferred to Syria, and finally to the
north-east of the sky, where the Milky Way became the heavenly Nile.
The main occupation in this kingdom was agriculture, as on earth; the
souls ploughed the land, sowed the corn, and reaped the harvest of
heavenly maize, taller and fatter than any of this world. In this land
they rowed on the heavenly streams, they sat in shady arbours, and
played the games which they had loved. But the cultivation was a toil,
and {15} therefore it was to be done by numerous serfs. In the
beginning of the monarchy it seems that the servants of the king were
all buried around him to serve him in the future; from the second to
the twelfth dynasty we lose sight of this idea, and then we find slave
figures buried in the tombs. These figures were provided with the hoe
for tilling the soil, the pick for breaking the clods, a basket for
carrying the earth, a pot for watering the crops, and they were
inscribed with an order to respond for their master when he was called
on to work in the fields. In the eighteenth dynasty the figures
sometimes have actual tool models buried with them; but usually the
tools are in relief or painted on the figure. This idea continued
until the less material view of the future life arose in Greek times;
then the deceased man was said to have 'gone to Osiris' in such a year
of his age, but no slave figures were laid with him. This view of the
future is complete in itself, and is appropriately provided for in the
tomb.
A third view of the future life belongs to an entirely different
theologic system, that of the progress of the sun-god Ra. According to
this the soul went to join the setting sun in the west, and prayed to
be allowed to enter the boat of the {16} sun in the company of the
gods; thus it would be taken along in everlasting light, and saved from
the terrors and demons of the night over which the sun triumphed. No
occupations were predicated of this future; simply to rest in the
divine company was the entire purpose, and the successful repelling of
the powers of darkness in each hour of the night by means of spells was
the only activity. To provide for the solar journey a model boat was
placed in the tomb with the figures of boatmen, to enable the dead to
sail with the sun, or to reach the solar bark. This view of the future
implied a journey to the west, and hence came the belief in the soul
setting out to cross the desert westward. We find also an early god of
the dead, Khent-amenti, 'he who is in the west,' probably arising from
this same view. This god was later identified with Osiris when the
fusion of the two theories of the soul arose. At Abydos Khent-amenti
only is named at first, and Osiris does not appear until later times,
though that cemetery came to be regarded as specially dedicated to
Osiris.
Now in all these views that we have named there is no occasion for
preserving the body. It is the _ba_ that is fed in the cemetery, not
the body. It is an immaterial body that takes part {17} in the kingdom
of Osiris, in the sky. It is an immaterial body that can accompany the
gods in the boat of the sun. There is so far no call to conserve the
body by the peculiar mummification which first appears in the early
dynasties. The dismemberment of the bones, and removal of the flesh,
which was customary in the prehistoric times, and survived down to the
fifth dynasty, would accord with any of these theories, all of which
were probably predynastic. But the careful mummifying of the body
became customary only in the third or fourth dynasty, and is therefore
later than the theories that we have noticed. The idea of thus
preserving the body seems to look forward to some later revival of it
on earth, rather than to a personal life immediately after death. The
funeral accompaniment of this view was the abundance of amulets placed
on various parts of the body to preserve it. A few amulets are found
worn on a necklace or bracelet in early times; but the full development
of the amulet system was in the twenty-sixth to thirtieth dynasties.
We have tried to disentangle the diverse types of belief, by seeing
what is incompatible between them. But in practice we find every form
of mixture of these views in most ages. In the {18} prehistoric times
the preservation of the bones, but not of the flesh, was constant; and
food offerings show that at least the theory of the soul wandering in
the cemetery was familiar. Probably the Osiris theory is also of the
later prehistoric times, as the myth of Osiris is certainly older than
the dynasties. The Ra worship was associated specially with
Heliopolis, and may have given rise to the union with Ra also before
the dynasties, when Heliopolis was probably a capital of the kings of
Lower Egypt. The boats figured on the prehistoric tomb at
Hierakonpolis bear this out. In the first dynasty there is no mummy
known, funeral offerings abound, and the _khu_ and _ka_ are named. Our
documents do not give any evidence, then, of the Osiris and Ra
theories. In the pyramid period the king was called the Osiris, and
this view is the leading one in the Pyramid inscriptions, yet the Ra
theory is also incompatibly present; the body is mummified; but funeral
offerings of food seem to have much diminished. In the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties the Ra theory gained ground greatly over the
Osirian; and the basis of all the views of the future is almost
entirely the union with Ra during the night and day. The mummy and
amulet theory was not dominant; but the funeral {19} offerings somewhat
increased. The twenty-sixth dynasty almost dropped the Ra theory; the
Osirian kingdom and its population of slave figures is the most
familiar view, and the preservation of the body by amulets was
essential. Offerings of food rarely appear in these later times. This
dominance of Osiris leads on to the anthropomorphic worship, which
interacts on the growth of Christianity as we shall see further.
Lastly, when all the theologic views of the future had perished, the
oldest idea of all, food, drink, and rest for the dead, has still kept
its hold upon the feelings of the people in spite of the teachings of
Islam.
{20}