EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
IN attempting to understand the conceptions of the ancient
inhabitants of Egypt on the subject of a future life, we are first
met by the inquiry why they took such great pains to preserve the
bodies of their dead. It has been supposed that no common motive
could have animated them to such lavish expenditure of money,
time, and labor as the process of embalming required. It has been
taken for granted that only some recondite theological
consideration could explain this phenomenon. Accordingly, it is
now the popular belief that the Egyptians were so scrupulous in
embalming their dead and storing them in repositories of eternal
stone, because they believed that the departed souls would at some
future time come back and revivify their former bodies, if these
were kept from decay. This hypothesis seems to us as false as it
is gratuitous. In the first place, there is no evidence of it
whatever, neither written testimony nor circumstantial hint.
Herodotus tells us, "The Egyptians say the soul, on the
dissolution of the body, always enters into some other animal then
born, and, having passed in rotation through the various
terrestrial, aquatic, and arial beings, again enters the body of a
man then born."1 There is no assertion that, at the end of the
three thousand years occupied by this circuit, the soul will re
enter its former body. The plain inference, on the contrary, is
that it will be born in a new body, as at each preceding step in
the series of its transmigrations. Secondly, the mutilation of the
body in embalming forbids the belief in its restoration to life.
The brain was extracted, and the skull stuffed with cotton. The
entrails were taken out, and sometimes, according to Porphyry2 and
Plutarch,3 thrown into the Nile; sometimes, as modern examinations
have revealed, bound up in four packages and either replaced in
the cavity of the stomach or laid in four vases beside the mummy.
It is absurd to attribute, without clear cause, to an enlightened
people the belief that these stacks of brainless, eviscerated
mummies, dried and shrunken in ovens, coated with pitch, bound up
in a hundredfold bandages, would ever revive, and, inhabited by
the same souls that fled them thirty centuries before, again walk
the streets of Thebes! Besides, a third consideration demands
notice. By the theory of metempsychosis universally acknowledged
to have been held by the Egyptians it is taught that souls at
death, either immediately, or after a temporary sojourn in hell or
heaven has struck the balance of their merits, are born in fresh
bodies; never that they return into their old ones. But the point
is set beyond controversy by the discovery of inscriptions,
accompanying pictures of scenes illustrating the felicity of
blessed souls in heaven, to this effect: "Their bodies shall
repose in their tombs forever; they live in the celestial regions
eternally, enjoying the presence of the Supreme God." 4 A writer
on this subject says, "A people who believed in the transmigration
1 Herod. lib. ii. cap. 123.
2 De Abstinentia, lib. iv. cap. 10.
3 Banquet of the Seven Wise Men.
4 Champollion, Descr. de l'Egypte, Antiq. tom ii. p. 132. Stuart's
Trans. of Greppo's Essay, p. 262.
of souls would naturally take extraordinary pains to preserve the
body from putrefaction, in the hope of the soul again joining the
body it had quitted." The remark is intrinsically untrue, because
the doctrine of transmigration coexists in reconciled belief with
the observed law of birth, infancy, and growth, not with the
miracle of transition into reviving corpses. The notion is
likewise historically refuted by the fact that the believers of
that doctrine in the thronged East have never preserved the body,
but at once buried or burned it. The whole Egyptian theology is
much more closely allied to the Hindu, which excluded, than to the
Persian, which emphasized, the resurrection of the body.
Another theory which has been devised to explain the purpose of
Egyptian embalming, is that "it was to unite the soul permanently
to its body, and keep the vital principle from perishing or
transmigrating; the body and soul ran together through the journey
of the dead and its dread ordeal." 5 This arbitrary guess is
incredible. The preservation of the body does not appear in any
way not even to the rawest fancy to detain or unite the soul with
it; for the thought is unavoidable that it is precisely the
absence of the soul which constitutes death. Again: such an
explanation of the motive for embalming cannot be correct, because
in the hieroglyphic representations of the passage to the judgment
the separate soul is often depicted as hovering over the body, 6
or as kneeling before the judges, or as pursuing its adventures
through the various realms of the creation. "When the body is
represented," Champollion says, "it is as an aid to the spectator,
and not as teaching a bodily resurrection. Sharpe's opinion that
the picture of a bird poised over the mouth of a mummy, with the
emblems of breath and life in its claws, implies the doctrine of a
general physical resurrection, is an inferential leap of the most
startling character. What proof is there that the symbol denotes
this? Hundreds of paintings in the tombs show souls undergoing
their respective allotments in the other world while their bodily
mummies are quiet in the sepulchres of the present. In his
treatise on "Isis and Osiris," Plutarch writes, "The Egyptians
believe that while the bodies of eminent men are buried in the
earth their souls are stars shining in heaven." It is equally
nonsensical in itself and unwarranted by evidence to imagine that,
in the Egyptian faith, embalming either retained the soul in the
body or preserved the body for a future return of the soul. Who
can believe that it was for either of those purposes that they
embalmed the multitudes of animals whose mummies the explorer is
still turning up? They preserved cats, hawks, bugs, crocodiles,
monkeys, bulls, with as great pains as they did men.7 When the
Canary Islands were first visited, it was found that their
inhabitants had a custom of carefully embalming the dead. The same
was the case among the Peruvians, whose vast cemeteries remain to
this day crowded with mummies. But the expectation of a return of
the souls into these preserved bodies is not to be ascribed to
those peoples. Herodotus informs us that "the Ethiopians, having
dried the bodies of their dead, coat them with white plaster,
which they paint with colors to the likeness of the deceased and
encase in a transparent substance. The dead, thus kept from being
offensive, and yet plainly visible, are retained a
5 Bonomi and Arundel on Egyptian Antiq., p. 46.
6 Pl. xxxiii. in Lepsius' Todtenb. der. Agypter.
7 Pettigrew, Hist of Egyptian Mummies, ch. xii.
whole year in the houses of their nearest relatives. Afterwards
they are carried out and placed upright in the tombs around the
city." 8 It has been argued, because the Egyptians expended so
much in preparing lasting tombs and in adorning their walls with
varied embellishments, that they must have thought the soul
remained in the body, a conscious occupant of the dwelling place
provided for it.9 As well might it be argued that, because the
ancient savage tribes on the coast of South America, who obtained
their support by fishing, buried fish hooks and bait with their
dead, they supposed the dead bodies occupied themselves in their
graves by fishing! The adornment of the tomb, so lavish and varied
with the Egyptians, was a gratification of the spontaneous
workings of fancy and affection, and needs no far fetched
explanation. Every nation has its funeral customs and its rites of
sepulture, many of which would be as difficult of explanation as
those of Egypt. The Scandinavian sea king was sometimes buried, in
his ship, in a grave dug on some headland overlooking the ocean.
The Scythians buried their dead in rolls of gold, sometimes
weighing forty or fifty solid pounds. Diodorus the Sicilian says,
"The Egyptians, laying the embalmed bodies of their ancestors in
noble monuments, see the true visages and expressions of those who
died ages before them. So they take almost as great pleasure in
viewing their bodily proportions and the lineaments of their faces
as if they were still living among them." 10 That instinct which
leads us to obtain portraits of those we love, and makes us
unwilling to part even with their lifeless bodies, was the cause
of embalming. The bodies thus prepared, we know from the testimony
of ancient authors, were kept in the houses of their children or
kindred, until a new generation, "who knew not Joseph," removed
them. Then nothing could be more natural than that the priesthood
should take advantage of the custom, so associated with sacred
sentiments, and throw theological sanctions over it, shroud it in
mystery, and secure a monopoly of the power and profit arising
from it. It is not improbable, too, as has been suggested, that
hygienic considerations, expressing themselves in political laws
and priestly precepts, may at first have had an influence in
establishing the habit of embalming, to prevent the pestilences
apt to arise in such a climate from the decay of animal
substances.
There is great diversity of opinion among Egyptologists on this
point. One thinks that embalming was supposed to keep the soul in
the body until after the funeral judgment and interment, but that,
when the corpse was laid in its final receptacle, the soul
proceeded to accompany the sun in its daily and nocturnal circuit,
or to transmigrate through various animals and deities. Another
imagines that the process of embalming was believed to secure the
repose of the soul in the other world, exempt from
transmigrations, so long as the body was kept from decay.11
Perhaps the different notions on this subject attributed by modern
authors to the Egyptians may all have prevailed among them at
different times or among distinct sects. But it seems most likely,
as we have said, that embalming first arose from physical and
sentimental considerations naturally operating, rather than from
any
8 Lib. iii. cap. 24.
9 Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. i. ch. xxi. sect. iii.
10 Lib. i. cap. 7.
11 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. ii. ch. iii.
theological doctrine carefully devised; although, after the
priesthood appropriated the business, it is altogether probable
that they interwove it with an artificial and elaborate system of
sacerdotal dogmas, in which was the hiding of the national power.
The second question that arises is, What was the significance of
the funeral ceremonies celebrated by the Egyptians over their
dead? When the body had been embalmed, it was presented before a
tribunal of forty two judges sitting in state on the eastern
borders of the lake Acherusia. They made strict inquiry into the
conduct and character of the deceased. Any one might make
complaint against him, or testify in his behalf. If it was found
that he had been wicked, had died in debt, or was otherwise
unworthy, he was deprived of honorable burial and ignominiously
thrown into a ditch. This was called Tartar, from the wailings the
sentence produced among his relatives. But if he was found to have
led an upright life, and to have been a good man, the honors of a
regular interment were decreed him. The cemetery a large plain
environed with trees and lined with canals lay on the western side
of the lake, and was named Elisout, or rest. It was reached by a
boat, the funeral barge, in which no one could cross without an
order from the judges and the payment of a small fee. In these and
other particulars some of the scenes supposed to be awaiting the
soul in the other world were dramatically shadowed forth. Each
rite was a symbol of a reality existing, in solemn correspondence,
in the invisible state. What the priests did over the body on
earth the judicial deities did over the soul in Amenthe. It seems
plain that the Greeks derived many of their notions concerning the
fate and state of the dead from Egypt. Hades corresponds with
Amenthe; Pluto, with the subterranean Osiris; Mercury
psychopompos, with Anubis, "the usher of souls;" Aacus, Minos, and
Rhadamanthos, with the three assistant gods who help in weighing
the soul and present the result to Osiris; Tartarus, to the ditch
Tartar; Charon's ghost boat over the Styx, to the barge conveying
the mummy to the tomb; Cerberus, to Oms; Acheron, to Acherusia;
the Elysian Fields, to Elisout.12 Kenrick thinks the Greeks may
have developed these views for themselves, without indebtedness to
Egypt. But the notions were in existence among the Egyptians at
least twelve hundred years before they can be traced among the
Greeks.13 And they are too arbitrary and systematic to have been
independently constructed by two nations. Besides, Herodotus
positively affirms that they were derived from Egypt. Several
other ancient authors also state this; and nearly every modern
writer on the subject agrees in it.
The triumphs of modern investigation into the antiquities of
Egypt, unlocking the hieroglyphics and lifting the curtain from
the secrets of ages, have unveiled to us a far more full and
satisfactory view of the Egyptian doctrine of the future life than
can be constructed from the narrow glimpses afforded by the
accounts of the old Greek authorities. Three sources of knowledge
have been laid open to us. First, the papyrus rolls, one of which
was placed in the bosom of every mummy. This roll, covered with
hieroglyphics, is called the funeral ritual, or book of the dead.
It served as a passport through the burial rites. It contained the
names of the deceased and his parents, a series of prayers he was
to recite
12 Spineto on Egyptian Antiq, Lectures IV., V.
13 Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 2d
Series, vol. i. ch. 12.
before the various divinities he would meet on his journey, and
representations of some of the adventures awaiting him in the
unseen state.14 Secondly, the ornamental cases in which the
mummies are enclosed are painted all over with scenes setting
forth the realities and events to which the soul of the dead
occupant has passed in the other life.15 Thirdly, the various
fates of souls are sculptured and painted on the walls in the
tombs, in characters which have been deciphered during the present
century:16
"Those mystic, stony volumes on the walls long writ, Whose sense
is late reveal'd to searching modern wit."
Combining the information thus obtained, we learn that, according
to the Egyptian representation, the soul is led by the god Thoth
into Amenthe, the infernal world, the entrance to which lies in
the extreme west, on the farther side of the sea, where the sun
goes down under the earth. It was in accordance with this
supposition that Herod caused to be engraved, on a magnificent
monument erected to his deceased wife, the line, "Zeus, this
blooming woman sent beyond the ocean." 17 At the entrance sits a
wide throated monster, over whose head is the inscription, "This
is the devourer of many who go into Amenthe, the lacerator of the
heart of him who comes with sins to the house of justice." The
soul next kneels before the forty two assessors of Osiris, with
deprecating asseverations and intercessions. It then comes to the
final trial in the terrible Hall of the two Truths, the approving
and the condemning; or, as it is differently named, the Hall of
the double Justice, the rewarding and the punishing. Here the
three divinities Horns, Anubis, and Thoth proceed to weigh the
soul in the balance. In one scale an image of Thmei, the goddess
of Truth, is placed; in the other, a heart shaped vase,
symbolizing the heart of the deceased with all the actions of
his earthly life. Then happy is he "Who, weighed 'gainst Truth,
down dips the awful scale."
Thoth notes the result on a tablet, and the deceased advances with
it to the foot of the throne on which sits Osiris, lord of the
dead, king of Amenthe. He pronounces the decisive sentence, and
his assistants see that it is at once executed. The condemned soul
is either scourged back to the earth straightway, to live again in
the form of a vile animal, as some of the emblems appear to
denote; or plunged into the tortures of a horrid hell of fire and
devils below, as numerous engravings set forth; or driven into the
atmosphere, to be vexed and tossed by tempests, violently whirled
in blasts and clouds, till its sins are expiated, and another
probation granted through a renewed existence in human form.
We have two accounts of the Egyptian divisions of the universe.
According to the first view, they conceived the creation to
consist of three grand departments. First came the earth, or zone
of trial, where men live on probation. Next was the atmosphere, or
zone of temporal
14 Das Todtenbuch der Agypter, edited with an introduction by Dr.
Lepsius.
15 Ch. ix. of Pettigrew's History of Egyptian Mummies.
16 Champollion's Letter, dated Thebes, May 16, 1829. An abstract
of this letter may be found in Stuart's trans. of Greppo's Essay
on Champollion's Hieroglyphic System, appendix, note N.
17 Basnage, Hist. of the Jews, lib. ii. ch. 12, sect. 19.
punishment, where souls are afflicted for their sins. The ruler of
this girdle of storms was Pooh, the overseer of souls in penance.
Such a notion is found in some of the later Greek philosophers,
and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drew
it from the priestly science of Egypt. Every one will recollect
how Paul speaks of "the prince of the power off the air." And
Shakspeare makes the timid Claudio shrink from the verge of death
with horror, lest his soul should, through ages,
"Be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless
violence round about The pendent world."
After their purgation in this region, all the souls live again on
earth by transmigration.18 The third realm was in the serene blue
sky among the stars, the zone of blessedness, where the accepted
dwell in immortal peace and joy. Eusebius says, "The Egyptians
represented the universe by two circles, one within the other, and
a serpent with the head of a hawk twining his folds around them,"
thus forming three spheres, earth, firmament, divinity.
But the representation most frequent and imposing is that which
pictures the creation simply as having the earth in the centre,
and the sun with his attendants as circulating around it in the
brightness of the superior, and the darkness of the infernal,
firmament. Souls at death pass down through the west into Amenthe,
and are tried. If condemned, they are either sent back to the
earth, or confined in the nether space for punishment. If
justified, they join the blissful company of the Sun God, and rise
with him through the east to journey along his celestial course.
The upper hemisphere is divided into twelve equal parts,
corresponding with the twelve hours of the day. At the gate of
each of these golden segments a sentinel god is stationed, to whom
the newly arriving soul must give its credentials to secure a
passage. In like manner, the lower hemisphere is cut into the same
number of gloomy sections, corresponding with the twelve hours of
the night. Daily the chief divinity, in robes of light, traverses
the beaming zones of the blessed, where they hunt and fish, or
plough and sow, reap and gather, in the Fields of the Sun on the
banks of the heavenly Nile. Nightly, arrayed in deep black from
head to foot, he traverses the dismal zones of the damned, where
they undergo appropriate retributions. Thus the future destiny of
man was sublimely associated with the march of the sun through the
upper and lower hemispheres.19 Astronomy was a part of the
Egyptian's theology. He regarded the stars not figuratively, but
literally, as spirits and pure genii; the great planets as
deities. The calendar was a religious chart, each month, week,
day, hour, being the special charge and stand point of a god.20
There was much poetic beauty and ethical power in these doctrines
and symbols. The necessity of virtue, the dread ordeals of the
grave, the certainty of retribution, the mystic circuits of
transmigration, a glorious immortality, the paths of planets and
gods and souls through creation, all were impressively enounced,
dramatically shown.
18 Liber Metempsychosis Veterum Agyptiorum, edited and translated
into Latin from the funeral papyri by H. Brugsch.
19 L'Univers, Egypte Ancienne, par Champollion Figeac, pp. 123
145.
20 Agyptische Glaubenslehre von Dr. Ed. Roth, ss. 171, 174.
"The Egyptain soul sail'd o'er the skyey sea
In ark of crystal, mann'd by beamy gods,
To drag the deeps of space and net the stars,
Where, in their nebulous shoals, they shore the void
And through old Night's Typhonian blindness shine.
Then, solarized, he press'd towards the sun,
And, in the heavenly Hades, hall of God,
Had final welcome of the firmament."
This solemn linking of the fate of man with the astronomic
universe, this grand blending of the deepest of moral doctrines
with the most august of physical sciences, plainly betrays the
brain and hand of that hereditary hierarchy whose wisdom was the
wonder of the ancient world. Osburn thinks the localization of
Amenthe in the west may have arisen in the following way. Some
superstitious Egyptians, travelling westwards, at twilight, on the
great marshes haunted by the strange gray white ibis, saw troops
of these silent, solemn, ghostlike birds, motionless or slow
stalking, and conceived them to be souls waiting for the funeral
rites to be paid, that they might sink with the setting sun to
their destined abode.21
That such a system of belief was too complex and elaborate to have
been a popular development is evident. But that it was really held
by the people there is no room to doubt. Parts of it were publicly
enacted on festival days by multitudes numbering more than a
hundred thousand. Parts of it were dimly shadowed out in the
secret recesses of temples, surrounded by the most astonishing
accompaniments that unrivalled learning, skill, wealth, and power
could contrive. Its authority commanded the allegiance, its charm
fascinated the imagination, of the people. Its force built the
pyramids, and enshrined whole generations of Egypt's embalmed
population in richly adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock. Its
substance of esoteric knowledge and faith, in its form of exoteric
imposture and exhibition, gave it vitality and endurance long. In
the vortex of change and decay it sank at last. And now it is only
after its secrets have been buried for thirty centuries that the
exploring genius of modern times has brought its hidden
hieroglyphics to light, and taught us what were the doctrines
originally contained in the altar lore of those priestly schools
which once dotted the plains of the Delta and studded the banks of
eldest Nile, where now, disfigured and gigantic, the solemn
"Old Syhinxes lift their countenances bland Athwart the river sea
and sea of sand."
21 Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. ch. 8.