The earliest belief in immortality is that which is shown to us
by the burial customs of the primitive race,--the prehistoric
Egyptian race.
About 4500 B.C. we find the Egyptian race was just emerging from
the Stone Age. All the implements and weapons found are of flint
or other stone. The men of that time were ignorant of writing,
but show a certain facility in line drawings of men, plants, and
animals. We have found thousands of their graves which all show
the same idea of death. Each person was buried with implements,
weapons, ornaments,--no doubt those actually used in life,--
with a full outfit of household pots and pans, and with a supply
of food. The man was dead, but he still needed the same things he
used in ordinary life. By a fortunate chance we have even
recovered bodies accidentally desiccated and preserved intact in
the dry soil. These bodies do not show any trace of mutilation,
mummification, or any other preparation for the grave except
probably washing. The dead body was simply laid on a mat in the
grave, covered with a cloth and a mat or a skin, and then with
clean gravel. But with it was placed all those things which the
man might need if his life were to go on in some mysterious,
unseen way, as life went on among those on earth. Possibly his
relations as in later times brought offerings of food to the
grave, but here even the dry soil of Egypt fails to furnish
positive evidence. All this shows a plain simple belief in the
persistence of the life of a man as distinguished from the body
--a belief widely prevalent among primitive people. It contains
nothing unusual, and is probably perfectly explicable psychologically
by means of dreams.
There is little or no change in this underlying belief to be
observed in the burial customs of the Egyptians during the late
predynastic period. Copper weapons and implements succeed stone
in the graves. All those objects in whose manufacture the new
tools are used show changes of technique and form. It is even
curious to note that some of the older stone and flint objects,
some of the older pots and pans, are still made as a matter of
tradition. The importance of this is not to be overlooked. For
centuries men had used flint knives and they had baked their
bread in flat mud saucers set in the ashes. For the centuries
these flint knives and these cakes with their saucers had been
placed in the graves. Gradually metal knives and better bread
pans displaced these more primitive objects in daily life; but
the older primitive objects were still placed in the graves as a
matter of tradition.
It must be remembered, of course, that these traditional objects
were also in use in ancient traditional ceremonies on earth. The
sacrificial animals were still slaughtered with flint knives. The
old-style cakes were still offered in the holy places. In other
words, life on earth now consisted of ordinary material life and
a traditional life--a life that clung to the forms of a more
primitive civilization as somehow more effective with the divine
powers. This view is closely reflected in the grave furniture;
here, too, were the practical objects and the traditional
ceremonial objects. Life after death is still always the same as
life on earth--with the same physical needs, with the same need
of help from supernatural powers or against supernatural powers.
The spirit of the man needed the spirit of the copper axe to
swing in battle; but just as much he needed the spirit of the
flint knife to make the first cut across the throat of the spirit
bull of sacrifice. Remember this--the other world, in which
lived the spirit of the dead, was filled with the spirits or
ghosts of all things and animals. The other, the unseen, was a
duplicate of this world; all things which have shape were there
--even to the black fields and the broad river of Egypt. This is
the foundation of the Egyptian conception of immortality. Through
all the modifications and accretions of the following three
thousand years, this foundation idea is always clearly visible.
All the statues, the carved and painted tombs, all the curious
little model boats and workshops, all the painted mummies, all
the amulets, the scarabs, the little funerary statuettes,--all
this mummery which seems to be so characteristic and so
essential, is only the means to an end, and an ever changing
means to secure a successful comfortable existence of the spirit
in the life after death,--in the ghostly duplicate of life on
earth.