Another change comes in the Fourth Dynasty, and is to be noted
first in the royal tombs, as is always the case. The Egyptians
had now learned to cut stone and build with it. The burial
chambers hollowed in the solid rock were necessarily smaller than
the old chambers dug in the gravel and no longer sufficient to
contain the great mass of furniture gathered by a king for his
grave. On the other hand, the chapels with the increase in
architectural skill could be build of great size. Corresponding
to these technical conditions we find a great increase in the
importance of the chapel. It becomes a great temple, whose
magazines were filled with all those objects which had formerly
been placed in the burial chamber and were so necessary to the
life of the spirit. The temples of the third pyramid, for
example, contained nearly two thousand stone vessels. Great
estates were set aside by will, and the income appointed to the
support of certain persons who on their side were obliged to keep
up the temple, to make the offerings and to recite the magical
formulas which would provide the spirit with all its necessities.
Following closely the growth in importance of the royal chapels,
the private offering places assumed a greater importance. The
custom of periodic offerings and the use of magical texts grew
until it reached its highest point in the Fifth Dynasty. At this
time there is a burial chamber deep underground where the dead
was laid securely in ancient traditional attitude, with his
clothing and a few personal ornaments. As a rule, it is only the
women, always conservative, that have anything more. Above this
grave, there is a solid rectangular structure, with a chapel or
offering place on the side towards the valley. The offering place
is always there, no matter how poor or small the tomb. But to
understand just what the Egyptian thought, we must turn to the
better tombs. The walls are of limestone carved with reliefs
representing the important processes of daily life,--sowing,
reaping, cattle-herding, hunting, pot-making, weaving,--all
those actions which furnish the daily supplies. The dead man is
represented overseeing all this. Finally, near the offering
niche, he is represented seated, usually with his wife at a table
bearing loaves of the traditional _ta_ bread. Beside him are
represented heaps of provisions--meat, cakes, vegetables, wine
and beer. A list of objects is never missing, marked with
numbers,--a thousand loaves of bread, a thousand head of
cattle, a thousand jars of wine, a thousand garments, and so on.
We know from latter inscriptions that these words, properly
recited, created for the spirit a store of spirit objects in
equal numbers. Below the niche is an altar for receiving actual
offerings of food and drink. It is clear that the living, coming
to this offering place with or without material offerings, could,
by proper recitation, secure to the spirit of the dead all its
daily needs. This offering niche is the door of the other world
--symbolically and actually. In many graves the niche is carved
to represent a door--sometimes opening in, and sometimes
opening out. Moreover, in several cases the figure of the dead is
carved half emerging from the opening door--a figure in all
ways like the figure of the dead as he is represented in the
scenes from life. Beyond this door lives the spirit of the dead.
In many offering chambers there is a small hole in the wall,
either in the offering niche or in another place. If this hole be
properly lighted and the space beyond has not been changed by
decay or violation, the light falls on the face of a statue of
the dead looking forth to the world of the living. For behind the
wall is another chamber, closed except for this small hole. This
hidden chamber contains statues of the dead often accompanied by
statues of his family and his servants. These statues of the dead
are labeled with his name, and are said to be the abode of his
spirit, his _ka_, as the Egyptians called it. Moreover, all the
offering formulas named the _ka_ as the recipient of the food and
drink. The duplicate spirit of the man is his _ka_. In these
statues we have, then, a simulacrum of the man provided for use
of his _ka_--perhaps to assist the _ka_ to the persistence of
his earthly form, and to the remembrance of his name. But what
were the uses of the subsidiary statues? What spirit resided in
them? The man's son in his turn died, and a similar room was made
for him with his statue and his subsidiary statues. Did his _ka_
live both in the statue placed with his father's statue and also
in the statue in his own grave? We have no answer. Probably the
Egyptian mind never formulated the difficulty.
But the new idea is clearly expressed. It is no longer necessary
to fill the burial chamber with a mass of household furniture for
the use of the dead. All these things can be carved on the wall
of the burial chamber and so made effective for his use. It was
in any case necessary to supply his food by means of the
offerings, and it was quite as easy to supply all his other
necessities in the same way. In other words, there is a distinct
growth in the use of magic to benefit the dead. At the same time,
we find the growth of the custom of supplying a special abode for
the _ka_--a simulacrum of the man, which assisted the _ka_ to
retain the form of the living man and to remember his identity.
The tendency of this period is then to place a greater dependence
on magic than on food, drink, and grave furniture. It is,
therefore, not surprising to find introduced, for the first time,
the use of magical texts in the burial chamber,--the so-called
Pyramid Texts. In the burial chamber in the pyramid of Unas, last
king of the Fifth Dynasty, and in the pyramids of the kings of
the Sixth Dynasty, the walls are covered with long magical texts
or chapters--the oldest form of the so-called book of the dead
or "book of the going forth by day." The texts were probably
somewhat older, but are now used for the first time in this
manner, no doubt owing to the increased facility in carving
stone. In these the various powers of the other world are invoked
by the incidents of the Osiris-Isis legend, to preserve the dead
body, to feed the _ka_, and to assist the other spirit, the _ba_,
in its struggles with supernatural powers.
The pyramid texts introduce us to three important ideas,--(1) a
curious plurality of the spirit existence, (2) a condition of
immortality better than that of the old underworld or Earu, and
(3) most important of all, the identification of the king with
Osiris according to the terms of the Osiris-Isis legend.
In all the older offering formulas it is only the _ka_ spirit
which is mentioned. Here is the body perishable and destructible;
here is the life, the _ka_ which fills every limb and vessel of
the body and must, therefore, have the same form. When death
comes, the _ka_ spirit, the image of the man, remains near the
body, and this spirit it was which was the object of the rites
and offerings in the funerary chapel. But besides this _ka_, it
appears for the first time that the king at any rate possesses
also a soul called a _ba_. In later times we see that every man
possessed a _ba_, and we learn that each god possessed several
_ba's_. But it is in the pyramid texts that we learn for the
first time of the _ba_ of a man, and that man is a king. When
death comes, the _ba_ takes flight in the form of a bird or
whatever form it wills. All seems confused. The _ka_ was near the
body, the _ka_ was in the field of Earu, under the earth
ploughing and sowing; the _ba_ is fluttering on the branches of
the tree on earth, the _ba_ has fled like a falcon to the
heavens, and has been set as a star among the stars. The dead
king lives with the gods and is fed by them. The goddesses give
him the breast. He lives in the Island of Food. He lives in Earu,
the Underworld, a land like Egypt, with fields and canals and
flood and harvest. He shares with the gods in the offerings made
in the great temples on earth.
It is quite clear that all this is an expression of
dissatisfaction with the old belief in the simple duplicate
world, the world of Earu under the earth. It is noteworthy that
this first appears in royal tombs. These texts are written for
kings alone. It is only many centuries later that the texts of
the book of the dead showed similar possibilities open to the
common man. This is the usual course of all advances in Egypt,--
architecture, sculpture, writing, whatever gain in skill or
knowledge there is, appears first in the service of the royal
family. Thus, even in the conception of immortality, the new
ideas, the better immortality was first thought out for the
benefit of the king. The basis for this lay simply in the life on
earth. The king had come early to have a sort of divinity
ascribed to him. His chief name was the Horus name. Menes was the
Horus Aha; Cheops was the Horus Mejeru; Pepy II was the Horus
Netery-khau. But he was also the son of Ra, the sun-god, endued
with life forever. The king was a god, and it could only be that
in his future life he shared the life of the gods. Thus, all is
no more confused or mysterious than is the conception of the life
of the gods themselves.
But the texts go even further than this and identify the dead
god-man, who as Horus was king on earth, with the father of
Horus, the dead god of the earth, Osiris. This identification of
the dead man with the dead god Osiris was later enlarged to
include all men, and became in the Ptolemaic period the most
characteristic feature of the Egyptian conception of life after
death.
The Osiris story as it can be pieced together from the pyramid
texts [See A. Erman: _Die Aegyptische Religion_, p. 38 ff.] was
briefly thus: Keb, the earth-god, and Nut, the goddess of the
sky, had four children,--Osiris and Isis, Seth and Nephthys,--
who were thus paired in marriage. Keb gave Osiris his dominion,
the earth, and made him the god of the earth, and he ruled justly
and powerfully. Seth, his brother, was jealous, and by treachery
enticed Osiris into a box, which he closed and threw into the
water. Isis sought for the body of her husband until she found it,
and Isis and Nephthys, her sister, sat at his head and feet and
bewailed him. Re, the greatest of the gods, heard Isis's
complaint; his heart was touched, and he sent Anubis to bury
Osiris. Anubis re-joined his separated bones, bound him with
cloths, and prepared him for burial,--that is, mummified him.
This is the form in which Osiris is represented,--as a mummy.
Isis then fanned her wings, and the air from her wings caused the
mummy to live. His life on earth, however, was over, could not be
recalled, so that his new life could only be passed in the other
world, the world of the dead. Here Osiris became king, as he had
been king on earth. But Isis conceived from the dead-living
Osiris, bore a child in secret, and suckled him, hidden in a
swamp. When the child, the sun-god Horus, grew up, he fought
against Seth to recover his father's kingdom, and to avenge his
death. Both gods were injured in the fight. Horus lost an eye.
But Thoth intervened, separated the fighters, and healed their
wounds. Thoth spat upon the eye of Horus and it became whole.
Horus, however, gave his eye to Osiris to eat, and thereby Osiris
became endowed with life, soul, and power (i.e. in the underworld).
But Seth disputed the legitimacy of the birth of Horus, and the
great gods held a court in the house of Keb. In this court,
justice was done, the truth of Horus's claims was established,
and he was placed on the throne of his father. Osiris became
the ruler in the land of the dead, Horus in the land of the
living.
The kernel of the story appears to be this: Osiris is the god of
the earth, and his life is the life of the vegetation, dying and
reviving with the course of the seasons, mourned by his wife Isis
and succeeded by his son Horus, the sun-god. It is apparently a
form of the common Tammuz or Adonis story of the Semites. This
fact brings with it a suggestion which requires consideration.
The racial connection of the Egyptians may seem to have little to
do with immortality. But I beg a moment's consideration. The two
great dominating ideas of immortality are those held by the
Christians and by the Mohammedans, and these are essentially the
same idea. Both these religions are creations of the Semitic
race. It is, therefore, decidedly of importance to find that the
Egyptian race, the creator of a third great religion, has also a
large Semitic strain. In fact, the investigations of the last ten
years appear to show that this Semitic strain it was which gave
the Egyptian race its creative power and made possible the
development of the Egyptian civilization.
The Egyptian language furnishes us with indisputable proof of the
Semitic affinity, as Professor Adolf Erman showed years ago. The
anatomical examination by Professor Elliot Smith of a large
number of skeletons, dated by careful excavations, has given us a
further clue. There is a prehistoric race found in the earliest
cemeteries--neither Negroid nor Asiatic in characteristics. In
the late predynastic and the early dynastic periods, when the
great development began, this primitive race had become modified
by an infiltration of broad-headed people from the north. In the
Old Empire, this broad-headed people had become predominant, and
remain so throughout all Lower and Middle Egypt until the present
day. This intruding race, whose advent marks the beginning of
Egyptian civilization, I believe to have been Semitic.
Remember this--the texts show clearly older ideas in conflict
with the Osiris belief. The primitive race was not, I believe, a
race of Osiris followers. Professor Erman has stated that the
Osiris belief is as early as 4200 B.C. That I am certain is
absolutely untenable. It is a question of Egyptian chronology in
which I beg to differ radically both from Eduard Meyer and
Professor Erman. In the formal calendar year of three hundred and
sixty-five days, there are twelve months of thirty days and five
intercalary days. These intercalary days are called the birthdays
of Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys--the five most
important figures in the Osiris myth. According to Professor
Meyer and Professor Erman, this formal calendar was introduced in
4200 B.C., one of the occasions when the heliacal rising of the
star Sothis fell on the first of the month Thoth of the calendar.
However, if we accept with them the date 3300 B.C. as the date of
the First dynasty, then in 4200 B.C. the Egyptians were just
emerging from a neolithic state. They were culturally incapable
of making a formal calendar and could have no possible use for
one. Either the calendar did not originate in Egypt, or it was
introduced in 2780 B.C., when again the heliacal rising Sothis
fell on the first of Thoth. At this time the Osiris story was
dominant, in the religion. We have a race almost certainly
Semitic, fusing the primitive race during the period 3500-3000,
and a few centuries later we have a new religious idea dominating
the fused race. When we examine this new idea, the Osiris belief,
we find its earliest form nothing more nor less than the common
tammuz or Adonis story of the Semites. The conclusion lies very
near at hand, that the Osiris story is in fact the Tammuz story,
brought into Egypt by the earliest Semitic tribes. In any case it
was a race with a large Semitic mixture which utilized this story
in working out a theory of immortality; and in all probability we
have in the Osiris-Isis religion a third great religion due to
the Semitic race.
However this may be, it is clear that the craving of the king for
a special immortality, for an exalted future life, found its
justification through the Osiris-Isis myth. Horus was the
successor of Osiris as lord of the earth and the living. The
kings of Egypt were the successors of Horus. The chief name of
the king was his Horus name; Menes was the Horus Aha, Cheops the
Horus Mejeru. When the king died, he became Osiris, and passed to
the kingdom of Osiris. He passed through the underworld with the
sun-god, abode there as Osiris, the god-king, or sped to the
heavens to the celestial gods. Thus comes the entering wedge
of a great change in the conception of immortality--an ordinary
immortality for the common man, a special divine immortality
for the divine man, the king. [It appears probable that the
deification of the king and the assumption of a divine immortality
for him was prior in time to the statement of these beliefs in
the terms of the Osiris story.] Even at this early age, it
was, of course, clearly stated that the king must be righteous,
morally satisfactory in the eyes of the world and of the gods.
The gods, as always, were on the side of the moral code, and
especially on the side of the organized religion. It is
perhaps significant that the chief sins of the kings of the
Fourth dynasty, so execrated by the Egyptian priests in the
Ptolemaic period, were sins against the great gods. The other
charges are for the most part plainly slanders. In practice every
king whose family remained in power was justified before gods and
men, and took his place among the gods in the islands of the
blessed in the northern part of the heavens.
The dead body was laid in the grave, supplied with all these
magic texts which were to restore and revive the soul and guide
it across waters and through dangers to the place of Osiris. But
the chapel was not wanting, the cult of the _ka_ was maintained,
the statues were placed in the hidden room, the food and drink
were brought daily to the door of the grave. Thus, while a
special immortality was evolved for the king, the funeral customs
continue to show the same service of the _ka_ as in the earlier
period.
In the Sixth Dynasty, there is a return to the older practice of
placing objects in the grave itself. At present we are unable to
point out the reasons for this. Possibly experience had taught
men that endowments and craved walls left to the care of
descendants were insecure supports for a life after death which
was to last forever. At any rate, the custom arose of making
small models in wood or stone or metal of those scenes and
objects which were carved in relief on the walls of the chapel,
--models of houses, granaries, of kitchens, of brickyards;
models of herds and servants and soldiers; models of boats and
ships; models of dance-halls with the man seated drinking wine,
around him musicians, before him dancing girls; models of swords,
of vessels, of implements. Poorer people must be contented with
poorer things, down to the peasant who is buried with the few
little necessary pots and pans of his daily life. But always, in
every grave, the chapel, small or great, is there. The endowment
of funerary priests continues. Every man, I suppose, however
poor, had some one to make at least one offering at his grave.
And so it was down to the New Empire.