In the Ptolemaic-Roman period we see the final stage of the
Osiris cult. Every dead man is laid in his grave without
furniture, prepared as a simulacrum of Osiris. The wealthiest
people have gilded and painted mummy cases with amulets and
funerary papyrus. The poorer are merely bundles of wrappings.
Every dead man is Osiris, and no doubt carried with him words
learned on earth to gain his way to a place in the kingdom of
Osiris. The offering places above the grave are still made and
offerings are still brought.
To gain some idea of the way in which these two conceptions of
the living dead were worked out in actual life, one has only to
turn to the funerary customs of the modern Egyptians. In the case
of both Christians and Moslems, the grave rites are similar; but
with those of the Moslems I am more familiar. The grave consists
still of the two parts, the burying place and the offering place.
The swathed body is laid on the right side, with the right hand
under the cheek and the face towards Mecca. At the burial the
confession of the faith is recited over and over, lest the dead
forget it.
Korans are sometimes placed in the graves; and I have even seen a
confession of the faith written on paper and placed on a twig
before the face of the dead. At the appointed seasons--
especially at the great Feast of Sacrifice--offerings are
brought to the grave. The family party passes through the
cemetery, the women bearing baskets of bread and bottles of
water, the men turning the head to the right and to the left and
reciting the _fatha_ in propitiation of the spirits. The party
enters the offering inclosure of the grave of their relative. The
wives greet the dead--"Peace unto thee, oh, my husband, oh, my
father, we have wept until we have watered the earth with our
tears on thy account." The offerings are laid before the tomb. A
scribe is called and recites or reads some chapter of the Koran
over and over, one hundred, one hundred and fifty, five hundred,
one thousand times, and concludes: "I have read this for thee,
oh, such and such a one." Or, "I have transferred the merit of
this to thee." When you question these people as to the
particulars of their belief, you find their ideas vague and
indefinite. Among the men a dispute quickly starts,--the people
who have been found good by the examining angels on the night of
the burial are there, but the bad are somewhere else. No, says
another, they are all in their graves, but the bad suffer
torment. Still another maintains that the good have already
passed to the lowest heaven. These are all mere remnants of
theological discussions caught from the sheikhs. The women
stolidly maintain that the dead are in their tombs and the
offerings must be brought. When you inquire which are the good
and which are the bad, there is again a great divergence of
opinion; but it is clear that every man believes in his heart
that a knowledge of the prayers and forms of the Moslem religion
is absolutely essential and entirely sufficient to gain a
desirable future life. The great master word is the confession of
faith--there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.
So it must have been in the last stage of the Osiris cult.
Immortality, a glorified future existence as an Osiris in the
kingdom of Osiris, with all the pleasures and comforts of life,
was secured to him who was buried with the proper rites and knew
the magic words. And yet the old feeling was never lost that the
dead was somehow in the grave and might suffer hunger and thirst.
When Christianity came into Egypt, all the gaudy apparatus of the
Osiris religion was swept out of existence. The body was to rise
again and might not be mutilated. Mummification, which destroyed
the body in order to preserve a conventional simulacrum, ceased
abruptly. Grave furniture was of course unthinkable. But the use
of charms did not cease. Crosses were embroidered in the
gravecloths; or small crosses of metal or wood placed on the
breast or arm; the gravestone bore a simple prayer to the Holy
Spirit for the peaceful rest of the soul. But the offering place
was still maintained; prayers were recited on the feast days;
lamps were allowed to remain at the grave; food was brought, but
given to the poor.
In all periods there are thousands of graves of poor people
without a single thing to secure their future life,--people who
were probably content simply to lay down the burdens of life. In
the Christian period these thousands of unnamed dead all have one
mark. They are laid with their feet to the east. Each one was a
Christian and secure in his future life, according to his faith
and his life on earth.