CHAPTER III.---THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT

_THE DIVINE DYNASTIES: RÂ, SHÛ, OSIEIS, SÎT, HOEUS--THOT, AND THE

INVENTION OF SCIENCES AND WRITING--MENES, AND THE THREE FIRST HUMAN

DYNASTIES._

_The Egyptians claim to Be the most ancient of peoples: traditions

concerning the creation of man and of animals--The Heliopolitan Enneads

the framework of the divine dynasties--Râ, the first King of Egypt, and

his fabulous history: he allows himself to be duped and robbed by Isis,

destroys rebellious men, and ascends into heaven.

The legend of Shu and Sibil--The reign of Osiris Onnophris and of Isis:

they civilize Egypt and the world--Osiris, slain by Sit, is entombed by

Isis and avenged by Horus--The wars of Typhon and of Horus: peace, and

the division of Egypt between the two gods.

The Osirian embalmment; the kingdom of Osiris opened to the followers of

Horus--The Book of the Dead--The journeying of the soul in search of the

fields of Ialû--The judgment of the soul, the negative confession--The

privileges and duties of Osirian souls--Confusion between Osirian and

Solar ideas as to the state of the dead: the dead in the hark of the

Sun--The going forth by day--The campaigns of Harmakhis against Sit.

Thot, the inventor: he reveals all sciences to men--Astronomy, stellar

tables; the year, its subdivisions, its defects, influence of

the heavenly bodies and the days upon human destiny--Magic arts;

incantations, amulets---Medicine: the vitalizing spirits, diagnosis,

treatment--Writing: ideographic, syllabic, alphabetic.

The history of Egypt as handed down by tradition: Manetho, the royal

lists, main divisions of Egyptian history--The beginnings of its early

history vague and uncertain: Menés, and the legend of Memphis--The first

three human dynasties, the two Thimie and the Memphite--Character and,

origin of the legends concerning them--The famine stela--The earliest

monuments: the step pyramid of Saqgdrah._

[Illustration: 221.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

THE LEGENDARY HISTORY OF EGYPT

_The divine dynasties: Râ, Shû, Osiris, Sît, Horus--Thot, and the

invention of sciences and writing--Menés, and the three first human

dynasties._

The building up and diffusion of the doctrine of the Ennead, like the

formation of the land of Egypt, demanded centuries of sustained effort,

centuries of which the inhabitants themselves knew neither the number

nor the authentic history. When questioned as to the remote past of

their race, they proclaimed themselves the most ancient of mankind, in

comparison with whom all other races were but a mob of young children;

and they looked upon nations which denied their pretensions with such

indulgence and pity as we feel for those who doubt a well-known truth.

Their forefathers had appeared upon the banks of the Nile even before

the creator had completed his work, so eager were the gods to behold

their birth. No Egyptian disputed the reality of this right of the

firstborn, which ennobled the whole race; but if they were asked the

name of their divine father, then the harmony was broken, and each

advanced the claims of a different personage.[*] Phtah had modelled man

with his own hands;[**] Khnûmû had formed him on a potter's table.[***]

* We know the words which Plato puts into the mouth of an

Egyptian priest: "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always

children, and there is no old man who is a Greek! You are

all young in mind; there is no opinion or tradition of

knowledge among you which is white with age." Other nations

disputed their priority--the Phrygians, the Medes, or rather

the tribe of the Magi among the Medes, the Ethiopians, the

Scythians. A cycle of legends had gathered about this

subject, giving an account of the experiments instituted, by

Psamtik, or other sovereigns, to find out which were right,

Egyptians or foreigners.

** At Philæ and at Denderah, Phtah is represented as piling

upon his potter's table the plastic clay from which he is

about to make a human body, and which is somewhat wrongly

called the egg of the world. It is really the lump of earth

from which man came forth at his creation.

*** At Philas, Khnûmû calls himself "the potter who

fashions men, the modeller of the gods." He there moulds the

members of Osiris, the husband of the local Isis, as at

Erment he forms the body of Harsamtaûi, or rather that of

Ptolemy Cæsarion, the son of Julius Cæsar and the celebrated

Cleopatra, identified with Harsamtaûi.

Râ at his first rising, seeing the earth desert and bare, had flooded it

with his rays as with a flood of tears; all living things, vegetable and

animal, and man himself, had sprung pell-mell from his eyes, and were

scattered abroad with the light over the surface of the world.[*]

Sometimes the facts were presented under a less poetic aspect. The mud

of the Nile, heated to excess by the burning sun, fermented and brought

forth the various races of men and animals by spontaneous generation,

having moulded itself into a thousand living forms. Then its procreative

power became weakened to the verge of exhaustion. Yet on the banks of

the river, in the height of summer, smaller animals might still be found

whose condition showed what had once taken place in the case of the

larger kinds. Some appeared as already fully formed, and struggling

to free themselves from the oppressive mud; others, as yet imperfect,

feebly stirred their heads and fore feet, while their hind quarters

were completing their articulation and taking shape within the matrix of

earth.[**]

* With reference to the substances which proceeded from the

eye of Râ, see the remarks of Birch, _Sur un papyrus magique

du Musée Britannique_. By his tears (_romîtû_) Horus, or his

eye as identified with the sun, had given birth to all men,

Egyptians (_romîtû, rotû_), Libyans, and Asiatics, excepting

only the negroes. The latter were born from another part of

his body by the same means as those employed by Atûmû in the

creation of Shû and Tafnûît.

** The same story is told, but with reference to rats only,

by Pliny, by Diodorus, by Ælianus, by Macrobius, and by

other Greek or Latin writers. Even in later times, and in

Europe, this pretended phenomenon met with a certain degree

of belief, as may be seen from the curious work of Marcus

Fredericus Wendelinus, _Archipalatinus, Admiranda Nili_,

Franco-furti, mdcxxiii., cap. xxi. pp. 157-183. In Egypt all

the fellahîn believe in the spontaneous generation of rats

as in an article of their creed. They have spoken to me of

it at Thebes, at Denderah, and on the plain of Abydos; and

Major Brown has lately noted the same thing in the Fayûm.

The variant which he heard from the lips of the notables is

curious, for it professes to explain why the rats who infest

the fields in countless bands during the dry season,

suddenly disappear at the return of the inundation; born of

the mud and putrid water of the preceding year, to mud they

return, and as it were dissolve at the touch of the new

waters.

It was not Râ alone whose tears were endowed with vitalizing power. All

divinities whether beneficent or malevolent, Sit as well as Osiris or

Isis, could give life by weeping; and the work of their eyes, when once

it had fallen upon earth, flourished and multiplied as vigorously as

that which came from the eyes of Râ.

[Illustration: 224.jpg KHNÛMÛ MODELLING MAN UPON A POTTER'S TABLE. 1]

1 Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Gayet. The scene is

taken from bas-reliefs in the temple of Luxor, where the god

Khnûmû is seen completing his modelling of the future King

Amenôthes III. and his double, represented as two children

wearing the side-lock and large necklace. The first holds

his finger to his lips, while the arms of the second swing

at his sides.

The individual character of the creator was not without bearing upon

the nature of his creatures; good was the necessary outcome of the

good gods, evil of the evil ones; and herein lay the explanation of

the mingling of things excellent and things execrable, which is found

everywhere throughout the world. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Sit and

his partisans were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. Daily

their eyes shed upon the world those juices by which plants are made

poisonous, as well as malign influences, crime, and madness. Their

saliva, the foam which fell from their mouths during their attacks of

rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared.

When any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, and

produced something strange and baleful--a serpent, a scorpion, a plant

of deadly nightshade or of henbane. But, on the other hand, the sun

was all goodness, and persons or things which it cast forth into life

infallibly partook of its benignity. Wine that maketh man glad, the bee

who works for him in the flowers secreting wax and honey, the meat and

herbs which are his food, the stuffs that clothe him, all useful things

which he makes for himself, not only emanated from the Solar Eye

of Horus, but were indeed nothing more than the Eye of Horus under

different aspects, and in his name they were presented in sacrifice. The

devout generally were of opinion that the first Egyptians, the sons and

flock of Râ, came into the world happy and perfect;[*] by degrees their

descendants had fallen from that native felicity into their present

state.

* In the tomb of Seti I, the words _flock of the Sun, flock

of Râ_, are those by which the god Horus refers to men.

Certain expressions used by Egyptian writers are in

themselves sufficient to show that the first generations of

men were supposed to have lived in a state of happiness and

perfection. To the Egyptians _the times of Râ, the times of

the god_--that is to say, the centuries immediately

following on the creation---were the ideal age, and no good

thing had appeared upon earth since then.

Some, on the contrary, affirmed that their ancestors were born as so

many brutes, unprovided with the most essential arts of gentle life.

They knew nothing of articulate speech, and expressed themselves by

cries only, like other animals, until the day when Thot taught them both

speech and writing.

These tales sufficed for popular edification; they provided but meagre

fare for the intelligence of the learned. The latter did not confine

their ambition to the possession of a few incomplete and contradictory

details concerning the beginnings of humanity. They wished to know the

history of its consecutive development from the very first; what manner

of life had been led by their fathers; what chiefs they had obeyed and

the names or adventures of those chiefs; why part of the nations had

left the blessed banks of the Nile and gone to settle in foreign lands;

by what stages and in what length of time those who had not emigrated

rose out of native barbarism into that degree of culture to which the

most ancient monuments bore testimony. No efforts of imagination were

needful for the satisfaction of their curiosity: the old substratum of

indigenous traditions was rich enough, did they but take the trouble

to work it out systematically, and to eliminate its most incongruous

elements. The priests of Heliopolis took this work in hand, as they had

already taken in hand the same task with regard to the myths referring

to the creation; and the Enneads provided them with a ready-made

framework. They changed the gods of the Ennead into so many kings,

determined with minute accuracy the lengths of their reigns, and

compiled their biographies from popular tales. The duality of the feudal

god supplied an admirable expedient for connecting the history of the

world with that of chaos. Tûmû was identified with Nû, and relegated to

the primordial Ocean: Râ was retained, and proclaimed the first king

of the world. He had not established his rule without difficulty. The

"Children of Defeat," beings hostile to order and light, engaged him in

fierce battles; nor did he succeed in organizing his kingdom until

he had conquered them in nocturnal combat at Hermopolis, and even at

Heliopolis itself.[*]

* The _Children of Defeat_, in Egyptian _Mosû batashû_, or

_Mosû batashît_, are often confounded with the followers of

Sit, the enemies of Osiris. From the first they were

distinct, and represented beings and forces hostile to the

sun, with the dragon Apôpi at their head. Their defeat at

Hermopolis corresponded to the moment when Shu, raising the

sky above the sacred mound in that city, substituted order

and light for chaos and darkness. This defeat is mentioned

in chap xvii. of the _Book of the Dead_ (Naville's edition,

vol. i. pl. xxiii. 1. 3, et seq.), in which connexion E. de

Rougé first explained its meaning. In the same chapter of

the _Book of the Dead_ (Naville's edition, vol. i. pis.

xxiv., xxv., 11. 54-58), reference is also made to the

battle by night, in Heliopolis, at the close of which Râ

appeared in the form of a cat or lion, and beheaded the

great serpent.

Pierced with wounds, Apôpi the serpent sank into the depths of Ocean at

the very moment when the new year began. The secondary members of the

Great Ennead, together with the Sun, formed the first dynasty, which

began with the dawn of the first day, and ended at the coming of Horus,

the son of Isis. The local schools of theology welcomed this method of

writing history as readily as they had welcomed the principle of the

Ennead itself. Some of them retained the Heliopolitan demiurge, and

hastened to associate him with their own; others completely eliminated

him in favour of the feudal divinity,--Amon at Thebes, Thot at

Hermopolis, Phtah at Memphis,--keeping the rest of the dynasty

absolutely unchanged.[*] The gods in no way compromised their prestige

by becoming incarnate and descending to earth. Since they were men of

finer nature, and their qualities, including that of miracle-working,

were human qualities raised to the highest pitch of intensity, it was

not considered derogatory to them personally to have watched over

the infancy and childhood of primeval man. The raillery in which the

Egyptians occasionally indulged with regard to them, the good-humoured

and even ridiculous _rôles_ ascribed to them in certain legends, do not

prove that they were despised, or that zeal for them had cooled. The

greater the respect of believers for the objects of their worship,

the more easily do they tolerate the taking of such liberties, and the

condescension of the members of the Ennead, far from lowering them

in the eyes of generations who came too late to live with them upon

familiar terms, only enhanced the love and reverence in which they were

held. Nothing shows this better than the history of Râ. His world was

ours in the rough; for since Shu was yet nonexistent, and Nuit still

reposed in the arms of Sibû, earth and sky were but one.[**]

* Thot is the chief of the Hermopolitan Ennead, and the

titles ascribed to him by inscriptions maintaining his

supremacy show that he also was considered to have been the

first king. One of the Ptolemies said of himself that he

came "as the Majesty of Thot, because he was the equal of

Atûmû, hence the equal of Khopri, hence the equal of Râ."

Atûmû-Khopri-Râ being the first earthly king, it follows

that the _Majesty of Thot_, with whom Ptolemy identifies

himself, comparing himself to the three forms of the God Râ,

is also the first earthly king.

** This conception of the primitive Egyptian world is

clearly implied in the very terms employed by the author of

The Destruction of Men. Nuit does not rise to form the sky

until such time as Râ thinks of bringing his reign to an

end; that is to say, after Egypt had already been in

existence for many centuries. In chap. xvii. of the Book of

the Dead (Naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 11. 3-5) it

is stated that the reign of Râ began in the times when the

upliftings had not yet taken place; that is to say, before

Shu had separated Nûît from Sibû, and forcibly uplifted her

above the body of her husband.

Nevertheless in this first attempt at a world there was vegetable,

animal, and human life. Egypt was there, all complete, with her two

chains of mountains, her Nile, her cities, the people of her nomes, and

the nomes themselves. Then the soil was more generous; the harvests,

without the labourer's toil, were higher and more abundant;[*] and when

the Egyptians of Pharaonic times wished to mark their admiration of any

person or thing, they said that the like had never been known since the

time of Râ.

* This is an ideal in accordance with the picture drawn of

the fields of Ialû in chap. ex. of the _Book of the Dead_

(Naville's edition, vol. i. pis. cxxi.~ cxxiii.). As with

the Paradise of most races, so the place of the Osirian dead

still possessed privileges which the earth had enjoyed

during the first years succeeding the creation; that is to

say, under the direct rule of Râ.

It is an illusion common to all peoples; as their insatiable thirst

for happiness is never assuaged by the present, they fall back upon the

remotest past in search of an age when that supreme felicity which is

only known to them as an ideal was actually enjoyed by their ancestors.

Râ dwelt in Heliopolis, and the most ancient portion of the temple of

the city, that known as the "Mansion of the Prince"--Haït Sarû,--passed

for having been his palace. His court was mainly composed of gods and

goddesses, and they as well as he were visible to men. It contained

also men who filled minor offices about his person, prepared his food,

received the offerings of his subjects, attended to his linen and

household affairs. It was said that the _oîrû maû_--the high priest of

Râ, the _hankistît_--his high priestess, and generally speaking all the

servants of the temple of Heliopolis, were either directly descended

from members of this first household establishment of the god, or had

succeeded to their offices in unbroken succession.

[Illustration: 230.jpg AT THE FIRST HOUR OF THE BAY THE SUN EMBARKS FOB

HIS JOURNEY THROUGH EGYPT.1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the scenes represented

upon the architraves of the pronaos at Edfû (Rosellini,

_Monumenti del Culto_, pl. xxxviii. No. 1).

In the morning he went forth with his divine train, and, amid the

acclamations of the crowd, entered the bark in which he made his

accustomed circuit of the world, returning to his home at the end of

twelve hours after the accomplishment of his journey. He visited each

province in turn, and in each he tarried for an hour, to settle all

disputed matters, as the final judge of appeal. He gave audience to both

small and great, he decided their quarrels and adjudged their lawsuits,

he granted investiture of fiefs from the royal domains to those who

had deserved them, and allotted or confirmed to every family the income

needful for their maintenance. He pitied the sufferings of his people,

and did his utmost to alleviate them; he taught to all comers potent

formulas against reptiles and beasts of prey, charms to cast out evil

spirits, and the best recipes for preventing illness. His incessant

bounties left him at length with only one of his talismans: the name

given to him by his father and mother at his birth, which they had

revealed to him alone, and which he kept concealed within his bosom lest

some sorcerer should get possession of it to use for the furtherance of

his evil spells.

But old age came on, and infirmities followed; the body of Râ grew bent,

"his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to earth and his

saliva dropped upon the ground." Isis, who had hitherto been a mere

woman-servant in the household of the Pharaoh, conceived the project of

stealing his secret from him, "that she might possess the world and make

herself a goddess by the name of the august god." Force would have been

unavailing; all enfeebled as he was by reason of his years, none was

strong enough to contend successfully against him. But Isis "was a woman

more knowing in her malice than millions of men, clever among millions

of the gods, equal to millions of spirits, to whom as unto Râ nothing

was unknown either in heaven or upon earth." She contrived a most

ingenious stratagem. When man or god was struck down by illness, the

only chance of curing him lay in knowing his real name, and thereby

adjuring the evil being that tormented him. Isis determined to cast a

terrible malady upon Râ, concealing its cause from him; then to offer

her services as his nurse, and by means of his sufferings to extract

from him the mysterious word indispensable to the success of the

exorcism. She gathered up mud impregnated with the divine saliva, and

moulded of it a sacred serpent which she hid in the dust of the road.

Suddenly bitten as he was setting out upon his daily round, the god

cried out aloud, "his voice ascended into heaven and his Nine called:

'What is it? what is it?' and his gods: 'What is the matter? what is the

matter?' but he could make them no answer so much did his lips tremble,

his limbs shake, and the venom take hold upon his flesh as the Nile

seizeth upon the land which it invadeth." Presently he came to himself,

and succeeded in describing his sensations. "Something painful hath

stung me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my two eyes see it not; my hand

hath not wrought it, nothing that I have made knoweth it what it is, yet

have I never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain that

may overpass it.... Fire it is not, water it is not, yet is my heart in

flames, my flesh trembleth, all my members are full of shiverings born

of breaths of magic. Behold! let there be brought unto me children of

the gods of beneficent words, who know the power of their mouths, and

whose science reacheth unto heaven." They came, these children of the

gods, all with their books of magic. There came Isis with her sorcery,

her mouth full of life-giving breaths, her recipe for the destruction of

pain, her words which pour life into breathless throats, and she said:

"What is it? what is it, O father of the gods? May it not be that a

serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee; that one of thy children

hath lifted up his head against thee? Surely he shall be overthrown by

beneficent incantations, and I will make him to retreat at the sight

of thy rays." On learning the cause of his torment, the Sun-god is

terrified, and begins to lament anew: "I, then, as I went along the

ways, travelling through my double land of Egypt and over my mountains,

that I might look upon that which I have made, I was bitten by a serpent

that I saw not. Fire it is not, water it is not, yet am I colder than

water, I burn more than fire, all my members stream with sweat, I

tremble, mine eye is not steady, no longer can I discern the sky, drops

roll from my face as in the season of summer." Isis proposes her remedy,

and cautiously asks him his ineffable name. But he divines her trick,

and tries to evade it by an enumeration of his titles. He takes the

universe to witness that he is called "Khopri in the morning, Râ at

noon, Tûmû in the evening." The poison did not recede, but steadily

advanced, and the great god was not eased. Then Isis said to Râ: "Thy

name was not spoken in that which thou hast said. Tell it to me and the

poison will depart; for he liveth upon whom a charm is pronounced in his

own name." The poison glowed like fire, it was strong as the burning

of flame, and the Majesty of Râ said, "I grant thee leave that thou

shouldest search within me, O mother Isis! and that my name pass from my

bosom into thy bosom." In truth, the all-powerful name was hidden within

the body of the god, and could only be extracted thence by means of

a surgical operation similar to that practised upon a corpse which

is about to be mummified. Isis undertook it, carried it through

successfully, drove out the poison, and made herself a goddess by virtue

of the name. The cunning of a mere woman had deprived Râ of his last

talisman.

In course of time men perceived his decrepitude. They took counsel

against him: "Lo! his Majesty waxeth old, his bones are of silver, his

flesh is of gold, his hair of lapis-lazuli." As soon as his Majesty

perceived that which they were saying to each other, his Majesty said to

those who were of his train, "Call together for me my Divine Eye, Shû,

Tafnûît, Sibû, and Nûît, the father and the mother gods who were with

me when I was in the Nû, with the god Nû. Let each bring his cycle along

with him; then, when thou shalt have brought them in secret, thou shalt

take them to the great mansion that they may lend me their counsel and

their consent, coming hither from the Nû into this place where I have

manifested myself." So the family council comes together: the ancestors

of Râ, and his posterity still awaiting amid the primordial waters

the time of their manifestation--his children Shû and Tafnûît, his

grandchildren Sibû and Nûît. They place themselves, according to

etiquette, on either side his throne, prostrate, with their foreheads to

the ground, and thus their conference begins: "O Nû, thou the eldest of

the gods, from whom I took my being, and ye the ancestor-gods, behold!

men who are the emanation of mine eye have taken counsel together

against me! Tell me what ye would do, for I have bidden you here before

I slay them, that I may hear what ye would say thereto." Nû, as the

eldest, has the right to speak first, and demands that the guilty shall

be brought to judgment and formally condemned. "My son Râ, god greater

than the god who made him, older than the gods who created him, sit thou

upon thy throne, and great shall be the terror when thine eye shall

rest upon those who plot together against thee!" But Râ not unreasonably

fears that when men see the solemn pomp of royal justice, they may

suspect the fate that awaits them, and "flee into the desert, their

hearts terrified at that which I have to say to them." The desert was

even then hostile to the tutelary gods of Egypt, and offered an almost

inviolable asylum to their enemies. The conclave admits that the

apprehensions of Râ are well founded, and pronounces in favour of

summary execution; the Divine Eye is to be the executioner. "Let it go

forth that it may smite those who have devised evil against thee, for

there is no Eye more to be feared than thine when it attacketh in the

form of Hâthor." So the Eye takes the form of Hâthor, suddenly falls

upon men, and slays them right and left with great strokes of the knife.

After some hours, Râ, who would chasten but not destroy his children,

commands her to cease from her carnage; but the goddess has tasted

blood, and refuses to obey him. "By thy life," she replies, "when I

slaughter men then is my heart right joyful!"

[Illustration: 236.jpg SOKHÎT, THE LIONESS-HEADED. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a bronze statuette of the

Saïte period in the Gizeh Museum (Mariette, _Album

photographique du Musée de Boulaq_, pl. 6).

That is why she was afterwards called Sokhît the slayer, and represented

under the form of a fierce lioness. Nightfall stayed her course in the

neighbourhood of Heracleopolis; all the way from Heliopolis she had

trampled through blood. As soon as she had fallen asleep, Râ hastily

took effectual measures to prevent her from beginning her work again on

the morrow. "He said: 'Call on my behalf messengers agile and swift,

who go like the wind.' When these messengers were straightway brought

to him, the Majesty of the god said: 'Let them run to Elephantine and

bring me mandragora in plenty.'"[**]

** The mandragora of Elephantine was used in the manufacture of an

intoxicating and narcotic drink employed either in medicine or in magic.

In a special article, Brugsch has collected particulars preserved by the

texts as to the uses of this plant. It was not as yet credited with

the human form and the peculiar kind of life ascribed to it by western

sorcerers.

When they had brought him the mandragora, the Majesty of this great god

summoned the miller which is in Heliopolis that he might bray it; and

the women-servants having crushed grain for the beer, the mandragora,

and also human blood, were mingled with the liquor, and thereof was made

in all seven thousand jars of beer. Râ himself examined this delectable

drink, and finding it to possess the wished-for properties: "'It is

well,' said he; 'therewith shall I save men from the goddess;' then,

addressing those of his train: 'Take these jars in your arms, and carry

them to the place where she has slaughtered men.' Râ, the king, caused

dawn to break at midnight, so that this philtre might be poured down

upon the earth; and the fields were flooded with it to the depth of four

palms, according as it pleased the souls of his Majesty." In the morning

the goddess came, "that she might return to her carnage, but she

found that all was flooded, and her countenance softened; when she had

drunken, it was her heart that softened; she went away drunk, without

further thought of men." There was some fear lest her fury might return

when the fumes of drunkenness were past, and to obviate this danger

Râ instituted a rite, partly with the object of instructing future

generations as to the chastisement which he had inflicted upon the

impious, partly to console Sokhît for her discomfiture. He decreed

that "on New Year's Day there should be brewed for her as many jars of

philtre as there were priestesses of the sun. That was the origin of

all those jars of philtre, in number equal to that of the priestesses,

which, at the feast of Hâthor, all men make from that day forth."

Peace was re-established, but could it last long? Would not men, as

soon as they had recovered from their terror, betake themselves again to

plotting against the god? Besides, Râ now felt nothing but disgust for

our race. The ingratitude of his children had wounded him deeply; he

foresaw ever-renewed rebellions as his feebleness became more marked,

and he shrank from having to order new massacres in which mankind would

perish altogether. "By my life," says he to the gods who accompanied

him, "my heart is too weary for me to remain with mankind, and slay them

until they are no more: annihilation is not of the gifts that I love

to make." And the gods exclaim in surprise: "Breathe not a word of thy

weariness at a time when thou dost triumph at thy pleasure." But Râ does

not yield to their representations; he will leave a kingdom wherein

they murmur against him, and turning towards Nû he says: "My limbs are

decrepit for the first time; I will not go to any place where I can

be reached." It was no easy matter to find him an inaccessible retreat

owing to the imperfect state in which the universe had been left by the

first effort of the demiurge. Nû saw no other way out of the difficulty

than that of setting to work to complete the creation. Ancient tradition

had imagined the separation of earth and sky as an act of violence

exercised by Shu upon Sibû and Nûît. History presented facts after a

less brutal fashion, and Shû became a virtuous son who devoted his time

and strength to upholding Nûît, that he might thereby do his father a

service. Nûît, for her part, showed herself to be a devoted daughter

whom there was no need to treat roughly in order to teach her her duty;

of herself she consented to leave her husband, and place her beloved

ancestor beyond reach. "The Majesty of Nû said: 'Son Shu, do as thy

father Râ shall say; and thou, daughter Nûît, place him upon thy back

and hold him suspended above the earth!' Nûît said: 'And how then, my

father Nû?' Thus spake Nûît, and she did that which Nû commanded her;

she changed herself into a cow, and placed the Majesty of Râ upon her

back. When those men who had not been slain came to give thanks to Râ,

behold! they found him no longer in his palace; but a cow stood there,

and they perceived him upon the back of the cow." They found him so

resolved to depart that they did not try to turn him from his purpose,

but only desired to give him such a proof of their repentance as should

assure them of the complete pardon of their crime. "They said unto him:

'Wait until the morning, O Râ! our lord, and we will strike down thine

enemies who have taken counsel against thee.' So his Majesty returned to

his mansion, descended from the cow, went in along with them, and earth

was plunged into darkness. But when there was light upon earth the next

morning, the men went forth with their bows and their arrows, and began

to shoot at the enemy. Whereupon the Majesty of this god said unto them:

'Your sins are remitted unto you, for sacrifice precludes the execution

of the guilty.' And this was the origin upon earth of sacrifices in

which blood was shed."

Thus it was that when on the point of separating for ever, the god

and men came to an understanding as to the terms of their future

relationship. Men offered to the god the life of those who had offended

him. Human sacrifice was in their eyes the obligatory sacrifice, the

only one which could completely atone for the wrongs committed against

the godhead; man alone was worthy to wash away with his blood the sins

of men.[*] For this one time the god accepted the expiation just as it

was offered to him; then the repugnance which he felt to killing his

children overcame him, he substituted beast for man, and decided that

oxen, gazelles, birds, should henceforth furnish the material for

sacrifice.[**]

* This legend, which seeks to explain the discontinuance of

human sacrifices among the Egyptians, affords direct proof

of their existence in primitive times. This is confirmed by

many facts. We shall see that _ûashbîti_ laid in graves were

in place of the male or female slaves who were originally

slaughtered at the tombs of the rich and noble that they

might go to serve their masters in the next world. Even in

Thebes, under the XIXth dynasty, certain rock-cut tombs

contain scenes which might lead us to believe that

occasionally at least human victims were sent to doubles of

distinction. During this same period, moreover, the most

distinguished hostile chiefs taken in war were still put to

death before the gods. In several towns, as at Eilithyia and

at Heliopolis, or before certain gods, such as Osiris or

Kronos-Sibû, human sacrifice lasted until near Roman times.

But generally speaking it was very rare. Almost everywhere

cakes of a particular shape, and called [Greek word], or

else animals, had been substituted for man.

** It was asserted that the partisans of Apôpi and of Sît,

who were the enemies of Râ, Osiris, and the other gods, had

taken refuge in the bodies of certain animals. Hence, it was

really human or divine victims which were offered when

beasts were slaughtered in sacrifice before the altars.

This point settled, he again mounted the cow, who rose, supported on her

four legs as on so many pillars; and her belly, stretched out above the

earth like a ceiling, formed the sky. He busied himself with organizing

the new world which he found on her back; he peopled it with many

beings, chose two districts in which to establish his abode, the Field

of Reeds--_Sokhît Ialû_--and the Field of Rest--_Sokhît Hotpît_--and

suspended the stars which were to give light by night. All this is

related with many plays upon words, intended, according to Oriental

custom, as explanations of the names which the legend assigned to the

different regions of heaven. At sight of a plain whose situation pleased

him, he cried: "The Field rests in the distance!"--and that was

the origin of the Field of Rest. He added: "There will I gather

plants!"--and from this the Field of Reeds took its name. While he gave

himself up to this philological pastime, Nûît, suddenly transported to

unaccustomed heights, grew frightened, and cried for help: "For pity's

sake give me supports to sustain me!" This was the origin of the

support-gods. They came and stationed themselves by each of her four

legs, steadying these with their hands, and keeping constant watch over

them. As this was not enough to reassure the good beast, "Râ said, 'My

son Shû, place thyself beneath my daughter Nûît, and keep watch on both

sides over the supports, who live in the twilight; hold thou her

up above thy head, and be her guardian!'" Shû obeyed; Nûît composed

herself, and the world, now furnished with the sky which it had hitherto

lacked, assumed its present symmetrical form.

Shû and Sibû succeeded Râ, but did not acquire so lasting a popularity

as their great ancestor. Nevertheless they had their annals, fragments

of which have come down to us. Their power also extended over the whole

universe: "The Majesty of Shû was the excellent king of the sky, of the

earth, of Hades, of the water, of the winds, of the inundation, of

the two chains of mountains, of the sea, governing with a true voice

according to the precepts of his father Râ-Harmakhis."

[Illustration: 242.jpg COW, SUSTAINED ABOVE THE EARTH BY SHÛ AND THE

SUPPORT]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

Only "the children of the serpent Apôpi, the impious ones who haunt

the solitary places and the deserts," disavowed his authority. Like the

Bedawîn of later times, they suddenly streamed in by the isthmus routes,

went up into Egypt under cover of night, slew and pillaged, and then

hastily returned to their fastnesses with the booty which they had

carried off. From sea to sea Ka had fortified the eastern frontier

against them. He had surrounded the principal cities with walls,

embellished them with temples, and placed within them those mysterious

talismans more powerful for defence than a garrison of men. Thus

Aît-nobsû, near the mouth of the Wady-Tûmilât, possessed one of the

rods of the Sun-god, also the living uraeus of his crown whose breath

consumes all that it touches, and, finally, a lock of his hair, which,

being cast into the waters of a lake, was changed into a hawk-headed

crocodile to tear the invader in pieces.[*]

* Egyptians of all periods never shrank from such marvels.

One of the tales of the Theban empire tells us of a piece of

wax which, on being thrown into the water, changed into a

living crocodile capable of devouring a man. The talismans

which protected Egypt against invasion are mentioned by the

Pseudo-Callisthenes, who attributes their invention to

Nectanebo. Arab historians often refer to them.

The employment of these talismans was dangerous to those unaccustomed

to use them, even to the gods themselves. Scarcely was Sibû enthroned as

the successor of Shu, who, tired of reigning, had reascended into heaven

in a nine days' tempest, before he began his inspection of the eastern

marches, and caused the box in which was kept the uræus of Râ to be

opened. "As soon as the living viper had breathed its breath against the

Majesty of Sibû there was a great disaster--great indeed, for those

who were in the train of the god perished, and his Majesty himself was

burned in that day. When his Majesty had fled to the north of Aît-nobsû,

pursued by the fire of this magic urasus, behold! when he came to the

fields of henna, the pain of his burn was not yet assuaged, and the gods

who were behind him said unto him: 'O Sire! let them take the lock of Râ

which is there, when thy Majesty shall go to see it and its mystery, and

his Majesty shall be healed as soon as it shall be placed upon thee.'

So the Majesty of Sibû caused the magic lock to be brought to

Piarît,--the lock for which was made that great reliquary of hard stone

which is hidden in the secret place of Piarît, in the district of the

divine lock of the Lord Râ,--and behold! this fire departed from the

members of the Majesty of Sibû. And many years afterwards, when this

lock, which had thus belonged to Sibû, was brought back to Piarît

in Aît-nobsû, and cast into the great lake of Piarît whose name is

_Aît-tostesû_, the dwelling of waves, that it might be purified, behold!

this lock became a crocodile: it flew to the water and became Sobkû,

the divine crocodile of Aît-nobsû." In this way the gods of the solar

dynasty from generation to generation multiplied talismans and enriched

the sanctuaries of Egypt with relics.

[Illustration: 244.jpg THREE OF THE DIVINE AMULETS PRESERVED IN THE

TEMPLE OF AÎT-NOBSÛ AT THE ROMAN PERIOD. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Griffith. The

three talismans here represented are two crowns, each in a

naos, and the burning fiery uræus.

Were there ever duller legends and a more senile phantasy! They did not

spring spontaneously from the lips of the people, but were composed at

leisure by priests desirous of enhancing the antiquity of their cult,

and augmenting the veneration of its adherents in order to increase

its importance. Each city wished it to be understood that its feudal

sanctuary was founded upon the very day of creation, that its privileges

had been extended or confirmed during the course of the first divine

dynasty, and that these pretensions were supported by the presence

of objects in its treasury which had belonged to the oldest of the

king-gods. Such was the origin of tales in which the personage of the

beneficent Pharaoh is often depicted in ridiculous fashion. Did we

possess all the sacred archives, we should frequently find them quoting

as authentic history more than one document as artificial as the

chronicle of Aît-nobsû. When we come to the later members of the Ennead,

there is a change in the character and in the form of these tales.

Doubtless Osiris and Sît did not escape unscathed out of the hands of

the theologians; but even if sacerdotal interference spoiled the legend

concerning them, it did not altogether disfigure it. Here and there

in it is still noticeable a sincerity of feeling and liveliness of

imagination such as are never found in those of Shû and of Sibû.

This arises from the fact that the functions of these gods left them

strangers, or all but strangers, to the current affairs of the world.

Shû was the stay, Sibû the material foundation of the world; and so long

as the one bore the weight of the firmament without bending, and the

other continued to suffer the tread of human generations upon his

back, the devout took no more thought of them than they themselves

took thought of the devout. The life of Osiris, on the other hand, was

intimately mingled with that of the Egyptians, and his most trivial

actions immediately reacted upon their fortunes. They followed the

movements of his waters; they noted the turning-points in his struggles

against drought; they registered his yearly decline, yearly compensated

by his aggressive returns and his intermittent victories over Typhon;

his proceedings and his character were the subject of their minute

study. If his waters almost invariably rose upon the appointed day and

extended over the black earth of the valley, this was no mechanical

function of a being to whom the consequences of his conduct are

indifferent; he acted upon reflection, and in full consciousness of the

service that he rendered. He knew that by spreading the inundation

he prevented the triumph of the desert; he was life, he was

goodness--_Onnofriû_--and Isis, as the partner of his labours, became

like him the type of perfect goodness. But while Osiris developed

for the better, Sit was transformed for the worse, and increased in

wickedness as his brother gained in purity and moral elevation. In

proportion as the person of Sît grew more defined, and stood out more

clearly, the evil within him contrasted more markedly with the innate

goodness of Osiris, and what had been at first an instinctive struggle

between two beings somewhat vaguely defined--the desert and the Nile,

water and drought--was changed into conscious and deadly enmity. No

longer the conflict of two elements, it was war between two gods; one

labouring to produce abundance, while the other strove to do away with

it; one being all goodness and life, while the other was evil and death

incarnate.

A very ancient legend narrates that the birth of Osiris and his brothers

took place during the five additional days at the end of the year; a

subsequent legend explained how Nûît and Sibû had contracted marriage

against the express wish of Râ, and without his knowledge. When he

became aware of it he fell into a violent rage, and cast a spell over

the goddess to prevent her giving birth to her children in any month of

any year whatever. But Thot took pity upon her, and playing at draughts

with the moon won from it in several games one seventy-second part of

its fires, out of which he made five whole days; and as these were not

included in the ordinary calendar, Nûît could then bring forth her five

children, one after another: Osiris, Haroêris, Sit, Isis, and Nephthys.

Osiris was beautiful of face, but with a dull and black complexion; his

height exceeded five and a half yards.[*]

* As a matter of fact, Osiris is often represented with

black or green hands and face, as is customary for gods of

the dead; it was probably this peculiarity which suggested

the popular idea of his black complexion. A magic papyrus of

Ramesside times fixes the stature of the god at seven

cubits, and a phrase in a Ptolemaic inscription places it at

eight cubits, six palms, three fingers.

He was born at Thebes, in the first of the additional days,

and straightway a mysterious voice announced that the lord of

all--_nibû-r-zarû_--had appeared. The good news was hailed with shouts

of joy, followed by tears and lamentations when it became known with

what evils he was menaced.[*] The echo reached Râ in his far-off

dwelling, and his heart rejoiced, notwithstanding the curse which he

had laid upon Nûît. He commanded the presence of his great-grandchild

in Xoïs, and unhesitatingly acknowledged him as the heir to his throne.

Osiris had married his sister Isis, even, so it was said, while both of

them were still within their mother's womb;[**] and when he became king

he made her queen regent and the partner of all his undertakings.

* One variant of the legend told that a certain Pamylis of

Thebes having gone to draw water had heard a voice

proceeding from the temple of Zeus, which ordered him to

proclaim aloud to the world the birth of the great king, the

beneficent Osiris. He had received the child from the hands

of Kronos, brought it up to youth, and to him the Egyptians

had consecrated the feast of Pamylies, which resembled the

Phallophoros festival of the Greeks.

** _De Iside et Osiride_, Leemans' edition, § 12, pp. 20,

21. Haroêris, the Apollo of the Greeks, was supposed to be

the issue of a marriage consummated before the birth of his

parents while they were still within the womb of their

mother Rhea-Nûît. This was a way of connecting the personage

of Haroêris with the Osirian myths by confounding him with

the homonymous Harsiêsis, the son of Isis, who became the

son of Osiris through his mother's marriage with that god.

The Egyptians were as yet but half civilized; they were cannibals, and

though occasionally they lived upon the fruits of the earth, they did

not know how to cultivate them. Osiris taught them the art of making

agricultural implements--the plough and the hoe,--field labour, the

rotation of crops, the harvesting of wheat and barley,[*] and vine

culture.

* Diodoeus even ascribes to him the discovery of barley and

of wheat; this is consequent upon the identification of Isis

with Demeter by the Greeks. According to the historian, Leo

of Pella, the goddess twined herself a crown of ripe ears

and placed it upon her head one day when she was sacrificing

to her parents.

Isis weaned them from cannibalism, healed their diseases by means of

medicine or of magic, united women to men in legitimate marriage, and

showed them how to grind grain between two flat stones and to prepare

bread for the household. She invented the loom with the help of her

sister Nephthys, and was the first to weave and bleach linen. There

was no worship of the gods before Osiris established it, appointed the

offerings, regulated the order of ceremonies, and composed the texts and

melodies of the liturgies. He built cities, among them Thebes itself,

according to some; though others declared that he was born there. As he

had been the model of a just and pacific king, so did he desire to be

that of a victorious conqueror of nations; and, placing the regency in

the hands of Isis, he went forth to war against Asia, accompanied by

Thot the ibis and the jackal Anubis. He made little or no use of force

and arms, but he attacked men by gentleness and persuasion, softened

them with songs in which voices were accompanied by instruments, and

taught them also the arts which he had made known to the Egyptians.

No country escaped his beneficent action, and he did not return to the

banks of the Nile until he had traversed and civilized the world from

one horizon to the other.

Sît-Typhon was red-haired and white-skinned, of violent, gloomy, and

jealous temper.[*] Secretly he aspired to the crown, and nothing but the

vigilance of Isis had kept him from rebellion during the absence of his

brother. The rejoicings which celebrated the king's return to Memphis

provided Sit with his opportunity for seizing the throne.

* The colour of his hair was compared with that of a red-

haired ass, and on that account the ass was sacred to him.

As to his violent and jealous disposition, see the opinion

of Diodorus Siculus, book i. 21, and the picture drawn by

Synesius in his pamphlet Ægyptius. It was told how he tore

his mother's bowels at birth, and made his own way into the

world through her side.

[Illustration: 250.jpg THE OSMIAN TRIAD HOKUS. OSIRIS, ISIS. 2]

2 Drawing by Boudier of the gold group in the Louvre

Museum. The drawing is made from a photograph which belonged

to M. de Witte, before the monument was acquired by E. de

Rougé in 1871. The little square pillar of lapis-lazuli,

upon which Osiris squats, is wrongly set up, and the names

and titles of King Osorkon, the dedicator of the triad, are

placed upside down.

He invited Osiris to a banquet along with seventy-two officers whose

support he had ensured, made a wooden chest of cunning workmanship and

ordered that it should be brought in to him, in the midst of the feast.

As all admired its beauty, he sportively promised to present it to any

one among the guests whom it should exactly fit. All of them tried it,

one after another, and all unsuccessfully; but when Osiris lay down

within it, immediately the conspirators shut to the lid, nailed it

firmly down, soldered it together with melted lead, and then threw it

into the Tanitic branch of the Nile, which carried it to the sea. The

news of the crime spread terror on all sides. The gods friendly to

Osiris feared the fate of their master, and hid themselves within the

bodies of animals to escape the malignity of the new king. Isis cut off

her hair, rent her garments, and set out in search of the chest. She

found it aground near the mouth of the river[*] under the shadow of

a gigantic acacia, deposited it in a secluded place where no one ever

came, and then took refuge in Bûto, her own domain and her native

city, whose marshes protected her from the designs of Typhon even as in

historic times they protected more than one Pharaoh from the attacks of

his enemies. There she gave birth to the young Horus, nursed and reared

him in secret among the reeds, far from the machinations of the wicked

one.[**]

* At this point the legend of the Saïte and Greek period

interpolates a whole chapter, telling how the chest was

carried out to sea and cast upon the Phoenician coast near

to Byblos. The acacia, a kind of heather or broom in this

case, grew up enclosing the chest within its trunk. This

addition to the primitive legend must date from the XVIIIth

to the XXth dynasties, when Egypt had extensive relations

with the peoples of Asia. No trace of it whatever has

hitherto been found upon Egyptian monuments strictly so

called; not even on the latest.

** The opening illustration of this chapter (p. 221) is

taken from a monument at Phihe, and depicts Isis among the

reeds. The representation of the goddess as squatting upon a

mat probably gave rise to the legend of the floating isle of

Khemmis, which HECATÆUS of Miletus had seen upon the lake of

Bûto, but whose existence was denied by Herodotus

notwithstanding the testimony of Hecatæus.

But it happened that Sît, when hunting by moonlight, caught sight of the

chest, opened it, and recognizing the corpse, cut it up into fourteen

pieces, which he scattered abroad at random. Once more Isis set forth on

her woeful pilgrimage. She recovered all the parts of the body excepting

one only, which the oxyrhynchus had greedily devoured;[*] and with the

help of her sister Nephthys, her son Horus, Anubis, and Thot, she joined

together and embalmed them, and made of this collection of his remains

an imperishable mummy, capable of sustaining for ever the soul of a god.

On his coming of age, Horus called together all that were left of the

loyal Egyptians and formed them into an army.[**]

* This part of the legend was so thoroughly well known,

that by the time of the XIXth dynasty it suggested incidents

in popular literature. When Bitiû, the hero of _The Tale of

the Two Brothers_, mutilated himself to avoid the suspicion

of adultery, he cast his bleeding member into the water, and

_the Oxyrhynchus devoured it_.

** Towards the Grecian period there was here interpolated

an account of how Osiris had returned from the world of the

dead to arm his son and train him to fight. According to

this tale he had asked Horus which of all animals seemed to

him most useful in time of war, and Horus chose the horse

rather than the lion, because the lion avails for the weak

or cowardly in need of help, whereas the horse is used for

the pursuit and destruction of the enemy. Judging from this

reply that Horus was ready to dare all, Osiris allowed him

to enter upon the war. The mention of the horse affords

sufficient proof that this episode is of comparatively late

origin (cf. p. 41 for the date at which the horse was

acclimatized in Egypt).

His "Followers"--_Shosûû Horû_--defeated the "Accomplices of

Sît"--_Samiu Sît_--who were now driven in their turn to transform

themselves into gazelles, crocodiles and serpents,--animals which were

henceforth regarded as unclean and Typhonian. For three days the two

chiefs had fought together under the forms of men and of hippopotami,

when Isis, apprehensive as to the issue of the duel, determined to bring

it to an end. "Lo! she caused chains to descend upon them, and made them

to drop upon Horus. Thereupon Horus prayed aloud, saying: 'I am thy son

Horus!' Then Isis spake unto the fetters, saying; 'Break, and unloose

yourselves from my son Horus!' She made other fetters to descend, and

let them fall upon her brother Sit. Forthwith he lifted up his voice and

cried out in pain, and she spake unto the fetters and said unto them:

'Break!' Yea, when Sît prayed unto her many times, saying: 'Wilt thou

not have pity upon the brother of thy son's mother?' then her heart was

filled with compassion, and she cried to the fetters: 'Break, for he is

my eldest brother!' and the fetters unloosed themselves from him, and

the two foes again stood face to face like two men who will not come

to terms." Horus, furious at seeing his mother deprive him of his prey,

turned upon her like a panther of the South. She fled before him on that

day when battle was waged with Sît the Violent, and he cut off her head.

But Thot transformed her by his enchantments and made a cow's head for

her, thereby identifying her with her companion, Hâthor.

[Illustration: 253.jpg ISIS-HATHOR, COW-HEADED. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette of Saïte

period in the Gîzeh Museum (Mariette, _Album photographique

du musée de Boulaq_, pl. 5, No. 167).

The war went on, with all its fluctuating fortunes, till the gods at

length decided to summon both rivals before their tribunal. According to

a very ancient tradition, the combatants chose the ruler of a

neighbouring city, Thot, lord of Hermopolis Parva, as the arbitrator of

their quarrel. Sît was the first to plead, and he maintained that Horus

was not the son of Osiris, but a bastard, whom Isis haô conceived after

the death of her husband. Horua triumphantly vindicated the legitimacy

of his birth; and Thot condemned Sît to restore, according to some, the

whole of the inheritance which he had wrongly retained,--according to

others, part of it only. The gods ratified the sentence, and awarded to

the arbitrator the title of _Ûapirahûhûi_: he who judges between two

parties. A legend of more recent origin, and circulated after the

worship of Osiris had spread over all Egypt, affirmed that the case had

remained within the jurisdiction of Sibû, who was father to the one, and

grandfather to the other party. Sibû, however, had pronounced the same

judgment as Thot, and divided the kingdom into halves--_poshûi_; Sît

retained the valley from the neighbourhood of Memphis to the first

cataract, while Horus entered into possession of the Delta. Egypt

henceforth consisted of two distinct kingdoms, of which one, that of the

North, recognized Horus, the son of Isis, as its patron deity; and the

other, that of the South, placed itself under the protection of Sît

Nûbîti, the god of Ombos.[*]

* Another form of the legend gives the 27th Athyr as the

date of the judgment, assigning Egypt to Horus, and to Sît

Nubia, or _Doshirît_, the red land. It must have arisen

towards the age of the XVIIIth dynasty, at a time when their

piety no longer allowed the devout to admit that the

murderer of Osiris could be the legitimate patron of half

the country. So _the half_ belonging to Sît was then placed

either in Nubia or in the western desert, which had, indeed,

been reckoned as his domain from earliest times.

The moiety of Horus, added to that of Sît, formed the kingdom which Sibû

had inherited; but his children failed to keep it together, though it

was afterwards reunited under Pharaohs of human race.

The three gods who preceded Osiris upon the throne had ceased to reign,

but not to live. Râ had taken refuge in heaven, disgusted with his own

creatures; Shû had disappeared in the midst of a tempest; and Sibû had

quietly retired within his palace when the time of his sojourning upon

earth had been fulfilled. Not that there was no death, for death, too,

together with all other things and beings, had come into existence in

the beginning, but while cruelly persecuting both man and beast, had for

a while respected the gods. Osiris was the first among them to be struck

down, and hence to require funeral rites. He also was the first for whom

family piety sought to provide a happy life beyond the tomb. Though he

was king of the living and the dead at Mendes by virtue of the rights of

all the feudal gods in their own principalities, his sovereignty after

death exempted him no more than the meanest of his subjects from that

painful torpor into which all mortals fell on breathing their last. But

popular imagination could not resign itself to his remaining in that

miserable state for ever. What would it have profited him to have

Isis the great Sorceress for his wife, the wise Horus for his son,

two master-magicians--Thot the Ibis and the jackal Anubis--for his

servants, if their skill had not availed to ensure him a less gloomy

and less lamentable after-life than that of men. Anubis had long before

invented the art of mummifying, and his mysterious science had secured

the everlasting existence of the flesh; but at what a price!

[Illustration: 256.jpg THE OSIRIAN MUMMY PREPARED AND LAID UPON THE

FUNERARY COUCH BY THE JACKAL ANUBIS.1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rosellint, _Monumenti

Civili_, pl. cxxxiv. 2. While Anubis is stretching out his

hands to lay out the mummy on its couch, the soul is

hovering above its breast, and holding to its nostrils the

sceptre, and the wind-filled sail which is the emblem of

breath and of the new life.

For the breathing, warm, fresh-coloured body, spontaneous in movement

and function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a

sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which

that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and

whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure

and almost without consciousness of existence. Thot, Isis, and Horus

applied themselves in the case of Osiris to ameliorating the discomfort

and constraint entailed by the more primitive embalmment.

[Illustration: 257.jpg THE RECEPTION OP THE MUMMY BY ANUBIS AT THE DOOR

OP THE TOMB, AND THE OPENING OF THE MOUTH. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting in the tomb of a

king in the Theban necropolis.

They did not dispense with the manipulations instituted by Anubis,

but endued them with new power by means of magic. They inscribed the

principal bandages with protective figures and formulas; they decorated

the body with various amulets of specific efficacy for its different

parts; they drew numerous scenes of earthly existence and of the life

beyond the tomb upon the boards of the coffin and upon the walls of

the sepulchral chamber. When the body had been made imperishable, they

sought to restore one by one all the faculties of which their previous

operations had deprived it. The mummy was set up at the entrance to the

vault; the statue representing the living person was placed beside it,

and semblance was made of opening the mouth, eyes, and ears, of loosing

the arms and legs, of restoring breath to the throat and movement to the

heart. The incantations by which these acts were severally accompanied

were so powerful that the god spoke and ate, lived and heard, and could

use his limbs as freely as though he had never been steeped in the bath

of the embalmer. He might have returned to his place among men, and

various legends prove that he did occasionally appear to his faithful

adherents. But, as his ancestors before him, he preferred to leave

their towns and withdraw into his own domain. The cemeteries of the

inhabitants of Busiris and of Mendes were called _Sokhît Ialû_, the

Meadow of Reeds, and _Sokhît Hotpû_, the Meadow of Best. They were

secluded amid the marshes, in small archipelagoes of sandy islets where

the dead bodies, piled together, rested in safety from the inundations.

This was the first kingdom of the dead Osiris, but it was soon placed

elsewhere, as the nature of the surrounding districts and the geography

of the adjacent countries became better known; at first perhaps on the

Phoenician shore beyond the sea, and then in the sky, in the Milky Way,

between the North and the East, but nearer to the North than to the

East. This kingdom was not gloomy and mournful like that of the other

dead gods, Sokaris or Khontamentît, but was lighted by sun and moon;

the heat of the day was tempered by the steady breath of the north wind,

and its crops grew and throve abundantly.

[Illustration: 259.jpg OSIKIS IN HADES, ACCOMPANIED BY ISIS, AMENTÎT,

AND NEPHTHYS, RECEIVES THE HOMAGE OF TRUTH. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Daniel Héron,

taken in 1881 in the temple of Seti I. at Abydos.

Thick walls served as fortifications against the attacks of Sit and

evil genii; a palace like that of the Pharaohs stood in the midst

of delightful gardens; and there, among his own people, Osiris led a

tranquil existence, enjoying in succession all the pleasures of earthly

life without any of its pains.

The goodness which had gained him the title of Onnophris while he

sojourned here below, inspired him with the desire and suggested the

means of opening the gates of his paradise to the souls of his former

subjects. Souls did not enter into it unexamined, nor without trial.

Each of them had first to prove that during its earthly life it had

belonged to a friend, or, as the Egyptian texts have it, to a vassal of

Osiris--_amakhû khir Osiri_--one of those who had served Horus in his

exile and had rallied to his banner from the very beginning of the

Typhonian wars.

[Illustration: 260.jpg THE DECEASED CLIMBING THE SLOPE OF THE MOUNTAIN

OF THE WEST,2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Naville Bas Ægyptische

Todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. cxxviii. Ai.

These were those followers of Horus--_Shosûû Horû_--so often referred to

in the literature of historic times.[*]

* Cf, p. 252. The _Followers of Horns_, i.e. those who had

followed Horus during the Typhonian wars, are mentioned in a

Turin fragment of the Canon of the Kings, in which the

author summarizes the chronology of the divine period. Like

the reign of Râ, the time in which the followers of Horus

were supposed to have lived was for the Egyptians of classic

times the ultimate point beyond which history did not reach.

Horus, their master, having loaded them with favours during life,

decided to extend to them after death the same privileges which he had

conferred upon his father. He convoked around the corpse the gods who

had worked with him at the embalmment of Osiris: Anubis and Thot,

Isis and Nephthys, and his four children--Hâpi, Qabhsonûf, Amsît, and

Tiûmaûtf--to whom he had entrusted the charge of the heart and viscera.

They all performed their functions exactly as before, repeated the same

ceremonies, and recited the same formulas at the same stages of the

operations, and so effectively that the dead man became a real Osiris

under their hands, having a true voice, and henceforth combining the

name of the god with his own.

[Illustration: 261.jpg THE MUMMY OF SÛTIMOSÛ CLASPING HIS SOUL INTO HIS

ARMS. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Guieysse-Lefébure, _Le

Papyrus de Soutimès_, pl. viii. The outlines of the original

have unfortunately been restored and enfeebled by the

copyist.

He had been Sakhomka or Menkaûrî; he became the Osiris Sakhomka, or the

Osiris Menkaûrî, true of voice. Horus and his companions then celebrated

the rites consecrated to the "Opening of the Mouth and the Eyes:"

animated the statue of the deceased, and placed the mummy in the tomb,

where Anubis received it in his arms. Recalled to life and movement, the

double reassumed, one by one, all the functions of being, came and went

and took part in the ceremonies of the worship which was rendered to him

in his tomb. There he might be seen accepting the homage of his

kindred, and clasping to his breast his soul under the form of a great

human-headed bird with features the counterpart of his own. After being

equipped with the formulas and amulets wherewith his prototype, Osiris,

had been furnished, he set forth to seek the "Field of Reeds." The way

was long and arduous, strewn with perils to which he must have succumbed

at the very first stages had he not been carefully warned beforehand and

armed against them.

[Illustration: 262.jpg CYNOCEPHALI DRAWING THE NET IN WHICH SOULS ARE

CAUGHT. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a facsimile by Dévèria (E. de

Rougé, _Études sur le Rituel Funéraire_, pl. iv. No. 4).

Ignorant souls fished for by the cynocephali are here

represented as fish; but the soul of Nofirûbnû, instructed

in the protective formulas, preserves its human form.

A papyrus placed with the mummy in its coffin contained the needful

topo-graphical directions and passwords, in order that he might

neither stray nor perish by the way. The wiser Egyptians copied out the

principal chapters for themselves, or learned them by heart while yet

in life, in order to be prepared for the life beyond. Those who had not

taken this precaution studied after death the copy with which they were

provided; and since few Egyptians could read, a priest, or relative of

the deceased, preferably his son, recited the prayers in the mummy's

ear, that he might learn them before he was carried away to the

cemetery. If the double obeyed the prescriptions of the "Book of the

Dead" to the letter, he reached his goal without fail.[*] On leaving

the tomb he turned his back on the valley, and staff in hand climbed

the hills which bounded it on the west, plunging boldly into the desert,

where some bird, or even a kindly insect such as a praying mantis, a

grasshopper, or a butterfly, served as his guide. Soon he came to one of

those sycamores which grow in the sand far away from the Nile, and

are regarded as magic trees by the fellahîn. Out of the foliage a

goddess--Nûît, ïïâthor, or Nît--half emerged, and offered him a dish of

fruit, loaves of bread, and a jar of water.

* Manuscripts of this work represent about nine-tenths of

the papyri hitherto discovered. They are not all equally

full; complete copies are still relatively scarce, and most

of those found with mummies contain nothing but extracts of

varying length. The book itself was studied by Champollion,

who called it the _Funerary Ritual_; Lepsius afterwards gave

it the less definite name of _Book of the Dead_, which seems

likely to prevail. It has been chiefly known from the

hieroglyphic copy at Turin, which Lepsius traced and had

lithographed in 1841, under the title of _Das Todtenbuch der

Ægypter_. In 1865, E. du Rougé began to publish a hieratic

copy in the Louvre, but since 1886 there has been a critical

edition of manuscripts of the Theban period most carefully

collated by E. Naville, _Das Mgyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII

bis XX Dynastie_, Berlin, 1886, 2 vols, of plates in folio,

and 1 vol. of Introduction in 4to. On this edition see

Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 325-387.

By accepting these gifts he became the guest of the goddess, and could

never more retrace his steps[*] without special permission. Beyond

the sycamore were lands of terror, infested by serpents and ferocious

beasts, furrowed by torrents of boiling water, intersected by ponds and

marshes where gigantic monkeys cast their nets.

* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 224-227. It was not in Egypt

alone that the fact of accepting food offered by a god of

the dead constituted a recognition of suzerainty, and

prevented the human soul from returning to the world of the

living. Traces of this belief are found everywhere, in

modern as in ancient times, and E. B. Tylob, has collected

numerous examples of the same in Primitive Culture, 2nd

edit., vol. ii. pp. 47, 51, 52.

[Illustration: 264.jpg THE DECEASED AND HIS WIFE SEATED IN FRONT OF THE

SYCAMORE OF NÛÎT AND RECEIVING THE BREAD AND WATER OF THE NEXT WORLD. 2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coloured plate in

Rosellini, _Monumenti civili._,pl. cxxxiv. 3.

Ignorant souls, or those ill prepared for the struggle, had no easy work

before them when they imprudently entered upon it. Those who were not

overcome by hunger and thirst at the outset were bitten by a urasus, or

horned viper, hidden with evil intent below the sand, and perished in

convulsions from the poison; or crocodiles seized as many of them as

they could lay hold of at the fords of rivers; or cynocephali netted

and devoured them indiscriminately along with the fish into which the

partisans of Typhon were transformed. They came safe and sound out of

one peril only to fall into another, and infallibly succumbed before

they were half through their journey. But, on the other hand, the

double who was equipped and instructed, and armed with the true voice,

confronted each foe with the phylactery and the incantation by which his

enemy was held in check. As soon as he caught sight of one of them he

recited the appropriate chapter from his book, he loudly proclaimed

himself Râ, Tûmû, Horus, or Khopri--that god whose name and attributes

were best fitted to repel the immediate danger--and flames withdrew at

his voice, monsters fled or sank paralysed, the most cruel of genii

drew in their claws and lowered their arms before him. He compelled

crocodiles to turn away their heads; he transfixed serpents with his

lance; he supplied himself at pleasure with all the provisions that he

needed, and gradually ascended the mountains which surround the world,

sometimes alone, and fighting his way step by step, sometimes escorted

by beneficent divinities. Halfway up the slope was the good cow Hâfchor,

the lady of the West, in meadows of tall plants where every evening

she received the sun at his setting. If the dead man knew how to ask

it according to the prescribed rite, she would take him upon her

shoulders[*] and carry him across the accursed countries at full speed.

* Coffins of the XXth and XXIst dynasties, with a yellow

ground, often display this scene. Generally the scene is

found beneath the feet of the dead, at the lower end of the

cartonage, and the cow is represented as carrying off at a

gallop the mummy who is lying on her back.

[Illustration: 266.jpg THE DECEASED PIERCING A SERPENT WITH HIS LANCE.

2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Naville (_Das

Ægyptische Todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl. iii. P b). The commonest

enemies of the dead were various kinds of serpents.

Having reached the North, he paused at the edge of an immense lake, the

lake of Kha, and saw in the far distance the outline of the Islands of

the Blest. One tradition, so old as to have been almost forgotten in

Rames-side times, told how Thot the ibis there awaited him, and bore

him away on his wings;[***] another, no less ancient but of more lasting

popularity, declared that a ferry-boat plied regularly between the solid

earth and the shores of paradise.

*** It is often mentioned in the Pyramid texts, and

inspired one of the most obscure chapters among them

(_Teti_, 11. 185-200; cf. _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. v. pp.

22, 23). It seems that the ibis had to fight with Sit for

right of passage.

The god who directed it questioned the dead, and the bark itself

proceeded to examine them before they were admitted on board; for it

was a magic bark. "Tell me my name," cried the mast; and the travellers

replied: "He who guides the great goddess on her way is thy name." "Tell

me my name," repeated the braces. "The Spine of the Jackal Ûapûaîtû is

thy name." "Tell me my name," proceeded the mast-head.

[Illustration: 267.jpg THE GOOD COW HÂTHOR CARRYING THE DEAD MAN AND HIS

SOUL. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a coloured facsimile

published by Leemans, _Monuments Égyptiens du Musée d'

Antiquités des Pays-Bas à Leyden_, part iii. pl. xii.

"The Neck of Amsît is thy name." "Tell me my name," asked the sail.

"Nûît is thy name." Each part of the hull and of the rigging spoke

in turn and questioned the applicant regarding its name, this being

generally a mystic phrase by which it was identified either with some

divinity as a whole, or else with some part of his body.

When the double had established his right of passage by the correctness

of his answers, the bark consented to receive him and to carry him to

the further shore. There he was met by the gods and goddesses of the

court of Osiris: by Anubis, by Hathor the lady of the cemetery, by Nît,

by the two Màîts who preside over justice and truth, and by the four

children of Horus stiff-sheathed in their mummy wrappings. They formed

as it were a guard of honour to introduce him and his winged guide into

an immense hall, the ceiling of which rested on light graceful columns

of painted wood.

[Illustration: 268.jpg ANUBIS AND THOT WEIGHING THE HEART OF THE

DECEASED IN THE SCALES OF TRUTH. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from pl. cxxxvi. Ag of

Naville's _Das Thebanische Todtenbuch_.

At the further end of the hall Osiris was seated in mysterious twilight

within a shrine through whose open doors he might be seen wearing a red

necklace over his close-fitting case of white bandaging, his green face

surmounted by the tall white diadem flanked by two plumes, his slender

hands grasping flail and crook, the emblems of his power.

[Illustration: 269.jpg THE DECEASED IS BROUGHT BEFORE THE SHRINE OF

OSIRIS THE JUDGE BY HORUS, THE SON OF ISIS.]

Behind him stood Isis and Nephthys watching over him with uplifted

hands, bare bosoms, and bodies straitly cased in linen. Forty-two jurors

who had died and been restored to life like their lord, and who had

been chosen, one from each of those cities of Egypt which recognized

his authority, squatted right and left, and motionless, clothed in the

wrappings of the dead, silently waited until they were addressed.

The soul first advanced to the foot of the throne, carrying on its

outstretched hands the image of its heart or of its eyes, agents and

accomplices of its sins and virtues. It humbly "smelt the earth," then

arose, and with uplifted hands recited its profession of faith. "Hail

unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of Truth and

Justice! I have come before thee, my master; I have been brought to see

thy beauties. For I know thee, I know thy name, I know the names of thy

forty-two gods who are with thee in the Hall of the Two Truths, living

on the remains of sinners, gorging themselves with their blood, in that

day when account is rendered before Onnophris, the true of voice. Thy

name which is thine is 'the god whose two twins are the ladies of the

two Truths;' and I, I know you, ye lords of the two Truths, I bring unto

you Truth, I have destroyed sins for you. I have not committed iniquity

against men! I have not oppressed the poor! I have not made defalcations

in the necropolis! I have not laid labour upon any free man beyond that

which he wrought for himself! I have not transgressed, I have not

been weak, I have not defaulted, I have not committed that which is an

abomination to the gods. I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated

of his master! I have not starved any man, I have not made any to

weep, I have not assassinated any man, I have not caused any man to be

treacherously assassinated, and I have not committed treason against

any! I have not in aught diminished the supplies of temples! I have not

spoiled the shrewbread of the gods! I have not taken away the loaves and

the wrappings of the dead! I have done no carnal act within the sacred

enclosure of the temple! I have not blasphemed! I have in nought

curtailed the sacred revenues! I have not pulled down the scale of the

balance! I have not falsified the beam of the balance! I have not taken

away the milk from the mouths of sucklings! I have not lassoed cattle on

their pastures! I have not taken with nets the birds of the gods! I

have not fished in their ponds! I have not turned back the water in its

season! I have not cut off a water-channel in its course! I have not

put out the fire in its time! I have not defrauded the Nine Gods of the

choice part of victims! I have not ejected the oxen of the gods! I have

not turned back the god at his coming forth! I am pure! I am pure! I am

pure! I am pure! Pure as this Great Bonû of Heracleopolis is pure!...

There is no crime against me in this land of the Double Truth! Since I

know the names of the gods who are with thee in the Hall of the Double

Truth, save thou me from them!" He then turned towards the jury and

pleaded his cause before them. They had been severally appointed for

the cognizance of particular sins, and the dead man took each of them by

name to witness that he was innocent of the sin which that one recorded.

His plea ended, he returned to the supreme judge, and repeated, under

what is sometimes a highly mystic form, the ideas which he had already

advanced in the first part of his address. "Hail unto you, ye gods who

are in the Great Hall of the Double Truth, who have no falsehood in

your bosoms, but who live on Truth in Aûnû, and feed your hearts upon it

before the Lord God who dwelleth in his solar disc! Deliver me from

the Typhon who feedeth on entrails, O chiefs! in this hour of supreme

judgment;--grant that the deceased may come unto you, he who hath not

sinned, who hath neither lied, nor done evil, nor committed any crime,

who hath not borne false witness, who hath done nought against himself,

but who liveth on truth, who feedeth on truth. He hath spread joy on all

sides; men speak of that which he hath done, and the gods rejoice in it.

He hath reconciled the god to him by his love; he hath given bread to

the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; he hath given

a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath offered sacrifices to the gods,

sepulchral meals unto the manes. Deliver him from himself, speak not

against him before the Lord of the Dead, for his mouth is pure, and his

two hands are pure!" In the middle of the Hall, however, his acts were

being weighed by the assessors. Like all objects belonging to the gods,

the balance is magic, and the genius which animates it sometimes shows

its fine and delicate little human head on the top of the upright

stand which forms its body. Everything about the balance recalls its

superhuman origin: a cynocephalus, emblematic of Thot, sits perched on

the upright and watches the beam; the cords which suspend the scales are

made of alternate _cruces ansato and tats_. Truth squats upon one of

the scales; Thot, ibis-headed, places the heart on the other, and always

merciful, bears upon the side of Truth that judgment may be favourably

inclined. He affirms that the heart is light of offence, inscribes

the result of the proceeding upon a wooden tablet, and pronounces the

verdict aloud. "Thus saith Thot, lord of divine discourse, scribe of

the Great Ennead, to his father Osiris, lord of eternity, 'Behold the

deceased in this Hall of the Double Truth, his heart hath been weighed

in the balance in the presence of the great genii, the lords of Hades,

and been found true. No trace of earthly impurity hath been found in

his heart. Now that he leaveth the tribunal true of voice, his heart

is restored to him, as well as his eyes and the material cover of his

heart, to be put back in their places each in its own time, his soul in

heaven, his heart in the other world, as is the custom of the "Followers

of Horus." Henceforth let his body lie in the hands of Anubis, who

presideth over the tombs; let him receive offerings at the cemetery in

the presence of Onno-phris; let him be as one of those favourites who

follow thee; let his soul abide where it will in the necropolis of

his city, he whose voice is true before the Great Ennead.'" In this

"Negative Confession," which the worshippers of Osiris taught to their

dead, all is not equally admirable. The material interests of the temple

were too prominent, and the crime of killing a sacred goose or stealing

a loaf from the bread offerings was considered as abominable as calumny

or murder. But although it contains traces of priestly cupidity, yet

how many of its precepts are untarnished in their purity by any selfish

ulterior motive! In it is all our morality in germ, and with refinements

of delicacy often lacking among peoples of later and more advanced

civilizations. The god does not confine his favour to the prosperous and

the powerful of this world; he bestows it also upon the poor. His will

is that they be fed and clothed, and exempted from tasks beyond their

strength; that they be not oppressed, and that unnecessary tears be

spared them. If this does not amount to the love of our neighbour as our

religions preach it, at least it represents the careful solicitude due

from a good lord to his vassals. His pity extends to slaves; not only

does he command that no one should ill-treat them himself, but he

forbids that their masters should be led to ill-treat them. This

profession of faith, one of the noblest bequeathed us by the old world,

is of very ancient origin. It may be read in scattered fragments upon

the monuments of the first dynasties, and the way in which its ideas are

treated by the compilers of these inscriptions proves that it was not

then regarded as new, but as a text so old and so well known that its

formulas were current in all mouths, and had their prescribed places

in epitaphs.[*] Was it composed in Mendes, the god's own home, or in

Heliopolis, when the theologians of that city appropriated the god of

Mendes and incorporated him in their Ennead? In conception it certainly

belongs to the Osirian priesthood, but it can only have been diffused

over the whole of Egypt after the general adoption of the Heliopolitan

Ennead throughout the cities.

As soon as he was judged, the dead man entered into the possession of

his rights as a pure soul. On high he received from the Universal

Lord all that kings and princes here below bestowed upon their

followers--rations of food,[**] and a house, gardens, and fields to be

held subject to the usual conditions of tenure in Egypt, i.e. taxation,

military service, and the corvée.

* For instance, one of the formulas found in Memphite tombs

states that the deceased had been the friend of his father,

the beloved of his mother, sweet to those who lived with

him, gracious to his brethren, loved of his servants, and

that he had never sought wrongful quarrel with any man;

briefly, that he spoke and did that which is right here

below.

** The formula of the pyramid times is: "Thy thousand of

oxen, thy thousand of geese, of roast and boiled joints from

the larder of the gods, of bread, and plenty of the good

things presented in the hall of Osiris."

If the island was attacked by the partisans of Sit, the Osirian doubles

hastened in a body to repulse them, and fought bravely in its defence.

Of the revenues sent to him by his kindred on certain days and by means

of sacrifices, each gave tithes to the heavenly storehouses. Yet this

was but the least part of the burdens laid upon him by the laws of the

country, which did not suffer him to become enervated by idleness, but

obliged him to labour as in the days when he still dwelt in Egypt.

[Illustration: 275.jpg THE MANES TILLING THE GROUND AND REAPING IN THE

FIELDS OF IALÛ. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a vignette in the funerary

papyrus of Nebhopît in Turin.

He looked after the maintenance of canals and dykes, he tilled the

ground, he sowed, he reaped, he garnered the grain for his lord and for

himself. Yet to those upon whom they were incumbent, these posthumous

obligations, the sequel and continuation of feudal service, at length

seemed too heavy, and theologians exercised their ingenuity to find

means of lightening the burden. They authorized the manes to look to

their servants for the discharge of all manual labour which they ought

to have performed themselves. Barely did a dead man, no matter how

poor, arrive unaccompanied at the eternal cities; he brought with him a

following proportionate to his rank and fortune upon earth.

[Illustration: 276.jpg UASHBÎTI. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a painted limestone statuette

from the tomb of _Sonnozmû_ at Thebes, dating from the end

of the XXth dynasty.

At first they were real doubles, those of slaves or vassals killed at

the tomb, and who had departed along with the double of the master to

serve him beyond the grave as they had served him here. A number of

statues and images, magically endued with activity and intelligence,

was afterwards substituted for this retinue of victims. Originally of

so large a size that only the rich or noble could afford them, they were

reduced little by little to the height of a few inches. Some were carved

out of alabaster, granite, diorite, fine limestone, or moulded out

of fine clay and delicately modelled; others had scarcely any human

resemblance. They were endowed with life by means of a formula recited

over them at the time of their manufacture, and afterwards traced upon

their legs. All were possessed of the same faculties. When the god who

called the Osirians to the corvée pronounced the name of the dead man to

whom the figures belonged, they arose and answered for him; hence their

designation of "Respondents "--_Ûashbîti_. Equipped for agricultural

labour, each grasping a hoe and carrying a seed-bag on his shoulder,

they set out to work in their appointed places, contributing the

required number of days of forced labour.

[Illustration: 277.jpg THE DEAD MAN AND HIS WIFE PLAYING AT DRAUGHTS IN

THE PAVILION. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a vignette in No, 4 Papyrus,

Dublin (Naville, _Das Mgyptische Todtenbuch_, vol. i. pl.

xxvii. Da). The name of draughts is not altogether accurate;

a description of the game may be found in Falkner, _Games

Ancient and Oriental and how to play them_, pp. 9-101.

Up to a certain point they thus compensated for those inequalities of

condition which death itself did not efface among the vassals of Osiris;

for the figures were sold so cheaply that even the poorest could always

afford some for themselves, or bestow a few upon their relations; and

in the Islands of the Blest, fellah, artisan, and slave were indebted to

the Uashbîti for release from their old routine of labour and unending

toil. While the little peasants of stone or glazed ware dutifully toiled

and tilled and sowed, their masters were enjoying all the delights

of the Egyptian paradise in perfect idleness. They sat at ease by the

water-side, inhaling the fresh north breeze, under the shadow of trees

which were always green. They fished with lines among the lotus-plants;

they embarked in their boats, and were towed along by their servants, or

they would sometimes deign to paddle themselves slowly about the canals.

[Illustration: 278.jpg THE DEAD MAN SAILING IN HIS BARK ALONG THE CANALS

OF THE FIELDS OF IALIT. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Papyrus of Nebhopît, in

Turin. This drawing is from part of the same scene as the

illustration on p. 275.

They went fowling among the reed-beds, or retired within their painted

pavilions to read tales, to play at draughts, to return to their wives

who were for ever young and beautiful.[**]

** Gymnastic exercises, hunting, fishing, sailing, are all

pictured in Theban tombs. The game of draughts is mentioned

in the title of chap. xvii. of the _Book of the Dead_

(Naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 1. 2), and the

women's pavilion is represented in the tomb of Rakhmiri That

the dead were supposed to read tales is proved from the fact

that broken ostraca bearing long fragments of literary works

are found in tombs; they were broken to kill them and to

send on their doubles to the dead man in the next world.

It was but an ameliorated earthly life, divested of all suffering under

the rule and by the favour of the true-voiced Onnophris. The feudal gods

promptly adopted this new mode of life.

[Illustration: 279.jpg BOAT OF A FUNERARY FLEET ON ITS WAY TO ABYDOS. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Éinil

Brugsch-Bey. The original was found in the course of M. de

Morgan's excavations at Mêîr, and is now at Gîzeh. The dead

man is sitting in the cabin, wrapped in his cloak. As far as

I know, this is the only boat which has preserved its

original rigging. It dates from the XIth or XIIth

dynasty.

Each of their dead bodies, mummified, and afterwards reanimated in

accordance with the Osirian myth, became an Osiris as did that of any

ordinary person. Some carried the assimilation so far as to absorb the

god of Mendes, or to be absorbed in him. At Memphis Phtah-Sokaris

became Phtah-Sokar-Osiris, and at Thinis Khontamentîfc became Osiris

Khontamentît. The sun-god lent himself to this process with comparative

ease because his life is more like a man's life, and hence also more

like that of Osiris, which is the counterpart of a man's life.

[Illustration: 280.jpg THE SOLAR BARK INTO WHICH THE DEAD MAN IS ABOUT

TO ENTER. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a vignette in the Papyrus of

Nebqadn, in Paris.

Born in the morning, he ages as the day declines, and gently passes away

at evening. From the time of his entering the sky to that of his leaving

it, he reigns above as he reigned here below in the beginning; but when

he has left the sky and sinks into Hades, he becomes as one of the dead,

and is, as they are, subjected to Osirian embalmment. The same dangers

that menace their human souls threaten his soul also; and when he has

vanquished them, not in his own strength, but by the power of amulets

and magical formulas, he enters into the fields of lalû, and ought to

dwell there for ever under the rule of Onuophris. He did nothing of the

kind, however, for daily the sun was to be seen reappearing in the east

twelve hours after it had sunk into the darkness of the west. Was it a

new orb each time, or did the same sun shine every day? In either case

the result was precisely the same; the god came forth from death and

re-entered into life. Having identified the course of the sun-god with

that of man, and Râ with Osiris for a first day and a first night,

it was hard not to push the matter further, and identify them for all

succeeding days and nights, affirming that man and Osiris might, if they

so wished, be born again in the morning, as Râ was, and together with

him. If the Egyptians had found the prospect of quitting the darkness of

the tomb for the bright meadows of Ialû a sensible alleviation of their

lot, with what joy must they have been filled by the conception which

allowed them to substitute the whole realm of the sun for a little

archipelago in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe. Their first

consideration was to obtain entrance into the divine bark, and this

was the object of all the various practices and prayers, whose text,

together with that which already contained the Osirian formulas, ensured

the unfailing protection of Râ to their possessor. The soul desirous of

making use of them went straight from his tomb to the very spot where

the god left earth to descend into Hades. This was somewhere in the

immediate neighbourhood of Abydos, and was reached through a narrow

gorge or "cleft" in the Libyan range, whose "mouth" opened in front

of the temple of Osiris Khontamentît, a little to the north-west of the

city. The soul was supposed to be carried thither by a small flotilla of

boats, manned by figures representing friends or priests, and laden with

food, furniture, and statues. This flotilla was placed within the

vault on the day of the funeral, and was set in motion by means of

incantations recited over it during one of the first nights of the year,

at the annual feast of the dead. The bird or insect which had previously

served as guide to the soul upon its journey now took the helm to show

the fleet the right way, and under this command the boats left Abydos

and mysteriously passed through the "cleft" into that western sea which

is inaccessible to the living, there to await the daily coming of the

dying sun-god.

[Illustration: 282.jpg THE SOLAR BARK PASSING INTO THE MOUNTAIN OF THE

WEST. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a very small photograph

published in the Catalogue of the Minutoli Sale.

As soon as his bark appeared at the last bend of the celestial Nile,

the cynocephali, who guarded the entrance into night, began to dance and

gesticulate upon the banks as they intoned their accustomed hymn. The

gods of Abydos mingled their shouts of joy with the chant of the sacred

baboons, the bark lingered for a moment upon the frontiers of day, and

initiated souls seized the occasion to secure their recognition and

their reception on board of it.[*] Once admitted, they took their share

in the management of the boat, and in the battles with hostile deities;

but they were not all endowed with the courage or equipment needful to

withstand the perils and terrors of the voyage. Many stopped short by

the way in one of the regions which it traversed, either in the realm of

Khontamentît, or in that of Sokaris, or in those islands where the good

Osiris welcomed them as though they had duly arrived in the ferry-boat,

or upon the wing of Thot. There they dwelt in colonies under the

suzerainty of local gods, rich, and in need of nothing, but condemned

to live in darkness, excepting for the one brief hour in which the

solar bark passed through their midst, irradiating them with beams of

light.[**]

* This description of the embarkation and voyage of the

soul is composed from indications given in one of the

vignettes of chap. xvi. of the _Book of the Dead_ (Naville's

edition, vol. i. pl. xxii.), combined with the text of a

formula which became common from the times of the XIth and

XIIth dynasties (Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et

l'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 14-18, and _Études

Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 122, 123).

** Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 44, 45.

The few persevered, feeling that they had courage to accompany the sun

throughout, and these were indemnified for their sufferings by the most

brilliant fate ever dreamed of by Egyptian souls., Born anew with the

sun-god and appearing with him at the gates of the east, they were

assimilated to him, and shared his privilege of growing old and dying,

only to be ceaselessly rejuvenated and to live again with ever-renewed

splendour. They disembarked where they pleased, and returned at will

into the world. If now and then they felt a wish to revisit all that was

left of their earthly bodies, the human-headed sparrow-hawk descended

the shaft in full flight, alighted upon the funeral couch, and, with

hands softly laid upon the spot where the heart had been wont to beat,

gazed upwards at the impassive mask of the mummy.

[Illustration: 284.jpg THE SOUL DESCENDING THE SEPULCHRAL SHAFT ON ITS

WAY TO REJOIN THE MUMMY. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Dévèria.

This was but for a moment, since nothing compelled these perfect souls

to be imprisoned within the tomb like the doubles of earlier times,

because they feared the light. They "went forth by day," and dwelt in

those places where they had lived; they walked in their gardens by their

ponds of running water; they perched like so many birds on the branches

of the trees which they had planted, or enjoyed the fresh air under the

shade of their sycamores; they ate and drank at pleasure; they travelled

by hill and dale; they embarked in the boat of Râ, and disembarked

without weariness, and without distaste for the same perpetual round.

This conception, which was developed somewhat late, brought the

Egyptians back to the point from which they had started when first they

began to speculate on the life to come.

[Illustration: 285.jpg THE SOUL ON THE EDGE OF THE FUNERAL COUCH, WITH

ITS HANDS ON THE HEART OF THE MUMMY. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-

Bey, reproducing the miniature sarcophagus of the scribe Râ

(Maspero, _Guide du Visiteur_, pp. 130, 131, No. 1621).

The soul, after having left the place of its incarnation to which in the

beginning it clung, after having ascended into heaven and there sought

congenial asylum in vain, forsook all havens which it had found above,

and unhesitatingly fell back upon earth, there to lead a peaceful, free,

and happy life in the full light of day, and with the whole valley of

Egypt for a paradise.

The connection, always increasingly intimate between Osiris and Râ,

gradually brought about a blending of the previously separate myths and

beliefs concerning each. The friends and enemies of the one became the

friends and enemies of the other, and from a mixture of the original

conceptions of the two deities, arose new personalities, in which

contradictory elements were blent together, often without true fusion.

The celestial Horuses one by one were identified with Horus, son of

Isis, and their attributes were given to him, as his in the same way

became theirs. Apopi and the monsters--the hippopotamus, the crocodile,

the wild boar--who lay in wait for Râ as he sailed the heavenly ocean,

became one with Sît and his accomplices. Sit still possessed his half

of Egypt, and his primitive brotherly relation to the celestial Horus

remained unbroken, either 'on account of their sharing one temple, as at

Nûbît, or because they were worshipped as one in two neighbouring

nomes, as, for example, at Oxyrrhynchos and at Heracleopolis Magna.

The repulsion with which the slayer of Osiris was regarded did not

everywhere dissociate these two cults: certain small districts persisted

in this double worship down to the latest times of paganism. It was,

after all, a mark of fidelity to the oldest traditions of the race, but

the bulk of the Egyptians, who had forgotten these, invented reasons

taken from the history of the divine dynasties to explain the fact. The

judgment of Thot or of Sibû had not put an end to the machinations of

Sît: as soon as Horus had left the earth, Sît resumed them, and pursued

them, with varying fortune, under the divine kings of the second Ennead.

Now, in the year 363 of Harmakhis, the Typhonians reopened the campaign.

Beaten at first near Edfû, they retreated precipitately northwards,

stopping to give battle wherever their partisans predominated,--at

Zatmîfc in the Theban nome,[*] at Khaîtnûtrît to the north-east of

Denderah, and at Hibonû in the principality of the Gazelle.

* Zatmît appears to have been situate at some distance from

Bayadîyéh, on the spot where the map published by the

Egyptian Commission marks the ruins of a modern village.

There was a necropolis of considerable extent there, which

furnishes the Luxor dealers with antiquities, many of which

belong to the first Theban empire.

[Illustration: 287.jpg THE SOUL GOING FORTH INTO ITS GARDEN BY DAY. 2]

2 Copied by Faucher-Gudin from the survey-drawings of the

tomb of Anni by Boussac, member of the _Mission française_

in Egypt (1891). The inscription over the arbour gives the

list of the various trees in the garden of Anni during his

lifetime.