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Development of Religion
and
Thought in Ancient Egypt
2
LIFE
AFTER DEATH—THE SOJOURN IN THE TOMB—DEATH MAKES ITS IMPRESSION ON RELIGION
Among no people ancient or
modern has the idea of a life beyond the grave held so prominent a place as
among the ancient Egyptians. This insistent belief in a hereafter may perhaps
have been, and experience in the land of Egypt has led me to believe it was,
greatly favored and influenced by the fact that the conditions of soil and
climate resulted in such a remarkable preservation of the human body as may be
found under natural conditions nowhere else in the world. In going up to the daily
task on some neighboring temple in Nubia, I was not infrequently obliged to
pass through the corner of a cemetery, where the feet of a dead man, buried in
a shallow grave, were now uncovered and extended directly across my path. They
were precisely like the rough and calloused feet of the workmen in our
excavations. How old the grave was I do not know, but any one familiar with the
cemeteries of Egypt, ancient and modern, has found numerous bodies or portions
of bodies indefinitely old which seemed about as well preserved as those of the
living. This must have been a frequent experience of the ancient
Egyptian, and like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick in his hands, he must often
have pondered deeply as he contemplated these silent witnesses. The
surprisingly perfect state of preservation in which he found his ancestors
whenever the digging of a new grave disclosed them, must have greatly stimulated
his belief in their continued existence, and often aroused his
imagination to more detailed pictures of the realm and the life of the
mysterious departed. The earliest and simplest of these beliefs began at an age
so remote that they have left no trace in surviving remains. The cemeteries of
the prehistoric communities along the Nile, discovered and excavated since
1894, disclose a belief in the future life which was already in an advanced
stage. Thousands of graves, the oldest of which cannot be dated much later than
the fifth millennium B.C., were dug by these primitive people in the desert
gravels along the margin of the alluvium. In the bottom of the pit, which is
but a few feet in depth, lies the body with the feet drawn up toward the chin
and surrounded by a meagre equipment of pottery, flint implements, stone
weapons, and utensils, and rude personal ornaments, all of which were of course
intended to furnish the departed for his future life.
From the archaic beliefs represented in such burials as these it is a
matter of fifteen hundred years to the appearance of the earliest written
documents surviving to us—documents from which we may draw fuller knowledge of
the more developed faith of a people rapidly rising toward a high material
civilization and a unified governmental organization, the first great state of
antiquity. Much took place in the thought of this remote people during that
millennium and a half, but for another half millennium after the beginning of
written documents we are still unable to discern the drift of the development.
For two thousand years, therefore, after the stage of belief represented by the
earliest burials just mentioned, that development went on, though it is now a
lost chapter in human thought which we shall never recover.
When we take up the course of the development about
3000 B.C., we have before us the complicated results of a commingling of
originally distinct beliefs which have long since interpenetrated each other
and have for many centuries circulated thus a tangled mass of threads which it
is now very difficult or impossible to disentangle.
Certain fundamental distinctions can be made, however. The early belief
that the dead lived in or at the tomb, which must therefore be equipped to
furnish his necessities in the hereafter, was one from which the Egyptian has
never escaped entirely, not even at the present day. As hostile creatures infesting
the cemeteries, the dead were dreaded, and protection from their malice was
necessary. Even the pyramid must be protected from the malignant dead prowling
about the necropolis, and in later times a man might be afflicted even in his
house by a deceased member of his family wandering in from the cemetery. His
mortuary practices therefore constantly gave expression to his involuntary
conviction that the departed continued to inhabit the tomb long after the
appearance of highly developed views regarding a blessed hereafter elsewhere in
some distant region. We who continue to place flowers on the graves of our
dead, though we may at the same time cherish beliefs in some remote paradise of
the departed, should certainly find nothing to wonder at in the conflicting
beliefs and practices of the ancient Nile-dweller five thousand years ago. Side
by side the two beliefs subsisted, that the dead continued to dwell in or near
the tomb, and at the same time that he departed elsewhere to a distant and
blessed realm.
In taking up the first of these two beliefs, the sojourn in the tomb, it
will be necessary to understand the Egyptian notion of a person, and of those
elements of the human personality which might survive death. These views are of
course not the studied product of a highly trained and long-developed
self-consciousness. On the contrary, we have in them the involuntary and
unconscious impressions of an early people, in the study of which it is
apparent that we are confronted by the earliest chapter in folk-psychology
which has anywhere descended to us from the past.
On the walls of the temple of Luxor, where the birth of Amenhotep III
was depicted in sculptured scenes late in the fifteenth century before Christ,
we find the little prince brought in on the arm of the Nile-god, accompanied
apparently by another child. This second figure, identical in external
appearance with that of the prince, is a being called by the Egyptians the
"ka"; it was born with the prince, being communicated to him by the
god. This curious comrade of an individual was corporeal and the fortunes of the two were ever afterward closely associated; but
the ka was not an element of the personality, as is so often stated. It seems
to me indeed from a study of the Pyramid Texts, that the nature of the ka has
been fundamentally misunderstood. He was a kind of superior genius intended to
guide the fortunes of the individual in the hereafter, or it was in the
world of the hereafter that he chiefly if not exclusively had his abode, and
there he awaited the coming of his earthly companion. In the oldest
inscriptions the death of a man may be stated by saying that "he goes to
his ka"; when Osiris dies he "goes to his ka." Hence the dead are referred to as those "who have gone to their
kas." Moreover, the ka was really separated from its protégé by more than the mere distance to the
cemetery, for in one passage the deceased "goes to his ka, to the
sky." Similarly the sojourn in the hereafter is described as an association
with the ka, and one of the powers of the blessed dead was to have dominion over the
other kas there. In their relations with each other the ka was distinctly superior to
his mundane companion. In the oldest texts the sign for the ka, the uplifted
arms, are frequently borne upon the standard which bears the signs for the
gods. "Call upon thy ka, like Osiris, that he may protect thee from all
anger of the dead," says one to the deceased; and to be the ka of a person is to have
entire control over him. Thus in addressing Osiris it is said of Set, "He
(Horus) has smitten Set for thee, bound; thou art his (Set's) ka." In the hereafter, at least, a person is under the dominion of his own
ka. The ka assists the deceased by speaking to the great god on his behalf, and
after this intercession, by introducing the dead man to the god (Re). He
forages for the deceased and brings him food that they both may eat
together, and like two guests they sit together at the same table. But the ka is ever the protecting genius. The dead king Pepi
"lives with his ka; he (the ka) expels the evil that is before Pepi, he
removes the evil that is behind Pepi, like the boomerangs of the lord of
Letopolis, which remove the evil that is before him and expel the evil that is
behind him." Notwithstanding their intimate association, there was danger that the
ka might fail
to recognize his protégé, and the departed therefore received a
garment peculiar to him, by means of which the ka may not mistake him for an
enemy whom he might slay. So strong was the ka, and so close was his union with his protégé,
that to have control over a god or a man it was necessary to gain the power
over his ka also, and complete justification of the deceased was only certain when his ka
also was justified. Thus united, the deceased and his protecting genius lived a common life
in the hereafter, and they said to the dead: "How beautiful it is in the
company of thy ka!" The mortuary priest whose duty it was to supply the needs of the
deceased in the hereafter was for this reason called "servant of the
ka," and whatever he furnished the ka was shared by him with his protégé,
as we have seen him foraging for his charge, and securing for him provisions
which they ate together. Eventually, that is after a long development, we find
the tombs of about 2000 B.C. regularly containing prayers for material
blessings in the hereafter ending with the words: "for the ka of X"
(the name of the deceased).
While the relation of the ka to the dead is thus fairly clear, it is not
so evident in the case of the living. His protecting power evidently had begun
at the birth of the individual, though he was most useful to his protégé after earthly life was over. We find the ka as the protecting genius of a
mortuary temple dwelling on earth, but it is certainly significant that it is a
mortuary building which he protects. Moreover the earliest example of such a local genius is Osiris, a mortuary god, who is said to become the ka of a pyramid and
its temple, that they may enjoy
his protection. As we stated above, however, the ka was not an element of the
personality, and we are not called upon to explain him physically or
psychologically as such. He is roughly parallel with the later notion of the
guardian angel as found among other peoples, and he is of course far the
earliest known example of such a being. It is of importance to note that in all
probability the ka was originally the exclusive possession of kings, each of
whom thus lived under the protection of his individual guardian genius, and
that by a process of slow development the privilege of possessing a ka became
universal among all the people.
The actual personality of the individual in life consisted, according to
the Egyptian notion, in the visible body, and the invisible intelligence, the
seat of the last being considered the "heart" or the
"belly," which indeed furnished the chief designations for the intelligence.
Then the vital principle which, as so frequently among other peoples, was
identified with the breath which animated the body, was not clearly
distinguished from the intelligence. The two together were pictured in one
symbol, a
human-headed bird with human arms, which we find in the tomb and coffin
scenes depicted hovering over the mummy and extending to its nostrils in one
hand the figure of a swelling sail, the hieroglyph for wind or breath, and in
the other the so-called crux ansata, or symbol of life. This curious
little bird-man was called by the Egyptians the "ba." The fact has
been strangely overlooked that originally the ba came into existence really for
the first time at the death of the individual. All sorts of devices and
ceremonies were resorted to that the deceased might at death become a ba, or as
the Pyramid Texts, addressing the dead king, say, "that thou mayest become
a ba among the gods, thou living as (or 'in') thy ba." There was a denominative verb "ba," meaning "to become a
ba." Ba has commonly been translated as "soul," and the
translation does indeed roughly correspond to the Egyptian idea. It is
necessary to remember, however, in dealing with such terms as these among so
early a people, that they had no clearly defined notion of the exact nature of
such an element of personality. It is evident that the Egyptian never wholly
dissociated a person from the body as an instrument or vehicle of sensation,
and they resorted to elaborate devices to restore to the body its various
channels of sensibility, after the ba, which comprehended these very things,
had detached itself from the body. He thought of his departed friend as
existing in the body, or at least as being in outward appearance still
possessed of a body, as we do, if we attempt to picture our departed friend at
all. Hence, when depicted in mortuary paintings, the departed of course appears
as he did in life.
In harmony with these conceptions was the desire of the surviving
relatives to insure physical restoration to the dead. Gathered with the
relatives and friends of the deceased, on the flat roof of the massive masonry
tomb, the mortuary priest stood over the silent body and addressed the
departed: "Thy bones perish not, thy flesh sickens not, thy members are
not distant from thee." Or he turns to the flesh of the dead itself and says: "O flesh of
this king Teti, decay not, perish not; let not thy odor be evil." He utters a whole series of strophes, each concluding with the refrain:
"King Pepi decays not, he rots not, he is not bewitched by your wrath, ye
gods."
However effective these injunctions may have been, they were not
considered sufficient. The motionless body must be resuscitated and restored to
the use of its members and senses. This resurrection might be the act of a
favoring god or goddess, as when accomplished by Isis or Horus, or the priest
addresses the dead and assures him that the Sky-goddess
will raise him up: "She sets on again for thee thy head, she
gathers for thee thy bones, she unites for thee thy members, she brings for
thee thy heart into thy body." Sometimes the priest assumes that the dead does not even enter the
earth at interment and assures the mourning relatives: "His abomination is
the earth, king Unis enters not Geb (the Earth-god). When he perishes, sleeping
in his house on earth, his bones are restored, his injuries are
removed. But if the inexorable fact be accepted that the body now lies in the
tomb, the priest undauntedly calls upon the dead: "Arise, dwellers in your
tombs. Loose your bandages, throw off the sand
from thy (sic!) face. Lift thee up from upon thy left side, support
thyself on thy right side. Raise thy face that thou mayest look at this which I
have done for thee. I am thy son, I am thy heir." He assures the dead: "Thy bones are gathered together for thee,
thy members are prepared for thee, thy impurities are thrown off for thee, thy bandages are loosed for
thee. The tomb is opened for thee, the coffin is broken open for
thee." And yet the insistent fact of death so inexorably proclaimed by the
unopened tomb led the priest to call upon the dead to waken and arise before
each ceremony which he performed. As he brings food and drink we find him
calling: "Raise thee up, king Pepi, receive to thee thy water. Gather to
thee thy bones, stand thou up upon thy two feet, being a glorious one before
the glorious. Raise thee up for this thy bread which cannot dry up, and thy
beer which cannot become stale."
But even when so raised the dead was not in possession
of his senses and faculties, nor the power to control and use his body
and limbs. His mourning friends could not abandon him to the uncertain future
without aiding him to recover all his powers. "King Teti's mouth is opened
for him, king Teti's nose is opened for him, king Teti's ears are opened for
him," says the priest, and elaborate ceremonies were performed to accomplish
this restoration of the senses and the faculty of speech.
All this was of no avail, however, unless the unconscious body received
again the seat of consciousness and feeling, which in this restoration of the
mental powers was regularly the heart. "The heart of king Teti is not
taken away," says the ritual; or if it has gone the Sky-goddess "brings for
thee thy heart into thy body (again)."
Several devices were necessary to make of this unresponsive mummy a
living person, capable of carrying on the life hereafter. He has not become a
ba, or a soul merely by dying, as we stated in referring to the nature of the
ba. It was necessary to aid him to become a soul. Osiris when lying dead had
become a soul by receiving from his son Horus the latter's eye, wrenched from
the socket in his conflict with Set. Horus, recovering his eye, gave it to his
father, and on receiving it Osiris at once became a soul. From that time any
offering to the dead might be, and commonly was, called the "eye of Horus,
"and might thus produce the same effect as on Osiris.
"Raise thee up," says the priest, "for this thy bread,
which cannot dry up, and thy beer which cannot become stale, by which thou
shalt become a soul." The food which the priest offered possessed the mysterious power of
effecting the transformation of the dead man into a soul as the "eye of
Horus" had once transformed Osiris. And it did more than this, for the
priest adds, "by which thou shalt become one prepared." To be "one prepared" or, as the variants have it, "one
equipped," is explained in the tombs of the Old Kingdom, where we find the
owner boasting, "I am an excellent, equipped spirit, I know every secret
charm of the court." This man, a provincial noble, is proud of the fact that he was granted
the great boon of acquaintance with the magical mortuary equipment used for the
king at the court, an equipment intended to render the dead invulnerable and
irresistible in the hereafter. We are able then to understand another noble of
the same period when he says: "I am an excellent equipped spirit
(literally, 'glorious one') whose mouth knows," meaning his mouth is familiar with the mortuary magical equipment,
which he is able to repeat whenever needed: Similarly one of the designations
of the departed in the Pyramid Texts is "the glorious by reason of their
equipped mouths." Finally this strangely potent bread and beer which the priest offers
the dead, not only makes him a "soul" and makes him
"prepared," but it also gives him "power" or makes him a
"mighty one." The "power" conferred was in the first place intended to
control the body of the dead and guide its actions, and without this power
intended for this specific purpose it is evident the Egyptian believed the dead
to be helpless. This "power" was also
intended to give the dead ability to confront successfully the uncanny
adversaries who awaited him in the beyond. It was so characteristic of the
dead, that they might be spoken of as the "mighty" as we say the
"blessed," and it was so tangible a part of the equipment of the
departed that it underwent purification together with him. This
"power" finally gave the deceased also "power" over all
other powers within him, and the priest says to him, "Thou hast power over
the powers that are in thee."
From these facts it is evident that the Egyptians had developed a rude
psychology of the dead, in accordance with which they endeavored to
reconstitute the individual by processes external to him, under the
control of the survivors, especially the mortuary priest who possessed the
indispensable ceremonies for accomplishing this end. We may summarize it all in
the statement that after the resuscitation of the body, there was a mental
restoration or a reconstitution of the faculties one by one, attained
especially by the process of making the deceased a "soul" (ba), in
which capacity he again existed as a person, possessing all the powers
that would enable him to subsist and survive in the life hereafter. It is
therefore not correct to attribute to the Egyptians a belief in the immortality of the soul strictly interpreted as imperishability or to speak of his
"ideas of immortality."
That life now involved an elaborate material equipment, a monumental
tomb with its mortuary furniture. The massive masonry tomb, like a truncated
pyramid with very steep sides, was but the rectangular descendant of the
prehistoric tumulus, with a retaining wall around it, once of rough stones, now
of carefully laid hewn stone masonry, which has taken on some of the incline of
its ancient ancestor, the sand heap, or tumulus, still within it. In the east
side of the superstructure, which was often of imposing size, was a rectangular
room, perhaps best called a chapel, where the offerings for the dead might be
presented and these ceremonies on his behalf might be performed. For,
notwithstanding the elaborate reconstitution of the dead as a person, he was not
unquestionably able to maintain himself in the hereafter without assistance
from his surviving relatives. All such mortuary arrangements were chiefly
Osirian, for in the Solar faith the Sun-god did not die among men, nor did he
leave a family to mourn for him and maintain mortuary ceremonies on his behalf.
To be sure, the oldest notion of the relation
of Osiris to the dead, which is discernible in the Pyramid Texts, represents
him as hostile to them, but this is an archaic survival of which only a trace
remains. As a son of Geb the Earth-god, it was altogether natural to confide the
dead to his charge.
It was the duty of every son to arrange the material equipment of his
father for the life beyond—a duty so naturally and universally felt that it
involuntarily passed from the life of the people into the Osiris myth as the
duty of Horus toward his father Osiris. It was an obligation which was
sometimes met with faithfulness in the face of difficulty and great danger, as
when Sebni of Elephantine received news of the death of his father, Mekhu, in
the Sudan, and at once set out with a military escort to penetrate the country
of the dangerous southern tribes and to rescue the body of his father. The
motive for such self-sacrifice was of course the desire to recover his father's
body that it might be embalmed and preserved, in order that the old man might
not lose all prospect of life beyond. Hence it was that when the son neared the
frontier on his return, he sent messengers to the court with news of what had
happened, so that as he re-entered Upper Egypt he was met by a company from the
court, made up of the embalmers, mortuary priests, and mourners, bearing
fragrant oil, aromatic gums, and fine linen, that all the ceremonies of
embalmment, interment, and complete equipment for the hereafter might be
completed at once, before the body should further perish.
The erection of the tomb was an equally obvious duty incumbent upon sons
and relatives, unless indeed that father was so attached to his own departed
father that he desired to rest in his father's tomb, as one noble of the
twenty-sixth century B.C. informs us was his wish. He says: "Now I
caused that I should be buried in the same tomb with this Zau (his father's
name) in order that I might be with him in the same place; not, however,
because I was not in a position to make a second tomb; but I did this in order
that I might see this Zau every day, in order that I might be with him in the
same place. This pious son says further: "I buried my father, the count Zau,
surpassing the splendor, surpassing the goodliness of any equal of his who was in this South" (meaning Upper Egypt).
From the thirty-fourth century on, as the tombs of the First Dynasty at
Abydos show, it had become customary for favorite officials and partisans of
the Pharaoh to be buried in the royal cemetery, forming a kind of mortuary
court around the monarch whom they had served in life. Gradually the king
became more and more involved in obligations to assist his nobles in the
erection of their tombs and to contribute from the royal treasury to the
splendor and completeness of their funerals. The favorite physician of the king
receives a requisition on the treasury and the royal quarries for the labor and
the transportation necessary to procure him a great and sumptuous false door of
massive limestone for his tomb, and he tells us the fact with great
satisfaction and much circumstance in his tomb inscriptions. We see the Pharaoh in the royal palanquin on the road which mounts from
the valley to the desert plateau, whither he has ascended to inspect his
pyramid, now slowly rising on the margin of the desert overlooking the valley.
Here he discovers the unfinished
tomb of Debhen, one of his favorites, who may have presumed upon a
moment of royal complaisance to call attention to its unfinished condition. The
king at once details fifty men to work upon the tomb of his protégé, and
afterward orders the royal engineers and quarrymen who are at work upon a
temple in the vicinity to bring for the fortunate Debhen two false doors of
stone, the blocks for the façade of the tomb, and likewise a portrait statue of
Debhen to be erected therein. One of the leading nobles who was flourishing at the close of the
twenty-seventh century B.C. tells us in his autobiography how he was similarly
favored: "Then I besought . . . the majesty of the king that there be
brought for me a limestone sarcophagus from Troja (royal quarries near Cairo,
from which much stone for the pyramids of Gizeh was taken). The king had the
treasurer of the god (= Pharaoh's treasurer) ferry over, together with a troop
of sailors under his hand, in order to bring for me this sarcophagus from
Troja; and he arrived with it in a large ship belonging to the court (that is,
one of the royal galleys), together with its lid, the false door . . . (several
other blocks the words for which are not quite certain in meaning), and one
offering-tablet."
In such cases as these, and indeed quite frequently, the king was
expected to contribute to the embalmment and burial of a favorite noble. We
have already seen how the Pharaoh sent out his body of mortuary officials,
priests, and embalmers to meet Sebni, returning from the Sudan with his
father's body. Similarly
he despatched one of his commanders to rescue the body of an unfortunate noble
who with his entire military escort had been massacred by the Bedwin on the
shores of the Red Sea, while building
a ship for the voyage to Punt, the Somali coast, in all likelihood the
land of Ophir of the Old Testament. Although the rescuer does not say so in his
brief inscription, it is evident that the Pharaoh desired to secure the body of
this noble also in order to prepare it properly for the hereafter. Such solicitude can only have been due to the sovereign's personal
attachment to a favorite official. This is quite evident in the case of
Weshptah, one of the viziers of the Fifth Dynasty about 2700 B.C. The king, his
family, and the court were one day inspecting a new building in course of
construction under Weshptah's superintendence, for, besides being grand vizier,
he was also chief architect. All admire the work and the king turns to praise
his faithful minister when he notices that Weshptah does not hear the words of
royal favor. The king's exclamation alarms the courtiers, the stricken minister
is quickly carried to the court, and the priests and chief physicians are
hurriedly summoned. The king has a case of medical rolls brought in, but all is
in vain. The physicians declare his case hopeless. The king is smitten with
sorrow and retires to his chamber, where he prays to Re. He then makes all arrangements
for Weshptah's burial, ordering an ebony coffin made and having the body
anointed in his own presence. The dead noble's eldest son was then empowered to
build the tomb, which the king furnished and endowed. The noble whose pious son wished to rest in the same tomb with him (p.
64) enjoyed similar favor at the king's hands. His son says: "I requested
as an honor from the majesty of my lord, the king of Egypt, Pepi II, who lives
forever, that there be levied a coffin, clothing, and festival perfume for this
Zau (his dead father). His majesty caused that the custodian
of the royal domain should bring a coffin of wood, festival perfume,
oil, clothing, two hundred pieces of first-grade linen and of fine southern
linen . . . taken from the White House (the royal treasury) of the court for
this Zau."
Interred thus in royal splendor and equipped with sumptuous furniture,
the maintenance of the departed, in theory at least, through all time was a responsibility which he dared not intrust exclusively to his surviving
family or eventually to a posterity whose solicitude on his behalf must
continue to wane and finally disappear altogether. The noble therefore executed
carefully drawn wills and testamentary endowments, the income from which was to
be devoted exclusively to the maintenance of his tomb and the presentation of
oblations of incense, ointment, food, drink, and clothing in liberal quantities
and at frequent intervals. The source of this income might be the revenues from
the noble's own lands or from his offices and the perquisites belonging to his
rank, from all of which a portion might be permanently diverted for the support
of his tomb and its ritual.
In a number of cases the legal instrument establishing these foundations
has been engraved as a measure of safety on the wall inside the tomb-chapel
itself and has thus been preserved to us. At Siut Hepzefi the count and baron
of the province has left us ten elaborate contracts on the inner wall of his
tomb-chapel, intended to perpetuate the service which he desired to have
regularly celebrated at his tomb or on his behalf.
The amount of the endowment was sometimes surprisingly
large. In the twenty-ninth century B.C., the tomb of prince Nekure, son
of king Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty, was endowed from the prince's private
fortune with no less than twelve towns, the income of which went exclusively to
the support of his tomb. A palace steward in Userkaf's time, in the middle of
the twenty-eighth century B.C., appointed eight mortuary priests for the
service of his tomb, and a baron of Upper Egypt two centuries and a half later
endowed his tomb with the revenues from eleven villages and settlements. The
income of a mortuary priest in such a tomb was, in one instance, sufficient to
enable him to endow the tomb of his daughter in the same way. In addition to
such private resources, the death of a noble not infrequently resulted in
further generosity on the part of the king, who might either increase the
endowment which the noble had already made during his life, or even furnish it
entirely from the royal revenues.
The privileges accruing to the dead from these endowments, while they
were intended to secure him against all apprehension of hunger, thirst, or cold
in the future life, seem to have consisted chiefly in enabling him to share in
the most important feasts and celebrations of the year. Like all Orientals the
Egyptian took great delight in religious celebrations, and the good cheer which
abounded on such occasions he was quite unwilling to relinquish when he
departed this world. The calendar of feasts, therefore, was a matter of the
greatest importance to him, and he was willing to divert plentiful revenues to
enable him to celebrate all its important days in the hereafter as he had once
so bountifully done among his friends on earth. He really expected, moreover,
to celebrate these
joyous occasions among his friends in the temple just as he once had
been wont to do, and to accomplish this he had a statue of himself erected in
the temple court. Sometimes the king, as a particular distinction granted to a
powerful courtier, commissioned the royal sculptors to make such a statue and
station it inside the temple door. In his tomb likewise the grandee of the
Pyramid Age set up a sumptuous stone portrait statue of himself, concealed in a
secret chamber hidden in the mass of the masonry. Such statues, too, the king
not infrequently furnished to the leading nobles of his government and court.
It was evidently supposed that this portrait statue, the earliest of which we
know anything in art, might serve as a body for the disembodied dead, who might
thus return to enjoy a semblance at least of bodily presence in the temple, or
again in the same way return to the tomb-chapel, where he might find other
representations of his body in the secret chamber close by the chapel.
We discern in such usages the emergence of a more highly developed and
more desirable hereafter, which has gradually supplanted the older and simpler
views. The common people doubtless still thought of their dead either as
dwelling in the tomb, or at best as inhabiting the gloomy realm of the west,
the subterranean kingdom ruled by the old mortuary gods eventually led by
Osiris. But for the great of the earth, the king and his nobles at least, a
happier destiny had now dawned. They might dwell at will with the Sun-god in
his glorious celestial kingdom. In the royal tomb we can henceforth discern the
emergence of this Solar hereafter .
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