salute the soul: "Come, Osiris N. Thou dost enter the hall of the two goddesses of truth! Thou art purified from all sin, from all crime. Hail, Osiris N.! Thou being very pure dost enter the lower heaven. The two goddesses of justice have purified thee in the great hall. Thou art justified forever and ever!" "0 ye gods who dwell in the lower heaven, hearken unto the voice of Osiris N. He is near unto you. There is no fault in him. … He liveth in the truth, he nourisheth himself with truth. The gods are satisfied with what he hath done. Let him live! Let his soul live!"[1]
That which strikes one most in the one hundred and twenty-fifth chapter is the profound insight that every work shall be brought into judgment, and every secret thing whether it be good or evil. It is the voice of conscience which accuses or excuses in that solemn hour, for no accuser appears in the hall; the man's whole life is seen by himself in its true light, all is "laid bare before Him with whom we have to do;" perfect justice is meted to every man, and yet at the last moment "mercy seasons justice," for the judge is Osiris the god-man.
The rubric that follows this chapter states that it was to be repeated on earth with great solemnity. The worshipper must be "clad in pure linen, and shod with white sandals, and anointed with fragrant oil, because he is received into the service of Osiris and is to be dressed in pure fine linen forever." This reminds us of the Apocalyptic vision: "To her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints."[2]
Constantly did the Egyptian look forward to the day of final judgment. It was the most important day of his existence: he called it, with significant brevity, "the day" — dies illa — the day in which he hoped to be "justified," or, as he expressed it, "found true in the balance." It was the supreme moment of escape from the death and darkness of this world into the life and light of the other world: then, not till then, should he "behold the face of God." Therefore death had for him no terror; it was a law, not a punishment;[3] it was a release from the company of the fellow-spirits imprisoned in the body. Sometimes a perfect representation of a mummy was seated at the Egyptian banquets; sometimes it was carried round to each guest in turn: "Gaze here, drink and be merry, for when you die such shall you become."[4] The object of this custom was to teach men "to love one another, and to avoid those evils which tend to make them consider life too long when in reality it is too short."[5] In a festal dirge King Antuf (eleventh dynasty) sang: "The gods who were aforetime rest in their tombs; the mummies of the saints are enwrapped in their tombs. They who build houses, and they who have no houses, behold what becomes of them. … No man returns thence. Who tells of their sayings? who tells of their doings? who encourages our hearts ? Ye go to the place whence none return. … Feast in tranquillity, seeing that there is no one who carries away his goods with him. Yea, behold, none who goes thither comes back again."[6] There is a sadness, a profound melancholy, in the "death in life" of the ancient Egyptians, which perhaps justifies the curious remark of Apuleius: "The gods of Egypt rejoice in lamentations, the gods of Greece in dances."
The Egyptian had a reverence for his body — the casket in which the precious jewel of the soul "lodged as in an inn" for so many years — and so he built sumptuous tombs, and adorned them with frescoes and inscriptions, and called them his "everlasting home."[7] Saneha, in his autobiography (2000 b.c.), says: "I built myself a tomb of stone. His Majesty chose the site. The chief painter designed it, the sculptors carved it. … All the decorations were of hewn stone. … My image was carved upon the portal of pure gold. His Majesty caused it to be done. No other was like unto it."[8]
These tombs were often sadly desecrated. We read, for instance, of a commission appointed by Rameses the Ninth to inspect the tombs of the "royal ancestors" at Thebes. Their report has been translated by M. Chabas. It states that some of the royal mummies were found lying in the dust; their gold and silver ornaments and the treasures had been stolen. It also mentions a tomb "broken into from the back, at the place where the stela is placed before the monument, and having the statue of the king upon the front of the stela with his hound Bahuka between his legs. Verified this day, and found intact."[9]
- ↑ Saï an Sinsin. Records of the Past, iv. 121.
- ↑ Revel. xix. 8.
- ↑ "Mors lex non pœna est." — Cicero.
- ↑ Herod. ii. 78. Lucian, Essay on Grief.
- ↑ Plutarch, De Is. 15.
- ↑ Records of the Past, iv. 118.
- ↑ άιδίους οίκους προσαγορεύουσιν. — Diodor. i. 51.
- ↑ Goodwin's translation in Records, vi. 133.
- ↑ Mélanges Egypt., 3me série, 1870.
