Part 1

Transcriber’s note:

Hieroglyph scripts are shown as {H} and Old English text is surrounded by + sign. -----------------------------------------

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY.

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

BY ALFRED WIEDEMANN, D.PH. PROFESSOR OF ORIENTAL LANGUAGES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BONN

AUTHOR OF “ÆGYPTISCHE GESCHICHTE,” “DIE RELIGION DER ALTEN ÆGYPTER,” “HERODOT’S ZWEITES BUCH”

+With Twenty-one Illustrations+

LONDON H. GREVEL & CO. 33, KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 1895

Printed by Hazell Watson, &. Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

PREFACE.

In writing this treatise my object has been to give a clear exposition of the most important shape which the doctrine of immortality assumed in Egypt. This particular form of the doctrine was only one of many different ones that were held. The latter, however, were but occasional manifestations, whereas the system here treated of was the popular belief among all classes of the Egyptian people, from early to Coptic times. By far the greater part of the religious papyri and tomb texts and of the inscriptions of funerary stelæ are devoted to it; the symbolism of nearly all the amulets is connected with it; it was bound up with the practice of mummifying the dead; and it centred in the person of Osiris, the most popular of all the gods of Egypt.

Even in Pyramid times Osiris had already attained pre-eminence; he maintained this position throughout the whole duration of Egyptian national life, and even survived its fall. From the fourth century B.C. he, together with his companion deities, entered into the religious life of the Greeks; and homage was paid to him by imperial Rome. Throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, even to the remotest provinces of the Danube and the Rhine, altars were raised to him, to his wife Isis, and to his son Harpocrates; and wherever his worship spread, it carried with it that doctrine of immortality which was associated with his name. This Osirian doctrine influenced the systems of Greek philosophers; it made itself felt in the teachings of the Gnostics; we find traces of it in the writings of Christian apologists and the older fathers of the Church, and through their agency it has affected the thoughts and opinions of our own time.

The cause of this far-reaching influence lies both in the doctrine itself, which was at once the most profound and the most attractive of all the teachings of the Egyptian religion; and also in the comfort and consolation to be derived from the pathetically human story of its founder, Osiris. He, the son of the gods, had sojourned upon earth and bestowed upon men the blessings of civilisation. At length he fell a prey to the devices of the Wicked One, and was slain. But the triumph of evil and of death was only apparent: the work of Osiris endured, and his son followed in his footsteps and broke the power of evil. Neither had his being ended with death, for on dying he had passed into the world to come, henceforth to reign over the dead as “The Good Being.” Even as Osiris, so must each man die, no matter how noble and how godly his life; nevertheless his deeds should be established for ever, his name should endure, and the life which is eternal awaited him beyond the tomb. To the Egyptian, nature on every hand presented images of the life of Osiris. To him that life was reflected in the struggle between good and evil, in the contest between the fertilising Nile and the encroaching desert, no less than in the daily and yearly courses of the sun. In earlier times Osiris was occasionally confounded with the Sun god; later, the two deities were habitually merged in one another. The death and resurrection of Osiris occurred at the end of the month Khoiak−-that is to say, at the winter solstice, concurrently with the dying of the Sun of the Old Year and the rising of the Sun of the New. The new phoenix was supposed to make his appearance in March; and this bird, although usually associated with the Sun, was often representative of Osiris. And the epithets and titles of the Sun god were similarly bestowed upon Osiris.

All the Osirian doctrines were readily apprehended in spite of their deep import, and they steadily tended towards the evolution of a high form of monotheistic belief. To no close student of these doctrines can the fact seem strange that Egypt should have been the first country in which Christianity permeated the whole body of the people. The Egyptian could recognise his old beliefs in many a Christian theme, and so much did the figure of Christ remind him of Osiris and his son Horus, that to him Christ became a hero who traversed the Nile valley even as Horus had done, overcoming His enemies, the evil demons and the wicked. In Egypt the Osirian faith and dogma were the precursors of Christianity, the foundations upon which it was able to build; and, altogether apart from their intrinsic worth and far-reaching influence, it is this which constitutes their significance in the history of the world.

For the choice of the illustrations, as well as for the English version, I am gratefully indebted to my translator.

ALFRED WIEDEMANN.

Bonn, March 1895.

THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

Little as we know of the ancient Egyptian religion in its entirety, and of its motley mixture of childishly crude fetichism and deep philosophic thought, of superstition and true religious worship, of polytheism, henotheism, and pantheism, one dogma stands out clearly from this confusion, one article of belief to which the Egyptian religion owes its unique position among all other religions of antiquity−-the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul. It is true that other ancient religions attained to a similar dogma, for the belief was early developed among Semites, Indo-Germanians, Turanians, and Mongolians; but in all these cases it appears as the outcome of a higher conception of man and God and of their reciprocal relationship, and, when attained to, brought about the abandonment of grossly material forms of thought. But in Egypt we have the unique spectacle of one of the most elaborated forms of the doctrine of immortality side by side with the most elementary conception of higher beings ever formulated by any people. We do not know whether the belief in immortality which prevailed in the valley of the Nile is as old as the Egyptian religion in general, although at first sight it appears to be so. The oldest of the longer religious texts which have come down to us are found in the wall inscriptions of pyramids of kings of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (according to Manetho’s scheme of the dynasties), and must be dated to at least 3000 B.C. In these texts the doctrine of immortality appears as a completed system with a long history of development behind it.

In that system, all the stages through which this doctrine of the Egyptian religion had successively passed are preserved; for the Egyptians were so immoderately conservative in everything that they could not make up their minds to give up their old ideas of deity, even after having advanced to higher and purer ones. The older ideas were all carefully retained, and we find various systems of religion which in point of time had followed each other on Egyptian soil afterwards existing side by side. There is no trace of any struggle for the victory between these systems; each new order of thought was taken as it arose into the circle of the older ones, however heterogeneous it might be to the rest. The consequence was that in Egypt there was no religious progress in our sense of the term. With us it is essential that old and outworn forms of belief should be cast off; with them a new doctrine could achieve no greater success than to win a place among the older conceptions of the Egyptian Pantheon.

Each single divinity, each religious belief, each amulet, has in itself a clear and intelligible significance; and where this is apparently otherwise it is not because the point was obscure to the Egyptian mind, but because we have not yet succeeded in making it clear to ourselves. When we abandon the consideration of single points and try to imagine how the different detached notions were combined by the people into one belief, and what picture they had really formed of their Heaven and Pantheon—then we have set ourselves an impossible task. Many divinities have precisely the same character and perform the same functions; whole circles of ideas are mutually exclusive; yet all existed together and were accepted and believed in at one and the same time.

In these circumstances any discussion of Egyptian religious ideas must begin by dealing with isolated facts; each divinity, each idea, each smallest amulet must be carefully examined by itself and treated of in the light of the texts specially referring to it. Generations of Egyptians pondered on each single point seeking to elucidate it. With anxious fear priests and laymen strove to acquire the use of all the formulæ by the help of which man hoped to appease the gods, overcome demons, and attain to bliss, and all sought to provide themselves with every amulet possessing efficacy for the world to come and import for man’s eternal welfare. But great as must have been the expenditure of thought which produced and developed their various religious doctrines, the Egyptians never succeeded in welding their different beliefs and practices into one consistent whole.

In most religions the gods of life are distinct from the gods of death, but such a distinction scarcely existed at all in Egypt, There the same beings who were supposed to determine the fate of man in this world were supposed to determine it also in the world to come; only in the case of certain deities sometimes the one and sometimes the other side of the divine activity was brought into special prominence. The exercise of their different functions by the gods was not in accordance with any fixed underlying principle, was not any essential outcome of their characters, but rather a matter of their caprice and inclination. In course of time the Egyptian idea of these functions changed, and was variously apprehended in different places. It seems to us at first as though the relation of the gods to the life beyond had nearly everywhere been regarded as more important than their relation to this life. But this impression is owing to the fact that our material for the study of the Egyptian religion is almost exclusively derived from tombs and funerary temples, while the number of Egyptian monuments unconnected with the cult of the dead is comparatively small.

On this account it has been supposed that both in their religion and in their public life the Egyptians turned all their thoughts towards death and what lay beyond it. But a close examination of the monuments has proved that they had as full an enjoyment of the life here as other nations of antiquity, and that they are not to be regarded as a stiff and spiritless race of men whose thoughts were pedantically turned towards the contemplation of the next world.

Had this been the case, the Egyptians would have come to hold a pessimistic view of the life here and hereafter something like that prevailing in India, and have striven to escape from the monotony and dulness of existence by seeking some means to end it. But this is the reverse of what happened in the valley of the Nile. The most ardent wish of its inhabitants was to remain on earth as long as possible, to attain to the age of one hundred and ten years, and to continue to lead after death the same life which they had been wont to lead while here. They pictured the after-life in the most material fashion; they could imagine no fairer existence than that which they led on the banks of the Nile. How simple and at the same time how complicated were their conceptions can best be shown by some account of their ideas on the immortality of the soul and its constitution as a combination of separate parts set forth in ancient Egyptian documents.

When once a man was dead, when his heart had ceased to beat and warmth had left his body, a lifeless hull was all that remained of him upon earth. The first duty of the survivors was to preserve this from destruction, and to that end it was handed over to a guild whose duty it was to carry out its embalmment under priestly supervision. This was done according to old and strictly established rules. The internal and more corruptible parts were taken away, and the rest of the body—_i.e._, the bony framework and its covering—was soaked in natron and asphalt, smeared with sweet-smelling unguents, and made incorruptible. The inside of the body was filled with linen bandaging and asphalt, among which were placed all kinds of amulets symbolising immortality−-heart-shaped vases, snake-heads in carnelian, scarabæi, and little glazed-ware figures of divinities. By their mystic power these amulets were intended to further and assist the preservation of the corpse, for which physical provision had already been made by embalmment. In about seventy days, when the work of embalmment was completed, the body was wrapped in linen bandages, placed in a coffin, and so returned to the family.

The friends and relatives of the deceased then carried the dead in solemn procession across the river to his last resting-place, which he had provided for himself in the hills forming the western boundary of the valley of the Nile. Mourning-women accompanied the procession with their wailing; priests burnt incense and intoned prayers, and other priests made offerings and performed mysterious ceremonies both during the procession and at the entrance to the tomb.[1] The mummy was then lowered into the vault, which was closed and walled up, further offerings were made, and afterwards the mourners partook of the funeral feast in the ante-chamber of the tomb. Harpers were there who sang of the dead man and of his worth, and exhorted his relations to forget their grief and again to rejoice in life, so long as it should be granted unto them to enjoy the light of the sun; for when life is past man knows not what shall follow it; beyond the grave is darkness and long sleep. Gayer and gayer grew the banquet, often degenerating into an orgy; when at length all the guests had withdrawn, the tomb was closed, and the dead was left alone. Afterwards it was only on certain feast days that the relatives made pilgrimages to the city of the dead, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by priests. On these occasions they again entered the ante-chamber of the tomb, and there offered prayers to the dead, or brought him offerings, either in the shape of real foods and drinks, or else under the symbolic forms of little clay models of oxen, geese, cakes of bread, and the like. Otherwise the tomb remained unvisited. How it there fared with the dead could only be learned from the doctrines and mysteries of religion; to descend into the vault and disturb the peace of the mummy was accounted a heavy crime against both gods and men.

And yet how much an Egyptian could have wished to look behind the sealed walls of the sepulchral chamber and see what secret and mysterious things there befell the dead! For their existence had not terminated with death; their earthly being only had come to an end, but they themselves had entered on a new, a higher and an eternal life. The constituent parts, whose union in the man had made a human life possible, separated at the moment of his death into those which were immortal and those which were mortal. But while the latter formed a unity, and constituted the corruptible body only ([Illustration: {H}] KHA), on which the above-mentioned rites of embalmment were practised, each of the former were distinct even when in combination. These “living, indestructible” parts of a man, which together almost correspond to our idea of the soul, had found their common home in his living body; but on leaving it at his death each set out alone to find its own way to the gods. If all succeeded in doing so, and it was further proved that the deceased had been good and upright, they again became one with him, and so entered into the company of the blessed, or even of the gods.

The most important of all these component parts[2] was the so-called [Illustration: {H}], KA, the divine counterpart of the deceased, holding the same relation to him as a word to the conception which it expresses, or a statue to the living man. It was his individuality as embodied in the man’s name; the picture of him which was, or might have been, called up in the minds of those who knew him at the mention of that name.[3] Among other races similar thoughts have given rise to higher ideas, and led to a philosophic explanation of the distinction between personalities and persons, such as that contained in the Platonic Ideas. But the Egyptian was incapable of abstract thought, and was reduced to forming a purely concrete conception of this individuality, which is strangely impressive by reason of its thorough sensuousness. He endowed it with a material form completely corresponding to that of the man, exactly resembling him, his second self, his Double, his _Doppelgänger_.[4]

Many scenes, dating from the eighteenth century B.C. and onwards, represent different kings appearing before divinities, while behind the king stands his KA, as a little man with the king’s features (fig. 1), or as a staff with two hands (fig. 2),[6] and surmounted by certain symbols of royalty, or by the king’s head. In these scenes the Personality accompanies the Person, following him as a shadow follows a man.

But even as early as the time of Amenophis III., about 1500 B.C., the Egyptians had carried the idea still further, and had completely dissevered the Personality from the Person, the king being frequently represented as appearing before his own Personality, which bears the insignia of divinity, the staff of command, and the symbol of life, the [Illustration: {H}] _ānkh_ (fig. 3). To it the king presents offerings of every kind and prefers his petition for gifts of the gods in exchange His Personality replies: “I give unto thee all Life, all Stability, all Power, all Health, and all Joy (enlargement of heart); I subdue for thee the peoples of Nubia (Khent), so that thou mayest cut off their heads.” In bas-reliefs of the same period which represent the birth of Amenophis III.,[9] his KA is born at the same time as the king, and both are presented to Amen Rā, as two boys exactly alike (fig. 4), and blessed by him. About this time the kings began to build temples to their own Personalities, and appointed priests to them; and from time to time the sovereign would visit his temple to implore from himself his own protection, and still greater gifts. So long as the king walked the earth, so long his “living KA, lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, tarried in his dwelling, in the Abode of Splendour ([Illustration: {H}] Pa Dûat)”;[10] for his KA was himself, independent of him, superior to him, and yet his counterpart and bound up with him.

The disjunction of the Personality from the Person was not, however, rigorously and systematically insisted upon; the two were indeed separate, but were so far one as to come into being only through and with each other. A man lived no longer than his KA remained with him, and it never left him until the moment of his death. But there was this difference in their reciprocal relations: the KA could live without the body, but the body could not live without the KA. Yet this does not imply that the KA was a higher, a spiritual being; it was material in just the same way as the body itself, needing food and drink for its well-being, and suffering hunger and thirst if these were denied it. In this respect its lot was the common lot of Egyptian gods; they also required bodily sustenance, and were sorely put to it if offerings failed them and their food and drink were unsupplied.

After a man’s death his KA became his Personality proper; prayers and offerings were made to the gods that they might grant bread and wine, meat and milk, and all good things needful for the sustenance of a god to the KA of the deceased.[12] Offerings were also made to the KA itself, and it was believed that from time to time it visited the tomb in order to accept the food there provided for it. On such occasions it became incorporate in the mummy, which began to live and grow ([Illustration: {H}] rûd), or renew itself as do plants and trees ([Illustration: {H}] renp), and became, as the texts occasionally express it, “the living KA in its coffin.” The rich founded endowments whose revenues were to be expended to all time in providing their KAS with food offerings, and bequeathed certain sums for the maintenance of priests to attend to this; large staffs of officials were kept up to provide the necessaries of life for the Personalities of the dead.[13] The KA was represented by statues of the dead man which were placed within his tomb, and sometimes in temples also by gracious permission of the sovereign.[14] Wherever one of these statues stood, there might the KA sojourn and take part in Feasts of Offerings and the pleasures of earthly life; there even seems to have been a belief that it might be imprisoned in a statue by means of certain magic formulæ. Royal statues in the temples were destined to the use of the royal KAS, the many statues of the same king in one temple being apparently all intended for his own Ka service.[15]

The Egyptians, holding the belief that the statue of a human being represented and embodied a human KA, concluded that the statues of the gods represented and embodied divine KAS, and were indeed neither more nor less than the KAS of the gods. Thus the idea of divinity became entirely anthropomorphic, and, just as the king built his temple not to himself but to his Personality, so also sanctuaries were sometimes dedicated not to a god himself but to his Personality. For example, the chief temple of Memphis was not for the service of the god Ptah,—the maker of the world, whom the Greeks compared to Hephæstos,—but rather for that of his KA. Ptah was not alone among the gods in this respect. The pyramid texts show that even in the times of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties Thot, Set, Horus, and other gods were recognised as having KAS; that is to say, each was supposed to be possessed of his own Personality in addition to himself.[16] It was believed that the divine KA, this image which had the greater likeness to man, stood nearer to man than the god himself, and hence in the case of votive stelæ dedicated to the incarnation of Ptah in the sacred Apis-bull of Memphis, prayer for the divine favour and blessings is not as a rule addressed to the Apis, but to its Ka. It is a very remarkable fact that in several inscriptions[17] the god Rā is credited with no less than seven BAS and fourteen KAS, corresponding to the various qualities or attributes pertaining to his own being, and which he could communicate to the person of the king; such as: wealth, stability, majesty, glory, might, victory, creative power, etc.[18]