History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 1 — 12 - Vol. 01, Ch. 02: The Gods of Egypt, pt. 4

Having taken these precautions, they placed the body in the grave, sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin.

The dead man was placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the east, in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of leather or a fleece, in the position of a child in the foetal state.

The knees were sharply bent at an angle of 45° with the thighs, while the latter were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as almost to touch the elbows.

The hands are sometimes extended in front of the face, sometimes the arms are folded and the hands joined on the breast or neck.

In some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk.

The deceased could only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation.

The dryness of the ground selected for these burial-places retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally destroyed.

Seeing decay could not be prevented, it was determined to accelerate the process, by taking the flesh from the bones before interment.

The bodies thus treated are often incomplete; the head is missing, or is detached from the neck and laid in another part of the pit, or, on the other hand, the body is not there, and the head only is found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones, or a layer of cut flints.

The forearms and the hands were subjected to the same treatment as the head.

In many cases no trace of them appears, in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered about haphazard.

Other mutilations are frequently met with; the ribs are divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground or enclosed together in an earthenware chest.

These precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the Egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice.

The human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor continuity.

It was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no connecting links.

This drawback, it is true, was remedied by the artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies.

The bones were laid in their natural order; those of the feet at the bottom, then those of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself.

But the superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally incomplete.

When they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living.

Having taken this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could really enjoy life so long as one half only of the body remained, and the other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to discover the means of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the body.

It had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted away,[*] and the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance, while its integrity ensured that of the soul.

* Such was the appearance of the bodies of Coptic monks of the sixth, eighth, and ninth centuries, which I found in the convent cemeteries of Contra-Syene, Taûd, and Akhmîm, right in the midst of the desert.

An attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative action of the sand, and, without mutilating the body, to secure at will that incorruptibility without which the persistence of the soul was but a useless prolongation of the death-agony.

It was the god Anubis--the jackal lord of sepulture--who was supposed to have made this discovery.

He cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most rapidly decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected it first of all with the hide of a beast, and over this laid thick layers of linen.

The victory the god had thus gained over corruption was, however, far from being a complete one.

The bath in which the dead man was immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body: the chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the period of saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously diminished.

When any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn: these shrivelled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened skin spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer's salts, were not the man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been.

As nevertheless he was secure against immediate destruction, the Egyptians described him as furnished with his shape; henceforth he had been purged of all that was evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security whatever awaited him in the future.

The art of Anubis, transmitted to the embalmers and employed by them from generation to generation, had, by almost eliminating the corruptible part of the body without destroying its outward appearance, arrested decay, if not for ever, at least for an unlimited period of time.

If there were hills at hand, thither the mummied dead were still borne, partly from custom, partly because the dryness of the air and of the soil offered them a further chance of preservation.

In districts of the Delta where the hills were so distant as to make it very costly to reach them, advantage was taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above the marshes, and there a cemetery was founded.

Where this resource failed, the mummy was fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after being placed within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough, hermetically fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of any moisture.

Reassured on this point, the soul followed the body to the tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines of the visible and invisible worlds.

Here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which pertained to it "upon the earth:" as it had been a "double" before death, so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions of animal life after its own fashion.

It moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechanically, rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any rational desire for immortality.

Unceasing regret for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful and inert existence.

"O my brother, withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth?

The West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein its inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy-forms, never more waking to see their brethren; never more to recognize their fathers or their mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children.

The living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but stagnant and dead;

that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine.

Since I came into this funereal valley I know not where nor what I am.

Give me to drink of running water!...

Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow."

By day the double remained concealed within the tomb.

If it went forth by night, it was from no capricious or sentimental desire to revisit the spots where it had led a happier life.

Its organs needed nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed nothing "but hunger for food, thirst for drink."

[*] Want and misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living.

It prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground--broken meats which had been left or forgotten, house and stable refuse--and, should these meagre resources fail, even the most revolting dung and excrement.

[**] * _Teti_, 11. 74, 75. "Hateful unto Teti is hunger, and he eateth it not; hateful unto Teti is thirst, nor hath he drunk it."

We see that the Egyptians made hunger and thirst into two substances or beings, to be swallowed as food is swallowed, but whose effects were poisonous unless counteracted by the immediate absorption of more satisfying sustenance.

** King Teti, when distinguishing his fate from that of the common dead, stated that he had abundance of food, and hence was not reduced to so pitiful an extremity.

"Abhorrent unto Teti is excrement, Teti rejecteth urine, and Teti abhorreth that which is abominable in him; abhorrent unto him is faecal matter and he eateth it not, hateful unto Teti is liquid filth."

(_Teti_, 11. 68, 69_).

The same doctrine is found in several places in the Book of the Dead_.

This ravenous sceptre had not the dim and misty form, the long shroud of floating draperies of our modern phantoms, but a precise and definite shape, naked, or clothed in the garments which it had worn while yet upon earth, and emitting a pale light, to which it owed the name of Luminous--_Khû, Khûû_.

[*] The double did not allow its family to forget it, but used all the means at its disposal to remind them of its existence.

It entered their houses and their bodies, terrified them waking and sleeping by its sudden apparitions, struck them down with disease or madness,[**] and would even suck their blood like the modern vampire.

* The name of luminous was at first so explained as to make the light wherewith souls were clothed, into a portion of the divine light.

In my opinion the idea is a less abstract one, and shows that, as among many other nations, so with the Egyptians the soul was supposed to appear as a kind of pale flame, or as emitting a glow analogous to the phosphorescent halo which is seen by night about a piece of rotten wood, or putrefying fish.

This primitive conception may have subsequently faded, and _khû the glorious one_, one of the _mânes_, may have become one of those flattering names by which it was thought necessary to propitiate the dead; it then came to have that significance of _resplendent with light_ which is ordinarily attributed to it.

** The incantations of which the Leyden Papyrus published by Pleyte is full are directed against _dead men or dead women_ who entered into one of the living to give him the _migraine_, and violent headaches.

Another Leyden Papyrus, briefly analyzed by Ohabas, and translated by Maspero, contains the complaint, or rather the formal act of requisition of a husband whom the _luminous_ of his wife returned to torment in his home, without any just cause for such conduct.

One effectual means there was, and one only, of escaping or preventing these visitations, and this lay in taking to the tomb all the various provisions of which the double stood in need, and for which it visited their dwellings.

Funerary sacrifices and the regular cultus of the dead originated in the need experienced for making provision for the sustenance of the manes after having secured their lasting existence by the mummification of their bodies.

[*] * Several chapters of the _Book of the Dead_ consist of directions for giving food to that part of man which survives his death, e. g. chap, cv.

, "_Chapter for providing food for the double_" (Naville's edition, pl.

cxvii.

), and chap, cvi.

, "_Chapter for giving daily abundance unto the deceased, in Memphis_" (Naville's edition, pl.

cxviii.

).

[Illustration: 161. jpg SACRIFICING TO THE DEAD IN THE TOMB CHAPEL.

2] 2 Stela of Antûf I. , Prince of Thebes, drawn by Faucher- Gudin from a photograph taken by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

Below, servants and relations are bringing the victims and cutting up the ox at the door of the tomb.

In the middle is the dead man, seated under his pavilion and receiving the sacrifice: an attendant offers him drink, another brings him the haunch of an ox a third a basket and two jars; provisions fill the whole chamber.

Behind Antûf stand two servants, the one fanning his master, and the second offering him his staff and sandals.

The position of the door, which is in the lowest row of the scenes, indicates that what is represented above it takes place within the tomb.

Gazelles and oxen were brought and sacrificed at the door of the tomb chapel; the haunches, heart, and breast of each victim being presented and heaped together upon the ground, that there the dead might find them when they began to be hungry.

Vessels of beer or wine, great jars of fresh water, purified with natron, or perfumed, were brought to them that they might drink their fill at pleasure, and by such voluntary tribute men bought their good will, as in daily life they bought that of some neighbour too powerful to be opposed.

The gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows upon men.

Their bodies suffered change and gradually perished until nothing was left of them.

Their souls, like human souls, were only the representatives of their bodies, and gradually became extinct if means of arresting the natural tendency to decay were not found in time.

Thus, the same necessity that forced men to seek the kind of sepulture which gave the longest term of existence to their souls, compelled the gods to the same course.

At first, they were buried in the hills, and one of their oldest titles describes them as those "who are upon the sand,"[*] safe from putrefaction; afterwards, when the art of embalming had been discovered, the gods received the benefit of the new invention and were mummified.

* In the _Book of Knowing that which is in Hades_, for the fourth and fifth hours of the night, we have the description of the sandy realm of Sokaris and of the gods _Hiriû Shâîtû- senû_, who are on their sand.

Elsewhere in the same book we have a cynocephalus _upon its sand_, and the gods of the eighth hour are also mysterious gods who are on their sand.

Wherever these personages are represented in the vignettes, the Egyptian artist has carefully drawn the ellipse painted in yellow and sprinkled with red, which is the conventional rendering of sand, and sandy districts.

Each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead god: at Thinis there was the mummy and the tomb of Anhuri, the mummy of Osiris at Mendes, the mummy of Tûmû at Heliopolis.

[*] In some of the nomes the gods did not change their names in altering the mode of their existence: the deceased Osiris remained Osiris; Nit and Hâthor when dead were still Nît and Hâthor, at Saïs and at Denderah.

But Phtah of Memphis became Sokaris by dying; Uapûaîtû, the jackal of Siût, was changed into Anubis;[**] and when his disk had disappeared at evening, Anhûri, the sunlit sky of Thinis, was Khontamentît, Lord of the West, until the following day.

* The sepulchres of Tûmû, Khopri, Râ, Osiris, and in each of them the heap of sand hiding the body, are represented in the tomb of Seti I. , as also the four rams in which the souls of the god are incarnate.

The tombs of the gods were known even in Roman times.

** To my mind, at least, this is an obvious conclusion from the monuments of Siût, in which the jackal god is called Uapûaîtû, as the living god, lord of the city, and Anûpû, master of embalming or of the Oasis, lord of Ra-qrirît, inasmuch as he is god of the dead.

Ra-qrirît, _the door of the stone_, was the name which the people of Siût gave to their necropolis and to the infernal domain of their god.

That bliss which we dream of enjoying in the world to come was not granted to the gods any more than to men.

Their bodies were nothing but inert larvae, "with unmoving heart,"[*] weak and shrivelled limbs, unable to stand upright were it not that the bandages in which they were swathed stiffened them into one rigid block.

Their hands and heads alone were free, and were of the green or black shades of putrid flesh.

* This is the characteristic epithet for the dead Osiris, Urdu Mt, he whose heart is unmoving, he whose heart no longer beats, and who has therefore ceased to live.

[Illustration: 164. jpg PHTAH AS A MUMMY.

2] 2 Drawing by Faucher-Gudin of a bronze statuette of the Saïte period, found in the department of Hérault, at the end of a gallery in an ancient mine.

Their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted the light.

All sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from which they suffered, and gods who were noted for their compassionate kindness when alive, became pitiless and ferocious tyrants in the tomb.

When once men were bidden to the presence of Sokaris, Khontamentîfc, or even of Osiris, "mortals come terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to look him in the face either among gods or men; for him the great are as the small.

He spareth not those who love him; he beareth away the child from its mother, and the old man who walketh on his way;

full of fear, all creatures make supplication before him, but he turneth not his face towards them."

Only by the unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding him as though he were a simple human double, could living or dead escape the consequences of his furious temper.

The living paid him his dues in pomps and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them.

He did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands.

When their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he insisted that these should first be offered and formally presented to himself; then he was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a double, whose name and parentage were pointed out to him.

He took possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his bounty gave the remainder to its destined recipient.

Thus death made no change in the relative positions of the feudal god and his worshippers.

The worshipper who called himself the _amakhû_ of the god during life was the subject and vassal of his mummied god even in the tomb;[*] and the god who, while living, reigned over the living, after his death continued to reign over the dead.

* The word _amakhû_ is applied to an individual who has freely entered the service of king or baron, and taken him for his lord: _amakhû khir nibuf_ means _vassal of his lord_.

In the same way, each chose for himself a god who became his patron, and to whom he owed _fealty_, i. e. to whom he was _amakhû_--vassal.

To the god he owed the service of a good vassal--tribute, sacrifices, offerings; and to his vassal the god owed in return the service of a suzerain-- protection, food, reception into his dominions and access to his person.

A man might be absolutely _nib amahkît_, master of fealty, or, relatively to a god, _amakhû khir Osiri_, the vassal of Osiris, _amakhû khir Phtah-Sokari_, the vassal of Phtah-Sokaris.