СНАР. I. condemned. 28. 29. 30. 31. I have not driven away the flocks from their pasturage. 32. I have not separated for myself [clandestinely] a channel 33. I have not extinguished the perpetual lamp (lit. hourly lamp). 34. I have not added anything to any of the sacred books. 35. I have not driven off any of the sacred cattle. 36. I have not stabbed the god (i. e. sacred animal), when he comes forth [from his shrine]. Fate of the Wherever the Egyptian failed to pass this ordeal, and the second not unlike it, he incurred a dark succession of tremendous penalties. The hapless spirit, banished from the presence of Osiris, who inclines his sceptre in token of disapprobation, is now hurried back to earth by ministers of vengeance in the hideous form of apes. She migrates from the human to the bestial sphere of being, and commencing with some animal shape' to which indeed she had contracted an affinity by former habits, she proceeds from year to year, from century to century, now rising and now sinking in the scale of creaturely existence, till at last the destined cycle is completed by the winding up of all things. The most abject stage in this rotation seems to be the lowest region of Kar-Neter, the Phlegethon of the Greeks. 'None of the dead can endure it; 1 Wilkinson, as above, p. 447. It is rarely, however, as Mr Kenrick remarks (1. 480), that we find 'among the funereal monuments of Egypt anything which relates to the metempsychosis; the reason, perhaps, being that every embalmed corpse, duly interred, was presumed by the survivors to have passed the scrutiny of the infernal judge, and so was in a state of permanent felicity. I. the waters being of flame and waves of fire of the CHAP. most intense and unconquerable heat; while the thirst of the dead in it is unquenchable; and they have no peace in it, because it is filled with weeds and filth'.' of the ac But on the contrary the human spirit who has Privileges stood the various tests applied to her at the tribu- quitted. nal of Osiris, passes on with the permission of the demons, and moves freely through the joyous halls of Aahlu (Elysium). Her body also purified at length, by its evisceration, from all properties which rendered it offensive to the gods has been assimilated by the mummifying process to the actual form of Osiris. The whole man, according to the later representations, has become Osirianised; the name of the great sun-god is combined, without distinction of age or calling, with the name of the departed mortal; he attains to a subordinate stage of deification; he acquires a faculty of self-translation and self-transformation3, just as the condemned are driven onward by some irresistible fate into the forms of animal life; he 1 Birch, as above, p. 275. 2 See the remarkable passage in Porphyry (De Abstinentia, IV. 10), where is preserved the invocation addressed by the embalmers to the sun in the name of the deceased; at the end of which he is made to say, 'If I have committed any other fault during my life, either in eating or drinking, it has not been done on my own account, but on account of these;' pointing to the chest containing the viscera. Such passages (cf. Part II. p. 37) remind one of St Augustine's statement respecting himself while he continued a Manichæan: Adhuc enim mihi videba tur, non esse nos qui peccamus, sed 3 Döllinger, p. 434: cf. Part II. I. CHAP. issues forth at will into the upper regions; he soars high above the earth with the alertness of the hawk or ibis; he revisits the sepulchre in which his body is preserved and thence derives a fresh accession to his vital powers. He inherits the two-fold life of the divine Osiris; all his happiness consists in tracking that illustrious sun-god, in addressing adorations to him, and in sailing with him through his daily circuits, in the barge employed by him to circumnavigate the firmament, or 'waters of the heavenly Nile.' In other words, the Sun which to Egyptians had for ages been the grandest symbol of their deities, and not unfrequently the glorious home or vehicle of Deity itself, was also the most lofty image they could form of pure and ultimate enjoyment. The reward of all acquitted spirits was translation from the sacred Valley of the Nile, its joys and sorrows and mutations, to the one unchanging source of brilliance and fertility. This great god speaks to them and they speak to him; his glory illuminates them in the splendour of his disc, while he is shining in their sphere'.' 1 Rosellini, in Kenrick, I. 487. Alleged Affinities between the Hebrew and Egyptian Systems. Κατὰ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα Αἰγύπτου, ἐν ᾗ κατῳκήσατε ἐπ ̓ αὐτῇ, οὐ ποιήσετε, καὶ κατὰ τὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα γῆς Χαναάν, εἰς ἣν ἐγὼ εἰσάγω ὑμάς ἐκεῖ, οὐ ποιήσετε, καὶ τοῖς νομίμοις αὐτῶν οὐ πορεύσεσθε. τὰ κρίματά μου ποιήσετε, καὶ τὰ προστάγματά μου φυλάξεσθε, καὶ πορεύεσθε ἐν αὐτοῖς. ΕΓΩ ΚΥΡΙΟΣ Ο ΘΕΟΣ ΥΜΩΝ. LEVIT. XVIII. 3, 4. (LXX.) THAT II. Different HAT some examples of external correspondency, CHAP. more marked and less fortuitous than any we have hitherto detected, can be traced between the theories on ritual codes of the Egyptian and the Hebrew, is this subject. no longer questioned even by the warmest advocate of supernatural religion'. These affinities, however, as we might at once anticipate from the absorbing interest of the points involved, give birth to a variety of conflicting interpretations. Some, for instance, have contended that as early as the age of Abraham, the priests of Lower Egypt were induced to borrow from him certain portions of the patriarchal creed, as well as to accept instruction at his hands in secular and useful learning. 1 Thus, Witsius in his Egyptiaca, p. 4, Basil. 1739, declares expressly 'magnam atque mirandam plane convenientiam in religionis negotio veteres inter Ægyptios atque Hebræos esse,' and adds: Quæ cum fortuita esse non possit, necesse est ut vel Ægyptii sua ab Hebræis, vel ex adverso Hebræi sua ab Ægyptiis habeant.' And Hengstenberg, in our own day, makes a similar ad mission: 'He [Spencer] sets out II. CHAP. Others, on the contrary, affirm that Abraham himself and his descendants in the time of Moses had not scrupled in particular cases to incorporate the riper wisdom of the land of Egypt with their own hereditary laws and their most cherished institutions. While a third class, arguing from the fact that both these peoples radiated from a common centre, would refer the numerous points of similarity which they exhibit to the influence of a purer and more primitive generation, when the fathers of the Hebrew race still' recognised the sacred character of worthies like Melchisedek, and communed with them as with 'priests of the most high God.' Different the theo risers. The feelings also which suggest the different motives of theories on this subject are as widely different as the theories themselves. On the one side stand the writers both of earlier and later ages, who are actuated by a strong conviction that we had almost 'as well not worship God at all as worship Him by rites which have been employed in paganism'.' The presence in the Bible of some element of faith or worship, known to have been actually borrowed from the primitive faith or worship of the circumjacent heathen would in their view silence or invalidate all arguments in favour of a special Revelation; and accordingly they feel concerned to demonstrate that 'images of truth,' wherever such exist in Gentilism, were merely due to the refracted 1 See Part I. p. 92, n. 2. 2 This is Warburton's characteristic way of putting the case of his opponents: cf. Div. Leg. II. 312 8q. Lond. 1846. A similar class of scruples have occasionally peeped out in discussions of the post-Re formation period on the subject of ecclesiastical vestments and other ceremonies: e. g. at the Hampton Court Conference, where objections were urged against the surplice, on the ground that such a dress was worn of old time by priests of Isis. |