see.

I

711

My mother is Aufank to the am one of the

thousands, or even millions of years, as | Lepsius. once they dreamed. The writing, wher- same seventeenth chapter from another He also gives a copy of the ever found, consists of sentences, vary- sarcophagus of lesser antiquity, bearing ing alike in number and in purport, very the name of Sebak-aa. various in the less important wording of tions mention is made of ornaments that the contents, and now spoken of collect- were laid with the mummy. In all inscripively as the Book of the Dead. The sec-draws attention to a plate of gold with an tions, whether more or fewer, are each inscription to the purport following: Lepsius headed by a word which is translated "chapter," and, as a received edition of on the neck of the deceased. Title. Chapter of the collar of gold placed the book from a manuscript at Turin now stands, the number of chapters is 163. But there is an unknown variety of texts, changing with times, and usually becoming more diffuse as time advances. Each text may be supposed to exhibit the doctrine prevailing at the time in the part of Egypt where it was written, while successive editions, found in these nearly imperishable monuments, exhibit the doctrine concerning the dead in a constantly enlarging form. The oldest are therefore the most valuable, as being nearest to the original conception, and least distant from the primeval revelation, so far as that revelation may have been known in Egypt ages before Joseph was sold to Potiphar.

Our authority for this account of comparative antiquity is Dr. Lepsius, who has published what he believes to be a fragment of the oldest text, and translates an inscription on a sarcophagus of Mentuhotep, a king or prince of the eleventh, or earliest Theban dynasty. But although the highest antiquity has been claimed for Thebes, Memphis and Lower Egypt, having been first peopled from Asia, are generally considered to be more ancient, and therefore the tradition of the first Memphite dynasty, if preserved, might have afforded a text more primitive than the oldest known to

MENTUHOTEP.

Mentuhotep, Master of the Palace, ever well pleasing before Rá, speaks in the chapter of the uprising on the day of days in the Lower World.

Justifier. My father is An.
Text. - Spoken by Osiris
Isis. I understand.
understanding ones.
gold on which this chapter is written for him.
Subscription. Spoken over the collar of
Laid on the neck of the deceased person on
the day of the burial.

laid on the breast or neck of the mummy, The collar thus inscribed is an amulet and the words thereon were to be spoken by the deceased when he came into the presence of the Justifier, so called, after the burial, and before what is called the uprising at the gate of the other world, and were also pronounced at the burial by the priest, who by that ceremony was power. supposed to impart to them their magic

previously by the owner of the plate, who Or if not then by the priest, provided it for himself in his lifetime, in anticipation of the funeral. The name of the person to whom this collar belonged was Aufank, and, as was usual for the deceased to do, Aufank took to himself the name of Osiris. The seventeenth chapter from the Book of the Dead, in its older form, from the sarcophagus of Mentuhotep, set side by side with a later form of the same from the papyrus of Aufank, will assist the reader to perceive on what principle the enlargement of earlier texts proceeded.

AUFANK.

the uprising, and coming into the Lower The chapter of the awakening of the dead; World. Being among the attendants on Osiris, refreshed with the food of Unnofre the justified, uprisen in the day of days, living in all existences, where he delights to be at rest from wandering, dwelling in the hall as a living spirit. Osiris Aufank the righteous, the son of Setkem the righteous, among all that are well-pleasing before all the great gods of the West Land, at the time of his faneral procession, and of the festivities during prep aration for the earth.

It becomes the speech of men, spoken by Aufank the righteous:

I am Tum, as one Being. I am one as the primary water.

I am Rá in his dominion, in the beginning of his reign that he has assumed. What is that?

There had been made a battle-field of the father Ra. he has made a battle-field of the gods, as I said:

Serpents. In the Egyptian mythology some serpents were good, others evil.

It is obvious that the older and shorter | tinction to terrestrial gloom, as to that text in the first column is enlarged on one long anticipated day of trial in the the second by the addition of explanatory Hall of Truth, the dies illa, the day bewords, and in this way the whole mass of fore all other days which ought to be in funereal sentences was amplified, in every one's thought, and in the unnumcourse of time, to an indefinite extent, bered ages to follow would be in every apparently with the intention of making one's memory. "The justified," disenit intelligible to an initiated Egyptian, cumbered of his earthly load, in that day but with the actual effect of making it enters into life again. He then takes more obscure to those who read it now, possession of his proper home, and in when the mythology of Egypt seems to due time will taste the more perfect be inextricably confused, or, as M. pleasures of Elysium. It was requisite, Edouard Naville well says, inexplorée. however, that on reaching the portals of The gods not only change names and the west he should assert his divine digforms at pleasure, but they absolutely nity, and solemnly present himself to the lose identity, melt away into one another, gods, his fellows, to challenge their open and mock every possible relation among recognition. Therefore he asserted his themselves. Yet amidst this incessantly identity with Rá, the sun, with Osiris, tantalizing contradiction, there is a con- chief god of the dead, and other high stant assertion of the immortality of man, divinities, whose names he borrowed in his manifestation to light, or his doom to succession, united with his own. But interminable transmigrations for purga- inasmuch as Rá became Osiris when dition from sin, and the eventual reunion vested of his diurnal brightness, and of the purified soul with the deserted bearing rule in the lower world, every human body-a characteristic delusion deceased person had that name prefixed of heathenism borrowed by the Jews after to his own earthly name, and was called the captivity, and revived in a corrupted “The Osiris." Christianity. There was always the same Osiris, according to this theory, was aspiration after a state of more perfect none other than Rá; the sun, shorn of his happiness, and an ambition of the Egyp-external glory, until clothed with light tians to be clothed with divinity, to as- again. He rose every morning on the sume the very nature of the gods, and eastern horizon, mounted up to the even to be identified, one by one, with zenith, and as he rushed on his course, the gods of their peculiar choice. again from the top of heaven seeking the From age to age it was persistently western bound, he received from morn believed that the eminently pure and up-to even adorations, changing every hour. right man would become at once a reno- Entering the portal of the west at sunvated human person after death, and an set, he revisited the lower world, which incarnate god. A prevalent idea was men think to be dark, and there bore that every such living man, having been mild sway through the hours of night, from eternity a god, had assumed the until, with sunrise, he rose again in the person whose name he bore, and which east. Here, to follow the Egyptian fable, name would, after death, be perpetuated he was begotten anew, and came from in the tomb, while the body would be left the region of spirits into this inferior behind in the mummy-case, and the The-world. At the dawn of day he is no anthrope, so to call him, would be reab- more than Horus, the child, pictured as a sorbed into his divine existence. boy, sitting in the lap of the moon-god, Birth into earthly life was death. This Isis. Now that he is Horus, son of Rá, world was darkness. Death itself was they call him Horus-Rá. Anew he starts manifestation into light. "The day," so upon the circling career of day. So is called with euphemistic brevity, after the the oldest of the gods rejuvenate, and by objective and mystical manner of expres- noon grows into maturity again. Again sion which characterizes the oldest for- they call him Rá. Rá rushes onward in mulas of the Book of the Dead, stands his might, then he expires at sunset, for the day of uprising, of judgment, of then again he revives, in the gentler justification; not so much with allusion form of Osiris, and reigns the night to the light of the sun-god, shining in through in the lower world. This perthe lower world, or to the glorious bright-petual transformation goes on, as every ness of the light of heaven, in contradis- circle goes, without an end.

Introduction aux Textes relatives à la Mythe

d'Horus. Genève et Bâle. 1870.

Following Lepsius now, in the attempted simplification of this mystery, we note that the life of a good man-an

Osiris is an avatar of the one God pect, and regard the end of his earthly under many varieties of name; each life as the most awful period, or crisis, member of that divine unity being, so to of his existence. Before he could be speak, detached from the exhaustless admitted to the happy life of eternity he body for a season to be restored to it would have to be justified by the merit again. The life of a Pharaoh, in his su- of the life he was leaving, and make preme power, partook of the godhead good his claim against every accuser. more largely than any other being. He Only when that was done could he boldly was a god in the form of a man; he bore walk forward and partake of the material the most sublime resemblance possible of enjoyments prepared for the justified. Rá, or at least of the youthful Horus-Rá. Being justified, he might receive the His earthly reign was, or ought to be, a choice varieties of meat and drink, and repetition on earth of his brilliant image consume them as his due. Then he in the sky. The death of a man so would ascend into heaven, leaving earth linked with the divinity was but the tran- far below, and be admitted as a pure sit of Rá-Osiris from the supramundane spirit into the presence of Rá and of form to the submundane. This twofold Tum, whose praises the happy gods and being, conscious of an immortal majesty, | demons are ever singing. His wife looked with a lofty complacency on would be there with him. His son and death, and was only careful to prepare heir whom they had left behind would an enduring habitation in everlasting marble to receive the body which, from its birth, had been the shrine of a god. He used the utmost art to have that shrine preserved from corruption by embalming, and prepared for it a tomb in rock or pyramid. The precious alabaster, the firm granite, the adamantine porphyry that never would decay, should serve him for coffin, and he trusted that the sanctity of the place where his sacred body was deposited would protect that shrine from desecration.

come up and offer adoration to himself. Symbolic pictures on the coffins represent the deified Pharaoh in the barge of Rá, which, rowed by a crew of gods, is floating in the clear empyreum; and there they are praying to Rá, and Tum, and Koper.

This presupposes a very strict ordeal. Before a man can make his way into that lofty region he must not only be justified from all blame, but crowned as in a triumph. The use of his members, paralyzed by death, - by death whose dread Leaving the well-guarded mummy reality no fanatical illusions could ever there, the Pharaoh was taught to believe hide,- must be restored to him. Speech that when, like the setting sun, he, being to the mouth, pulsation to the heart, justified, reached the lower world, in motion and firmness to the feet, and skill company with spirits like himself, he, to the hands. Then the hero shall subOsiris-Rá, would subdue the strength and due ferocious beasts, and then shall he rage of the crowd of envious fiends that receive heavenly endowments. Then were collected there to withstand return- the sense of hearing, once lost to him ing gods; that then he should make him- when he left this world, shall be so reself known by his names divine and hu- stored and heightened that he shall enjoy man, make himself acknowledged as one the songs of the blessed, and sing as well that is wise, and prove his identity with as they. This was his resurrection. But the God most High. The priests prom-how the members of his body were to ised him that he would fight royally with regain life while they lay in the mummythe malignant fiends, and vanquish them cloths, hardened and immovable for long with godlike might. They assured him that he would stand justified by Thoth, the god of letters, and the judge of the departed against all accusers, and that, being readmitted into the world of delights, he would enjoy that world much after the very worldly manner that we hear Mohammedans expect to enjoy their paradise. Who, now, can wonder at the pride of a Pharaoh ?

ages on the marble bed, surely they could not conceive. Probably they were taught that the gods would give the good man another body in its stead, and indeed the constant language of the book we have before us does imply as much. Such conceptions lingered in Egypt in the days of the Apostles, and yet later. It was even then believed that the departed did enjoy the uprising or resurBut if the apotheosis was only to be rection minutely described in the Book accomplished after so stiff a conflict, of the Dead, and this may be quite suffieven a king of Egypt, languishing on his cient to account for a saying of St. Paul death-bed, might well tremble at the pros-that certain persons had overthrown the

faith of some, saying that the resurrection was past already.*

move the mass of mythology that followed, and in the residue that is left you will still find the vital and imperishable truth that there is an essential Godhead irrespective of the names of gods, that the soul of man is immortal in spite of his earthly death, and that a momentous futurity awaits him.

purest when youngest; gradually corrupted, yet never extinct; such truth can only be regarded as a divine gift originally revealed from heaven, as much a gift of God as human speech or human

man before Egypt was-imparted to the first of men before mankind wandered away from their Father in Heaven, before the creature made upright had wrought out many inventions. It was as certainly given to man as life was given, when the Creator breathed into him the breath of life, and made him a living soul.

Therefore, when it is said that the immortality of the soul was not known to Moses and the Hebrews, nor to the writers of the Old Testament in general

With all its absurdity there is grandeur in this myth. It is too grand, and certainly too elaborate, to have been the invention of any single mind. A poet of lively imagination might possibly have conceived something of the kind, but he would have needed more than human This truth, not being the invention of power of persuasion to graft his figmenta vates, nor yet of traditionary growth, on the public mind, to make his dream but originating in an ancient source, the standard of general belief, to make the wealth, the power, the high artistic skill, the heart and soul of an entire nation subservient to his fancy, to elaborate a written faith that should outlast dynasty after dynasty, enduring, as their conscience. It must have been given to system did endure, for thousands of years from the foundation of Egypt in the depth of its pre-historic antiquity down to the days of Porphyry when the world was beginning to turn away from heathenism to Christianity; for we know that all this time it did keep hold upon the mind and habits of the Egyptians from the borders of Nubia to the waters of the' Mediterranean Sea, and retained its power even while their minds and habits were so often divided, and so intimately disturbed by the intrusion of foreign elements that, notwithstanding an une--although the Old Testament contains qualled wealth of monumental record, their history cannot be easily deciphered, their chronology is not likely to be settled, and their mythology remains unexplored. Nothing but an element of truth laying hold upon the conscience antecedent to the mass of error and false worship could have given it persistence. Such an element was the primary doctrine of the unity of God and the immortality of man. This doctrine did not proceed from any single teacher that we hear of, neither was it slowly developed in the course of ages, but existed from the first, and continued to the last, although overlaid and shrouded with an ever-thickening disguise of fable. The fundamental truths were ever there, not wrought out by the persevering study of the priests nor made up from accumulating legends, nor spelt out by the interpreters of mystic ceremonies, but abiding in spite of the myth, the legend and the mystery. They were essential to the wisdom of Egypt which Moses learned and Iamblicus expounded, and you may strip off the amplification of the later texts as much as you please, go back to the briefest forms of earliest confession, and re

2 Tim. ii. 17, 18.

internal evidence to the contrary or that it was so faintly received by the Hebrews of the Exodus as not to be thought of at the giving of the Mosaic Law, and that the thought of rewards and punishments in a future state did not influence the legislator, nor affect the nation, we can now meet the allegation with a confident reply. We can show that the contrary appears in all the monuments of Egypt, contemporaneous with Moses, many ages before his time, and many ages after him. Incidentally, too, we know that this allegation of ignorance is equally discordant with all that bears any relation to the subject in the ancient monuments of Chaldea and Assyria, as well as with the confession of Job and the exultant faith of David.

As to the doctrine of the divine unity, which sharply contrasts with the polytheism of Egypt in the Book of the Dead, we must remind the reader of the passage we have seen in the seventeenth chapter, as given from the sarcophagus of Mentuhotep: “I am Tum, one Being I am one." Lepsius translates the Egyp tian by, "Ich bin Tum, ein Wesen (das) ich eines bin." So he expresses his perception of the original hieroglyph, and recalls a sentence in the New Testament,