Osiris was the first divine King of Egypt who reigned in true human likeness; he civilised the Egyptians, instructed them in agriculture, gave them laws, and taught them true religion. After a long and blessed reign he fell a prey to the machinations of his brother Set (Typhon), and having been slain was constrained to descend into the underworld, where he evermore lived and reigned as judge and king of the dead. His fate of death was the fate of all men. Every one, when his earthly pilgrimage was ended, must descend into the underworld by the gates of death; but each man hoped to rise again, even as Osiris had risen, to lead henceforth the life of the blessed. In this hope men called their dead Osiris, just as Germans speak of their dead as “blessed,”—hoping that blessedness may indeed be their lot. Death had not changed Osiris; as he had been king on earth, so he was king in the world beyond death. In the same way man, too, remained that which he had been here; death merely made a break in his life, without altering any of his conditions of existence.
Fig. 15.—Hypocephalus, from a drawing by Dr. W. H, Rylands.
The relation subsisting between a man’s Osiris and his mummy was not clearly apprehended, even by the Egyptians themselves. Identical they were not—that fact is obviously implied by the texts, which never once substitute the mummy for the Osiris; men knew also from experience that no mummy had ever left its place of embalmment, or the tomb, to journey on into the next world. Yet mummy and Osiris were nevertheless not entirely different and distinct; both had the same appearance and the same character. Moreover, the texts describe the Osiris as resembling the mummy in appearance while really differing from it, and the embalmers equipped the mummy as though it were called upon to journey forth as the Osiris. The inherent contradiction in all this arose principally from the fact that the Egyptian hoped and believed that shortly after death he would arise again, complete in flesh and blood as he had lived upon earth; whereas experience contradicted his creed, for it showed him that the mummy never did and never could leave the earth. He extricated himself from the dilemma by providing the mummy with a Doppelgänger: its own perfect counterpart, yet not itself. When once we have familiarised ourselves with this singular idea we find in it a simple key to all the riddles of the Osiris.
The mummy was provided with an artificial heart in the shape of a scarabæus,[37] because the Osiris could not live without one, and also with various amulets, by virtue of every one of which demons of the next world could be overcome. A stuccoed disc of papyrus, linen, or bronze, which, by the figures and formulæ inscribed upon it, had mystic power to preserve the needful warmth of life to the Osiris ([fig. 15]), was placed under the head of the mummy.[38] The soles of the feet which had trodden the mire of earth were removed in order that the Osiris might tread the Hall of Judgment with pure feet; and the gods were prayed to grant milk to the Osiris that he might bathe his feet in it and so assuage the pain which the removal of the soles must needs have caused him. And, finally, the soles which had been excised were placed within the mummy in order that the Osiris might find them to hand for the completion of his Personality.[39] That nothing might be wanting to this Personality, the gods were besought that the mummy should not suffer earthly corruption, and it was held to be of supreme importance that flesh and bones, muscles and limbs should all remain in place. With the mummy were also placed The Book of the Dead, as well as other religious and mystic texts needed by the Osiris for his guidance through the regions beyond the grave, and from which he might learn the prayers which had to be spoken in due order and place according to strict prescriptions. In short, the mummy was treated precisely as though it were an Osiris. But the difference was great: the mummy remained within the sarcophagus in the sepulchral chamber, while the Osiris proceeded on his way.
The journey of the Osiris, treated at wearisome length, forms the favourite subject of Egyptian texts, and to this is devoted the largest and best known work in the religious literature of the nation: the compilation called by us The Book of the Dead. This book contains no systematic account of the journey, such as the analogy of similar literatures might lead us to expect, but exhibits it in a series of disconnected stages by giving the prayers which the Osiris must repeat when passing through different parts of the underworld, or on encountering certain genii there. A chapter is devoted to each prayer, but the chapters do not follow each other in the order in which the prayers were to be used. The Egyptians never attained to any clear idea of the Osirian underworld; the same confusion and obscurity reigned over it as over their whole conception of the unseen world and of deity. They pondered deeply over a series of separate problems without being able to unite the results into one consistent whole, which should command acceptance, or to form any definite and permanent topography of the regions beyond the tomb. Hence there is no fixed sequence for the chapters of The Book of the Dead; the order varies materially in the different manuscripts to which we are indebted for our knowledge of the work. The number of chapters in the different copies also varies; while in some it is small, in others, as in the Ptolemaic copy for a certain Aûfānkh, published by Lepsius, it reaches to one hundred and sixty-five. Since there was no fixed rule as to order or number, priest or scribe might make a selection of such chapters as he or the family of the deceased held to be the most essential, and each was at liberty to form for himself a more or less modified conception of the characteristics of the underworld.
We cannot here follow the Osiris through all the details of his journey, but must be content to know that according to the account in The Book of the Dead he issued victorious from all his trials, overcame all enemies whom he encountered, and was ushered at length into the Hall of the Double Truth, and received by the goddess of Truth. Here also he found the chief gods of the Osirian cycle gathered together, and the forty-two assessors of Divine Justice near the canopy under which the god Osiris was enthroned. Then the deceased spoke, and proceeded to recite the “Negative Confession”—a denial of sins of commission—declaring that he had not been guilty of certain definite sins, and denying one or another particular form of guilt to each of the assessors. He had not done evil, had not robbed, nor murdered, nor lied, not caused any to weep, not injured the property of the gods, and so on.[40] The judges heard all in silence, giving no sign either of approval or disapproval; but when the confession was ended the heart of the deceased was brought forward and laid in the scales against the image or symbol of Truth. The weighing was superintended by the gods Anubis and Horus, while Thot, the scribe of the gods, stood by ready to record the result ([fig. 16]).[41]
Fig. 16.—The weighing of the dead man's heart against the feather symbolic of Maāt, the goddess of Truth. (From “The Book of the Dead”)