This was the time for the deceased anxiously to call upon his heart in the prescribed formula from The Book of the Dead,[42] not to bear witness against him, for “the heart of a man is his own god,”[43] and must now determine his everlasting fate. If his heart were content with him, and the scales turned in his favour, then the god Thot commanded that his heart should be restored to him to be set again in its place. This was done, and forthwith the immortal elements which death had separated began to reunite. His Ka, and all the remaining parts of himself, were now restored to the justified Osiris, who was thus built up into the complete man who had once walked the earth, and who now entered upon a new life, the everlasting life of the righteous and the blessed. He was joyfully admitted by the gods into their circle, and was henceforth as one of them.
The Book of the Dead and cognate religious texts, always assume that judgment goes in favour of the deceased, that his heart approves him, and that he becomes one of the blessed. Nowhere are we clearly informed as to the fate of the condemned who could not stand before the god Osiris. We are told that the enemies of the gods perish, that they are destroyed or overthrown; but such vague expressions afford no certainty as to how far the Egyptians in general believed in the existence of a hell as a place of punishment or purification for the wicked;[44] or whether, as seems more probable, they held some general belief that when judgment was pronounced against a man his heart and other immortal parts were not restored to him. For such a man no re-edification and no resurrection was possible. The immortal elements were divine, and by nature pure and imperishable; but they could be preserved from entering the Osiris, from re-entering the hull of the man who had proved himself unworthy of them. The soul, indeed, as such did not die, although personal annihilation was the lot of the evil-doer in whom it had dwelt. But it was the hope of continued individuality which their doctrine held out to the Egyptians; this it was which they promised to the good and in all probability denied to the wicked.
Fig. 17.—-The Blessed Dead ploughing and sowing by the waters of the celestial Nile. (From “The Book of the Dead.”)
Fig. 18.—The blessed Dead reaping and treading out the corn in the fields of Aalû.
(From “The Book of the Dead.”)
After judgment the righteous entered into blessedness, unchanged in appearance as in nature; the only difference being that, while the existence which they had led upon earth had been limited in its duration, the life of the world to come was eternal. But the future blessedness for which the Egyptian hoped was far from being a passive state of bliss such as is promised by most of the higher religions, an absorption into the All or into the Godhead, a dreamy state of floating in everlasting repose, content, and unimpassioned joy. The average Egyptian expected to lead as active a life in the world to come as he had led here. Although with the Godhead, he counted on retaining his independent individuality in all respects and on working and enjoying himself even as he had done on earth. He expected his chief employment to be agriculture, the occupation which must have seemed most natural to a people almost entirely dependent upon the produce of the fields. A vignette belonging to chap. cx. of The Book of the Dead represents the dead at work in the fields of the Blessed,[45] ploughing with oxen, casting the seed-corn into the furrows ([fig. 17]), cutting the ripe ears with sickles, driving oxen to tread out the grain from the straw ([fig. 18]), and finally piling up the corn in heaps against it was required to serve for the making of bread. For change and recreation they sailed upon the canals of the next world in their boats ([fig. 19]), played at draughts with their own souls, or made offerings to the gods, especially to the celestial Nile, which gave water to their fields and fertility to their seed ([fig. 20]). All went on exactly as here, excepting that the work of the blessed was invariably crowned with success. The Nile always overflowed the fields to best advantage, the corn grew five ells high and its ears were two ells long, the harvest never failed to be abundant, the weather was always favourable, the fresh and pleasant north wind was always blowing, the foe was always conquered, and the gods graciously accepted all offerings and requited the givers with rich gifts of all kinds. In short, the life of the dead in the kingdom of the gods was an idealised earthly life, although not always a very moral life according to our standards.
Fig. 19.—One of the Osirian dead sailing in his papyrus bark along the heavenly canals.
(From “The Book of the Dead.”)
