Fig. 6.—A heart scarab.[24]
In the meantime the mummy was without heart, and had become lifeless and dead; for to pierce the heart of anything was equivalent to utterly destroying it. The Osiris, too (to which we shall presently return), would have shared the fate of the mummy had the device not been conceived of providing the latter with an artificial heart in place of its own original one, which had returned to the gods. The provisional heart was represented by an artificial scarabæus, generally made of hard greenish stone in the image of the beetle, which was a symbol of genesis and resurrection ([fig. 6]). Underneath it was made flat, and inscribed with magic formulæ,[25] that it might be the substitute for the dead man’s heart, and also ensure his resurrection by virtue of its form. But when his own heart was restored to him the scarabæus lost its significance. Like all the rest of the amulets which the Egyptians gave to their dead, its efficacy only availed for the space of time intervening between death and the reunion of those elements which death had separated. When once the resurrection had taken place there was no further need of amulets, nor any hurt through lack of them.
Fig. 7.—The Ba as a bird.
Another immortal part of man was the
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