We seem to meet with the history of the immemorial quest in the Pyramid Texts of Ancient Egypt. The ancient priests appear to have concerned themselves greatly regarding the problem how the dead were to be nourished in the celestial Paradise. “The chief dread felt by the Egyptian for the hereafter,” says Breasted, “was fear of hunger.”[3] In Egypt, as in other lands offerings of food were made at the tombs, and these were supposed to be conveyed to the souls by certain of the gods. But those who hoped to live for ever knew well that the time would come when grave-offerings would cease to be made, and their own names would be forgotten on earth. Some Pharaohs endowed their chapel-tombs for all time, but revolutions ultimately caused endowments to be appropriated.
The Babylonians believed that if the dead were not fed, their ghosts would prowl through the streets and enter houses, searching for food and water.[4] In Polynesia the homeless and desolate ghosts were those of poor people, “who during their residence in the body had no friends and no property”.[5] The custom of including food-vessels and drinking-cups in the funerary furniture of prehistoric graves in different countries was no doubt connected with the fear of hunger in the hereafter. The custom was widespread of giving the dead food offerings [[133]]at regular intervals. Once a year the living held feasts in the burial-grounds, and invited the dead to partake of their share. Among the Hallowe’en beliefs in the British Isles is one that ghosts return home during the year-end festival to attend “the feast of all souls”. The Hebridean custom, which lingered even in the nineteenth century, of placing food and water, or milk, beside a corpse while it lay in a house, and outside the door or at the grave after the burial took place, was no doubt a relic of an ancient custom, based on the haunting belief that the dead were in need of nourishment, if not for all time, at any rate until the journey to the Otherworld was completed.
As has been said, it was the provision of food in the celestial Paradise, far removed from the earth and its produce, that chiefly concerned the Egyptians. In the Underworld Kingdom, presided over by Osiris, the souls grew corn and gathered fruit. But the Paradise of the solar cult was above or beyond the sky. Some of the sun-worshippers are found in the Pyramid Texts to have placed their faith in the food-supplying Great Mother, the goddess Hathor, who gave them corn and milk during their earthly lives. As son of Re, born of the sky-goddess, he (the Pharaoh) is frequently represented as suckled by one of the sky-goddesses, or some other divinity connected with Re, especially the ancient goddesses of the prehistoric kingdoms of South and North. These appear as “the two vultures with long hair and hanging breasts; … they draw their breasts over the mouth of King Pepi, but they do not wean him forever.…” Another text invokes the mother-goddess: “Give thy breast to this King Pepi, … suckle this King Pepi therewith”. As a result, perhaps, of the prevalence of Osirian beliefs, the solar cult adopted [[134]]the idea that food, such as is found in Egypt, might be provided in the regions above or beyond the sky. The sun-god was appealed to: “Give thou bread to this King Pepi, from this thy eternal bread, thy everlasting beer”.[6]
But the chief source of nourishment in the celestial Paradise was the Tree of Life (a form of the mother-goddess) on the great isle in the mythical lake or sea beyond the Eastern horizon.[7] Egyptian artists depicted this tree as a palm, or sycamore, with a goddess rising from inside it, pouring water from a vessel on the hands of the Pharaoh’s soul, which might appear in human form, or in the man-bird form called the ba. In the funeral ritual the ceremony of pouring out a libation was performed with the object of restoring the body moisture (the water of life) to the mummy.[8] A Biblical reference to the ceremony is found in 2 Kings, iii, 11, in which it is said of Elisha that he “poured water on the hands of Elijah”. No doubt the Egyptian soul received water as nourishment, as well as to ensure its immortality, from the tree-goddess.
In the Book of the Dead (Chapter LIX), the Tree of Life is referred to as “the sycamore of Nut” (the sky-goddess). Other texts call the tree “the Western Tree” of Nut or Hathor. It may be that the solar cult of the East took over the tree from the Osirian cult of the West.
This mythical tree figures in many ancient mythologies. The goddess Europa was worshipped at Gortyna, in Crete, during the Hellenic period, as a sacred tree.[9] The tree may be traced from the British Isles to India, and there are numerous legends of spirits entering or leaving [[135]]it. The Polynesians have stories of this kind. Their Tree of Life was the local bread-fruit tree which “became a god”, or, as some had it, a goddess. “Out of this magic bread-fruit tree,” a legend says, “a great goddess was made.”[10]
It may be that the island Paradise with its Tree of Life was specially favoured after maritime enterprise made strong appeal to the imagination of the Egyptians. No doubt the old sailors who searched for “soul-substance” in the shape of pearls, precious stones, and metals had much to do with disseminating the idea of the Isles of the Blest. At any rate, it became, as we have seen, a tradition among seafarers to search for the distant land in which was situated the “water of life”. The home-dwelling Osirians clung to their idea of an Underworld Paradise, and belief in it became fused with that of the floating island, or Islands of the Blest. Those who dwelt in inland plains and valleys, and those accustomed to cross the great mysterious deserts on which the oasis-mirage frequently appeared and vanished like the mythical floating island, conceived of a Paradise on earth. There are references in more than one land to a Paradise among the mountains. It figures in the fairy stories of Central Europe, for instance, as “the wonderful Rose Garden” with its linden Tree of Immortality, the hiding-place of a fairy lady, its dancing nymphs and its dwarfs; the king of dwarfs has a cloak of invisibility which he wraps round those mortals he carries away.[11]
At first only the souls of kings entered Paradise. But, in time, the belief became firmly established that the souls of others could reach it too, and be fed there. The quest of the “food of life” then became a popular [[136]]theme of the story-tellers, and so familiar grew the idea of the existence of this fruit that people believed it could be obtained during life, and that those who partook of it might have their days prolonged indefinitely. For, as W. Schooling has written, “a few simple thoughts on a few simple subjects produce a few simple opinions common to a whole tribe” (and even a great part of mankind), “and are taught with but little modification to successive generations; hence arises a rigidity that imposes ready-made opinions, which are seldom questioned, while such questioning as does occur is usually met with excessive severity, as Galileo and others have found out”.[12]
THE CHINESE SI WANG MU (JAPANESE SEIOBO) AND MAO NU