1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rosellint, Monumenti
Civili, pl. cxxxiv. 2. While Anubis is stretching out his
hands to lay out the mummy on its couch, the soul is
hovering above its breast, and holding to its nostrils the
sceptre, and the wind-filled sail which is the emblem of
breath and of the new life.
For the breathing, warm, fresh-coloured body, spontaneous in movement and function, was substituted an immobile, cold and blackish mass, a sufficient basis for the mechanical continuity of the double, but which that double could neither raise nor guide; whose weight paralysed and whose inertness condemned it to vegetate in darkness, without pleasure and almost without consciousness of existence. Thot, Isis, and Horus applied themselves in the case of Osiris to ameliorating the discomfort and constraint entailed by the more primitive embalmment.
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painting in the tomb of a
king in the Theban necropolis.
They did not dispense with the manipulations instituted by Anubis, but endued them with new power by means of magic. They inscribed the principal bandages with protective figures and formulas; they decorated the body with various amulets of specific efficacy for its different parts; they drew numerous scenes of earthly existence and of the life beyond the tomb upon the boards of the coffin and upon the walls of the sepulchral chamber. When the body had been made imperishable, they sought to restore one by one all the faculties of which their previous operations had deprived it. The mummy was set up at the entrance to the vault; the statue representing the living person was placed beside it, and semblance was made of opening the mouth, eyes, and ears, of loosing the arms and legs, of restoring breath to the throat and movement to the heart. The incantations by which these acts were severally accompanied were so powerful that the god spoke and ate, lived and heard, and could use his limbs as freely as though he had never been steeped in the bath of the embalmer. He might have returned to his place among men, and various legends prove that he did occasionally appear to his faithful adherents. But, as his ancestors before him, he preferred to leave their towns and withdraw into his own domain. The cemeteries of the inhabitants of Busiris and of Mendes were called Sokhît Ialû, the Meadow of Reeds, and Sokhît Hotpû, the Meadow of Best. They were secluded amid the marshes, in small archipelagoes of sandy islets where the dead bodies, piled together, rested in safety from the inundations. This was the first kingdom of the dead Osiris, but it was soon placed elsewhere, as the nature of the surrounding districts and the geography of the adjacent countries became better known; at first perhaps on the Phoenician shore beyond the sea, and then in the sky, in the Milky Way, between the North and the East, but nearer to the North than to the East. This kingdom was not gloomy and mournful like that of the other dead gods, Sokaris or Khontamentît, but was lighted by sun and moon; the heat of the day was tempered by the steady breath of the north wind, and its crops grew and throve abundantly.
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Daniel Héron,
taken in 1881 in the temple of Seti I. at Abydos.
Thick walls served as fortifications against the attacks of Sit and evil genii; a palace like that of the Pharaohs stood in the midst of delightful gardens; and there, among his own people, Osiris led a tranquil existence, enjoying in succession all the pleasures of earthly life without any of its pains.