Behind him stood Isis and Nephthys watching over him with uplifted hands, bare bosoms, and bodies straitly cased in linen. Forty-two jurors who had died and been restored to life like their lord, and who had been chosen, one from each of those cities of Egypt which recognized his authority, squatted right and left, and motionless, clothed in the wrappings of the dead, silently waited until they were addressed. The soul first advanced to the foot of the throne, carrying on its outstretched hands the image of its heart or of its eyes, agents and accomplices of its sins and virtues. It humbly "smelt the earth," then arose, and with uplifted hands recited its profession of faith. "Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to thee, great god, lord of Truth and Justice! I have come before thee, my master; I have been brought to see thy beauties. For I know thee, I know thy name, I know the names of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in the Hall of the Two Truths, living on the remains of sinners, gorging themselves with their blood, in that day when account is rendered before Onnophris, the true of voice. Thy name which is thine is 'the god whose two twins are the ladies of the two Truths;' and I, I know you, ye lords of the two Truths, I bring unto you Truth, I have destroyed sins for you. I have not committed iniquity against men! I have not oppressed the poor! I have not made defalcations in the necropolis! I have not laid labour upon any free man beyond that which he wrought for himself! I have not transgressed, I have not been weak, I have not defaulted, I have not committed that which is an abomination to the gods. I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master! I have not starved any man, I have not made any to weep, I have not assassinated any man, I have not caused any man to be treacherously assassinated, and I have not committed treason against any! I have not in aught diminished the supplies of temples! I have not spoiled the shrewbread of the gods! I have not taken away the loaves and the wrappings of the dead! I have done no carnal act within the sacred enclosure of the temple! I have not blasphemed! I have in nought curtailed the sacred revenues! I have not pulled down the scale of the balance! I have not falsified the beam of the balance! I have not taken away the milk from the mouths of sucklings! I have not lassoed cattle on their pastures! I have not taken with nets the birds of the gods! I have not fished in their ponds! I have not turned back the water in its season! I have not cut off a water-channel in its course! I have not put out the fire in its time! I have not defrauded the Nine Gods of the choice part of victims! I have not ejected the oxen of the gods! I have not turned back the god at his coming forth! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! Pure as this Great Bonû of Heracleopolis is pure!... There is no crime against me in this land of the Double Truth! Since I know the names of the gods who are with thee in the Hall of the Double Truth, save thou me from them!"
He then turned towards the jury and pleaded his cause before them. They had been severally appointed for the cognizance of particular sins, and the dead man took each of them by name to witness that he was innocent of the sin which that one recorded. His plea ended, he returned to the supreme judge, and repeated, under what is sometimes a highly mystic form, the ideas which he had already advanced in the first part of his address. "Hail unto you, ye gods who are in the Great Hall of the Double Truth, who have no falsehood in your bosoms, but who live on Truth in Aûnû, and feed your hearts upon it before the Lord God who dwelleth in his solar disc! Deliver me from the Typhon who feedeth on entrails, O chiefs! in this hour of supreme judgment;—grant that the deceased may come unto you, he who hath not sinned, who hath neither lied, nor done evil, nor committed any crime, who hath not borne false witness, who hath done nought against himself, but who liveth on truth, who feedeth on truth. He hath spread joy on all sides; men speak of that which he hath done, and the gods rejoice in it. He hath reconciled the god to him by his love; he hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; he hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath offered sacrifices to the gods, sepulchral meals unto the manes. Deliver him from himself, speak not against him before the Lord of the Dead, for his mouth is pure, and his two hands are pure!" In the middle of the Hall, however, his acts were being weighed by the assessors. Like all objects belonging to the gods, the balance is magic, and the genius which animates it sometimes shows its fine and delicate little human head on the top of the upright stand which forms its body. Everything about the balance recalls its superhuman origin: a cynocephalus, emblematic of Thot, sits perched on the upright and watches the beam; the cords which suspend the scales are made of alternate cruces ansato and tats. Truth squats upon one of the scales; Thot, ibis-headed, places the heart on the other, and always merciful, bears upon the side of Truth that judgment may be favourably inclined. He affirms that the heart is light of offence, inscribes the result of the proceeding upon a wooden tablet, and pronounces the verdict aloud. "Thus saith Thot, lord of divine discourse, scribe of the Great Ennead, to his father Osiris, lord of eternity, 'Behold the deceased in this Hall of the Double Truth, his heart hath been weighed in the balance in the presence of the great genii, the lords of Hades, and been found true. No trace of earthly impurity hath been found in his heart. Now that he leaveth the tribunal true of voice, his heart is restored to him, as well as his eyes and the material cover of his heart, to be put back in their places each in its own time, his soul in heaven, his heart in the other world, as is the custom of the "Followers of Horus." Henceforth let his body lie in the hands of Anubis, who presideth over the tombs; let him receive offerings at the cemetery in the presence of Onno-phris; let him be as one of those favourites who follow thee; let his soul abide where it will in the necropolis of his city, he whose voice is true before the Great Ennead.'" In this "Negative Confession," which the worshippers of Osiris taught to their dead, all is not equally admirable. The material interests of the temple were too prominent, and the crime of killing a sacred goose or stealing a loaf from the bread offerings was considered as abominable as calumny or murder. But although it contains traces of priestly cupidity, yet how many of its precepts are untarnished in their purity by any selfish ulterior motive! In it is all our morality in germ, and with refinements of delicacy often lacking among peoples of later and more advanced civilizations. The god does not confine his favour to the prosperous and the powerful of this world; he bestows it also upon the poor. His will is that they be fed and clothed, and exempted from tasks beyond their strength; that they be not oppressed, and that unnecessary tears be spared them. If this does not amount to the love of our neighbour as our religions preach it, at least it represents the careful solicitude due from a good lord to his vassals. His pity extends to slaves; not only does he command that no one should ill-treat them himself, but he forbids that their masters should be led to ill-treat them. This profession of faith, one of the noblest bequeathed us by the old world, is of very ancient origin. It may be read in scattered fragments upon the monuments of the first dynasties, and the way in which its ideas are treated by the compilers of these inscriptions proves that it was not then regarded as new, but as a text so old and so well known that its formulas were current in all mouths, and had their prescribed places in epitaphs.[*] Was it composed in Mendes, the god's own home, or in Heliopolis, when the theologians of that city appropriated the god of Mendes and incorporated him in their Ennead? In conception it certainly belongs to the Osirian priesthood, but it can only have been diffused over the whole of Egypt after the general adoption of the Heliopolitan Ennead throughout the cities.
As soon as he was judged, the dead man entered into the possession of his rights as a pure soul. On high he received from the Universal Lord all that kings and princes here below bestowed upon their followers—rations of food,[**] and a house, gardens, and fields to be held subject to the usual conditions of tenure in Egypt, i.e. taxation, military service, and the corvée.
* For instance, one of the formulas found in Memphite tombs
states that the deceased had been the friend of his father,
the beloved of his mother, sweet to those who lived with
him, gracious to his brethren, loved of his servants, and
that he had never sought wrongful quarrel with any man;
briefly, that he spoke and did that which is right here
below.
** The formula of the pyramid times is: "Thy thousand of
oxen, thy thousand of geese, of roast and boiled joints from
the larder of the gods, of bread, and plenty of the good
things presented in the hall of Osiris."
If the island was attacked by the partisans of Sit, the Osirian doubles hastened in a body to repulse them, and fought bravely in its defence. Of the revenues sent to him by his kindred on certain days and by means of sacrifices, each gave tithes to the heavenly storehouses. Yet this was but the least part of the burdens laid upon him by the laws of the country, which did not suffer him to become enervated by idleness, but obliged him to labour as in the days when he still dwelt in Egypt.
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a vignette in the funerary
papyrus of Nebhopît in Turin.