1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a vignette in the Papyrus of
Nebqadn, in Paris.
Born in the morning, he ages as the day declines, and gently passes away at evening. From the time of his entering the sky to that of his leaving it, he reigns above as he reigned here below in the beginning; but when he has left the sky and sinks into Hades, he becomes as one of the dead, and is, as they are, subjected to Osirian embalmment. The same dangers that menace their human souls threaten his soul also; and when he has vanquished them, not in his own strength, but by the power of amulets and magical formulas, he enters into the fields of lalû, and ought to dwell there for ever under the rule of Onuophris. He did nothing of the kind, however, for daily the sun was to be seen reappearing in the east twelve hours after it had sunk into the darkness of the west. Was it a new orb each time, or did the same sun shine every day? In either case the result was precisely the same; the god came forth from death and re-entered into life. Having identified the course of the sun-god with that of man, and Râ with Osiris for a first day and a first night, it was hard not to push the matter further, and identify them for all succeeding days and nights, affirming that man and Osiris might, if they so wished, be born again in the morning, as Râ was, and together with him. If the Egyptians had found the prospect of quitting the darkness of the tomb for the bright meadows of Ialû a sensible alleviation of their lot, with what joy must they have been filled by the conception which allowed them to substitute the whole realm of the sun for a little archipelago in an out-of-the-way corner of the universe. Their first consideration was to obtain entrance into the divine bark, and this was the object of all the various practices and prayers, whose text, together with that which already contained the Osirian formulas, ensured the unfailing protection of Râ to their possessor. The soul desirous of making use of them went straight from his tomb to the very spot where the god left earth to descend into Hades. This was somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood of Abydos, and was reached through a narrow gorge or "cleft" in the Libyan range, whose "mouth" opened in front of the temple of Osiris Khontamentît, a little to the north-west of the city. The soul was supposed to be carried thither by a small flotilla of boats, manned by figures representing friends or priests, and laden with food, furniture, and statues. This flotilla was placed within the vault on the day of the funeral, and was set in motion by means of incantations recited over it during one of the first nights of the year, at the annual feast of the dead. The bird or insect which had previously served as guide to the soul upon its journey now took the helm to show the fleet the right way, and under this command the boats left Abydos and mysteriously passed through the "cleft" into that western sea which is inaccessible to the living, there to await the daily coming of the dying sun-god.
1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a very small photograph
published in the Catalogue of the Minutoli Sale.
As soon as his bark appeared at the last bend of the celestial Nile, the cynocephali, who guarded the entrance into night, began to dance and gesticulate upon the banks as they intoned their accustomed hymn. The gods of Abydos mingled their shouts of joy with the chant of the sacred baboons, the bark lingered for a moment upon the frontiers of day, and initiated souls seized the occasion to secure their recognition and their reception on board of it.[*] Once admitted, they took their share in the management of the boat, and in the battles with hostile deities; but they were not all endowed with the courage or equipment needful to withstand the perils and terrors of the voyage. Many stopped short by the way in one of the regions which it traversed, either in the realm of Khontamentît, or in that of Sokaris, or in those islands where the good Osiris welcomed them as though they had duly arrived in the ferry-boat, or upon the wing of Thot. There they dwelt in colonies under the suzerainty of local gods, rich, and in need of nothing, but condemned to live in darkness, excepting for the one brief hour in which the solar bark passed through their midst, irradiating them with beams of light.[**]
* This description of the embarkation and voyage of the
soul is composed from indications given in one of the
vignettes of chap. xvi. of the Book of the Dead (Naville's
edition, vol. i. pl. xxii.), combined with the text of a
formula which became common from the times of the XIth and
XIIth dynasties (Maspero, Études de Mythologie et
l'Archéologie Égyptiennes, vol. i. pp. 14-18, and Études
Égyptiennes, vol. i. pp. 122, 123).
** Maspero, Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie
Égyptiennes, vol. ii. pp. 44, 45.
The few persevered, feeling that they had courage to accompany the sun throughout, and these were indemnified for their sufferings by the most brilliant fate ever dreamed of by Egyptian souls., Born anew with the sun-god and appearing with him at the gates of the east, they were assimilated to him, and shared his privilege of growing old and dying, only to be ceaselessly rejuvenated and to live again with ever-renewed splendour. They disembarked where they pleased, and returned at will into the world. If now and then they felt a wish to revisit all that was left of their earthly bodies, the human-headed sparrow-hawk descended the shaft in full flight, alighted upon the funeral couch, and, with hands softly laid upon the spot where the heart had been wont to beat, gazed upwards at the impassive mask of the mummy.