[76] Comp. Wilkinson, Manners, etc., of the Ancient Egyptians, 2nd series, London, 1841, Vol. II., p. 260, Vol. I., pp. 250, 256.
VII.[ToC]
IMPORTANCE OF THE HEART IN THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL ACCORDING TO THAT RELIGION. SYMBOLISM OF THE SCARAB IN THEIR DOCTRINE OF SUCH IMMORTALITY. NO THING IN THIS UNIVERSE ABSOLUTELY DESTROYED, ONLY CHANGED. THE IDEA OF METEMPSYCHOSIS IN ANCIENT EGYPT. ELEVATED IDEAS AS TO THE DEITY. HYMN TO AMMON-RA CITED. QUOTATIONS AS TO EGYPTIAN PHILOSOPHY, EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE AND KOSMOGONY. OF KHEPRA AND OF TUM OR ATMU. EGYPTIAN PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS DIVISIONS.
The human heart, the first life principle of human existence and regeneration, the first apparent individuality of embryonic human life; was symbolized, in the Per-em-Hru, i.e., the Book of the Dead, by Khepra, the scarabæus deity; this is one reason why the texts (chapters XXX. and XXVII., see also LXIV.,) which related to the heart, were those usually inscribed on the funeral scarabæi, and consecrated to the preservation of the heart of the dead. The condition of death was described by the Egyptian expression: "The one whose heart does not beat." The resurrection or re-birth from the dead only began, according to the Egyptian idea, when this organ, so essential and necessary to all animal life, was returned to the deceased Ba, i.e., responsible soul, by the decree of Osiris and the judges of the dead, which Thoth registers: "To him is accorded that his heart may be in its place." Indeed most of the texts of the Per-em-Hru, as we have seen, are dedicated to the preservation of the heart of the dead one. The philosophic student can therefore from this, at once see, the great value of the scarabæus symbol to the whole religious thought-world of Ancient Egypt. It was the symbol, when returned to the dead, of the regenerated and resurrected life of the dead one to the heavenly regions of the blessed for all eternity, to the second birth in the regions of eternal rest and happiness.
Taking as a model the daily course of the sun, which rising in the morning as Horus; reaching the zenith at noon as Ra; setting in the evening, in the regions of darkness as Tum; and absent during the night and until the morrow as Osiris; upon which, victorious over the chaotic darkness, it arose in triumph again as Horus; the birth and journey of man on earth, was considered by the Ancient Egyptians as similar to the solar journey; and death, the end of that journey, was assimilated to the course of the sun when at night it was, according to their astronomical knowledge, supposed to be in the Lower Regions or Underworld, the abode of Osiris. When he died, the Egyptian became as Osiris, "the nocturnal sun;" resurrected, he became Horus, the new-born and rising sun; in midday, he was Ra. Horus was: "The Old One who rejuvenated himself." Such a re-birth of the dead to immortality, was the recompense promised by the Egyptian religion, to the soul of the man pious and good during this life, but the wicked were to be tortured, transformed into lower forms, or annihilated.[77] Matter, according to it, does not perish but only changes and the earth itself, was deified as Seb, Isis, Ta-nen, and Ptah-Tatunen.
What then did matter become, it was transformed, the deities were transformed. Matter was transformed,—this is explained to us through the symbolism of the scarab, the hieroglyph of the word Kheper, i.e., "to be," "to exist," "to become," "to create," "to emanate;" of which, as I have said, the Great Sphinx is the symbol, and has therefore the philosophical value of creator and created.[78] God and His universe, existence and change or transformation, death and dissolution, all which were only considered as regeneration and re-birth in another form. Thence becomes apparent to us, the great value and importance to the Egyptian people of the symbolism of the scarab, it was, to them, the emblematic synthesis of their religion as to-day to Christians, the Latin or the Greek cross, is the emblematic synthesis of Latin or Greek Christianity. The philosophic Egyptian, thought, the atoms and molecules of all bodies and of all matter, were never destroyed or lost, they were always in motion but were only transformed and changed, by death or the dissolution of forms. Death on this earth did not destroy the personality of the human being, that continued beyond death on our earth, and as to those who had been good and pious during their life here, their personality continued eternally; but the punishment of the wicked was, the annihilation of that personality or an immobility which was almost the same. The work entitled, Hermes Trismegistos, contains a resumé of that idea, saying, among other things: "What was composed is divided. That division is not Death, it is the analysis of a combination; but the aim of that analysis is not destruction, it is the renewment. What is in effect the energy of life? Is it not movement? What then is there in this world, immovable?"[79]
The everlasting interchange of life and death, flows throughout all the religious philosophy of the Ancient Egyptians; basing itself on the continual return of day from night and of day to night, and upon the apparent course of the sun, they seem to have formulated the idea of the immortality of the soul of man after death.