Edward B. Tylor happily names the two chief theories which have been held in regard to the state of souls in the hereafter as the continuance and the retribution theory. The first theory is that of primitive man while his moral sense is yet undeveloped. According to this theory the same fate is allotted to all who go down to death. There is no such thing as rewards and punishments. This is the conception of the after-life which is held by all races on the lower levels of culture, and it is a view which often lingers on as a survival among peoples far advanced in civilization. But as the moral judgment becomes more discriminating, then this view of the other world is very certain to undergo a change. The quickened sense of justice demands that the allotments after death shall be in accordance with merit and demerit. This ethical feeling gradually transforms the topography of the underworld and organizes the as yet undivided community of shades. The hitherto common abode of the dead is usually divided into two distinct compartments or regions, heaven and hell, and souls are separated, according to their deeds on earth, into two classes, the good and the bad, those to be welcomed to the abode of the blessed and these consigned to the place of torment. Sometimes, however, the lot conceived for the wicked is simply annihilation.
The incoming of this theory of rewards and punishments after death constitutes a great landmark in the moral evolution of mankind. In the words of Tylor, this transition from the continuance to the retribution theory “for deep import to human life has scarcely its rival in the history of religion.”[80] The sanctions of morality are doubled.
Now in ancient Egypt by the beginning of the second millennium B.C. the transition from the continuance to the retribution theory had already been effected, as will appear in the following account of the Egyptian Judgment of the Dead. Thus here, as in the change of practices at the tomb, we have indisputable evidence of the progress of moral ideas in early Egypt.
The Judgment of the Dead
The Judgment of the Dead was the trial which every soul had to undergo before Osiris and his forty-two assessors in the great tribunal hall of the underworld. The astonishing thing about this tribunal, as we have just intimated, is that at a time when the oldest monuments raised in Egypt were yet recent this whole conception of the moral order in all its details was already fully matured.[81] Osiris had been raised to the judgment seat in the other world, and the moral standard in some departments of life, particularly in the relations of man to man in the everyday social and business spheres, was as high and true as is the standard in many of the civilized nations of to-day. This admirable code of social morals points unmistakably to long periods of organized society and moral training in prefeudal Egypt.
The Negative Confession
This early standard of goodness is embodied in the so-called Negative Confession, in which the soul before the Osirian tribunal pleaded his innocence of the forty-two sins condemned by the Egyptian code of morality. This confession, previous to the discovery of the Babylonian code of Hammurabi, constituted the oldest known code of morality of the ancient world. These are some of the declarations of the soul: “I did not steal”; “I did not get any man treacherously killed”; “I did not utter any lie”;[82] “I did not make any one weep”; “I did not kill any sacred animals”; “I did not damage any cultivated land”; “I was angry only when there was reason [for being angry]”; “I did not turn a deaf ear to the words of truth”; “I did not commit any act of rebellion”; “I did not do any witchcraft”; “I did not blaspheme a god”; “I did not make the slave to be misused by his master”; “I was not imperious”; “I did not strip the mummies of their stuff.”[83]
After this confession to the forty-two assessors in the hall of judgment, the soul made the following affirmative declaration, which makes a singularly close approach to Christian morality: “I gave bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, garments to the naked, a bark to the one who was without one [that is, a boat to the detained traveler], offerings to the gods, and funeral conservations to the shades.”[84]
After this confession and declaration the heart of the man was placed in one scale of a balance and the image of Truth in the other. If the heart was not found wanting, but weighed just equal to the image, Osiris pronounced the soul justified, and it was welcomed to the company of the blessed. The punishment meted out to the soul found lacking seems to have been of a negative nature—a denial of immortality.[85]
Comparison of the morality of the Negative Confession with that of the Hebrew Decalogue and other codes