The two catalogues agree to a certain extent, but they also disagree, and the second is evidently the result of a different process of thought than that which gave birth to the first. The author of Part I is not the author of Part II, unless perhaps at a different and later period. Nor is there any indication in Part I of the extraordinary examination to which the deceased person is subjected in Part III. This in itself would not be a serious objection, but the matter becomes more complicated if we remember that the picture of the Psychostasia has the right to be considered as a part of the chapter. The texts which are written upon it differ, indeed, according to the taste of the artist, and can therefore claim no canonical authority. But the question as to the order of succession in the trials, or the precise moment at which the deceased person is finally freed from all anxiety as to his fate, cannot be satisfactorily solved on the supposition that all these documents form parts of a consistent whole. It seems much more natural to consider them as really independent compositions brought together in consequence of their subject matter. The artists of the Ramseside period (in the papyri of Hunefer and Ani) add another scene[[111]] in which the deceased is judged not by the forty-two assessors of Osiris but by a smaller company of gods (twelve or fourteen), sitting on thrones and bearing the names of well known divinities.
The essential notion was that of a trial before Osiris, in which the man’s conduct or conscience was weighed in the Balance. This trial is referred to in various chapters of the Book of the Dead and in other texts which prove that, with reference to the details, free scope was allowed to the imagination of the scribes or artists.
The number of the Forty-two assessors might be thought connected with that of the Nomes of Egypt. But this number is only certain for the later periods of Egyptian history, and is not true for earlier times. Moreover the localities in which the gods are said to make their appearances do not correspond to the nomes, or places within them. Some of the localities occur more than once, and some of them, if not all, are localities not upon earth. Heaven occurs twice, the eleventh god makes his appearance at Amenta and the forty-second in the Netherworld. But the names which have a more earthly sound may have a mystical meaning. The first god makes his appearance in Annu, so does the seventeenth and so does the twenty-fourth. But does this mean Heliopolis of Egypt? On referring to an important text in Mariette’s Monuments Divers, pl. 46, it will be seen that Annu is the Eastern Solar Mountain
, where the sun rises, and where he is saluted by the Powers of the East. There cannot be a more striking illustration of “the Divine Babe who maketh his appearance in Annu” (the twenty-fourth Assessor), than the picture I refer to.[[112]]
And Chemunnu,
