The Age of Personal Piety — Sacerdotalism and Final Decadence (Part 1)

The Age of Personal Piety—Sacerdotalism and Final Decadence

(Period: 1350 B.C. on.)

Fall of Ikhnaton—Suppression of the Aton faith—Restoration of Amon—Influences of Aton faith survive—Their appearance in folk-religion of 13th and 12th centuries B.C.—Fatherly care and solicitude of God (as old as Feudal Age), together with elements of Aton faith, appear in a manifestation of personal piety among the common people—New spiritual relation with God, involving humility. confession of sin, and silent meditation—Morals of the sages and moral progress—Resignation to one's lot—Folk theology—Pantheism in a folk-tale—In Theology—Universal spread of mortuary practices—Increasing power of religious institutions—A state within the state—Sacerdotalism triumphs—Religion degenerates into usages, observances, and scribal conservation of the old writings—The retrospective age—Final decadence into the Osirianism of the Roman Empire.

CHRONOLOGY

Beginning of the Dynasties with Menes, about 3400 B.C.

Early Dynasties, I And II, About 3400 To 2980 B.C.

Old Kingdom or Pyramid Age, Dynasties III to VI, 2980 to 2475 B.C., roughly the first five hundred years of the third millennium B.C.

Middle Kingdom or Feudal Age, Dynasties XI and XII, 2160 to 1788 B.C.

The Empire, Dynasties XVIII to XX first half only), about 1580 to 1150 B.C.

Decadence, Dynasties XX (second half) to XXV, about 1150 to 660 B.C.

Restoration, Dynasty XXVI, 663 to 525 B.C.

Persian Conquest, 525 B.C.

Greek Conquest, 332 B.C.

Roman Conquest, 30 B.C.

DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION AND THOUGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT

LECTURE I

THE ORIGINS: NATURE AND THE STATE IN THEIR IMPRESSION ON RELIGION—EARLIEST SYSTEMS

The recovery of the history of the nearer Orient in the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic and Babylonian cuneiform brought with it many unexpected revelations, but none more impressive than the length of the development disclosed. In Babylonia, however, the constant influx of foreign population resulted in frequent and violent interruption of the development of civilization. In Egypt, on the other hand, the isolation of the lower Nile valley permitted a development never seriously arrested by permanent immigrations for over three thousand years. We find here an opportunity like that which the zoologist is constantly seeking in what he calls "unbroken series," such as that of the horse developing in several millions of years from a creature little larger than a rabbit to our modern domestic horse. In all the categories of human life: language, arts, government, society, thought, religion—what you please—we may trace a development in Egypt essentially undisturbed by outside forces, for a period far surpassing in length any such development elsewhere preserved to us; and it is a matter of not a little interest to observe what humankind becomes in the course of five thousand years in such an Island of the Blest as Egypt; to follow him from the flint knife and stone hammer in less than two thousand years to the

copper chisel and the amazing extent and accuracy of the Great Pyramid masonry; from the wattle-hut to the sumptuous palace, gorgeous with glazed tile, rich tapestries, and incrusted with gold; to follow all the golden threads of his many-sided life, as it was interwoven at last into a rich and noble fabric of civilization. In these lectures we are to follow but one of these many threads, as its complicated involutions wind hither and thither throughout the whole fabric.

There is no force in the life of ancient man the influence of which so pervades all his activities as does that of the religious faculty. It is at first but an endeavor in vague and childish fancies to explain and to control the world about him; its fears become his hourly master, its hopes are his constant mentor, its feasts are his calendar, and its outward usages are to a large extent the education and the motive toward the evolution of art, literature, and science. Life not only touches religion at every point, but life, thought, and religion are inextricably interfused in an intricate complex of impressions from without and forces from within. How the world about him and the world within him successively wrought and fashioned the religion of the Egyptian for three thousand years is the theme of these studies.

As among all other early peoples, it was in his natural surroundings that the Egyptian first saw his gods. The trees and springs, the stones and hill-tops, the birds and beasts, were creatures like himself, or possessed of strange and uncanny powers of which he was not master. Nature thus makes the earliest impression upon the religious faculty, the visible world is first explained in terms of religious forces, and the earliest gods are the controlling forces of the material world. A social or political realm,

or a domain of the spirit where the gods shall be supreme, is not yet perceived. Such divinities as these were local, each known only to the dwellers in a given locality. 1

As the prehistoric principalities, after many centuries of internal conflict, coalesced to form a united state, the first great national organization of men in history (about 3400 B.C.), this imposing fabric of the state made a profound impression upon religion, and the forms of the state began to pass over into the world of the gods.

At the same time the voices within made themselves heard, and moral values were discerned for the first time. Man's organized power without and the power of the moral imperative within were thus both early forces in shaping Egyptian religion. The moral mandate, indeed, was felt earlier in Egypt than anywhere else. With the development of provincial society in the Feudal Age there ensued a ferment of social forces, and the demand for social justice early found expression in the conception of a gracious and paternal kingship, maintaining high ideals of social equity. The world of the gods, continuing in sensitive touch with the political conditions of the nation, at once felt this influence, and through the idealized kingship social justice passed over into the character of the state god, enriching the ethical qualities which in some degree had for probably a thousand years been imputed to him.

Thus far all was national. As the arena of thought and action widened from national limits to a world of imperial scope, when the Egyptian state expanded to embrace contiguous Asia and Africa, the forces of imperial power consistently reacted upon the thought and religion

of the empire. The national religion was forcibly supplanted by a non-national, universal faith, and for the first time in history monotheism dawned. Unlike the social developments of the Feudal Age, this movement was exclusively political, artificial, and imposed upon the people by official pressure from above. The monotheistic movement also failed for lack of nationalism. The Mediterranean world was not yet ripe for a world-religion. In the reversion to the old national gods, much of the humane content of the monotheistic teaching survived, and may be recognized in ideas which gained wide currency among the people. In this process of popularization, the last great development in Egyptian religion took place (1300–1100 B.C.), a development toward deep personal confidence in the goodness and paternal solicitude of God, resulting in a relation of spiritual communion with him. This earliest known age of personal piety in a deep spiritual sense degenerated under the influence of sacerdotalism into the exaggerated religiosity of Græco-Roman days in Egypt.

Such is the imposing vista of development in the religion and thought of Egypt, down which we may look, surveying as we do a period of three thousand years or more. To sum up: what we shall endeavor to do is to trace the progress of the Egyptian as both the world about him and the world within him made their impression upon his thought and his religion, disclosing to us, one after another, nature, the national state, the inner life with its growing sense of moral obligation, the social forces, the world state, the personal conviction of the presence and goodness of God, triumphant sacerdotalism, scribal literalism, and resulting decay—in short, all these in succession as felt by the Egyptian with profound effect

upon his religion and his thought for three thousand years will constitute the survey presented in these lectures.

The fact that a survey of exactly this character has not been undertaken before should lend some interest to the task. The fact that objective study of the great categories mentioned has ranged them chronologically in their effect upon thought and religion in the order above outlined, disclosing a religious development in the main points analogous with that of the Hebrews, though with differences that might have been expected, should also enhance the interest and importance of such a reconstruction. Indeed one of the noticeable facts regarding the religious and intellectual development of the Hebrews has been that the Oriental world in which they moved has heretofore furnished us with no wholly analogous process among kindred peoples.

It will be seen that such a study as we contemplate involves keeping in the main channel and following the broad current, the general drift. It will be impossible, not to say quite undesirable, to undertake an account of all the Egyptian gods, or to study the material appurtenances and outward usages of religion, like the ceremonies and equipment of the cult, which were so elaborately developed in Egypt. Nor shall we follow thought in all its relations to the various incipient sciences, but only those main developments involved in the intimate interrelation between thought and religion.

One characteristic of Egyptian thinking should be borne in mind from the outset: it was always in graphic form. The Egyptian did not possess the terminology for the expression of a system of abstract thought; neither did he develop the capacity to create the necessary terminology as did the Greek. He thought in concrete pictures,

he moved along tangible material channels, and the material world about him furnished nearly all of the terms which he used. While this is probably ultimately true of all terms in any early language, such terms for the most part remained concrete for the Egyptian. We shall discern the emergence of the earliest abstract term known in the history of thought as moral ideas appear among the men of the Pyramid Age in the first half of the third millennium B.C. Let us not, therefore, expect an equipment of precise abstract terms, which we shall find as lacking as the systems which might require them. We are indeed to watch processes by which a nation like the Greeks might have developed such terms, but as we contemplate the earliest developments in human thinking still traceable in contemporary documents, we must expect the vagueness, the crudities, and the limitations inevitable at so early a stage of human development. As the earliest chapter in the intellectual history of man, its introductory phases are, nevertheless, of more importance than their intrinsic value as thought would otherwise possess, while the climax of the development is vital with human interest and human appeal.

As we examine Egyptian religion in its earliest surviving documents, it is evident that two great phenomena of nature had made the most profound impression upon the Nile-dwellers and that the gods discerned in these two phenomena dominated religious and intellectual development from the earliest times. These are the sun and the Nile. In the Sun-god, Re, Atum, Horus, Khepri, and in the Nile, Osiris, we find the great gods of Egyptian life and thought, who almost from the beginning entered upon a rivalry for the highest place in the religion of Egypt—a rivalry which ceased only with the annihilation of Egyptian

religion at the close of the fifth century of the Christian era. He who knows the essentials of the story of this long rivalry, will know the main course of the history of Egyptian religion, not to say one of the most important chapters in the history of the early East.

The all-enveloping glory and power of the Egyptian sun is the most insistent fact in the Nile valley, even at the present day as the modern tourist views him for the first time. The Egyptian saw him in different, doubtless originally local forms. At Edfu he appeared as a falcon, for the lofty flight of this bird, which seemed a very comrade of the sun, had led the early fancy of the Nile peasant to believe that the sun must be such a falcon, taking his daily flight across the heavens, and the sun-disk with the outspread wings of the falcon became the commonest symbol of Egyptian religion. As falcon he bore the name Hor (Horus or Horos), or Harakhte, which means "Horus of the horizon." The latter with three other Horuses formed the four Horuses of the eastern sky, originally, doubtless, four different local Horuses. 1 We find them

in the Pyramid Texts as "these four youths who sit on the east side of the sky, these four youths with curly hair who sit in the shade of the tower of Kati." 1

At Heliopolis the Sun-god appeared as an aged man tottering down the west, while elsewhere they saw in him a winged beetle rising in the east as Khepri. Less picturesque fancy discerned the material sun as Re, that is the "sun." While these were early correlated they at first remained distinct gods for the separate localities where they were worshipped. Survivals of the distinction between the archaic local Sun-gods are still to be found in the Pyramid Texts. Horus early became the son of Re, but in the Pyramid Texts we may find the dead Pharaoh mounting "upon his empty throne between the two great gods" (Re and Horus). 2 They ultimately coalesced, and their identity is quite evident also in the same Pyramid Texts, where we find the compound "Re-Atum" to indicate the identity. 3 The favorite picture of him discloses him sailing across the celestial ocean in the sun-barque, of which there were two, one for the morning and the other for the evening. There were several ancient folk-tales of how he reached the sky when he was still on earth. They prayed that the deceased Pharaoh might reach the sky in the same way: "Give thou to this king Pepi (the Pharaoh) thy two fingers which thou gavest to the maiden, the daughter of the Great God (Re), when the sky was separated from the earth, and the gods ascended to the sky, while thou wast a soul appearing in the bow of thy ship of seven hundred and seventy cubits (length), which the gods of Buto built for thee, which the eastern gods shaped for thee." 4 This separation of

earth and sky had been accomplished by Shu the god of the atmosphere, who afterward continued to support the sky as he stood with his feet on earth. There, like Atlas shouldering the earth, he was fed by provisions of the Sun-god brought by a falcon. 1

Long before all this, however, there had existed in the beginning only primeval chaos, an ocean in which the Sun-god as Atum had appeared. At one temple they said Ptah had shaped an egg out of which the Sun-god had issued; at another it was affirmed that a lotus flower had grown out of the water and in it the youthful Sun-god was concealed; at Heliopolis it was believed that the Sun-god had appeared upon the ancient pyramidal "Ben-stone in the Phœnix-hall in Heliopolis" as a Phœnix. 2 Every sanctuary sought to gain honor by associating in some way with its own early history the appearance of the Sun-god. Either by his own masculine power self-developed, 3 or by a consort who appeared to him, the Sun-god now begat Shu the Air-god, and Tefnut his wife. Of these two were born Geb the Earth-god, and Nut the goddess of the sky, whose children were the two brothers Osiris and Set, and the sisters Isis and Nephthys.

In the remotest past it was with material functions that the Sun-god had to do. In the earliest Sun-temples at Abusir, he appears as the source of life and increase. Men said of him: "Thou hast driven away the storm, and hast expelled the rain, and hast broken up the clouds." 4 These were his enemies, and of course they were likewise personified in the folk-myth, appearing in a tale in which the Sun-god loses his eye at the hands of

his enemy. Similarly the waxing and waning of the moon, who was also an eye of the Sun-god, gave rise to another version of the lost eye, which in this case was brought back and restored to the Sun-god by his friend Thoth the Moon-god. 1 This "eye," termed the "Horus-eye," became one of the holiest symbols of Egyptian religion, and was finally transferred to the Osirian faith, where it played a prominent part. 2

As the Egyptian state developed and a uniformly organized nation under a single king embraced and included all the once petty and local principalities, the Sun-god became an ancient king who, like a Pharaoh, had once ruled Egypt. Many folk-myths telling of his earthly rule arose, but of these only fragments have survived, like that which narrates the ingratitude of his human subjects, whom he was obliged to punish and almost exterminate before he retired to the sky. 3

While the Egyptian still referred with pleasure to the incidents which made up these primitive tales, and his religious literature to the end was filled with allusions to these myths, nevertheless at the beginning of the Pyramid Age he was already discerning the Sun-god in the exercise of functions which lifted him far above such childish fancies and made him the great arbiter and ruler of the Egyptian nation. While he was supreme among the gods, and men said of him, "Thou passest the night in the evening-barque, thou wakest in the morning-barque;

for thou art he who overlooks the gods; there is no god who overlooks thee"; 1 he was likewise at the same time supreme over the destinies of men.

This fundamental transition, the earliest known, transferred the activities of the Sun-god from the realm of exclusively material forces to the domain of human affairs. Already in the Pyramid Age his supremacy in the affairs of Egypt was celebrated in the earliest Sun-hymn which we possess. It sets forth the god's beneficent maintenance and control of the land of Egypt, which is called the "Horus-eye," that is the Sun-god's eye. The hymn is as follows:

"Hail to thee, Atum! Hail to thee, Kheprer! Who himself became (or 'self-generator'). Thou art high in this thy name of 'Height,' Thou becomest (ḫpr) in this thy name of 'Beetle' (ḫprr). Hail to thee, Horus-eye (Egypt), Which he adorned with both his arms.

"He permits thee (Egypt) not to hearken to the westerners, He permits thee not to hearken to the easterners, He permits thee not to hearken to the southerners, He permits thee not to hearken to the northerners, He permits thee not to hearken to the dwellers in the midst of the earth, But thou hearkenest unto Horus.

"It is he who has adorned thee, It is he who has built thee, It is he who has founded thee. Thou doest for him everything that he says to thee In every place where he goes.

"Thou carriest to him the fowl-bearing waters that are in thee; Thou carriest to him the fowl-bearing waters that shall be in thee. Thou carriest to him every tree that is in thee, Thou carriest to him every tree that shall be in thee. Thou carriest to him all food that is in thee, Thou carriest to him all food that shall be in thee. Thou carriest to him the gifts that are in thee, Thou carriest to him the gifts that shall be in thee. Thou carriest to him everything that is in thee, Thou carriest to him everything that shall be in thee. Thou bringest them to him, To every place where his heart desires to be.

"The doors that are on thee stand fast like Inmutef, 1 They open not to the westerners, They open not to the easterners, They open not to the northerners, They open not to the southerners, They open not to the dwellers in the midst of the earth, They open to Horus. It was he who made them, It was he who set them up, It was he who saved them from every ill which Set did to them. It was he who settled (grg) thee, In this thy name of 'Settlements' (grg-wt). It was he who went doing obeisance (nyny) after thee, In this thy name of 'City' (nwt) It was he who saved thee from every ill Which Set did unto thee." 2

Similarly the Sun-god is the ally and protector of the king: "He settles for him Upper Egypt, he settles for him Lower Egypt; he hacks up for him the strongholds of Asia, he quells for him all the people, 3 who were fashioned

under his fingers." 1 Such was his prestige that by the twenty-ninth century his name appeared in the names of the Gizeh kings, the builders of the second and third pyramids there, Khafre and Menkure, and according to a folk-tale circulating a thousand years later, Khufu the builder of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, and the predecessor of the two kings just named, was warned by a wise man that his line should be superseded by three sons of the Sun-god yet to be born. As a matter of fact, in the middle of the next century, that is about 2750 B.C., the line of Khufu, the Fourth Dynasty, was indeed supplanted by a family of kings, who began to assume the title "Son of Re," though the title was probably not unknown even earlier. This Fifth Dynasty was devoted to the service of the Sun-god, and each king built a vast sanctuary for his worship in connection with the royal residence, on the margin of the western desert. Such a sanctuary possessed no adytum, or holy-of-holies, but in its place there rose a massive masonry obelisk towering to the sky. Like all obelisks, it was surmounted by a pyramid, which formed the apex. The pyramid was, as we shall see, the chief symbol of the Sun-god, and in his sanctuary at Heliopolis there was a pyramidal stone in the holy place, of which that surmounting the obelisk in the Fifth Dynasty sun-temples was perhaps a reproduction. It is evident that the priests of Heliopolis had become so powerful that they had succeeded in seating this Solar line of kings upon the throne of the Pharaohs. From now on the state fiction was maintained that the Pharaoh was the physical son of the Sun-god by an earthly mother, and in later days we find the successive incidents of the Sun-god's terrestrial amour sculptured

on the walls of the temples. It has been preserved in two buildings of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the temple of Luxor and that of Der el-Bahri. 1

The legend was so persistent that even Alexander the Great deferred to the tradition, and made the long journey to the Oasis of Amon in the western desert, that he might be recognized as the bodily son of the Egyptian Sun-god; 2 and the folk-tale preserved in Pseudo-Callisthenes gave the legend currency as a popular romance, which survived until a few centuries ago in Europe. It still remains to be determined what influence the Solar Pharaoh may have had upon the Solar apotheosis of the Cæsars, five hundred years later.

From the foundation of the Fifth Dynasty, in the twenty-eighth century B.C., the position of the Sun-god then, as the father of the Pharaoh and the great patron divinity of the state, was one of unrivalled splendor and power. He was the great god of king and court. When King Neferirkere is deeply afflicted at the sudden death of his grand vizier, who was stricken down with disease at the king's side, the Pharaoh prays to Re; 3 and the court-physician, when he has received a gift from the king for his tomb, tells of it in his tomb inscriptions with the words: "If ye love Re, ye shall praise every god for Sahure's sake who did this for me." 4

The conception of the Sun-god as a former king of Egypt, as the father of the reigning Pharaoh, and as the protector and leader of the nation, still a kind of ideal king, resulted in the most important consequences for

religion. The qualities of the earthly kingship of the Pharaoh were easily transferred to Re. We can observe this even in externals. There was a palace song with which the court was wont to waken the sovereign five thousand years ago, or which was addressed to him in the morning as he came forth from his chamber. It began:

"Thou wakest in peace, The king awakes in peace, Thy wakening is in peace." 1

This song was early addressed to the Sun-god, 2 and similarly the hymns to the royal diadem as a divinity were addressed to other gods. 3 The whole earthly conception and environment of the Egyptian Pharaoh were soon, as it were, the "stage properties" with which Re was "made up" before the eyes of the Nile-dweller. When later on, therefore, the conception of the human kingship was developed and enriched under the transforming social forces of the Feudal Age, these vital changes were soon reflected from the character of the Pharaoh to that of the Sun-god. It was a fact of the greatest value to religion, then, that the Sun-god became a kind of celestial reflection of the earthly sovereign. This phenomenon is, of course, merely a highly specialized example of the universal process by which man has pictured to himself his god with the pigments of his earthly experience. We shall later see how this process is closely analogous to the developing idea of the Messianic king in Hebrew thought.

While there is no question whatever regarding the natural phenomenon of which Re, Atum, Horus, and the rest were personifications, there has been much uncertainty and discussion of the same question in connection with Osiris. 1

The oldest source, the Pyramid Texts, in combination with a few later references, settles the question beyond any doubt. The clearest statement of the nature of Osiris is that contained in the incident of the finding of the dead god by his son Horus, as narrated in the Pyramid Texts: "Horus comes, he recognizes his father in thee, youthful in thy name of 'Fresh Water."' 2 Equally unequivocal are the words of King Ramses IV, who says to the god: "Thou art indeed the Nile, great on the fields at the beginning of the seasons; gods and men live by the moisture that is in thee." 3

Similarly in the Pyramid Texts, Osiris is elsewhere addressed: "Ho, Osiris, the inundation comes, the overflow moves, Geb (the earth-god) groans: 'I have sought thee in the field, I have smitten him who did aught against thee . . . that thou mightest live and lift thyself up.'" 4 Again when the dead king Unis is identified with Osiris, it is said of him: "Unis comes hither up-stream when the flood inundates. . . . Unis comes to his pools that are in the region of the flood at the great inundation, to the

place of peace, with green fields, that is in the horizon. Unis makes the verdure to flourish in the two regions of the horizon"; 1 or "it is Unis who inundates the land." 2

Likewise the deceased king Pepi I is addressed as Osiris thus: "This thy cavern, 3 is the broad hall of Osiris, O King Pepi, which brings the wind and ⌈guides⌉ the north-wind. It raises thee as Osiris, O King Pepi. The winepress god comes to thee bearing wine-juice. . . . Those who behold the Nile tossing in waves tremble. The marshes laugh, the shores are overflowed, the divine offerings descend, men give praise and the heart of the gods rejoices." 4 A priestly explanation in the Pyramid Texts represents the inundation as of ceremonial origin, Osiris as before being its source: "The lakes fill, the canals are inundated, by the purification that came forth from Osiris"; 5 or "Ho this Osiris, king Mernere! Thy water, thy libation is the great inundation that came forth from thee" (as Osiris). 6

In a short hymn addressed to the departed king, Pepi II, as Osiris, we should discern Osiris either in the life-giving waters or the soil of Egypt which is laved by them. The birth of the god is thus described: "The waters of life that are in the sky come; the waters of life that are in the earth come. The sky burns for thee, the earth trembles for thee, before the divine birth. The two mountains divide, the god becomes, the god takes possession of his body. Behold this king Pepi, his feet are kissed by the pure waters which arose through Atum, which the phallus of Shu makes and the vulva of Tefnut causes to be.

[paragraph continues] They come to thee, they bring to thee the pure waters from their father. They purify thee, they cleanse thee, O Pepi. . . . The libation is poured out at the gate of this king Pepi, the face of every god is washed. Thou washest thy arms, O Osiris." 1 As Osiris was identified with the waters of earth and sky, he may even become the sea and the ocean itself. We find him addressed thus: "Thou art great, thou art green, in thy name of Great Green (Sea); lo, thou art round as the Great Circle (Okeanos); lo, thou art turned about, thou art round as the circle that encircles the Haunebu (Ægeans)." 2 "Thou includest all things in thy embrace, in thy name of 'Encircler of the Haunebu' (Ægeans)." 3 Or again: "Thou hast encircled every god in thy embrace, their lands and all their possessions. O Osiris . . . thou art great, thou curvest about as the curve which encircles the Haunebu." 4 Hence it is that Osiris is depicted on the sarcophagus of Seti I, engulfed in waters and lying as it were coiled, with head and heels meeting around a vacancy containing the inscription: "It is Osiris, encircling the Nether-World." 5 We may therefore understand another passage of the Pyramid Texts, which says to Osiris: "Thou ferriest over the lake to thy house the Great Green (sea)." 6

While the great fountains of water are thus identified with Osiris, it is evidently a particular function of the waters with which he was associated. It was water as a source of fertility, water as a life-giving agency with which

[paragraph continues] Osiris was identified. It is water which brings life to the soil, and when the inundation comes the Earth-god Geb says to Osiris: "The divine fluid that is in thee cries out, thy heart lives, thy divine limbs move, thy joints are loosed," in which we discern the water bringing life and causing the resurrection of Osiris, the soil. In the same way in a folk-tale thirteen or fourteen hundred years later than the Pyramid Texts, the heart of a dead hero, who is really Osiris, is placed in water, and when he has drunk the water containing his heart, he revives and comes to life. 1

As we have seen in the last passage from the Pyramid Texts, Osiris is closely associated with the soil likewise. This view of Osiris is carried so far in a hymn of the twelfth century B.C. as to identify Osiris, not only with the soil but even with the earth itself. The beginning is lost, but we perceive that the dead Osiris is addressed as one "with outspread arms, sleeping upon his side upon the sand, lord of the soil, mummy with long phallus. . . . Re-Khepri shines on thy body, when thou liest as Sokar, and he drives away the darkness which is upon thee, that he may bring light to thy eyes. For a time he shines upon thy body mourning for thee. . . . The soil is on thy arm, its corners are upon thee as far as the four pillars of the sky. When thou movest, the earth trembles. . . . As for thee, the Nile comes forth from the sweat of thy hands. Thou spewest out the wind that is in thy throat into the nostrils of men, and that whereon men live is divine. It is ⌈alike in⌉ thy nostrils, the tree and its verdure, reeds—plants, barley, wheat, and the tree of life. When canals are dug, . . . houses and temples are built, when monuments are transported and fields are cultivated, when

tomb-chapels and tombs are excavated, they rest on thee, it is thou who makest them. They are on thy back, although they are more than can be put into writing. [Thy] back hath not an empty place, for they all lie on thy back; but [thou sayest] not, 'I am weighed down.' Thou art the father and mother of men, they live on thy breath, they eat of the flesh of thy body. The 'Primæval' is thy name." 1

The earlier views of the Pyramid Texts represent him as intimately associated with vegetable life. We find him addressed thus: "O thou whose ab-tree is green, which (or who) is upon his field; O thou opener of the ukhikh-flower that (or who) is on his sycomore; O thou brightener of regions who is on his palm; O thou lord of green fields." 2 Again it is said to him: "Thou art flooded with the verdure with which the children of Geb (the Earth-god) were flooded. . . . The am-tree serves thee, the nebes-tree bows its head to thee." 3 In addition to his connection with the wine-press god above, he is called "Lord of overflowing wine." 4 Furthermore, as the inundation began at the rising of Sothis, the star of Isis, sister of Osiris, they said to him: "The beloved daughter, Sothis, makes thy fruits (rnpwt) in this her name of 'Year' (rnpt)." 5 These are the fruits on which Egypt lives; when therefore the dead king is identified with Osiris, his birth is called "his unblemished birth, whereby the Two Lands (Egypt) live," and thereupon he comes as the messenger of Osiris announcing the prosperous yield of the year. 6 In the earliest versions of the Book of the Dead likewise, the deceased says of himself: "I am

[paragraph continues] Osiris, I have come forth as thou (that is "being thou"), I have entered as thou . . . the gods live as I, I live as the gods, I live as 'Grain,' 1 I grow as 'Grain.' . . . I am barley." With these early statements we should compare the frequent representations showing grain sprouting from the prostrate body of Osiris, or a tree growing out of his tomb or his coffin, or the effigies of the god as a mummy moulded of bruised corn and earth and buried with the dead, or in the grain-field to insure a plentiful crop.

It is evident from these earliest sources that Osiris was identified with the waters, especially the inundation, with the soil, and with vegetation. This is a result of the Egyptian tendency always to think in graphic and concrete forms. The god was doubtless in Egyptian thought the imperishable principle of life wherever found, and this conception not infrequently appears in representations of him, showing him even in death as still possessed of generative power. The ever-waning and reviving life of the earth, sometimes associated with the life-giving waters, sometimes with the fertile soil, or again discerned in vegetation itself—that was Osiris. The fact that the Nile, like the vegetation which its rising waters nourished awl supported, waxed and waned every year, made it more easy to see him in the Nile, the most important feature of the Egyptian's landscape, than in any other form. 2 As a matter of fact the Nile was but the source

and visible symbol of that fertility of which Osiris was the personification.

This ever-dying, ever-reviving god, who seemed to be subjected to human destiny and human mortality, was inevitably the inexhaustible theme of legend and saga. Like the Sun-god, after kings appeared in the land, Osiris soon became an ancient king, who had been given the inheritance of his father Geb, the Earth-god. He was commonly called "the heir of Geb," who "assigned to him the leadership of the lands for the good of affairs. He put this land in his hand, its water, its air, its verdure, all its herds, all things that fly, all things that flutter, its reptiles, its game of the desert, legally conveyed to the son of Nut (Osiris)." 1

Thus Osiris began his beneficent rule, and "Egypt was content therewith, as he dawned upon the throne of his father, like Re when he rises in the horizon, when he sends forth light for him that is in darkness. He shed forth light by his radiance, and he flooded the Two Lands like the sun at early morning, while his diadem pierced the sky and mingled with the stars—he, leader of every god, excellent in command, favorite of the Great Ennead, beloved of the Little Ennead." 2 In power and splendor and benevolence he ruled a happy people. He "established justice in Egypt, putting the son in the seat of the father." "He overthrew his enemies, and with a mighty arm he slew his foes, setting the fear of him among his adversaries, and extending his boundaries." 3

His sister Isis, who was at the same time his wife, stood

loyally at his side; she "protected him, driving away enemies, warding off ⌈danger,⌉ taking the foe by the excellence of her speech—she, the skilful-tongued, whose word failed not, excellent in command, Isis, effective in protecting her brother." 1 The arch enemy of the good Osiris was his brother Set, who, however, feared the good king. 2 The Sun-god warned him and his followers: "Have ye done aught against him and said that he should die? He shall not die but he shall live forever." 3

Nevertheless his assailants at last prevailed against him, if not openly then by stratagem, as narrated by Plutarch, although there is no trace in the Egyptian sources of Plutarch's story of the chest into which the doomed Osiris was lured by the conspirators and then shut in to die. 4

The oldest source, the Pyramid Texts, indicates assassination: "his brother Set felled him to the earth in Nedyt"; 5 or "his brother Set overthrew him upon his side, on the further side of the land of Gehesti"; 6 but another document of the Pyramid Age, and possibly quite as old as the passages quoted from the Pyramid Texts, says: "Osiris was drowned in his new water (the inundation)." 7

When the news reached the unhappy Isis, she wandered in great affliction seeking the body of her lord, "seeking

him unweariedly, sadly going through this land, nor stopping until she found him." 1 The oldest literature is full of references to the faithful wife unceasingly seeking her murdered husband: "Thou didst come seeking thy brother Osiris, when his brother Set had overthrown him." 2 The Plutarch narrative even carries her across the Mediterranean to Byblos, where the body of Osiris had drifted in the waters. The Pyramid Texts refer to the fact that she at last found him "upon the shore of Nedyt," 3 where we recall he was slain by Set, and it may be indeed that Nedyt is an ancient name for the region of Byblos, although it was later localized at Abydos, and one act of the Osirian passion play was presented at the shore of Nedyt, near Abydos. 4 The introduction of Byblos is at least as old as the thirteenth century B.C., when the Tale of the Two Brothers in an Osirian incident pictures the Osirian hero as slain in the Valley of the Cedar, which can have been nowhere but the Syrian coast where the cedar flourished. Indeed in the Pyramid Texts, Horus is at one point represented as crossing the sea. 5 All this is doubtless closely connected with the identification of Osiris with the waters, or even with the sea, and harmonizes easily with the other version of his death, which represents him as drowning. In that version "Isis and Nephthys saw him. . . . Horus commanded Isis and Nephthys in Busiris, that they seize upon Osiris, and that they prevent him from drowning. They turned around the head (of Osiris) . . . and they

brought him to the land." 1 Nephthys frequently accompanies her sister in the long search, both of them being in the form of birds. "Isis comes, Nephthys comes, one of them on the right, one of them on the left, one of them as a het-bird, one of them as a falcon. They have found Osiris, as his brother Set felled him to the earth in Nedyt." 2 "'I have found (him),' said Nephthys, when they saw Osiris (lying) on his side on the shore. . . . O my brother, I have sought thee; raise thee up, O spirit." 3 "The het-bird comes, the falcon comes; they are Isis and Nephthys, they come embracing their brother, Osiris. . . . Weep for thy brother, Isis! Weep for thy brother, Nephthys! Weep for thy brother. Isis sits, her arms upon her head; Nephthys has seized the tips of her breasts (in mourning) because of her brother." 4 The lamentations of Isis and Nephthys became the most sacred expression of sorrow known to the heart of the Egyptian, and many were the varied forms which they took until they emerged in the Osirian mysteries of Europe, three thousand years later.

Then the two sisters embalm the body of their brother to prevent its perishing, 5 or the Sun-god is moved with pity and despatches the ancient mortuary god "Anubis . . . lord of the Nether World, to whom the westerners (the dead) give praise . . . him who was in the middle of the mid-heaven, fourth of the sons of Re, who was made to descend from the sky to embalm Osiris, because he was so very worthy in the heart of Re." 6 Then when they have laid him in his tomb a sycomore grows up and

envelops the body of the dead god, like the erica in the story of Plutarch. This sacred tree is the visible symbol of the imperishable life of Osiris, which in the earliest references was already divine and might be addressed as a god. Already in the Pyramid Age men sang to it: "Hail to thee, Sycomore, which encloses the god, under which the gods of the Nether Sky stand, whose tips are scorched, whose middle is burned, who art just in ⌈suffering⌉. . . . Thy forehead is upon thy arm (in mourning) for Osiris. . . . Thy station, O Osiris; thy shade over thee, O Osiris, which repels thy defiance, O Set; the gracious damsel (meaning the tree) which was made for this soul of Gehesti; thy shade, O Osiris." 1

Such was the life and death of Osiris. His career, as picturing the cycle of nature, could not of course end here. It is continued in his resurrection, and likewise in a later addition drawn from the Solar theology, the story of his son Horus and the Solar feud of Horus and Set, which was not originally Osirian. Even in death the life-giving power of Osiris did not cease. The faithful Isis drew near her dead lord, "making a shadow with her pinions and causing a wind with her wings . . . raising the weary limbs of the silent-hearted (dead), receiving his seed, bringing forth an heir, nursing the child in solitude, whose place is not known, introducing him when his arm grew strong in the Great Hall" (at Heliopolis?) 2

The imagination of the common people loved to dwell upon this picture of the mother concealed in the marshes of the Delta, as they fancied, by the city of Khemmis, and there bringing up the youthful Horus, that "when his arm grew strong" he might avenge the murder of his father. All this time Set was, of course, not idle, and many were the adventures and escapes which befell the child at the hands of Set. These are too fragmentarily preserved to be reconstructed clearly, but even after the youth has grown up and attained a stature of eight cubits (nearly fourteen feet), he is obliged to have a tiny chapel of half a cubit long made, in which he conceals himself from Set. 1 Grown to manhood, however, the youthful god emerges at last from his hiding-place in the Delta. In the oldest fragments we hear of "Isis the great, who fastened on the girdle in Khemmis, when she brought her ⌈censer⌉ and burned incense before her son Horus, the young child, when he was going through the land on his white sandals, that he might see his father Osiris." 2 Again: "Horus comes forth from Khemmis, and (the city of) Buto arises for Horus, and he purifies himself there. Horus comes purified that he may avenge his father." 3

The filial piety of Horus was also a theme which the imagination of the people loved to contemplate, as he went forth to overthrow his father's enemies and take vengeance upon Set. They sang to Osiris: "Horus hath

come that he might embrace thee. He hath caused Thoth to turn back the followers of Set before thee. He hath brought them to thee all together. He hath turned back the heart of Set before thee, for thou art greater than he. Thou hast gone forth before him, thy character is before him. Geb hath seen thy character, he hath put thee in thy place. Geb hath brought to thee thy two sisters to thy side: it is Isis and Nephthys. Horus hath caused the gods to unite with thee and fraternize with thee. . . . He hath caused that the gods avenge thee. Geb hath placed his foot on the head of thy enemy, who hath retreated before thee. Thy son Horus hath smitten him. He hath taken away his eye from him; he hath given it to thee, that thou mightest become a soul thereby and be mighty thereby before the spirits. Horus hath caused that thou seize thy enemies and that there should be none escaping among them before thee. . . . Horus hath seized Set, he hath laid him for thee under thee, that he (Set) may lift thee up and tremble under thee as the earth trembles. . . . Horus hath caused that thou shouldest recognize him in his inner heart, without his escaping from thee. O Osiris, . . . Horus hath avenged thee." 1 "Horus hath come that he may recognize thee. He hath smitten Set for thee, bound. Thou art his (Set's) ka. Horus hath driven him back for thee; thou art greater than he. He swims bearing thee; he carries in thee one greater than he. His followers behold thee that thy strength is greater than he, and they do not attack thee. Horus comes, he recognizes his father in thee, youthful (rnp) in thy name of 'Fresh Water' (mw-rnpw)." 2 "Loose thou Horus from his bonds, that he may punish the followers of Set. Seize

them, remove their heads, wade thou in their blood. Count their hearts in this thy name of 'Anubis counter of hearts.'" 1

The battle of Horus with Set, which as we shall see was a Solar incident, waged so fiercely that the young god lost his eye at the hands of his father's enemy. When Set was overthrown, and it was finally recovered by Thoth, this wise god spat upon the wound and healed it. This method of healing the eye, which is, of course, folk-medicine reflected in the myth, evidently gained wide popularity, passed into Asia, and seems to reappear in the New Testament narrative, in the incident which depicts Jesus doubtless deferring to recognized folk-custom in employing the same means to heal a blind man. Horus now seeks his father, even crossing the sea in his quest, 2 that he may raise his father from the dead and offer to him the eye which he has sacrificed in his father's behalf. This act of filial devotion, preserved to us in the Pyramid Texts (see above, p. 12), made the already sacred Horus-eye doubly revered in the tradition and feeling of the Egyptians. It became the symbol of all sacrifice; every gift or offering might be called a "Horus-eye," especially if offered to the dead. Excepting the sacred beetle, or scarab, it became the commonest and the most revered symbol known to Egyptian religion, and the myriads of eyes, wrought in blue or green glaze, or even cut from costly stone, which fill our museum collections, and are brought home by thousands by the modern tourist, are survivals of this ancient story of Horus and his devotion to his father.

A chapter of the Pyramid Texts tells the whole story of the resurrection. "The gods dwelling in Buto ⌈approach⌉,

they come to Osiris 1 at the sound of the mourning of Isis, at the cry of Nephthys, at the wailing of these two horizon-gods over this Great One who came forth from the Nether World. The souls of Buto wave their arms to thee, they . strike their flesh for thee, they throw their arms for thee, they beat on their temples for thee. They say of thee, O Osiris:

"'Though thou departest, thou comest (again); though thou sleepest, thou wakest (again); though thou diest, thou livest (again).'

"'Stand up, that thou mayest see what thy son has done for thee. Awake, that thou mayest hear what Horus has done for thee.'

"'He has smitten (ḥy) for thee the one that smote thee, as an ox (yḥ); he has slain (sm’) for thee the one that slew thee, as a wild bull (sm’). He has bound for thee the one that bound thee.'

"'He has put himself under thy daughter, the Great One (fem.) dwelling in the East, that there may be no mourning in the palace of the gods.'

"Osiris speaks to Horus when he has removed the evil that was in Osiris on his fourth day, and had forgotten what was done to him on his eighth day. Thou hast come forth from the lake of life, purified in the celestial lake, becoming Upwawet. Thy son Horus leads thee when he has given to thee the gods who were against thee, and Thoth has brought them to thee. How beautiful are they who saw, how satisfied are they who beheld, who saw Horus when he gave life to his father, when he offered satisfaction to Osiris before the western gods."

"Thy libation is poured by Isis, Nephthys has purified

thee, thy two great and mighty sisters, who have put together thy flesh, who have fastened together thy limbs, who have made thy two eyes to shine (again) in thy head." 1

Sometimes it is Horus who puts together the limbs of the dead god, 2 or again he finds his father as embalmed by his mother and Anubis: "Horus comes to thee, he separates thy bandages, he throws off thy bonds;" 3 "arise, give thou thy hand to Horus, that he may raise thee up." Over and over again the rising of Osiris is reiterated, as the human protest against death found insistent expression in the invincible fact that he rose. We see the tomb opened for him: "The brick are drawn for thee out of the great tomb," 4 and then "Osiris awakes, the weary god wakens, the god stands up, he gains control of his body." 5 "Stand up! Thou shalt not end, thou shalt not perish." 6

The malice of Set was not spent, however, even after his defeat by Horus and the resurrection of Osiris. He entered the tribunal of the gods at Heliopolis and lodged with them charges against Osiris. We have no clear account of this litigation, nor of the nature of the charges, except that Set was using them to gain the throne of Egypt. There must have been a version in which the subject of the trial was Set's crime in slaying Osiris. In dramatic

setting the Pyramid Texts depict the scene. "The sky is troubled, earth trembles, Horus comes, Thoth appears. They lift Osiris from his side; they make him stand up before the two Divine Enneads. 'Remember O Set, and put it in thy heart, this word which Geb spoke, and this manifestation which the gods made against you in the hall of the prince in Heliopolis, because thou didst fell Osiris to the earth. When thou didst say, O Set, "I have not done this to him," that thou mightest prevail thereby, being saved that thou mightest prevail against Horus. When thou didst say, O Set, "It was he who bowed me down" . . . When thou didst say, O Set, "It was he who attacked me" . . . Lift thee up, O Osiris! Set has lifted himself. He has heard the threat of the gods who spoke of the Divine Father. Isis has thy arm, Osiris; Nephthys has thy hand and thou goest between them.'" 1

But Osiris is triumphantly vindicated, and the throne is restored to him against the claims of Set. "He is justified through that which he has done. . . . The Two Truths 2 have held the legal hearing. Shu was witness. The Two Truths commanded that the thrones of Geb should revert to him, that he should raise himself to that which he desired, that his limbs which were in concealment should be gathered together (again); that he should join those who dwell in Nun (the primeval ocean); and that he should terminate the words in Heliopolis." 3

The verdict rendered in favor of Osiris, which we translate "justified," really means "true, right, just, or righteous of voice." It must have been a legal term already in use when this episode in the myth took form. It is later used in frequent parallelism with "victorious" or "victory," and possessed the essential meaning of "triumphant" or "triumph," both in a moral as well as a purely material and physical sense. The later development of the Osirian litigation shows that it gained a moral sense in this connection, if it did not possess it in the beginning. We shall yet have occasion to observe the course of the moral development involved in the wide popularity of this incident in the Osiris myth.

The gods rejoice in the triumph of Osiris. "All gods dwelling in the sky are satisfied; All gods dwelling in the earth are satisfied; All gods southern and northern are satisfied; All gods western and eastern are satisfied; All gods of the nomes are satisfied; All gods of the cities are satisfied;

with this great and mighty word that came out of the mouth of Thoth in favor of Osiris, treasurer of life, seal-bearer of the gods." 1

The penalty laid upon Set was variously narrated in the different versions of the myth. The Pyramid Texts several times refer to the fact that Set was obliged to take Osiris on his back and carry him. "Ho! Osiris! Rouse thee! Horus causes that Thoth bring to thee thy enemy. He places thee upon his back. Make thy seat upon him. Ascend and sit down upon him; let him not escape thee"; 2 or again, "The great Ennead avenges thee; they put for

thee thy enemy under thee. Carry one who is greater than thou,' say they of him. . . . 'Lift up one greater than thou,' say they." 1 "'He to whom evil was done by his brother Set comes to us,' say the Two Divine Enneads, 'but we shall not permit that Set be free from bearing thee forever, O king Osiris,' say the Two Divine Enneads concerning thee, O king Osiris." 2 If Osiris is here the earth as commonly, it may be that we have in this episode the earliest trace of the Atlas myth. Another version, however, discloses Set, bound hand and foot "and laid upon his side in the Land of Ru," 3 or slaughtered and cut up as an ox and distributed as food to the gods; 4 or he is delivered to Osiris "cut into three pieces." 5

The risen and victorious Osiris receives the kingdom. "The sky is given to thee, the earth is given to thee, the fields of Rushes are given to thee, the Horite regions, the Setite regions, the cities are given to thee. The nomes are united for thee by Atum. It is Geb (the Earth-god) who speaks concerning it." 6 Indeed Geb, the Earth-god and father of Osiris, "assigned the countries to the embrace of Osiris, when he found him lying upon his side in Gehesti." 7 Nevertheless Osiris does not really belong to the kingdom of the living. His dominion is the gloomy Nether World beneath the earth, to which he at once descends. After his death, one of the oldest sources says of him: "He entered the secret gates in the ⌈splendid⌉ precincts of the lords of eternity, at the goings of him who rises in the horizon, upon the ways of Re in the Great Seat." 8 There he is proclaimed king. Horus "proclaimed the royal decree in the

places of Anubis. 1 Every one hearing it, he shall not live." 2 It was a subterranean kingdom of the dead over which Osiris reigned, and it was as champion and friend of the dead that he gained his great position in Egyptian religion.

But it will be discerned at once that the Osiris myth expressed those hopes and aspirations and ideals which were closest to the life and the affections of this great people. Isis was the noblest embodiment of wifely fidelity and maternal solicitude, while the highest ideals of filial devotion found expression in the story of Horus. About this group of father, mother, and son the affectionate fancy of the common folk wove a fair fabric of family ideals which rise high above such conceptions elsewhere. In the Osiris myth the institution of the family found its earliest and most exalted expression in religion, a glorified reflection of earthly ties among the gods. The catastrophe and the ultimate triumph of the righteous cause introduced here in a nature-myth are an impressive revelation of the profoundly moral consciousness with which the Egyptian at a remote age contemplated the world. When we consider, furthermore, that Osiris was the kindly dispenser of plenty, from whose prodigal hand king and peasant alike received their daily bounty, that he was waiting over yonder behind the shadow of death to waken all who have fallen asleep to a blessed hereafter with him, and that in every family group the same affections and emotions which had found expression in the beautiful myth were daily and hourly experiences, we shall understand something of the reason for the universal devotion which was ultimately paid the dead god.

The conquest of Egypt by the Osiris faith was, however,

a gradual process. He had once in prehistoric times been a dangerous god, and the tradition of his unfavorable character survived in vague reminiscences long centuries after he had gained wide popularity. 1 At that time the dark and forbidding realm which he ruled had been feared and dreaded. 2 In the beginning, too, he had been local to the Delta, where he had his home in the city of Dedu, later called Busiris by the Greeks. His transformation into a friend of man and kindly ruler of the dead took place here in prehistoric ages, and at an enormously remote date, before the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united under one king (3400 B.C.), the belief in him spread into the southern Kingdom. 3 He apparently first found a home in the south at Siut, and in the Pyramid Texts we read, "Isis and Nephthys salute thee in Siut, (even) their lord in thee, in thy name of 'Lord of Siut.'" 4 But the Osirian faith was early localized at Abydos, whither an archaic mortuary god, known as Khenti-Amentiu, "First of the Westerners," had already preceded Osiris. 5 There he became the "Dweller in Nedyt," 6 and even in the Pyramid Texts he is identified with the "First of the Westerners."

"Thou art on the throne of Osiris, As representative of the First of the Westerners." 1

[paragraph continues] As "Lord of Abydos," Osiris continued his triumphant career, and ultimately was better known under this title than by his old association with Busiris (Dedu). All this, however, belongs to the historical development which we are to follow.

In spite of its popular origin we shall see that the Osirian faith, like that of the Sun-god, entered into the most intimate relations with the kingship. In probably the oldest religious feast of which any trace has been preserved in Egypt, known as the "Heb-Sed" or "Sed-Feast," the king assumed the costume and insignia of Osiris, and undoubtedly impersonated him. The significance of this feast is, however, entirely obscure as yet. The most surprising misunderstandings have gained currency concerning it, and the use of it for far-reaching conclusions before the surviving materials have all been put together is premature.

One of the ceremonies of this feast symbolized the resurrection of Osiris, and it was possibly to associate the Pharaoh with this auspicious event that he assumed the rôle of Osiris. In the end the deceased Pharaoh became Osiris and enjoyed the same resuscitation by Horus and Isis, all the divine privileges, and the same felicity in the hereafter which had been accorded the dead god.

Some attempt to correlate the two leading gods of Egypt,

the Sun-god and Osiris, was finally inevitable. The harmonization was accomplished by the Solar theologians at Heliopolis, though not without inextricable confusion, as the two faiths, which had already interfused among the people, were now wrought together into a theological system. It is quite evident from the Pyramid Texts that the feud between Horus and Set was originally a Solar incident, and quite independent of the Osiris myth. We find that in the mortuary ceremonies, Set's spittle is used to purify the dead in the same words as that of Horus; 1 and that Set may perform the same friendly offices for the dead as those of Horus. 2 Indeed we find him fraternizing with the dead, precisely as Horus does. 3 We find them without distinction, one on either side of the dead, holding his arms and aiding him as he ascends to the Sun-god. 4 Set was king of the South on equal terms with Horus as king of the North; 5 over and over again in the Pyramid Texts they appear side by side, though implacable enemies, without the least suggestion that Set is a foul and detested divinity. 6 There are even traces of a similar ancient correlation of Osiris himself with Set! 7 Set appears too without any unfavorable reflection upon him in connection with the Sun-god and his group, 8 and in harmony with this an old doctrine represents Set as in charge of the ladder by which the dead may ascend to the Sun-god—the ladder up which he himself once climbed. 9 Set was doubtless some natural phenomenon like the others of the group to which he belongs, and it is most probable that he was the darkness. He and Horus divided Egypt between them, Set being most

commonly represented as taking the South and Horus the North. The oldest royal monuments of Egypt represent the falcon of Horus and the strange animal (probably the okapi) of Set, side by side, as the symbol of the kingship of the two kingdoms now ruled by one Pharaoh. It is not our purpose, nor have we the space here, to study the question of Set, further than to demonstrate that he belonged to the Solar group, on full equality with Horus.

By what process Set became the enemy of Osiris we do not know. The sources do not disclose it. When this had once happened, however, it would be but natural that the old rival of Set, the Solar Horus, should be drawn into the Osirian situation, and that his hostility toward Set should involve his championship of the cause of Osiris. An old Memphite document of the Pyramid Age unmistakably discloses the absorption of the Set-Horus feud by the Osirian theology. In dramatic dialogue we discern Geb assigning their respective kingdoms to Horus and Set, a purely Solar episode, while at the same time Geb involves in this partition the incidents of the Osirian story.

"Geb says to Set: 'Go to the place where thou wast born.'"

"Geb says to Horus: 'Go to the place where thy father was drowned.'"

"Geb says to Horus and Set: 'I have separated you.'"

"Set: Upper Egypt."

"Horus: Lower Egypt."

"[Horus and Set]: Upper and Lower Egypt."

"Geb says to the Divine Ennead: 'I have conveyed my heritage to this my heir, the son of my first-born son. He is my son, my child.'"

The equality of Horus and Set, as in the old Solar

theology, is quite evident, but Horus is here made the son of Osiris. An ancient commentator on this passage has appended the following explanation of Geb's proceeding in assigning the kingdoms.

"He gathered together the Divine Ennead and he separated Horus and Set. He prevented their conflict and he installed Set as king of Upper Egypt in Upper Egypt, in the place where he was born in Sesesu. Then Geb installed Horus as king of Lower Egypt, in Lower Egypt in the place where his father was drowned, at (the time of) the dividing of the Two Lands."

"Then Horus stood in (one) district, when they satisfied the Two Lands in Ayan—that is the boundary of the Two Lands."

"Then Set stood in the (other) district, when they satisfied the Two Lands in Ayan—that is the boundary of the Two Lands.

"It was evil to the heart of Geb, that the portion of Horus was (only) equal to the portion of Set. Then Geb gave his heritage to Horus, this son of his first-born son, and Horus stood in the land and united this land." 1

Here the Osirian point of view no longer permits Set and Horus to rule in equality side by side, but Set is dispossessed, and Horus receives all Egypt. The Solar theologians of Heliopolis certainly did not take this position in the beginning. They built up a group, which we have already noted, of nine gods (commonly called an ennead), headed by the ancient Atum, and among this group of nine divinities appears Osiris, who had no real

original connection with the Solar myth. As Horus had no place in the original ennead, it was the more easy to appropriate him for the Osirian theology. As the process of correlation went on, it is evident also that, like Osiris, the local gods of all the temples were more and more drawn into the Solar theology. The old local Sun-gods had merged, and we find five Solar divinities in a single list in the Pyramid Texts, all addressed as Re. 1 A distinct tendency toward Solar henotheism, or even pantheism, is now discernible. Each of the leading temples and priesthoods endeavored to establish the local god as the focus of this centralizing process. The political prestige of the Sun-god, however, made the issue quite certain. It happens, however, that the system of a less important temple than that of Heliopolis is the one which has survived to us. A mutilated stela in the British Museum, on which the priestly scribes of the eighth century B.C. have copied and rescued a worm-eaten papyrus which was falling to pieces in their day, has preserved for two thousand seven hundred years more, and thus brought down to our time, the only fragment of the consciously constructive thought of the time, as the priests endeavored to harmonize into one system the vast complex of interfused local beliefs which made up the religion of Egypt.

It was the priests of Ptah, the master craftsman of the gods, whose temple was at Memphis, who are at this juncture our guides in tracing the current of religious thought in this remote age. This earliest system, as they wrought it out, of course made Ptah of Memphis the great and central figure. He too had his Memphite ennead made up of a primeval Ptah and eight emanations or manifestations of himself. In the employment of an ennead

to begin with, the theologians of Memphis were betraying the influence of Heliopolis, where the first ennead had its origin. The supremacy of the Solar theology, even in this Memphite system, is further discernible in the inevitable admission of the fact that Atum the Sun-god was the actual immediate creator of the world. But this they explained in this way. One of the members of the Memphite ennead bears the name "Ptah the Great," and to this name is appended the remarkable explanation, "he is the heart and tongue of the ennead," meaning of course the Memphite ennead. This enigmatic "heart and tongue" are then identified with Atum, who, perhaps operating through other intermediate gods, accomplishes all things through the "heart and tongue." When we recall that the Egyptian constantly used "heart" as the seat of the mind, we are suddenly aware also that he possessed no word for mind. A study of the document demonstrates that the ancient thinker is using "heart" as his only means of expressing the idea of "mind," as he vaguely conceived it. From Ptah then proceeded "the power of mind and tongue" which is the controlling power in "all gods, all men, all animals, and all reptiles, which live, thinking and commanding that which he wills." 1

After further demonstrating that the members of Atum, especially his mouth which spake words of power, were made up of the ennead of Ptah, and thus of Ptah himself, our thinker passes on to explain his conception of the function of "heart (mind) and tongue." "When the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they transmit to the

heart. It is he (the heart) who brings forth every issue, and it is the tongue which repeats the thought of the heart. He 1 fashioned all gods, even Atum and his ennead. Every divine word came into existence by the thought of the heart and the commandment of the tongue. It was he who made the kas and ⌈created⌉ the qualities; 2 who made all food, all offerings, by this word; who made that which is loved and that which is hated. It was he who gave life to the peaceful and death to the guilty."

After this enumeration of things chiefly supermaterial, of which the mind and the tongue were the creator, our Memphite theologian passes to the world of material things.

"It was he who made every work, every handicraft, which the hands make, the going of the feet, the movement of every limb, according to his command, through the thought of the heart that came forth from the tongue."

"There came the saying that Atum, who created the gods, stated concerning Ptah-Tatenen: 'He is the fashioner of the gods, he, from whom all things went forth, even offerings, and food and divine offerings and every good thing! And Thoth perceived that his strength was greater than all gods. Then Ptah was satisfied, after he had made all things and every divine word."

"He fashioned the gods, he made the cities, he settled the nomes. He installed the gods in their holy places, he made their offerings to flourish, he equipped their holy places. He made likenesses of their bodies to the satisfaction of their hearts. Then the gods entered into their bodies of every wood and every stone and every metal. Everything grew upon its trees whence they came forth. Then he assembled all the gods and their kas (saying to them): 'Come ye and take possession of "Neb-towe," the divine store-house of Ptah-Tatenen, the great seat, which delights the heart of the gods dwelling in the House of Ptah, the mistress of life . . . whence is furnished the "Life of the Two Lands."'" 1

In this document we are far indeed from the simple folk-tales of the origin of the world, which make up the mythology of Egypt. Assuming the existence of Ptah in the beginning, the Memphite theologian sees all things as first existing in the thought of the god. This world first

conceived in his "heart," then assumed objective reality by the utterance of his "tongue." The utterance of the thought in the form of a divine fiat brought forth the world. We are reminded of the words in Genesis, as the Creator spoke, "And God said." Is there not here the primeval germ of the later Alexandrian doctrine of the "Logos"?

We should not fail to understand in this earliest philosophico-religious system, that the world which Ptah brought forth was merely the Egyptian Nile valley. As we shall discover in our further progress, the world-idea was not yet born. This Memphite Ptah was far from being a world-god. The world, in so far as it was possible for the men of the ancient Orient to know it, was still undiscovered by the Memphite theologians or any other thinkers of that distant age, and the impression which the world-idea was to make on religion was still over a thousand years in the future when this venerable papyrus of

the Pyramid Age was written. The forces of life which were first to react upon religion were those which spent themselves within the narrow borders of Egypt, and especially those of moral admonition which dominate the inner world and which had already led the men of this distant age to discern for the first time in human history that God "gave life to the peaceful and death to the guilty."

Footnotes

5:1 These remarks are in part drawn from the writer's History of Egypt, p. 53.

9:1 These four Horuses are: (1) "Harakhte," (2) "Horus of the Gods," (3) "Horus of the East," and (4) "Horus-shesemti." On their relation to Osiris, see infra, p. 156. Three important Utterances of the Pyramid Texts are built up on them: Ut. 325, 563, and 479. They are also inserted into Ut. 504 (§§ 1085–6). See also § 1105 and § 1206. They probably occur again as curly haired youths in charge of the ferry-boat to the eastern sky in Ut. 520, but in Ut. 522 the four in charge of the ferry-boat are the four genii, the sons of the Osirian Horus, and confusion must be guarded against. On this point see infra, p. 157. In Pyr. § 1258 the four Horuses appear with variant names and are perhaps identified with the dead; they are prevented from decaying by Isis and Nephthys. In Pyr. § 1478 also the four Horuses are identified with the dead, who is the son of Re, in a resurrection. Compare also the four children of the Earth-god Geb (Pyr. §§ 1510–11), and especially the four children of Atum who decay not (Pyr. §§2057–8), as in Pyr. § 1258.

10:1 Pyr. Texts, § 1105.

10:2 Pyr. § 1125.

10:3 Pyr. §§ 1694–5.

10:4 Pyr. §§ 1208–9.

11:1 Pyr. § 1778.

11:2 Pyr. § 1652.

11:3 Pyr. § 1818 and § 1248, where the act is described in detail.

11:4 Pyr: § 500.

12:1 Pyr. § 2213 d.

12:2 On the two eyes of the Sun-god, see Erman's full statement, Hymnen an das Diadem der Pharaonen, in Abhandl. der Kgl. Preuss. Akad., 1911, pp. 11–14.

12:3 On the sun-myths see Erman, Aegyptische Religion, pp. 33–38. An insurrection suppressed by the Sun-god is referred to in the Pyramid Texts, Ut. 229 and § 311.

13:1 Pyr. § 1479.

14:1 A priestly title meaning "Pillar of his mother" and containing some mythological allusion.

14:2 Pyr. §§ 1587–95.

14:3 The word used applies only to the people of Egypt.

15:1 Pyr. § 1837.

16:1 BAR, II, 187–212.

16:2 The material will be found in Maspero's useful essay, Comment Alexandre devint dieu en Égypte, École des Hautes Études, annuaire, 1897.

16:3 BAR, I, 247.

16:4 BAR, I, 247.

17:1 The character and origin, and the later use of this song as a part of temple ritual and worship, were first noticed by Erman, Hymnen an das Diadem der Pharaonen, Abhandl. der Kgl. Preuss. Akad., Berlin, 1911, pp. 15, ff.

17:2 Pyr. §§ 1478, 1518.

17:3 See Erman, ibid.

18:1 The material known before the discovery of the Pyramid Texts was put together by Lefebure, Le mythe osirien, Paris, 1874; review by Maspero, Revue critique, 1875, t. II, pp. 209–210. Without the Pyramid Texts, the oldest source, it is hardly possible to settle the question. The complete material from this source has not hitherto been brought to bear on the question, not even in the latest work on the subject, Frazer's admirable book, Adonis Attis Osiris, London, 1907.

18:2 Pyr. § 589.

18:3 Mariette, Abydos, II, 54, 1. 7.

18:4 Pyr. § 2111.

19:1 Pyr. §§ 507–8.

19:2 Pyr. § 388.

19:3 The word used is t̠pḥt, the term constantly employed in later religious texts for the cavern from which the Nile had its source.

19:4 Pyr. §§ 1551–4.

19:5 Pyr. § 848.

19:6 Pyr. § 868.

20:1 Pyr. §§ 2063–8.

20:2 Pyr. §§ 628–9. Osiris is made ruler of the Haunebu also in the Stela No. 20, Bibl. Nat. Cat. Ledrain, pl. xxvi, ll. 19–20.

20:3 Pyr. § 1631.

20:4 Pyr. § 847.

20:5 Bonomi and Sharpe, Alabaster Sarcophagus of Oimeneptah I, London, 1864, pl. 15.

20:6 Pyr. § 1752.

21:1 The Tale of the Two Brothers; see infra, pp. 357–360.

22:1 Erman, Zeitschr. für aegypt. Sprache, 38, pp. 30–33.

22:2 Pyr. § 699.

22:3 Pyr. § 1019.

22:4 Pyr. § 1524.

22:5 Pyr. § 1065.

22:6 Pyr. §§ 1194–5.

23:1 Here personified as god of Grain (Npr). The passage is from the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts, published by Lacau, Recueil de trav. See also "Chapter of Becoming the Nile" (XIX) and cf. XLIV.

23:2 The later classical evidence from Greek and Roman authors is in general corroborative of the above conclusions. It is of only secondary importance as compared with the early sources employed above. The most important passages will be found in Frazer's Adonis Attis Osiris, London, 1907, pp. 330–345.

24:1 Hymn to Osiris in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Stela No. 20, published by Ledrain, Les monuments égyptiens de la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, 1879, pls. xxi-xxviii, ll. 10–11. Hereafter cited as Bib. Nat. No. 20. It dates from the Eighteenth Dynasty.

24:2 Bib. Nat. No. 20, ll. 12–13.

24:3 Ibid., 20, ll. 9–10.

25:1 Bib. Nat. No. 20, ll. 13–14.

25:2 Pyr. § 589. The same intimations are discernible throughout this Utterance (357).

25:3 Pyr. § 1471. The Pharaoh's name has been inserted in place of the last pronoun. In the variants of this text (§ 481 and § 944) the enemy is in the singular.

25:4 See Schaefer, Zeitschrift für aegypt. Sprache, 41, 81

25:5 Pyr. § 1256.

25:6 Pyr. 972.

25:7 British Museum, Stela 797, ll. 19 and 62. On this monument see infra, pp. 41–47.

26:1 Bib. Nat. No. 20, ll. 14–15.

26:2 Pyr. § 972.

26:3 Pyr. § 1008.

26:4 See infra, p. 289. Nedyt was conceived as near Abydos even in the Pyramid Texts, see § 754, where Nedyt occurs in parallelism with Thinis the nome of Abydos.

26:5 Pyr. §§ 1505, 1508.

27:1 Brit. Museum, 797, ll. 62–63.

27:2 Pyr. §§ 1255–6.

27:3 Pyr. §§ 2144–5.

27:4 Pyr. §§ 1280–2.

27:5 Pyr. § 1257.

27:6 Coffin of Henui, Steindorff, Grabfunde des Mittleren Reichs, II, 17.

28:1 Pyr. §§ 1285–7. Gehesti is the name of the land where Osiris was slain. The reference to the scorching and burning of the tree is doubtless the earliest native mention of the ceremony of enclosing an image of Osiris in a tree and burning it, as narrated by Firmicus Maternus, De errore profanarum religionum, 27; Frazer, Adonis Attis Osiris, pp. 339–340.

28:2 Bib. Nat. No. 20, ll. 15–16. The story is told with coarse frankness also in the Pyramid Texts: "Thy sister Isis comes to thee, rejoicing for love of thee. Ponis eam ad phallum tuum, semen tuum p. 29 emergit in eam." Pyr. § 632, and again less clearly in Pyr. § 1636. At Abydos and Philæ the incident is graphically depicted on the wall in relief.

29:1 See Schaefer, Zeitschr. f. aegypt. Sprache, 41, 81.

29:2 Pyr. § 1214.

29:3 Pyr. § 2190. There was also a story of how he left Buto, to which there is a reference in Pyr. § 1373 = § 1089.

30:1 Pyr. §§ 575–582.

30:2 Pyr. §§ 587–9.

31:1 Pyr. §§ 1285–7.

31:2 Pyr. §§ 1505, 1508.

32:1 The name of the king for whom the chapter was employed has been inserted here.

33:1 Pyr. Ut. 670, §§ 1976–82, as restored from Ut. 482 (a shorter redaction), and the tomb of Harhotep and the tomb of Psamtik. (See Sethe, Pyr., vol. II, pp. iii-iv, Nos. 6, 10, 11).

33:2 Pyr. §§ 617, 634.

33:3 Pyr. §§ 2201–2.

33:4 Pyr. § 572.

33:5 Pyr. § 2092.

33:6 Pyr. § 1299. Commonly so in the Pyramid Texts. It became a frequent means of introducing the formulas of the ritual of mortuary offerings, in order that the dead might be roused to partake of the food offered; see Pyr. § 654 and § 735, or Ut. 413 and 437 entire. The resurrection of Osiris by Re was doubtless a theological device for correlating the Solar and Osirian doctrines (Pyr. § 721).

34:1 Pyr. §§ 956–960.

34:2 On the Two Truths see the same phrase in the Book of the Dead, infra, p. 299 and notes 2 and 3.

34:3 Pyr. §§ 316–318. Compare also, "'Set is guilty, Osiris is righteous,' (words) from the mouth of the gods on that good day of going forth upon the mountain" (for the interment of Osiris) (Pyr. §1556), from which it would appear that there was a verdict before the resurrection of Osiris.

35:1 Pyr. §§ 1522–3.

35:2 Pyr. §§ 651–2; see also §§ 642, 649.

36:1 Pyr. §§ 626–7, var. § 1628. See also § 1632.

36:2 Pyr. § 1699.

36:3 Pyr. § 1035.

36:4 Pyr. Ut. 580.

36:5 Pyr. Ut. 543; see also 1339.

36:6 Pyr. § 961.

36:7 Pyr. § 1033.

36:8 Brit. Mus. Stela 797, l. 63.

37:1 An old god of the hereafter.

37:2 Pyr. § 1335.

38:1 Pyr. §§ 1266–7.

38:2 Pyr. §§ 251, 350; see also infra, pp. 142–143.

38:3 This is shown in the Pyramid Texts, where the sycomore of Osiris is thus addressed: "Thou hast hurled thy terror into the heart of the kings of Lower Egypt dwelling in Buto" (Pyr. § 1488). Osiris must therefore have reached Upper Egypt, and have become domiciled there at a time when the kings of the North were still hostile.

38:4 Pyr. § 630. There is not space here to correlate this fact with Meyer's results regarding the wolf and jackal gods at Abydos and Siut.

38:5 See Maspero, Etudes de mythologie et d’archéologie égyptiennes, II, pp. 10, 359, etc., and Eduard Meyer, Zeitschr. für aegypt. Sprache, 41, pp. 97 ff.

38:6 Pyr. § 754.

39:1 Pyr. § 2021; see also § 1996. Eduard Meyer (ibid., p. 100) states that Osiris is never identified with Khenti-Amentiu in the Pyramid Texts, and it is true that the two names are not placed side by side as proper name and accompanying epithet in the Pyramid Texts, as they are so commonly later, but such a parallel as that above seems to me to indicate essential identity.

40:1 Pyr. § 850.

40:2 Pyr. §§ 1492–3.

40:3 Pyr. § 1016 = § 801.

40:4 Pyr. § 390.

40:5 Pyr. §§ 204–6.

40:6 See Pyr. §§ 418, 473, 487, 535, 594, 601, 683, 798, 823, 946, 971, 1148.

40:7 Pyr. §§ 832, 865.

40:8 Pyr. § 370.

40:9 Pyr. §§ 478, 1148, 1253.

42:1 British Museum, Stela No. 797, as reconstructed by Erman, Ein Denkmal memphitischer Theologie (Sitzungsber. der Kgl. Preuss. Akad., 1911, XLIII), pp. 925–932. On this remarkable monument see also below, pp. 43–47.

43:1 Pyr. §§ 1444–9.

44:1 The verbal form of "thinking" is questionable, but no other interpretation seems possible. Whether "he" in "he wills" refers to Ptah directly or to the "power of mind and tongue" is not essential, as the latter proceeds from Ptah.

45:1 Heart and tongue have the same gender in Egyptian and the pronoun may equally well refer to either. I use "he" for heart and "it" for tongue, but, I repeat, the distinction is not certain here.

45:2 Ḥmswt, which, as Brugsch has shown (Woerterbuch Suppl., pp. 996 ff.), indicates the qualities of the Sun-god, here attributed, in origin, to Ptah. These are: "Might, radiance, prosperity, victory, wealth, plenty, augustness, readiness or equipment, making, intelligence, adornment, stability, obedience, nourishment (or taste)." They appear with the kas at royal births, wearing on their heads shields with crossed arrows. So at Der el-Bahri.

46:1 British Museum, Stela No. 797, formerly No. 135, ll. 48–61. This remarkable document long rested in obscurity after its acquirement by the British Museum in 1805. The stone had been used as a nether millstone, almost abrading the inscription and rendering it so illegible that the process of copying was excessively difficult. It was early published by Sharpe (Inscriptions, I, 36–38), but the knowledge of the language current in his day made a usable copy impossible. As the signs face the end instead of the beginning as usual, Sharpe numbered the vertical lines backward, making the last line first. Mr. Bryant and Mr. Read then published a much better copy in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, March, 1901, pp. 160 ff. They still numbered the lines backward, however, and so translated the document. In working through the inscriptions of the British Museum for the Berlin Egyptian Dictionary it had soon become evident to me that the lines of this inscription were to be numbered in the other direction. I then published a fac-simile copy of the stone in the Zeitschrift für aegypt. Sprache, 39, pp. 39 ff. I stated at the time: "The signs are very faint, and in badly worn places reading is excessively difficult. . . . I have no doubt that p. 47 with a better light than it is possible to get in the museum gallery, more could in places be gotten out." At the same time I ventured to publish a preliminary "rapid sketch" of the content which was undoubtedly premature and which dated the early Egyptian original papyrus of which our stone is a copy at least as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty, adding that "some points in orthography would indicate a much earlier date." Professor Erman has now published a penetrating critical analysis of the document (Ein Denkmal memphitischer Theologie, Sitzungsber. der Kgl. Preuss. Akad., 1911, XLIII, pp. 916–950) which places it on the basis of orthography in the Pyramid Age, to which I had not the courage to assign it on the same evidence. With a better knowledge of the Pyramid Texts and Old Kingdom orthography than I had twelve years ago, I wholly agree with Erman's date for the document, surprising as it is to find such a treatise in the Pyramid Age. From Lepsius's squeeze of the stone, Erman has also secured a number of valuable new readings, while the summary of the document given above is largely indebted to his analysis. The discussion in my History of Egypt, pp. 356–8, as far as it employs this document, should be eliminated from the Empire.

LECTURE II

LIFE AFTER DEATH—THE SOJOURN IN THE TOMB—DEATH MAKES ITS IMPRESSION ON RELIGION

Among no people ancient or modern has the idea of a life beyond the grave held so prominent a place as among the ancient Egyptians. This insistent belief in a hereafter may perhaps have been, and experience in the land of Egypt has led me to believe it was, greatly favored and influenced by the fact that the conditions of soil and climate resulted in such a remarkable preservation of the human body as may be found under natural conditions nowhere else in the world. In going up to the daily task on some neighboring temple in Nubia, I was not infrequently obliged to pass through the corner of a cemetery, where the feet of a dead man, buried in a shallow grave, were now uncovered and extended directly across my path. They were precisely like the rough and calloused feet of the workmen in our excavations. How old the grave was I do not know, but any one familiar with the cemeteries of Egypt, ancient and modern, has found numerous bodies or portions of bodies indefinitely old which seemed about as well preserved as those of the living. This must have been a frequent experience of the ancient Egyptian, 1 and like Hamlet with the skull of Yorick in his hands, he must often have pondered deeply as he contemplated these silent witnesses. The surprisingly perfect state of preservation in which he found his ancestors whenever the digging of a new grave disclosed them, must have greatly stimulated

his belief in their continued existence, and often aroused his imagination to more detailed pictures of the realm and the life of the mysterious departed. The earliest and simplest of these beliefs began at an age so remote that they have left no trace in surviving remains. The cemeteries of the prehistoric communities along the Nile, discovered and excavated since 1894, disclose a belief in the future life which was already in an advanced stage. Thousands of graves, the oldest of which cannot be dated much later than the fifth millennium B.C., were dug by these primitive people in the desert gravels along the margin of the alluvium. In the bottom of the pit, which is but a few feet in depth, lies the body with the feet drawn up toward the chin and surrounded by a meagre equipment of pottery, flint implements, stone weapons, and utensils, and rude personal ornaments, all of which were of course intended to furnish the departed for his future life.

From the archaic beliefs represented in such burials as these it is a matter of fifteen hundred years to the appearance of the earliest written documents surviving to us—documents from which we may draw fuller knowledge of the more developed faith of a people rapidly rising toward a high material civilization and a unified governmental organization, the first great state of antiquity. Much took place in the thought of this remote people during that millennium and a half, but for another half millennium after the beginning of written documents we are still unable to discern the drift of the development. For two thousand years, therefore, after the stage of belief represented by the earliest burials just mentioned, that development went on, though it is now a lost chapter in human thought which we shall never recover.

When we take up the course of the development about

[paragraph continues] 3000 B.C., we have before us the complicated results of a commingling of originally distinct beliefs which have long since interpenetrated each other and have for many centuries circulated thus a tangled mass of threads which it is now very difficult or impossible to disentangle.

Certain fundamental distinctions can be made, however. The early belief that the dead lived in or at the tomb, which must therefore be equipped to furnish his necessities in the hereafter, was one from which the Egyptian has never escaped entirely, not even at the present day. As hostile creatures infesting the cemeteries, the dead were dreaded, and protection from their malice was necessary. Even the pyramid must be protected from the malignant dead prowling about the necropolis, and in later times a man might be afflicted even in his house by a deceased member of his family wandering in from the cemetery. His mortuary practices therefore constantly gave expression to his involuntary conviction that the departed continued to inhabit the tomb long after the appearance of highly developed views regarding a blessed hereafter elsewhere in some distant region. We who continue to place flowers on the graves of our dead, though we may at the same time cherish beliefs in some remote paradise of the departed, should certainly find nothing to wonder at in the conflicting beliefs and practices of the ancient Nile-dweller five thousand years ago. Side by side the two beliefs subsisted, that the dead continued to dwell in or near the tomb, and at the same time that he departed elsewhere to a distant and blessed realm.

In taking up the first of these two beliefs, the sojourn in the tomb, it will be necessary to understand the Egyptian notion of a person, and of those elements of the human personality which might survive death. These views are of

course not the studied product of a highly trained and long-developed self-consciousness. On the contrary, we have in them the involuntary and unconscious impressions of an early people, in the study of which it is apparent that we are confronted by the earliest chapter in folk-psychology which has anywhere descended to us from the past.

On the walls of the temple of Luxor, where the birth of Amenhotep III was depicted in sculptured scenes late in the fifteenth century before Christ, we find the little prince brought in on the arm of the Nile-god, accompanied apparently by another child. This second figure, identical in external appearance with that of the prince, is a being called by the Egyptians the "ka"; it was born with the prince, being communicated to him by the god. 1 This curious comrade of an individual was corporeal 2 and the fortunes of the two were ever afterward closely associated; but the ka was not an element of the personality, as is so often stated. It seems to me indeed from a study of the Pyramid Texts, that the nature of the ka has been fundamentally misunderstood. He was a kind of superior genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual in the hereafter, or it was in the world of the hereafter that he chiefly if not exclusively had his abode, and there he awaited the coming of his earthly companion. In the oldest inscriptions the death of a man may be stated by saying that "he goes to his ka"; 3 when Osiris dies he "goes to his ka." 4 Hence the dead are referred to as those "who have gone to their kas." 5 Moreover, the ka was really

separated from its protégé by more than the mere distance to the cemetery, for in one passage the deceased "goes to his ka, to the sky." 1 Similarly the sojourn in the hereafter is described as an association with the ka, 2 and one of the powers of the blessed dead was to have dominion over the other kas there. 3 In their relations with each other the ka was distinctly superior to his mundane companion. In the oldest texts the sign for the ka, the uplifted arms, are frequently borne upon the standard which bears the signs for the gods. "Call upon thy ka, like Osiris, that he may protect thee from all anger of the dead," 4 says one to the deceased; and to be the ka of a person is to have entire control over him. Thus in addressing Osiris it is said of Set, "He (Horus) has smitten Set for thee, bound; thou art his (Set's) ka." 5 In the hereafter, at least, a person is under the dominion of his own ka. The ka assists the deceased by speaking to the great god on his behalf, and after this intercession, by introducing the dead man to the god (Re). 6 He forages for the deceased and brings him food that they both may eat together, 7 and like two guests they sit together at the same table. 8 But the ka is ever the protecting genius. The dead king Pepi "lives with his ka; he (the ka) expels the evil that is before Pepi, he removes the evil that is behind Pepi, like the boomerangs of the lord of Letopolis, which remove the evil that is before him and expel the evil that is behind him." 9 Notwithstanding their intimate association, there was danger that the ka might fail

to recognize his protégé, and the departed therefore received a garment peculiar to him, by means of which the ka may not mistake him for an enemy whom he might slay. 1 So strong was the ka, and so close was his union with his protégé, that to have control over a god or a man it was necessary to gain the power over his ka also, 2 and complete justification of the deceased was only certain when his ka also was justified. 3 Thus united, the deceased and his protecting genius lived a common life in the hereafter, and they said to the dead: "How beautiful it is in the company of thy ka!" 4 The mortuary priest whose duty it was to supply the needs of the deceased in the hereafter was for this reason called "servant of the ka," and whatever he furnished the ka was shared by him with his protégé, as we have seen him foraging for his charge, and securing for him provisions which they ate together. Eventually, that is after a long development, we find the tombs of about 2000 B.C. regularly containing prayers for material blessings in the hereafter ending with the words: "for the ka of X" (the name of the deceased).

While the relation of the ka to the dead is thus fairly clear, it is not so evident in the case of the living. His protecting power evidently had begun at the birth of the individual, though he was most useful to his protégé after earthly life was over. We find the ka as the protecting genius of a mortuary temple dwelling on earth, but it is certainly significant that it is a mortuary building which he protects. Moreover the earliest example of such a local genius is Osiris, a mortuary god, who is said to become the ka of a pyramid and its temple, that they may enjoy

his protection. 1 As we stated above, however, the ka was not an element of the personality, and we are not called upon to explain him physically or psychologically as such. He is roughly parallel with the later notion of the guardian angel as found among other peoples, and he is of course far the earliest known example of such a being. It is of importance to note that in all probability the ka was originally the exclusive possession of kings, each of whom thus lived under the protection of his individual guardian genius, and that by a process of slow development the privilege of possessing a ka became universal among all the people. 2

The actual personality of the individual in life consisted, according to the Egyptian notion, in the visible body, and the invisible intelligence, the seat of the last being considered the "heart" or the "belly," 3 which indeed furnished the chief designations for the intelligence. Then the vital principle which, as so frequently among other peoples, was identified with the breath which animated the body, was not clearly distinguished from the intelligence. The two together were pictured in one symbol, a

human-headed bird with human arms, which we find in the tomb and coffin scenes depicted hovering over the mummy and extending to its nostrils in one hand the figure of a swelling sail, the hieroglyph for wind or breath, and in the other the so-called crux ansata, or symbol of life. This curious little bird-man was called by the Egyptians the "ba." The fact has been strangely overlooked that originally the ba came into existence really for the first time at the death of the individual. All sorts of devices and ceremonies were resorted to that the deceased might at death become a ba, or as the Pyramid Texts, addressing the dead king, say, "that thou mayest become a ba among the gods, thou living as (or 'in') thy ba." 1 There was a denominative verb "ba," meaning "to become a ba." Ba has commonly been translated as "soul," and the translation does indeed roughly correspond to the Egyptian idea. It is necessary to remember, however, in dealing with such terms as these among so early a people, that they had no clearly defined notion of the exact nature of such an element of personality. It is evident that the Egyptian never wholly dissociated a person from the body as an instrument or vehicle of sensation, and they resorted to elaborate devices to restore to the body its various channels of sensibility, after the ba, which comprehended these very things, had detached itself from the body. He thought of his departed friend as existing in the body, or at least as being in outward appearance still possessed of a body, as we do, if we attempt to picture our departed friend at all. Hence, when depicted in mortuary paintings, the departed of course appears as he did in life. 2

In harmony with these conceptions was the desire of the surviving relatives to insure physical restoration to the dead. Gathered with the relatives and friends of the deceased, on the flat roof of the massive masonry tomb, the mortuary priest stood over the silent body and addressed the departed: "Thy bones perish not, thy flesh sickens not, thy members are not distant from thee." 1 Or he turns to the flesh of the dead itself and says: "O flesh of this king Teti, decay not, perish not; let not thy odor be evil." 2 He utters a whole series of strophes, each concluding with the refrain: "King Pepi decays not, he rots not, he is not bewitched by your wrath, ye gods." 3

However effective these injunctions may have been, they were not considered sufficient. The motionless body must be resuscitated and restored to the use of its members and senses. This resurrection might be the act of a favoring god or goddess, as when accomplished by Isis or Horus, or the priest addresses the dead and assures him that the Sky-goddess

will raise him up: "She sets on again for thee thy head, she gathers for thee thy bones, she unites for thee thy members, she brings for thee thy heart into thy body." 1 Sometimes the priest assumes that the dead does not even enter the earth at interment and assures the mourning relatives: "His abomination is the earth, king Unis enters not Geb (the Earth-god). When he perishes, sleeping in his house on earth, his bones are restored, his injuries are removed." 2 But if the inexorable fact be accepted that the body now lies in the tomb, the priest undauntedly calls upon the dead: "Arise, dwellers in your tombs. Loose your ⌈bandages,⌉ throw off the sand from thy (sic!) face. Lift thee up from upon thy left side, support thyself on thy right side. Raise thy face that thou mayest look at this which I have done for thee. I am thy son, I am thy heir." 3 He assures the dead: "Thy bones are gathered together for thee, thy members are prepared for thee, thy ⌈impurities⌉ are thrown off for thee, thy bandages are loosed for thee. The tomb is opened for thee, the coffin is broken open for thee." 4 And yet the insistent fact of death so inexorably proclaimed by the unopened tomb led the priest to call upon the dead to waken and arise before each ceremony which he performed. As he brings food and drink we find him calling: "Raise thee up, king Pepi, receive to thee thy water. Gather to thee thy bones, stand thou up upon thy two feet, being a glorious one before the glorious. Raise thee up for this thy bread which cannot dry up, and thy beer which cannot become stale." 5

But even when so raised the dead was not in possession

of his senses and faculties, nor the power to control and use his body and limbs. His mourning friends could not abandon him to the uncertain future without aiding him to recover all his powers. "King Teti's mouth is opened for him, king Teti's nose is opened for him, king Teti's ears are opened for him," 1 says the priest, and elaborate ceremonies were performed to accomplish this restoration of the senses and the faculty of speech. 2

All this was of no avail, however, unless the unconscious body received again the seat of consciousness and feeling, which in this restoration of the mental powers was regularly the heart. "The heart of king Teti is not taken away," 3 says the ritual; or if it has gone the Sky-goddess "brings for thee thy heart into thy body (again)." 4

Several devices were necessary to make of this unresponsive mummy a living person, capable of carrying on the life hereafter. He has not become a ba, or a soul merely by dying, as we stated in referring to the nature of the ba. It was necessary to aid him to become a soul. Osiris when lying dead had become a soul by receiving from his son Horus the latter's eye, wrenched from the socket in his conflict with Set. Horus, recovering his eye, gave it to his father, and on receiving it Osiris at once became a soul. From that time any offering to the dead might be, and commonly was, called the "eye of Horus, "and might thus produce the same effect as on Osiris.

[paragraph continues] "Raise thee up," says the priest, "for this thy bread, which cannot dry up, and thy beer which cannot become stale, by which thou shalt become a soul." 1 The food which the priest offered possessed the mysterious power of effecting the transformation of the dead man into a soul as the "eye of Horus" had once transformed Osiris. And it did more than this, for the priest adds, "by which thou shalt become one prepared." 2 To be "one prepared" or, as the variants have it, "one equipped," is explained in the tombs of the Old Kingdom, where we find the owner boasting, "I am an excellent, equipped spirit, I know every secret charm of the court." 3 This man, a provincial noble, is proud of the fact that he was granted the great boon of acquaintance with the magical mortuary equipment used for the king at the court, an equipment intended to render the dead invulnerable and irresistible in the hereafter. We are able then to understand another noble of the same period when he says: "I am an excellent equipped spirit (literally, 'glorious one') whose mouth knows," 4 meaning his mouth is familiar with the mortuary magical equipment, which he is able to repeat whenever needed: Similarly one of the designations of the departed in the Pyramid Texts is "the glorious by reason of their equipped mouths." 5 Finally this strangely potent bread and beer which the priest offers the dead, not only makes him a "soul" and makes him "prepared," but it also gives him "power" or makes him a "mighty one." 6 The "power" conferred was in the first place intended to control the body of the dead and guide its actions, and without this power intended for this specific purpose it is evident the Egyptian believed the dead to be helpless. 7 This "power" was also

intended to give the dead ability to confront successfully the uncanny adversaries who awaited him in the beyond. It was so characteristic of the dead, that they might be spoken of as the "mighty" as we say the "blessed," and it was so tangible a part of the equipment of the departed that it underwent purification together with him. 1 This "power" finally gave the deceased also "power" over all other powers within him, and the priest says to him, "Thou hast power over the powers that are in thee." 2

From these facts it is evident that the Egyptians had developed a rude psychology of the dead, in accordance with which they endeavored to reconstitute the individual by processes external to him, under the control of the survivors, especially the mortuary priest who possessed the indispensable ceremonies for accomplishing this end. We may summarize it all in the statement that after the resuscitation of the body, there was a mental restoration or a reconstitution of the faculties one by one, attained especially by the process of making the deceased a "soul" (ba), in which capacity he again existed as a person, possessing all the powers that would enable him to subsist and survive in the life hereafter. It is therefore not correct to attribute to the Egyptians a belief in the immortality of the soul strictly interpreted as imperishability or to speak of his "ideas of immortality." 3

That life now involved an elaborate material equipment, a monumental tomb with its mortuary furniture. The massive masonry tomb, like a truncated pyramid with very steep sides, was but the rectangular descendant of the prehistoric tumulus, with a retaining wall around it, once of rough stones, now of carefully laid hewn stone masonry, which has taken on some of the incline of its ancient ancestor, the sand heap, or tumulus, still within it. In the east side of the superstructure, which was often of imposing size, was a rectangular room, perhaps best called a chapel, where the offerings for the dead might be presented and these ceremonies on his behalf might be performed. For, notwithstanding the elaborate reconstitution of the dead as a person, he was not unquestionably able to maintain himself in the hereafter without assistance from his surviving relatives. All such mortuary arrangements were chiefly Osirian, for in the Solar faith the Sun-god did not die among men, nor did he leave a family to mourn for him and maintain mortuary ceremonies on his behalf. To be sure, the oldest notion of the relation

of Osiris to the dead, which is discernible in the Pyramid Texts, represents him as hostile to them, but this is an archaic survival of which only a trace remains. 1 As a son of Geb the Earth-god, it was altogether natural to confide the dead to his charge. 2

It was the duty of every son to arrange the material equipment of his father for the life beyond—a duty so naturally and universally felt that it involuntarily passed from the life of the people into the Osiris myth as the duty of Horus toward his father Osiris. It was an obligation which was sometimes met with faithfulness in the face of difficulty and great danger, as when Sebni of Elephantine received news of the death of his father, Mekhu, in the Sudan, and at once set out with a military escort to penetrate the country of the dangerous southern tribes and to rescue the body of his father. The motive for such self-sacrifice was of course the desire to recover his father's body that it might be embalmed and preserved, in order that the old man might not lose all prospect of life beyond. Hence it was that when the son neared the frontier on his return, he sent messengers to the court with news of what had happened, so that as he re-entered Upper Egypt he was met by a company from the court, made up of the embalmers, mortuary priests, and mourners, bearing fragrant oil, aromatic gums, and fine linen, that all the ceremonies of embalmment, interment, and complete equipment for the hereafter might be completed at once, before the body should further perish. 3

The erection of the tomb was an equally obvious duty incumbent upon sons and relatives, unless indeed that father was so attached to his own departed father that he desired to rest in his father's tomb, as one noble of the

twenty-sixth century B.C. informs us was his wish. He says: "Now I caused that I should be buried in the same tomb with this Zau (his father's name) in order that I might be with him in the same place; not, however, because I was not in a position to make a second tomb; but I did this in order that I might see this Zau every day, in order that I might be with him in the same place." 1 This pious son says further: "I buried my father, the count Zau, surpassing the splendor, surpassing the goodliness of any ⌈equal⌉ of his who was in this South" (meaning Upper Egypt). 2

From the thirty-fourth century on, as the tombs of the First Dynasty at Abydos show, it had become customary for favorite officials and partisans of the Pharaoh to be buried in the royal cemetery, forming a kind of mortuary court around the monarch whom they had served in life. Gradually the king became more and more involved in obligations to assist his nobles in the erection of their tombs and to contribute from the royal treasury to the splendor and completeness of their funerals. The favorite physician of the king receives a requisition on the treasury and the royal quarries for the labor and the transportation necessary to procure him a great and sumptuous false door of massive limestone for his tomb, and he tells us the fact with great satisfaction and much circumstance in his tomb inscriptions. 3 We see the Pharaoh in the royal palanquin on the road which mounts from the valley to the desert plateau, whither he has ascended to inspect his pyramid, now slowly rising on the margin of the desert overlooking the valley. Here he discovers the unfinished

tomb of Debhen, one of his favorites, who may have presumed upon a moment of royal complaisance to call attention to its unfinished condition. The king at once details fifty men to work upon the tomb of his protégé, and afterward orders the royal engineers and quarrymen who are at work upon a temple in the vicinity to bring for the fortunate Debhen two false doors of stone, the blocks for the façade of the tomb, and likewise a portrait statue of Debhen to be erected therein. 1 One of the leading nobles who was flourishing at the close of the twenty-seventh century B.C. tells us in his autobiography how he was similarly favored: "Then I besought . . . the majesty of the king that there be brought for me a limestone sarcophagus from Troja (royal quarries near Cairo, from which much stone for the pyramids of Gizeh was taken). The king had the treasurer of the god (= Pharaoh's treasurer) ferry over, together with a troop of sailors under his hand, in order to bring for me this sarcophagus from Troja; and he arrived with it in a large ship belonging to the court (that is, one of the royal galleys), together with its lid, the false door . . . (several other blocks the words for which are not quite certain in meaning), and one offering-tablet." 2

In such cases as these, and indeed quite frequently, the king was expected to contribute to the embalmment and burial of a favorite noble. We have already seen how the Pharaoh sent out his body of mortuary officials, priests, and embalmers to meet Sebni, returning from the Sudan with his father's body. 3 Similarly he despatched one of his commanders to rescue the body of an unfortunate noble who with his entire military escort had been massacred by the Bedwin on the shores of the Red Sea, while building

a ship for the voyage to Punt, the Somali coast, in all likelihood the land of Ophir of the Old Testament. Although the rescuer does not say so in his brief inscription, it is evident that the Pharaoh desired to secure the body of this noble also in order to prepare it properly for the hereafter. 1 Such solicitude can only have been due to the sovereign's personal attachment to a favorite official. This is quite evident in the case of Weshptah, one of the viziers of the Fifth Dynasty about 2700 B.C. The king, his family, and the court were one day inspecting a new building in course of construction under Weshptah's superintendence, for, besides being grand vizier, he was also chief architect. All admire the work and the king turns to praise his faithful minister when he notices that Weshptah does not hear the words of royal favor. The king's exclamation alarms the courtiers, the stricken minister is quickly carried to the court, and the priests and chief physicians are hurriedly summoned. The king has a case of medical rolls brought in, but all is in vain. The physicians declare his case hopeless. The king is smitten with sorrow and retires to his chamber, where he prays to Re. He then makes all arrangements for Weshptah's burial, ordering an ebony coffin made and having the body anointed in his own presence. The dead noble's eldest son was then empowered to build the tomb, which the king furnished and endowed. 2 The noble whose pious son wished to rest in the same tomb with him (p. 64) enjoyed similar favor at the king's hands. His son says: "I requested as an honor from the majesty of my lord, the king of Egypt, Pepi II, who lives forever, that there be levied a coffin, clothing, and festival perfume for this Zau (his dead father). His majesty caused that the custodian

of the royal domain should bring a coffin of wood, festival perfume, oil, clothing, two hundred pieces of first-grade linen and of fine southern linen . . . taken from the White House (the royal treasury) of the court for this Zau." 1

Interred thus in royal splendor and equipped with sumptuous furniture, the maintenance of the departed, in theory at least, through all time was a responsibility which he dared not intrust exclusively to his surviving family or eventually to a posterity whose solicitude on his behalf must continue to wane and finally disappear altogether. The noble therefore executed carefully drawn wills and testamentary endowments, the income from which was to be devoted exclusively to the maintenance of his tomb and the presentation of oblations of incense, ointment, food, drink, and clothing in liberal quantities and at frequent intervals. The source of this income might be the revenues from the noble's own lands or from his offices and the perquisites belonging to his rank, from all of which a portion might be permanently diverted for the support of his tomb and its ritual. 2

In a number of cases the legal instrument establishing these foundations has been engraved as a measure of safety on the wall inside the tomb-chapel itself and has thus been preserved to us. At Siut Hepzefi the count and baron of the province has left us ten elaborate contracts on the inner wall of his tomb-chapel, intended to perpetuate the service which he desired to have regularly celebrated at his tomb or on his behalf. 3

The amount of the endowment was sometimes surprisingly

large. In the twenty-ninth century B.C., the tomb of prince Nekure, son of king Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty, was endowed from the prince's private fortune with no less than twelve towns, the income of which went exclusively to the support of his tomb. A palace steward in Userkaf's time, in the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., appointed eight mortuary priests for the service of his tomb, and a baron of Upper Egypt two centuries and a half later endowed his tomb with the revenues from eleven villages and settlements. The income of a mortuary priest in such a tomb was, in one instance, sufficient to enable him to endow the tomb of his daughter in the same way. In addition to such private resources, the death of a noble not infrequently resulted in further generosity on the part of the king, who might either increase the endowment which the noble had already made during his life, or even furnish it entirely from the royal revenues. 1

The privileges accruing to the dead from these endowments, while they were intended to secure him against all apprehension of hunger, thirst, or cold in the future life, seem to have consisted chiefly in enabling him to share in the most important feasts and celebrations of the year. Like all Orientals the Egyptian took great delight in religious celebrations, and the good cheer which abounded on such occasions he was quite unwilling to relinquish when he departed this world. The calendar of feasts, therefore, was a matter of the greatest importance to him, and he was willing to divert plentiful revenues to enable him to celebrate all its important days in the hereafter as he had once so bountifully done among his friends on earth. He really expected, moreover, to celebrate these

joyous occasions among his friends in the temple just as he once had been wont to do, and to accomplish this he had a statue of himself erected in the temple court. Sometimes the king, as a particular distinction granted to a powerful courtier, commissioned the royal sculptors to make such a statue and station it inside the temple door. In his tomb likewise the grandee of the Pyramid Age set up a sumptuous stone portrait statue of himself, concealed in a secret chamber hidden in the mass of the masonry. Such statues, too, the king not infrequently furnished to the leading nobles of his government and court. It was evidently supposed that this portrait statue, the earliest of which we know anything in art, might serve as a body for the disembodied dead, who might thus return to enjoy a semblance at least of bodily presence in the temple, or again in the same way return to the tomb-chapel, where he might find other representations of his body in the secret chamber close by the chapel. 1

We discern in such usages the emergence of a more highly developed and more desirable hereafter, which has gradually supplanted the older and simpler views. The common people doubtless still thought of their dead either as dwelling in the tomb, or at best as inhabiting the gloomy realm of the west, the subterranean kingdom ruled by the old mortuary gods eventually led by Osiris. But for the great of the earth, the king and his nobles at least, a happier destiny had now dawned. They might dwell at will with the Sun-god in his glorious celestial kingdom. In the royal tomb we can henceforth discern the emergence of this Solar hereafter (cf. pp. 140–1).

Footnotes

49:1 See also Prof. G. Elliot Smith, The History of Mummification in Egypt, Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 1910.

52:1 On the creation of the kas in the beginning by the god see Brit. Mus. 797, infra, p. 45.

52:2 Pyr. § 372.

52:3 BAR, I, 187, 253.

52:4 Pyr. §§ 826, 832, 836; cf. also "he goes with his ka," Pyr. § 17.

52:5 Petrie, Deshasheh, 7; Lepsius, Denkmaeler, Text I, 19; Pyr. § 829.

53:1 Pyr. § 1431.

53:2 "How beautiful it is with thy ka (that is, in the company of thy ka = in the hereafter) forever," Pyr. § 2028.

53:3 Pyr. § 267 and § 311.

53:4 Pyr. § 63.

53:5 Pyr. § 587. See also § 1609 and § 1623.

53:6 Pyr. Ut. 440.

53:7 Pyr. § 564.

53:8 Pyr. § 1357.

53:9 Pyr. § 908.

54:1 Pyr. Ut. 591.

54:2 Pyr. § 776.

54:3 Pyr. § 929.

54:4 Pyr. § 2028.

55:1 Pyr. Texts. A later example is found in the temple of Seti I, latter half of the fourteenth century B.C., in a relief where the ka is depicted as a woman, with the ka sign of uplifted arms on her head, embracing the name of Seti's Gurna temple. Champollion, Monuments, pl. 151, Nos. 2 and 3.

55:2 I owe this last remark to Steindorff, who has recently published a reconsideration of the ka (Zeitschrift für aegypt. Sprache, 48,151, ff.), disproving the old notion that the mortuary statues in the tombs, especially of the Old Kingdom, are statues of the ka. He is undoubtedly right. After the collection of the above data it was gratifying to receive the essay of Steindorff and to find that he had arrived at similar conclusions regarding the nature and function of the ka, though in making the ka so largely mortuary in function I differ with him.

55:3 See above, pp. 44–45; and my essay, Zeitsch. für aegypt. Sprache, 39, pp. 39 ff.

56:1 Pyr. § 1943 b.

56:2 There were other designations of the dead, but there were not additional elements of his personality besides the ba and the body, as we find it so commonly stated in the current discussions of this subject. Thus the dead were thought of as "glorious" (y’ḫw), p. 57 and in the Pyramid Texts are frequently spoken of as the "glorious" just as we say the "blessed." The fact that they later spoke of "his y’ḫw," that is "his glorious one," does not mean that the y’ḫw was another element in the personality. This is shown in the reference to Osiris when he died, as "going to his y’ḫw" (Pyr. § 472), which is clearly a substitution of y’ḫw for ka, in the common phrase for dying, namely, "going to his ka." The use of y’ḫw with the pronoun, namely, "his y’ḫw," is rare in the Pyramid Texts, but came into more common use in the Middle Kingdom, as in the Misanthrope, who addresses his soul as his y’ḫw. Similarly the "shadow" is only another symbol, but not another element of the personality. There is no ground for the complicated conception of a person in ancient Egypt as consisting, besides the body of a ka, a ba (soul), a y’ḫw (spirit), a shadow, etc. Besides the body and the ba (soul), there was only the ka, the protecting genius, which was not an element of the personality as we have said.

57:1 Pyr. § 725.

57:2 Pyr. § 722.

57:3 Pyr. Ut. 576; see also preservation from decay by Isis and Nephthys, Pyr. § 1255.

58:1 Pyr. § 835.

58:2 Pyr. § 308.

58:3 Pyr. §§ 1878–9.

58:4 Pyr. § 2008–9.

58:5 Pyr. §§ 858–9; see also the resuscitation before purification, Pyr. §§ 837, 841, and not uncommonly.

59:1 Pyr. § 712.

59:2 See also Pyr. §§ 9, 10, and for the opening of the mouth, especially Ut. 20, 21, 22, 34, 38; for the opening of the eyes, Ut. 638, 639; for the opening of eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, see Pyr. § 1673.

59:3 Pyr. § 748.

59:4 Pyr. § 828 = § 835; the heart may also be restored to the body by Horus, Pyr. Ut. 595, or by Nephthys, Ut. 628.

60:1 Pyr. § 859.

60:2 Ibid.

60:3 BAR, I, 378.

60:4 BAR, I, 329.

60:5 Pyr. Ut. 473.

60:6 Pyr. § 859.

60:7 Pyr. § 2096.

61:1 Pyr. § 837.

61:2 Pyr. § 2011.

61:3 The above does not exhaust the catalogue of qualities which were thought valuable to the dead and were communicated to him in the Pyramid Texts. Thus they say of the deceased: "His fearfulness (b’w) is on his head, his terror is at his side, his magical charms are before him" (Pyr. § 477). For "fearfulness" a variant text has "lion's-head" (Pyr. § 940), which was a mask placed over the head of the deceased. With this should be compared the equipment of the deceased with a jackal's face, not infrequently occurring (e.g., Pyr. § 2098), which of course is a survival of the influence of the ancient mortuary p. 62 god, of the jackal head, Anubis. Two other variant passages (§ 992 and § 1472) have "ba" (soul) instead of "fearfulness" above. This threefold equipment was that of Osiris. It is found several times, e.g., in § 1559, where the text states: "His power is within him, his soul (ba) is behind him, his preparation (or equipment) is upon him, which Horus gave to Osiris." Again it is fourfold, as in Pyr. § 1730, where the appropriate recitation is enjoined

"that he may be a glorious one thereby, that he may be a soul thereby, that he may be an honored one thereby, that he may be a powerful (or mighty) one thereby" (Pyr. § 1730).

[paragraph continues] Similarly the ceremony of offering ointment to the dead is performed, and as a result the priest says, "Thou art a soul thereby, thou art a mighty one thereby, thou art an honored one thereby" (Pyr. § 2075), omitting the "equipment" or "preparation." It is also omitted in Pyr. § 2096 and § 2098.

63:1 Ut. 534.

63:2 Ut. 592.

63:3 BAR, I, 362–374.

64:1 BAR, I, 383; other examples of filial piety in the same respect, BAR, I, 181–7, 248, 274

64:2 BAR, I, 382.

64:3 BAR, I, 237–240.

65:1 BAR, I, 210–212.

65:2 BAR, I, 308.

65:3 See above, p. 61.

66:1 BAR, I, 360.

66:2 BAR, I, 242–9.

67:1 BAR, I, 382.

67:2 BAR, I, 200–9, 213–222, 226–230, 231, 349, 378, 535–593.

67:3 BAR, I, 535–593. They will be found in substance infra, pp. 259–269.

68:1 So with the vizier, Weshptah, above, p. 66; see also BAR, I, 378, 241, 213–230.

69:1 The supposition that these statues were intended to be those of the ka in particular is without foundation. Ka statues are nowhere mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, nor does the inscription regularly placed on such a statue ever refer to it as a statue of the ka. Later see also Steindorff, Zeitschr. für aegypt. Sprache, 48, 152–9.

LECTURE III

THE REALMS OF THE DEAD—THE PYRAMID TEXTS—THE ASCENT TO THE SKY

The Pharaoh himself might reasonably expect that his imposing tomb would long survive the destruction of the less enduring structures in which his nobles were laid, and that his endowments, too, might be made to outlast those of his less powerful contemporaries. The pyramid as a stable form in architecture has impressed itself upon all time. Beneath this vast mountain of stone, as a result of its mere mass and indestructibility alone, the Pharaoh looked forward to the permanent survival of his body, and of the personality with which it was so indissolubly involved. Moreover, the origin of the monument, hitherto overlooked, made it a symbol of the highest sacredness, rising above the mortal remains of the king, to greet the Sun, whose offspring the Pharaoh was.

The pyramid form may be explained by an examination of the familiar obelisk form. The obelisk, as is commonly known, is a symbol sacred to the Sun-god. So far as I am aware, however, little significance has heretofore been attached to the fact that the especially sacred portion of the obelisk is the pyramidal apex with which it is surmounted. An obelisk is simply a pyramid upon a lofty base which has indeed become the shaft. In the Old Kingdom Sun-temples at Abusir, this is quite clear, the diameter of the shaft being at the bottom quite one-third

of its height. Thus the shaft appears as a high base, upon which the surmounting pyramid is supported. This pyramidal top is the essential part of the monument and the significant symbol which it bore. The Egyptians called it a benben (or benbenet), which we translate "pyramidion," and the shaft or high base would be without significance without it. Thus, when Sesostris I proclaims to posterity the survival of his name in his Heliopolis monuments, he says:

"My beauty shall be remembered in his house, My name is the pyramidion and my name is the lake." 1

[paragraph continues] His meaning is that his name shall survive on his great obelisks, and in the sacred lake which he excavated. The king significantly designates the obelisk, however, by the name of its pyramidal summit. Now the long recognized fact that the obelisk is sacred to the sun, carries with it the demonstration that it is the pyramid surmounting the obelisk which is sacred to the Sun-god. Furthermore, the sanctuary at Heliopolis was early designated the "Benben-house," that is the "pyramidion-house." 2 The symbol, then, by which the sanctuary of the Sun-temple at Heliopolis was designated was a pyramid. Moreover, there was in this same Sun-temple a pyramidal object called a "ben," presumably of stone standing in the "Phœnix-house"; and upon this pyramidal object the Sun-god in the form of a Phœnix had in the beginning first appeared. This object was already sacred as far back as the middle of the third millennium B.C., 3 and will doubtless have

been vastly older. We may conjecture that it was one of those sacred stones, which gained their sanctity in times far back of all recollection or tradition, like the Ka‘aba at Mecca. In hieroglyphic the Phœnix is represented as sitting upon this object, the form of which was a universally sacred symbol of the Sun-god. Hence it is that in the Pyramid Texts the king's pyramid tomb is placed under the protection of the Sun-god in two very clear chapters, 1 the second of which opens with a reference to the fact that the Sun-god when he created the other gods was sitting aloft on the ben as a Phœnix, and hence it is that the king's pyramid is placed under his protection. (See pp. 76–77.)

The pyramidal form of the king's tomb therefore was of the most sacred significance. The king was buried under the very symbol of the Sun-god which stood in the holy of holies in the Sun-temple at Heliopolis, a symbol upon which, from the day when he created the gods, he was accustomed to manifest himself in the form of the Phœnix; and when in mountainous proportions the pyramid rose above the king's sepulchre, dominating the royal city below and the valley beyond for many miles, it was the loftiest object which greeted the Sun-god in all the land, and his morning rays glittered on its shining summit long before he scattered the shadows in the dwellings of humbler mortals below. We might expect to find some hint of all this on the pyramids themselves, and in this expectation we are not disappointed, in spite of the fact that hitherto no exterior inscription has ever been found actually in position in the masonry of a pyramid, so sadly have they suffered at the hands of time and vandals. A magnificent

pyramidal block of polished granite, found lying at the base of Amenemhet III's pyramid at Dahshur, is, however, unquestionably the ancient apex of that monument, from which it has fallen down as a result of the quarrying by modern natives. 1

On the side which undoubtedly faced the east appears a winged sun-disk, surmounting a pair of eyes, beneath which are the words "beauty of the sun," the eyes of course indicating the idea of beholding, which is to be understood with the words "beauty of the sun." Below is an inscription 2 of two lines beginning: "The face of king Amenemhet III is opened, that he may behold the Lord of the Horizon when he sails across the sky." 3

Entirely in harmony with this interpretation of the significance of the pyramid form is its subsequent mortuary use. A large number of small stone pyramids, each cut from a single block, has been found in the cemeteries of later times. On opposite sides of such a pyramid is a niche in which the deceased appears kneeling with upraised hands, while the accompanying inscriptions represent him as singing a hymn to the Sun-god, on one side to the rising and on the other to the setting sun. The larger museums of Europe possess numbers of these small monuments.

In the selection of the pyramid, the greatest of the Solar symbols, as the form of the king's tomb, we must therefore recognize another evidence of the supremacy of the Solar faith at the court of the Pharaohs. 1 It is notable in this connection that it was chiefly against Osiris and the divinities of his cycle that protection was sought at the dedication of a royal pyramid tomb. 2

The imposing complex of which the pyramid was the chief member has only been understood in recent years as a result of the excavations of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft at Abusir. The pyramid occupied a prominent position on the margin of the desert plateau overlooking the Nile valley. On its east side, properly called the front of the monument, and abutting on the masonry of the pyramid, rose an extensive temple, with a beautiful colonnaded court in front, storage chambers on either side, and in the rear a holy place. The back wall of this "holy of holies" was the east face of the pyramid itself, in which was a false door. Through this the dead king might step forth to receive and enjoy the offerings presented to him here. A covered causeway of massive masonry led up from the valley below to the level of the plateau where pyramid and temple stood, and extended to the very door

in the front of the temple, with whose masonry it engaged. The lower end of the causeway was adorned with a sumptuous colonnaded entrance, a monumental portal, which served as a town or residence temple of the pyramid and was probably within the walls of the royal residence city below. These temples were of course the home of the mortuary ritual maintained on behalf of the king, and were analogous in origin to the chapel of the noble's tomb already discussed (p. 62). The whole group or complex, consisting of pyramid, temple, causeway, and town temple below, forms the most imposing architectural conception of this early age and its surviving remains have contributed in the last few years an entirely new chapter in the history of architecture. They mark the culmination of the development of the material equipment of the dead.

Each Pharaoh of the Third and Fourth Dynasties spent a large share of his available resources in erecting this vast tomb, which was to receive his body and insure its preservation after death. It became the chief object of the state and its organization thus to insure the king's survival in the hereafter. More than once the king failed to complete the enormous complex before death, and was thus thrown upon the piety of his successors, who had all they could do to complete their own tombs. When completed the temple and the pyramid were dedicated by the royal priests with elaborate formulæ for their protection. The building was addressed and adjured not to admit Osiris or the divinities of his cycle, when they came, "with an evil coming," that is of course with evil designs upon the building. On the other hand, the building was charged to receive hospitably the dead king at his coming. The priest addressing the building said: "When this king

[paragraph continues] Pepi, together with his ka, comes, open thou thy arms to him." At the same time Horus is supposed to say: "Offer this pyramid and this temple to king Pepi and to his ka. That which this pyramid and this temple contain belongs to king Pepi and to his ka." 1 Besides this the buildings were protected by doors with boukrania upon or over them, and "sealed with two evil eyes," and the great hall being "purer than the sky," the place was thus inviolable 2 even by the mortuary patron god Osiris if he should come with malicious intent.

Similarly the pyramid and temple were protected from decay for all time. When the dead king appears in the hereafter he is at once hailed with greetings by Atum, the ancient Sun-god; Atum then summons the gods: "Ho, all ye gods, come, gather together; come, unite as ye gathered together and united for Atum in Heliopolis, that he might hail you. Come ye, do ye everything which is good for king Pepi II for ever and ever." Atum then promises generous offerings "for all gods who shall cause every good thing to be king Pepi II's; who shall cause to endure this pyramid and this building like that where king Pepi II loved to be for ever and ever. All gods who shall cause to be good and enduring this pyramid and this building of king Pepi II they shall be equipped (or prepared), they shall be honored, they shall become souls, they shall become mighty; to them shall be given royal mortuary offerings, they shall receive divine offerings; to them shall joints be presented, to them shall oblations be made." 3

Again the priest addresses the Sun-god under his earliest name, Atum, and recalls the time when the god sat high on the sacred ben, the pyramidal symbol at Heliopolis,

and created the other gods. This then is a special reason why he should preserve the pyramid of the king forever. "Thou wast lofty," says the priest, "on the height; thou didst shine as Phœnix of the ben in the Phœnix-hall in Heliopolis. That which thou didst spew out was Shu; that which thou didst spit out was Tefnut (his first two children). Thou didst put thy arms behind them as a ka-arm, that thy ka might be in them. O Atum, put thou thy arms behind king Mernere, behind this building, and behind this pyramid, as a ka-arm, that the ka of king Mernere may be in it enduring for ever and ever. Ho, Atum! Protect thou this king Mernere, this his pyramid and this building of king Mernere." 1 The priest then commends the pyramid to the whole Ennead, and finally proceeds to another long Utterance, which takes up the names of all the gods of the Ennead one after the other, affirming that, "as the name of the god so-and-so is firm, so is firm the name of king Mernere; so are firm this his pyramid and this his building likewise for ever and ever." 2

Resting beneath the pyramid, the king's wants were elaborately met by a sumptuous and magnificent ritual performed on his behalf in the temple before his tomb. Of this ritual we know nothing except such portions of it as have been preserved in the Pyramid Texts. These show that the usual calendar of feasts of the living was celebrated for the king, 3 though naturally on a more splendid scale. Evidently the observances consisted chiefly in the presentation of plentiful food, clothing, and the like. One hundred and seventy-eight formulæ or utterances, forming about one-twentieth of the bulk of the Pyramid Texts, 4 contain the words spoken by the royal mortuary

priests in offering food, drink, clothing, ointment, perfume, and incense, revealing the endless variety and splendid luxury of the king's table, toilet, and wardrobe in the hereafter. The magnificent vases discovered by Borchardt at Abusir in the pyramid-temple of Neferirkere (twenty-eighth century B.C.) are a further hint of the royal splendor with which this ritual of offerings was maintained, while the beauty and grandeur of the pyramid-temples themselves furnished an incomparable setting within which all this mortuary magnificence was maintained.

All this system of mortuary maintenance early came under the complete domination of the Osirian faith, though the very tomb at which it was enacted was a symbol of the Sun-god. Osiris had died not in the distant sky like Re, but on earth as men die. The human aspects of his life and death led to the early adoption of the incidents in his story as those which took place in the life and death of every one. Horus had offered to his father the eye which Set had wrenched out, and this evidence of the son's self-sacrifice for the father's sake had made Osiris a "soul," and proven of incalculable blessing. The "Horus-eye" became the primal type of all offerings, especially those offered to the dead, Osiris having been dead when he received the eye. Thus every offering presented to the king in the ritual of the pyramids was called the "Horus-eye," no matter what the character of the offering might be. In presenting linen garments the priest addressed the dead king thus: "Ho! This king Pepi! Arise thou, put on thee the Horus-eye, receive it upon thee, lay it to thy flesh; that thou mayest go forth in it, and the gods may see thee clothed in it. . . . The Horus-eye is brought to thee, it removes not from thee

for ever and ever." 1 Again in offering ointment the priest assuming the office of Horus says: "Horus comes filled with ointment. He has embraced his father Osiris. He found him (lying) upon his side in Gehesti. Osiris filled himself with the eye of him whom he begat. Ho! This king Pepi II! I come to thee steadfast, that I may fill thee with the ointment that came forth from the Horus-eye. Fill thyself therewith. It will join thy bones, it will unite thy members, it will join to thee thy flesh, it will dissolve thy evil sweat to the earth. Take its odor upon thee that thy odor may be sweet like (that of) Re, when he rises in the horizon, and the horizon-gods delight in him. Ho! This king Pepi II! The odor of the Horus-eye is on thee; the gods who follow Osiris delight In thee." 2

The individual formulæ in the long offering-ritual are very brief. The prevailing form of offering is simply: "O king X! Handed to thee is the Horus-eye which was wrested from Set, rescued for thee, that thy mouth might be filled with it. Wine, a white jar." 3 The last words prescribe the offering which the formula accompanies. Similarly the method of offering or the accompanying acts may be appended to the actual words employed by the priest. Thus through the lengthy ritual of six or eight score such utterances, besides some others scattered through the Pyramid Texts, the priest lays before the dead king those creature comforts which he had enjoyed in the flesh. 4 In doing so he entered the mysterious

chamber behind the temple court, where he stepped into the presence of the pyramid itself, beneath which the king lay. Before the priest rose the great false door through which the spirit of the king might re-enter the temple from his sepulchre far beneath the mountain of masonry now towering above it. Standing before the false door the priest addressed the king as if present and presented a vast array of the richest gifts, accompanying each with the precribed formula of presentation which we have already discussed. But the insistent fact of death cannot be ignored even in these utterances which exist solely because the dead is believed to live and feels the needs of the living. In the silent chamber the priest feels the unresponsiveness of the royal dead yonder far beneath the mountainous pyramid, and hence from time to time calls upon him to rise from his sleep and behold the food and the gifts spread out for him. In order that none of these may be omitted, the priest summarizes them all in the promise to the king: "Given to thee are all offerings, all oblations, (even) thy desire, and that by which it is well for thee with the god forever." 1 Added to all this elaborate ritual of gifts there were also charms potent to banish hunger from the vitals of the king, and these, too, the priest from time to time recited for the Pharaoh's benefit. 2

The kings of the early Pyramid Age in the thirtieth century

[paragraph continues] B.C. evidently looked confidently forward to indefinite life hereafter maintained in this way. In a lament for the departed Pharaoh, which the priest as Horus recited, Horus says: "Ho! king Pepi! I have wept for thee! I have mourned for thee. I forget thee not, my heart is not weary to give to thee mortuary offerings every day, at the (feast of the) month, at the (feast of the) half-month, at the (feast of) 'Putting-down-the-Lamp,' at the (feast of) Thoth, at the (feast of) Wag, at the period of thy years and thy months which thou livest as a god." 1 But would the posterity of an Oriental sovereign never weary in giving him mortuary offerings every day? We shall see.

Such maintenance required a considerable body of priests in constant service at the pyramid-temple, though no list of a royal pyramid priesthood has survived to us. They were supported by liberal endowments, for which the power of the royal house might secure respect for a long time. The priesthood and the endowment of the pyramid of Snefru at Dahshur (thirtieth century B.C.) were respected and declared exempt from all state dues and levies by a royal decree issued by Pepi II of the Sixth Dynasty, three hundred years after Snefru's death. Moreover, there had been three changes of dynasty since the decease of Snefru. But such endowments, accumulating as they did from generation to generation, must inevitably break down at last. In the thirtieth century B.C., Snefru himself had given to one of his nobles "one hundred loaves every day from the mortuary temple of the mother of the king's children, Nemaathap." 2 This queen had died at the close of the Second Dynasty, some

two generations earlier. Snefru, while he may not have violated her mortuary income, at least disposed of it after it had served its purpose at her tomb, in rewarding his partisans. In the same way Sahure, desiring to reward Persen, one of his favorite nobles, finds no other resources available and diverts to Persen's tomb an income of loaves and oil formerly paid to the queen Neferhotepes every day. 1 There is in these acts of Snefru and Sahure a hint of one possible means of meeting the dilemma as the number of tomb endowments increased, viz., by supplying one tomb with food-offerings which had already served in another. Even so the increasing number of royal tombs made it more and more difficult as a mere matter of management and administration to maintain them. Hence even the priests of Sahure's pyramid in the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., unable properly to protect the king's pyramid-temple, found it much cheaper and more convenient to wall up all the side entrances and leave only the causeway as the entrance to the temple. They seem to have regarded this as a pious work, for they left the name of the particular phyle of priests who did it, on the masonry of the doorways which they thus closed up. 2 After this the accidentally acquired sanctity of a figure of the goddess Sekhmet in the temple, a figure which enjoyed the local reverence and worship of the surrounding villages, and continued in their favor for centuries, resulted in the preservation of a large portion of the temple which otherwise would long before have fallen into ruin. Sahure's successor, Neferirkere, fared much worse. A few years after his death a successor of the same dynasty (Nuserre) broke away the causeway leading up to the

pyramid-temple that he might divert it to his own temple near by. The result was that the mortuary priests of Neferirkere, unable longer to live in the valley below, moved up to the plateau, where they grouped their sun-dried brick dwellings around and against the façade of the temple where they ministered. As their income dwindled these dwellings became more and more like hovels, they finally invaded the temple court and chambers, and the priests, by this time in a state of want, fairly took possession of the temple as a priestly quarter. Left at last without support, their own tumble-down hovels were forsaken and the ruins mingled with those of the temple itself. When the Middle Kingdom opened, six hundred years after Neferirkere's death, the temple was several metres deep under the accumulation of rubbish, and the mounds over it were used as a burial ground, where the excavations disclosed burials a metre or two above the pavement of the temple. The great Fourth Dynasty cemetery at Gizeh experienced the same fate. The mortuary priests whose ancestors had once administered the sumptuous endowments of the greatest of all pyramids, pushed their intrusive burials into the streets and areas between the old royal tombs of the extinct line, where they too ceased about 2500 B.C., four hundred years after Khufu laid out the Gizeh cemetery. Not long after 2500 B.C., indeed the whole sixty-mile line of Old Kingdom pyramids from Medûm on the south to Gizeh on the north had become a desert solitude. 1 This melancholy condition is discernible also in the reflections of the thoughtful in the Feudal Age five hundred years later as they contemplated the wreck of these massive tombs. (See pp. 181–4.)

What was so obvious centuries after the great Pharaohs

of the Pyramid Age had passed away was already discernible long before the Old Kingdom fell. The pyramids represent the culmination of the belief in material equipment as completely efficacious in securing felicity for the dead. The great pyramids of Gizeh represent the effort of titanic energies absorbing all the resources of a great state as they converged upon one supreme endeavor to sheath eternally the body of a single man, the head of the state, in a husk of masonry so colossal that by these purely material means the royal body might defy all time and by sheer force of mechanical supremacy make conquest of immortality. The decline of such vast pyramids as those of the Fourth Dynasty at Gizeh, and the final insertion of the Pyramid Texts in the pyramids beginning with the last king of the Fifth Dynasty about 2625 B.C., puts the emphasis on well-being elsewhere, a belief in felicity in some distant place not so entirely dependent upon material means, and recognizes in some degree the fact that piles of masonry cannot confer that immortality which a man must win in his own soul.

The Pyramid Texts as a whole furnish us the oldest chapter in human thinking preserved to us, the remotest reach in the intellectual history of man which we are now able to discern. It had always been supposed that the pyramids were all without inscription, until the native workmen employed by Mariette at Sakkara in 1880, the year before his death, penetrated the pyramid of Pepi I, and later that of Mernere. For the first edition of the Pyramid Texts we are indebted to Maspero, who displayed great penetration in discerning the general character of these texts, which he published during the next ten years. Nevertheless, it has been only since the appearance of Sethe's great edition in 1910 that it has been possible to

undertake the systematic study of these remarkable documents. 1

Written in hieroglyphic they occupy the walls of the passages, galleries, and chambers in five of the pyramids of Sakkara: the earliest, that of Unis, belonging at the end of the Fifth Dynasty in the latter half of the twenty-seventh century B.C., and the remaining four, those of the leading kings of the Sixth Dynasty, Teti, Pepi I, Mernere, and Pepi II, the last of whom died early in the twenty-fifth century B.C. They thus represent a period of about one hundred and fifty years from the vicinity of 2625 to possibly 2475 B.C., that is the whole of the twenty-sixth century and possibly a quarter of a century before and after it.

It is evident, however, that they contain material much older than this, the age of the copies which have come down to us. The five copies themselves refer to material then in existence which has not survived. We read in them of "the Chapter of Those Who Ascend," and the "Chapter of Those Who Raise Themselves Up," which purport to have been used on the occasion of various incidents in the myths. 2 They were thus regarded as older than our Pyramid Texts. Such older material, therefore, existed, whether we possess any of it or not. We find conditions of civilization also in the Pyramid Texts which were far older than the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. In

summoning the dead to rise he is bidden: "Throw off the sand from thy face," 1 or "Remove thy earth." 2 Such passages as these must have arisen in a time when the king was buried in a primitive grave scooped out of the desert sand. Similarly when the king's tomb is opened for him that he may rise he is assured: "The brick are drawn for thee out of the great tomb," 3 a passage which must have come into use when the kings used brick tombs like those at Abydos in the First and Second Dynasties. Like the sand grave or the brick tomb, is the common representation of the king crossing the celestial waters on the two reed floats, used by the peasants of Nubia to this day.

Parallel with these hints in the conditions of civilization are others referring to the political conditions, which plainly place some of the Pyramid Texts in the days before the rise of the dynasties, in the age when South and North were warring together for supremacy, that is before 3400 B.C. We find a sycomore-goddess addressed thus: "Thou hast placed the terror of thee in the heart of the kings of Lower Egypt, dwelling in Buto" (the capital of the prehistoric Delta kingdom), 4 a passage evidently written from the point of view of the South in hostility toward the North. We read of Horus "who smote the Red Crowns"; 5 again "the White (southern) Crown comes forth, it has devoured the Great (northern) Crown;" 6 or "the horizon burns incense to Horus of Nekhen (capital of the South), . . . the flood of its flame is against you, ye wearers of the Great (northern) Crown." 7 It is said of the king that