The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 8

The acceptance of Osiris as the G.o.d of the underworld meant the displacement of Anubis. He had to make way for "the lord of Daddu." The fact is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the influence which the Osirian teaching must have possessed. Osiris was the feudal G.o.d only of a nome in the north of the Delta; Anubis had been adored from time immemorial throughout the valley of the Nile. The cities which recognised him as their chief deity were numerous and powerful. Nevertheless he had to yield to the rival G.o.d and take a subordinate place beside him. He remained, indeed, in the pantheon, for the Egyptians never broke with their past; but the part he had played in it was taken by another, and he was content to become merely the minister of Osiris and the guardian of the cemeteries of the dead.

Meanwhile Osiris, like the Greek Dionysos, had pursued his victorious march. Wherever his worship extended his temple rose by the side of his tomb like the temples attached to the Pyramids. Like Pta? of Memphis or the mummified Horus of Nekhen, he was a dead G.o.d, and it was to a dead G.o.d consequently that the offering was made and the priest dedicated. It was at Abydos in Upper Egypt, however, that his fame was greatest. Abydos was the sepulchral temple of Osiris attached to the city of This, and This was not only the seat of a powerful kingdom, which probably succeeded that of Nekhen, but the birthplace of Menes, the founder of the united monarchy.

Around the tomb of the Osiris of Abydos, accordingly, the kings and princes of the Thinite dynasties were buried, and where the Pharaoh was buried his subjects wished to be buried too. From all parts of Egypt the bodies of the dead were brought to the sacred ground, that they might be interred as near as possible to the tomb of the G.o.d, and so their mummies might repose beside him on earth as they hoped their souls would do in the paradise of the Blest. Even the rise of the Memphite dynasties did not deprive Abydos of its claim to veneration. Its sanct.i.ty was too firmly established; hundreds of Egyptians still continued to be buried there, rather than in the s.p.a.cious necropolis of the Memphite Pharaohs.(133) Abydos, with its royal memories, threw the older city of Osiris into the shade. He still, it is true, retained his ancient t.i.tle of "lord of Daddu," but it was an archaism rather than a reality, and it was as "lord of Abydos" that he was now with preference addressed.

But other sanctuaries disputed with Abydos its claim to possess the tomb of the G.o.d of the dead. Wherever a temple was erected in his honour, his tomb also was necessarily to be found. An attempt was made to harmonise their conflicting claims by falling back on the old tradition of the custom of dismembering the dead: the head of the G.o.d was at Abydos, his heart at Athribis, his neck at Letopolis. But even so the difficulty remained: the separate limbs would not suffice for the number of the tombs, and the same member was sometimes claimed by more than one locality. At Memphis, for example, where Osiris was united with Apis into the compound Serapis, his head was said to have been interred as well as at Abydos.

Abydos, at the outset, was the cemetery, or rather one of the cemeteries, of This. And the G.o.d of This was the sun-G.o.d Anher, who was depicted in human form. In the age which produced the doctrine of the Ennead, Anher was identified with Shu, the atmosphere, or, more strictly speaking, the G.o.d of the s.p.a.ce between sky and earth was merged into the G.o.d of the sun.

But it was not only at This that Anher was worshipped. He was also the G.o.d of Sebennytos, which adjoined the Busirite nome, and where, therefore, the human sun-G.o.d was in immediate contact with the human G.o.d of the dead.

What the mummy was to the living man, that Osiris was to Anher.(134)

The double relation between Osiris and Anher in both Lower and Upper Egypt cannot be an accident. Osiris became the G.o.d of Abydos, because Abydos was the cemetery of This, whose feudal G.o.d was Anher. The relation that existed in the Delta, between Anher the sun-G.o.d of Sebennytos, and Osiris the G.o.d of the dead at Busiris, was transferred also to Southern Egypt.

Whom or what did Osiris originally represent? To this many answers have been given. Of late Egyptologists have seen in him sometimes a personification of mankind, sometimes the river Nile, sometimes the cultivated ground. After the rise of the solar school of theology the Egyptians themselves identified him with the sun when it sinks below the horizon to traverse the dark regions of the underworld. Horus the sun-G.o.d of morning thus became his son, born as it were of the sun-G.o.d of night, and differing from his father only in his form of manifestation.(135)

We have, however, one or two facts to guide us in determining the primitive character of the G.o.d. He was a mummified man like Pta? of Memphis, and he was the brother and enemy of Set. Set or Sut became for the later Egyptians the impersonation of evil. He was identified with Apophis, the serpent of wickedness, against whom the sun-G.o.d wages perpetual war; and his name was erased from the monuments on which it was engraved. But all this was because Set was the G.o.d and the representative of the Asiatic invaders who had conquered Egypt, and aroused in the Egyptian mind a feeling of bitter animosity towards themselves. As late as the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the Pharaohs who restored Tanis, the Hyksos capital, to something of its former glory, called themselves after the name of the Hyksos deity. Thothmes III. of the Eighteenth Dynasty built a temple in honour of Set of Ombos, who was worshipped near Dendera; and if we go back to the oldest records of the united monarchy, we find Set symbolising the north while Horus symbolises the south. Before the days of Menes, Set was the G.o.d of Northern Egypt, Horus of Southern Egypt.

In the prehistoric wars of the two kingdoms the two G.o.ds would be hostile to one another, and yet brethren.

It was the armies of Set that were driven by Horus and his metal-bearing followers from one end of Egypt to the other, and finally overcome.(136) Set therefore represents in the legend the older population of the valley of the Nile. The reason of this is not far to seek. Set or Sut, like Sati, denotes the Semitic or African nomad of the desert, the Babylonian Sutu.

He is the equivalent of the Bedawi of to-day, who still hovers on the Egyptian borders, and between whom and the fellah there is perpetual feud.

The same cause which made Horus the brother and yet the enemy of Set must have been at work to place Osiris in the same relation to him. Osiris too must have typified the Pharaonic Egyptian, and like Horus have been the first of the Pharaohs. Hence his human body, and hence also the confusion between himself and Horus, which ended in making Horus his son and in generating a new Horus-Horus the younger-by the side of the older Horus of the Egyptian faith.(137)

The position of Osiris in respect to Anher is now clear. He is the sun-G.o.d after his setting in the west, when he has pa.s.sed to the region of the dead in the underworld. He stands, therefore, in exactly the same relation to Anher that the mummified hawk stands to the Horus-hawk. The one belongs to the city of the living, the other to the city of the dead. But they are both the same deity under different forms, one of which presides over the city, the other over its burying-ground. Like Horus, Osiris must have been a sun-G.o.d of the Pharaonic Egyptians, but a sun-G.o.d who was connected for some special reason with the dead.(138)

Now Mr. Ball has drawn attention to the fact that there was a Sumerian G.o.d who had precisely the same name as Osiris, and that this name is expressed in both cases by precisely the same ideographs.(139) The etymology of the name has been sought in vain in Egyptian. But the cuneiform texts make it clear. Osiris (As-ar) is the Asari of ancient Babylonia, who was called Merodach by the Semites, and whose ordinary t.i.tle is "the G.o.d who does good to man." The name of Asari is written with two ideographs, one of which denotes "a place" and the other "an eye," and the forms of the two ideographs, as well as their meanings, are identical with those of the hieroglyphic characters which represent Osiris. Such a threefold agreement cannot be accidental: both the name and the mode of writing it must have come from Babylonia. And what makes the agreement the stronger is the fact that the ideographs have nothing to do with the signification of the name itself; they express simply its p.r.o.nunciation. In the Sumerian of early Babylonia the name signified "the mighty one."(140)

Asari was the sun-G.o.d of Eridu, the ancient seaport of Babylonia on the Persian Gulf. He was the son of Ea, the chief G.o.d of the city, of whose will and wisdom he was the interpreter. It was he who communicated to men the lessons in culture and the art of healing, which Ea was willing they should learn. Just as Osiris spent his life in doing good, according to the Egyptian legend, so Asari was he "who does good to man." He was ever on the watch to help his worshippers, to convey to them the magic formulas which could ward off sickness or evil, and, as it is often expressed, to "raise the dead to life."

In this last expression we have the key to the part played by Osiris.

Osiris died, and was buried, like Asari or Merodach, whose temple at Babylon was also his tomb; but it was that he might rise again in the morning with renewed strength and brilliancy. And through the spells he had received from his father all those who trusted in him, and shared in his death and entombment, were also "raised to life." Both in Egypt and in Babylonia he was the G.o.d of the resurrection, whether that took place in this visible world or in the heavenly paradise, which was a purified reflection of the earth.

In Babylonia, Asari or Merodach was the champion of light and order, who conquered the dragon of chaos and her anarchic forces, and put the demons of darkness to flight. In Egypt that part was taken by Horus. But both Anher and Osiris were merely local forms-local names, if the phrase should be preferred-of Horus and the mummified hawk. Anher is sometimes represented, like Horus, with the spear in his hand, overthrowing the wicked; but his figure was eclipsed by that of Osiris, who had come to be regarded as the benefactor of mankind, and to whom men prayed in sickness and death. A G.o.d of the dead, however, could not be a conqueror; it was he, and not his foe, who had died, and consequently the victories gained by Horus could not be ascribed to him. But the difficulty was not insoluble; Horus became his son, who was at the same time his father, and the old struggle between Horus and Set was transferred to the Osirian cult.

It is significant, however, that in the recently-recovered monuments of the Thinite dynasties Set is still the twin-brother of Horus. He still represents the north, until lately the antagonist of the south; and a king whose remains have been found at Nekhen and Abydos, and who calls himself "the uniter of the two sceptres" of Egypt, still sets the Horus-hawk and the animal of Set above his name.

Set, as I have already said, is the Sutu or Bedawi. He was adored elsewhere than in Egypt; the Moabites called themselves his children (Num.

xxiv. 17), and in the cuneiform texts Sutu-sar ("Sutu the king") and Nabu-rabe ("Nebo the great") are described as twins.(141) But in Egypt he represented the population which had been conquered by the Pharaonic Egyptians or continued to live on the desert frontiers of the country, and which was stronger in the Delta than in the south. The old struggle, therefore, between light and darkness, order and confusion, which formed the background of Babylonian mythology, became the struggle which was waged for such long centuries, first between the Pharaonic Egyptians and the neolithic races, then between the kingdoms of the south and north, and finally between the united monarchy and the Bedawin of the desert or a.s.sailants from Asia. Where the foreign element prevailed, Set was an honoured G.o.d; where the ruling Egyptian was dominant, his place was taken by his brother and his antagonist.

It has been thought that the struggle between Horus and Set typified the struggle that is ever going on between the desert and the cultivated land.

But such an idea is far too abstract to have formed the basis of an Egyptian religious myth. It might have been elaborated subsequently by some theological school out of the contrast between the Sutu of the desert and the G.o.d of the agriculturists; but it could never have been there originally. The interpretation is as little justifiable as that which sees in Osiris the seed that is buried in the ground.

It is indeed true that the Egyptians of a later period, when the Osirian doctrine of the Resurrection was fully developed, found an a.n.a.logy to it in the seed that is sown in order to grow again. The tomb of Ma-her-pa-Ra, the fan-bearer of Amon-hotep II. of the Eighteenth Dynasty, discovered by M. Loret in the valley of the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes, contains a proof of this. In it was a rudely-constructed bed with a mattress, on which the figure of Osiris had been drawn. On this earth was placed, and in the earth grains of corn had been sown. The corn had sprouted and grown to the height of a few inches before it had withered away. But such symbolism is, like the similar symbolism of Christianity, the result of the doctrine of the resurrection and not the origin of it. It is not till men believe that the human body can rise again from the sleep of corruption, that the growth of the seed which has been buried in the ground is invoked to explain and confirm their creed.

How came this doctrine of the resurrection to be attached to the cult of Osiris and to become an integral part of Egyptian belief? There is only one answer that can be given to this: the doctrine of the resurrection was a necessary accompaniment of the practice of mummification, and Osiris was a mummified G.o.d.

We have already seen that old Babylonian hymns describe Asari or Merodach as the G.o.d "who raises the dead to life." We have also seen that Osiris was not the only mummified G.o.d known in Egypt. Pta? of Memphis was also a mummy; so too was the mummified Horus of Nekhen, who was worshipped even in the Delta in the "Arabian" nome of Goshen on the borders of Asia.

Whether or not the practice of embalming first originated at Nekhen, where it was discovered that bodies buried in the nitrogenous soil of El-Kab were preserved undecayed, it is certain that, like the art of writing, it characterised the Pharaonic Egyptians from the earliest times. In no other way can we explain the existence among them of their mummified G.o.ds. But its adoption by the older races who still formed the bulk of the people was but gradual. It did not become universal before the age of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

It was not, however, the bulk of the people, but the ruling cla.s.ses, who worshipped Osiris, and among whom his cult spread and grew. He became for them Un-nefer, "the good being," ready to heal for them even the pains of death, and to receive them in his realm beyond the grave, where life and action would be restored to them. The sun shone there as it did here, for was not Osiris himself a sun-G.o.d? the fields of the blessed were like those of Egypt, except that no sickness or death came near them, that no blight ever fell on fruit or corn, that the Nile never failed, and that the heat was always tempered by the northern breeze.

The "field of Alu," the Elysion of the Greeks, was at first in the marshes of the Delta near the mouths of the Nile, like the paradise of early Babylonia, which too was "at the mouth of the rivers." But it soon migrated to the north-eastern portion of the sky, and the Milky Way became the heavenly Nile. Here the dead lived in perpetual happiness under the rule of Osiris, working, feasting, reading, even fighting, as they would below, only without pain and eternally.(142)

But, in order to share in this state of bliss, it was necessary for the believer in Osiris to become like the G.o.d himself. He must himself be an Osiris, according to the Egyptian expression. His individuality remained intact; as he had been on earth, so would he be in heaven. The Osiris, in fact, was a spiritualised body in which the immortal parts of man were all united together. Soul and spirit, heart and double, all met together in it as they had done when the individual was on earth.

It is clear that the doctrine of the Osiris in its developed form is inconsistent with the idea of the _ka_. But it is also clear that without the idea of the _ka_ it would never have been formed. Both presuppose an individuality separate from the person to which it belongs, and yet at the same time material, an individuality which continues after death and manifests itself under the same shape as that which characterised the person in life. The popular conception of the ghost, which reproduces not only the features but even the dress of the dead, is a.n.a.logous.

Fundamentally the Osiris is a _ka_, but it is a _ka_ which represents not only the outward shape, but the inner essence as well. The whole man is there, spiritually, morally, intellectually, as well as corporeally. The doctrine of the Osiris thus absorbs, as it were, the old idea of the _ka_, and spiritualises it, at the same time confining it to the life after death.

But if the conception of a double, unsubstantial and yet materialised, underlay the belief in the Osiris, the practice of embalming was equally responsible for it. The continued existence of the double was dependent on the continued existence of the body, for the one presupposed the other, and it was only the mummified body which could continue to exist. As long as the double was believed to haunt the tomb, and there receive the food and other offerings which were provided for it, the connection between it and the mummy presented no difficulties. But when the Egyptian came to look forward to the heaven of Osiris, first on this nether earth and then in the skies, the case was wholly altered. The mummy lay in the tomb, the immortal counterpart of the man himself was in another and a spiritual world. The result was inevitable: the follower of Osiris soon a.s.sured himself that one day the mummified body also would have life and action again breathed into it and rejoin its Osiris in the fields of paradise.

Had not the G.o.d carried thither his divine body as well as its counterpart? and what the G.o.d had done those who had become even as he was could also do.

In this way the doctrine of the resurrection of the body became an integral part of the Osirian faith. The future happiness to which its disciples looked forward was not in absorption into the divinity, or contemplation of the divine attributes, or a monotonous existence of pa.s.sive idleness. They were to live as they had done in this life, only without sorrow and suffering, without sin, and eternally. But all their bodily powers and interests were to remain and be gratified as they could not be in this lower world. The realm over which Osiris ruled was the idealised reproduction of that Egypt which the Egyptian loved so well, with its sunshine and light, its broad and life-bearing river, its fertile fields, and its busy towns. Those who dwelt in it could indeed feast and play, could lounge in canoes and fish or hunt, could read tales and poems or write treatises on morality, could transform themselves into birds that alighted among the thick foliage of the trees; but they must also work as they had done here, must cultivate the soil before it would produce its ears of wheat two cubits high, must submit to the corvee and embank the ca.n.a.ls. The Osirian heaven had no place for the idle and inactive.

No sooner, indeed, had the dead man been p.r.o.nounced worthy of admittance to it, than he was called upon to work. At the very outset of his new existence, before any of its pleasures might be tasted, he was required to till the ground and guide the plough. This was no hardship to the poor fellah who had spent his life in agricultural labour. But it was otherwise with the rich man whose lands had been cultivated by others, while he himself had merely enjoyed their produce. In the early days of Egyptian history, accordingly, it was the fashion for the feudal landowner to surround his tomb with the graves of his servants and retainers, whose bodies were mummified and buried at his expense. What they had performed for him in this world, it was believed they would perform for him in the world to come. There, too, the Osiris of the fellah would work for the Osiris of the wealthy, whose necessary task would thus be performed vicariously.

But as time went on a feeling grew up that in the sight of Osiris all those who were a.s.similated to him were equal one to the other. Between one Osiris and another the distinctions of rank and station which prevail here were no longer possible. The old conception of the ka came to the help of the believer. The place of the human servant was taken by the _ushebti_, that little figure of clay or wood which represented a peasant, and whose double, accordingly, was sent to a.s.sist the dead in his tasks above. The human Osiris, whatever his lot in this life had been, was henceforth free from the toils which had once awaited him in the fields of Alu; he could look on while the _ka_ of the _ushebti_ performed his work. The _ushebti_-figures become especially numerous after the expulsion of the Hyksos. The domination of the foreigner and the long war of independence which put an end to it, had destroyed the feudal n.o.bility, and therewith the feudal ideas which regarded mankind as divided, now and hereafter, into two cla.s.ses. From thenceforth the Egyptians became the democratic people that they still are. As the Pharaoh on earth ruled a people who before him were all equal, so between the subjects of Osiris, the Pharaoh in heaven, no distinctions of rank were known except such as were conferred by himself.

The same belief which had subst.i.tuted the _ushebti_ for the human peasant had filled the tombs with the objects which, it was thought, would best please the dead man. Besides the meat and drink which had been provided for the _ka_ from time immemorial, there was now placed beside the mummy everything which it was imagined he would need or desire in the other world. Even the books which the dead man had delighted in during his earthly existence were not forgotten. It was not necessary, however, that the actual objects should be there. It was the _ka_ only of the object that was wanted, and that could be furnished by a representation of the object as well as by the object itself. And so, besides the actual clothes or tools or weapons that are buried in the tombs, we find imitation clothes and tools, like the "ghost-money" of the Greeks, or even paintings on the wall, which, so long as the object was correctly depicted in them, were considered quite sufficient. One of the most touching results of this thorough-going realism has been noticed by Professor Wiedemann.(143) "The soles of the feet (of the mummy) which had trodden the mire of earth were removed, in order that the Osiris might tread the Hall of Judgment with pure feet; and the G.o.ds were prayed to grant milk to the Osiris that he might bathe his feet in it and so a.s.suage the pain which the removal of the soles must needs have caused him. And, finally, the soles" were then placed within the mummy, that he might find them at hand on the day of resurrection, and meantime make use of their _ka_.

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body involved also a doctrine of a judgment of the deeds committed by the body. Those only were admitted into the kingdom of Osiris who, like their leader, had done good to men. A knowledge of the Ritual with its divine lore and incantations was not sufficient to unlock its gates. The Osiris who entered it had to be morally as well as ceremonially pure. Osiris was not only a king; he was a judge also, and those who appeared before him had to prove that their conduct in this life had been in conformity with one of the highest of the moral codes of antiquity.

This moral test of righteousness is the most remarkable fact connected with the Osirian system of doctrine. The Egyptian who accepted it was called on to acknowledge that orthodoxy in belief and practice was not sufficient to ensure his future salvation; it was needful that he should have avoided sin and been actively benevolent as well. Unlike most ancient forms of faith, morality-and that too of a high order-was made an integral part of religion, and even set above it. It was not so much what a man believed as what he had done that enabled him to pa.s.s the awful tribunal of heaven and be admitted to everlasting bliss.

The Book of the Dead was the guide of the dead man on his journey to the other world. Its chapters were inscribed on the rolls buried with the mummy, or were painted on the coffin and the walls of the tomb. It was the Ritual which prescribed the prayers and incantations to be repeated in the course of the journey, and described the enemies to be met with on the other side of the grave. Thanks to its instructions, the dead pa.s.sed safely through the limbo which divides this earth from the kingdom of Osiris, and arrived at last at the Judgment Hall, the hall of the Twofold Truth, where Mat, the G.o.ddess of truth and law, received him. Here on his judgment throne sat Osiris, surrounded by the forty-two a.s.sessors of divine justice from the forty-two nomes of Egypt, while Thoth and the other deities of the Osirian cycle stood near at hand. Then the dead man was called upon to show reason why he should be admitted to the fields of Alu, and to prove that during his lifetime he had practised mercy and justice and had abstained from evil-doing. The negative confession put into his mouth is one of the most noteworthy relics of ancient literature.

"Praise be to thee (O Osiris)," he was made to say, "lord of the Twofold Truth! Praise to thee, great G.o.d, lord of the Twofold Truth! I come to thee, my lord, I draw near to see thine excellencies.(144)...

I have not acted with deceit or done evil to men.

I have not oppressed the poor.

I have not judged unjustly.

I have not known ought of wicked things.

I have not committed sin.

I have not exacted more work from the labourer than was just.

I have not been anxious. I have not been feeble of purpose.

I have not defaulted. I have not been n.i.g.g.ardly.

I have not done what the G.o.ds abhor.

I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated by his master.

I have made none to hunger.

I have made none to weep.

I have not committed murder.