What is the Egyptian Book of the Dead?

This Egypt was remarkable in other ways — as the abode of science and civilization. To that wonderful country people go now to study her monuments and her architecture. Egypt built as if she had eternity before her to enjoy it in. Her buildings were made to outlast by ages the people of a day who builded them; they could not make the people last, yet tried their best at that. They embalmed their dead; and sent their dead down to the generations yet to come side by side with what their hands had made, as if solemnly saying: "Here are the mighty works of those over whom a mightier has triumphed." What a comment upon all her grandeur! Her main literary memorial is a "book of the dead." In her monuments death is stereotyped. The desert, after all, has vanquished the river. The land of science and of art is a land of death, not of life.

Yet this Egypt within its narrow limits was remarkable as the abode of the arts and sciences, the home of civilization. Still people go down there — for you "go down," not "up," to Egypt — to study her wonderful monuments and admire her massive architecture. Egypt built as if she had eternity before her in which to enjoy it. Her buildings were made to outlast by ages the people of a day who builded them. They could not make the people last, yet they did what they could at that: they embalmed their dead, and sent them down to the generations yet to come, solemn preachers of the vanity attaching to all that is human. What a comment upon all her grandeur! Her main literary memorial is a "book of the dead." In her whole condition, death seems stereotyped. The desert, after all, has vanquished the river. The land of science and art is a land of death, and not of life.

Egypt is, as we have seen long since, the land of Mizraim — the double strip: that is, the strip on each side of the river, the overflow of which has formed and enriches it. Wherever we look at it, it is essentially the land of independence, as far as heaven is concerned. The rain seldom falls there; it is not expected. The sources of the river are necessarily in the heavens themselves, but so far off that they are no more thought of, or if speculated about, the speculations themselves are of no great consequence. The practical thing is that the river is there, always there, overflowing at a certain regular time most convenient for man's purposes, giving him little to think about, only how best to guide hither and thither the supply which is thus made his own. Indeed be values himself upon this, that he can direct this abundant water with great wisdom so as to meet with it his own needs. Thus Pharaoh can say, as we see him here doing: "My river is mine, and I have made it." Practically it is the reverse of this, it is the river that has made him. Even the name of the first father of the Egyptians, Mizraim, is given to him, as one would say, by the land to which he owes his all: which is after all but the narrow strip through a desert in constant conflict with it, blowing its sand upon it in such a way as would soon annihilate the whole strip if it were not for the constant overflow of the river. Life is thus in perpetual conflict with death, and the Egyptians, one would say, were in a position to value life and enjoy it. No doubt in a way they did — yet from the earliest times Egypt was, what the earth at large very much is, a place of death rather than of life. Egypt is emphatically the land of tombs. Its literary memorial is a book of the dead. Their great men built their sepulchres with more extravagance than their palaces, for they realized that they were to use them longer; and, almost as if in mockery of themselves, they had their bodies embalmed that they might enjoy their sepulchres!

But the eminently business-like Egyptians did not rely solely on the attention of Nut. Talismans, amulets and charms were also employed to secure the defunct, and the sarcophagus was also inscribed with correct formulas, in order to preserve to the tenant within it, the pleasures of the world to come. It was held that the mummification of the body purified it, and rendered it fit for the eventual company of the purified soul, and thus the money spent in embalming was well laid out. It was further held that an impaired corpse stood doubt fully in view of its resurrection, and the soul is portrayed as visiting it in the tomb, and seeing how it was preserved. In addition to these precautions, the principal intestines of the deceased — stomach, small intestines, lungs, heart and liver — were placed in jars, dedicated to four genii, as portrayed opposite, who guarded them till the resurrection.

On its way in the underworld to the abode of bliss, the soul was supposed to encounter dangers and difficulties. But the priestly ingenuity which created these obstacles also found a way of escape from them. The soul had during lifetime on earth learned magic watchwords, and these on being uttered drove back the opposing genii below, and a chapter from the Book of the Dead, recited when in difficulty on the journey, smoothed the rough places, and if these various protections after all should fail, one final preservative remained. It was to be had for money. The priests would make all secure by an abundance of funereal rites.

However zealous the Egyptian was in prayer, and however earnestly the priests prayed for him, a lurking suspicion, and indeed often an avowed want of confidence in the deities supplicated, possessed him. We have already quoted from the Papyrus of Ani, the royal scribe, who held office as "scribe and accountant of all the gods," whose wife was also a priestess, and who were both "high ecclesiastical dignitaries." Now such a man's copy of the Book for the Dead — that "Manifestation of Light," written with the finger of the god of divine intelligence, Thoth — must be regarded as reliable. And what do we find in it over and over again? Poor Ani himself so little believed in the efficacy of prayer, or in its being heard on high, that in his journeys in the underworld he fell back on magic, and protected himself by circumventing the gods of the gates by uttering magical sentences.* The Chinese will utilize a small windmill to roll round their slips of paper inscribed with their prayers; the wind, not their hearts, being the motive power which presents the deity with so many dozens of repetitions — so little do these moderns invest their deities with sense! The Egyptians protected themselves against their deities with magic sentences, so little did those ancients trust them. Both these moderns and those ancients are laughed to scorn by their religion, for what sort of god is it that a man can trick, and what sort of god is it that a man cannot trust? Such prayers are not the utterance of the heart of a man to the heart of God; they are not the cry of the creature to the Creator, or the expressed longings of a child to the Father, but the vacant, unreal utterances of a degenerate, or evolved system of conceptions.

Neither had the Egyptian any real trust in his religion. In "The Book of the Dead" there are chapters "of coming forth by day," and living after death, in which the departed frequently declares he has "become a prince," he is "victorious" and "glorious," but only to add again and again the desire that his soul may not be set in bondage by "those who fetter souls and who shut in the shades of the dead" In this dilemma he falls back upon his magic to secure himself, for the book proceeds, "If this chapter be known, he shall come forth by day, and his soul shall not be shut in." Also a protection was found in having the coffin duly inscribed with the sacred words of the book, while the wearing of amulets, and having the benefit of many prayers and performances of the priests, contributed to assist the sacred scribe. Ani had sufficient knowledge of the truth to make him fear for his eternal future, but no true knowledge of the living God by which he might find rest to his heart.

The rolls found in the tombs had been placed under the arms or between the legs of the deceased, and sometimes on the stomach. There seems to be no doubt that these rolls were considered somewhat like passports to bliss. In the collection of Trinity College, Dublin, there is a papyrus which contains a rubric to this effect, as interpreted by Dr. Hincks: "If this book be recited on the earth, and this chapter be put in writing upon a person's coffin, he shall be manifested in the light with all the honours due to him: when he goes to his house he shall not be turned back; there shall be given to him bread, liquors, and the choicest meats on the altar of Osiris; and he shall go to the fields of Aalon." From this we learn that the delusions of Satan not only embraced the quieting of the conscience for time but extended to a hope of eternal bliss. How blessed to be delivered from his delusions!

There was a good trade done in the funeral papyri. Many are preserved which prove that they were prepared beforehand, and a blank left for the person's name, which in some cases has been filled up evidently by a different hand from the body of the writing, while in some cases the name was not inserted from some cause, and the blanks remain to this day.

In pig form he comes back to the world, and the figure with the axe cuts off his return to the sacred shores. Anubis, the director of the weights, looks on, to see all is done correctly, and, under the guardianship of two apes, the soul of the deceased, now within the pig's body, comes back, eats, wallows in the mire, and is abhorred by all respectable Egyptians, and thus becomes pure.

The dog-headed ape was an important personage in Egyptian mythology. In "The Manifestation of Light," the Book Revealing Light to the Soul (the Book of the Dead), the four apes around the lake of fire are thus addressed by the defunct —

A remarkable feature of their belief was the complacency and self-justification of the defunct. "I present myself," says such an one, "before the Lord of Eternity. There is no evil in me." Again, "I have neither done any sin, nor omitted any duty to man… I have not shortened the cubit… I have not falsified the weight of the balance… I have not netted the ducks (of the Nile) illegally; I have not been a glutton; I have not been a drunkard," and so on. But in spite of the array of good works, the heart sometimes had its pangs, and very touching are the words, "My heart, which comes to me from my mother; my heart, necessary for my existence on earth, rise not against me, become not an adversary against me before the gods."

Stripped of the fancies respecting the actual heart being separated from the body, and thus an eternal existence being doubtful, we read in these words the truth that man is the same to-day as he was in ancient Egypt, that he would fain justify himself before his Judge, and yet that his self-justification affords him no real rest.

The religion of Egypt was very remarkable. They had a religion in which were embalmed the relics of another religion — the dead tradition of a life that had been. "Even Herodotus had learned that, amidst their system of polytheism, the Egyptians of Thebes recognized one supreme God, who had no beginning, and would have no end; and Jamblichus quotes from the old Hermetic books the statement, 'Before all the things that actually exist, and before all beginnings, there is one God, — prior even to the first god and king, remaining unmoved in the singleness of His own Unity.' And now, if like the prophet on his mission to Egypt we ask by what name we shall announce this God, the sacred books of Egypt give the very same answer — an answer which the initiated took with them to the grave, inscribed on a scroll as their confession of faith — 'NUK PU NUK' — 'I am that I am.'" (Phil. Smith: "Ancient History of the East.")

The Egyptians were also a religious people, and though their religion was, alas, idolatry, yet it was an idolatry far more seemly and moral than that practised by the cultured Greeks and Romans. It was earlier, and hence nearer a source of knowledge of God. Rom. 1:21. In theory they speak of one god: 'the only living in substance,' and 'the only eternal substance,' and though they speak of two, 'father and son,' as some interpret, yet it did not destroy the unity of their god, 'the one in one.' From this they treated each of his attributes as separate gods; and they had also gods distinct from these. Then they had a number of sacred animals, from the cat to the crocodile, which were said to be symbols of their gods. The bull Apis represented the god Osiris; it was selected with great care, and strictly guarded. It is supposed that it was the remembrance of this Apis that caused the Israelites to choose the form of a calf for their golden idol; and we learn from Ezek. 20:6-8 that Israel had fallen into idolatry when in Egypt.

The Egyptians believed in a future state. One of their illustrations represents the heart of a deceased person being weighed against a figure of the goddess of truth. Two gods superintend the weighing. On the right is the deceased with uplifted hands, introduced by two goddesses. The ibis-headed god has a tablet in hand, recording the result. Next to him is the god Typhon, as a hippopotamus — the Cerberus of the Greeks — accusing the deceased, and demanding her punishment. Osiris is the presiding judge with his crook and whip. If the trial was satisfactory the soul passed into other scenes; if the reverse it passed into some lower animal. Thus did Satan delude these cultivated descendants of Ham !