This reverence for beasts, the excessive regard for the nourishment of the sacred kinds and the preservation of their bodies, the offering of prayers to them, the worship of bulls, birds, and crocodiles as living gods, the royal honours with which these selected examples were buried, would of necessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and culture in the country, had not the Egyptians united a deeper feeling with their worship of animals. In the living and yet typical forms of beasts as contrasted with the deadness of nature, they saw not only creations of the deities, but manifestations of the divine life itself. The consecrated race of animals participated in the nature of the god to whom it belonged, and the specimens in the temples were an unbroken series of incarnations of the deity.

In a different sense from the sacred animals, man also was in the eyes of the Egyptians a manifestation of the divine life and nature. If we set aside the position of the kings (see below), we find no indication that man was regarded as the incarnation of particular deities or their attributes. Yet man had a share in the immortality of the gods; and he who studied and desired the divine was thought by his bodily death to arrive at a complete divine existence. The primary result of this feeling was that the body must be preserved as the vehicle of personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man. Beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool, secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. No nation has devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses, whether of men or of sacred animals, as the Egyptians. It was almost the first duty of the living to attend to the dead. And with his body must be preserved all that the deceased person had done or acquired in life: his occupation, his actions must live on in the grave, like his corpse. Pictures in his tomb must represent his life, and inscriptions must give an account of it. "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, "speak of the dwellings of the living as a lodging; but of the tombs of the dead as eternal habitations, because the dead pass an endless time in Hades. Hence they bestow less toil upon their houses; but their tombs they furnish in a most extraordinary manner."¹¹⁶

The tombs are always turned towards the west, and are deeply hollowed out in soil, or hewn in the rocks of the Libyan mountains. Those of the wealthier sort generally consist of two chambers, an upper and a lower, or a front and a back one. The upper or front chamber is furnished with a description of the life of the dead person, his possessions, his office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life exhibited in relief and pictures. It served as a chapel in which the offerings to the dead were made. In the lower or hinder chamber lay the corpse. The corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place in the common sepulchres. The preservation of the corpse was accomplished in various ways. Either the entrails were taken out through an aperture and placed in separate vessels, or the corpse was protected against corruption by the injection of various substances; or finally it was allowed to lie for a considerable time in saltpetre.

Like the embalmment and the tomb, the cerements and the coffin were more or less costly, according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. The dead person was placed in a receptacle adapted to the shape of the corpse, provided with a mask to represent his face, and adorned with inscriptions and pictures. On the breast was generally depicted the beetle of Ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of Osiris. This receptacle was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which were made of more or less costly wood. Rich persons added to their coffins the stone sarcophagus, a hollow block of granite, the heavy lid of which was then made so fast to the lower part that it could not be opened without destroying the whole.

The sarcophagus was carried to the sepulchre in solemn procession, led by the temple-servants, with the necessary implements, and the bull destined for sacrifice to the dead. Next were seen the implements used by the deceased in his lifetime; the insignia of his order, if he had been a priest, or in any office; or, if he had held any military command, his chariot followed. After this came the waiting-women, hired for this purpose according to the custom of the East; and men with palm-branches, the servants of the dead, and the priests; last of all followed the sarcophagus on a boat – for the soul of the dead passed like the sun-god on a boat to the under world. This boat was on rollers, and drawn by oxen. The procession was closed by the mourners of the family and the friends. When the bull had been sacrificed and frankincense burned to the gods, libations were poured in honour of the dead. He was praised, as Diodorus assures us, not because he was born of a noble race, but because he had been carefully educated and well instructed, because he had been pious towards the gods, and had lived a just and sober life. Then the kinsfolk implored the gods to receive the dead into the society of the good. The accompanying multitude joined in the prayer, and extolled the faith of the deceased, who now would for ever pass his life in the company of the good.¹¹⁷ The coffin was then brought into the upper chamber, and from thence, when the ceremonies were completed, it was carried to its proper resting-place, and placed on the west side of it; the place was then closed and sealed.

According to the Egyptian story, Osiris was not slain by Typhon. He did not die; he was only taken away from men, as Diodorus says;¹¹⁸ he descended into the under world; he passed away into the invisible region, while in the visible world he continued to live and work in the vigorous strength of his son Horus. In the shape of Horus, or Ra, Osiris wandered through the visible world. He changed only his name and shape when, every evening, he went back to his distant home in order to be alone. Thus, by descending from earth and dying, he had received the sovereignty of the lower world, and left to the youthful Ra, his son Horus, the empire of this world. As the sun goes down every evening, and every morning awakes to new life, as the vegetation dies away in the heat of summer and in autumn, and again in the spring attains to new life, so to the minds of the Egyptians death, in all its shapes, was only death in appearance, in reality it was a transition to a new life. And as Osiris remained alive in death, and was the source of new life, so through him and in him the soul of man was aroused out of death to a new life. The sacred animals and men were of divine nature and origin; they could not, therefore, end with death; death could only carry them back to their divine origin, to that other world, from which they had come; and in that other world they must awake to a new life.

Owing to this power of awakening life out of death, Osiris became to the Egyptians the special god of the human soul. As lord of the under world, Osiris is often found on the monuments in the shape of a mummy. His colour was in this case black, like his bull in Memphis; his clothing was white;¹¹⁹ his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the second beholding of light. In this form of Osiris the Greeks recognised the Dionysus of their Mysteries, whom they could also compare with Osiris as the giver of fruits.¹²⁰

The Egyptians, says Herodotus, were the first to maintain that the soul of man was immortal.¹²¹ Plutarch, as we have already seen, informs us that to the Egyptian Osiris was the embodiment not only of all that is in heaven, but also of all that is in the under world. "His soul," he continues, "was regarded by the Egyptians as eternal and indestructible, and, according to the doctrine of the priests, Osiris ruled over the dead, as Hades and Pluto among the Greeks. In reality, he was free and untouched by everything subject to change and death. When men are delivered from the body, and from pain, and pass into the eternal and invisible world, where pain is unknown, then Osiris becomes their king and leader. They are his retainers, who desire him, and are spectators of a beauty inconceivable and inexpressible to men. This is the explanation of the story most suitable to the deities."¹²²

The inscriptions on the sarcophagi, the wraps round the corpses, but above all a papyrus roll placed in the coffin with the dead body, the so-called "Book of the Dead," enable us to ascertain with considerable accuracy the views of the Egyptians on the fate of the soul after death. The greater part of the known manuscripts of this book belong to the seventh or sixth century B.C. The contents show that rubrics and prayers of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next world. All the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of these manuscripts all the names under which Osiris can be invoked – and they are more than a hundred – are gathered together. But fragments of this Book of the Dead, or, more strictly, this Book of the Resurrection, which forms the core of the Egyptian doctrine of the world to come, are found hewn in sarcophagi – already with a triple commentary – which belong to a date previous to the year 2000 B.C.

After death the soul of man descends with the setting sun under the earth into the nether world. Here, on the day of the "valuation of words," the day of "justification," the soul is examined, and its actions weighed in the hall of double justice, i. e. the justice which rewards and the justice which punishes. Osiris, with a crown upon his head, and holding in his hand a crosier and a whip, sits upon a throne surrounded by the water of life, out of which spring up lotus-flowers. Beside him sit forty-two spirits; Anubis, the god with a jackal's head, the leader and keeper of the dead, and Horus, with a hawk's head, are busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. The god with the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the weighing. As Osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by Horus and Thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. The deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates forty-two errors into which he has not fallen. He has done no wickedness; he has not stolen, nor slain any one intentionally; he has not allowed his devotions to be seen; he has not been guilty of hypocrisy, or lying; he has not stolen the property of the gods, or the sacrificial food; he has not calumniated any one, or fallen into drunkenness or adultery; he has not turned away his ear from the words of truth; he has been no idle talker; he has not slighted the king or his father; he has not contemned the gods, or torn from the dead their linen wraps.

The departed spirit was not allowed to enter the other world in ignorance: he must know what awaits him there; the path which he has to tread, and the prayers which opened for him the gates of the various regions, which gave him power to overcome whatever spirits and monsters might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of Ra. He must know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he has sprung, and which he now again assumes. As in him divinity has been made human, so is he now in turn deified. To secure this knowledge for the dead, the book is placed in his coffin, the important passages were written on the wraps, and engraved on the coffin.

If the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was pure,¹²³ he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of life and the sky – Hathor and Nut – poured out upon him the water of life. His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the serpent Apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach the fields of the sun-god.¹²⁴ Here the blessed planted the heavenly wheat – of which the ears were two cubits in length – wandered at will in shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water.

Arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various existences – that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it sprang. Hence to the Egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the "entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."¹²⁵ The first chapter of the Book of the Dead was to be pronounced by the deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance there. "By learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be thrust back. Food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the table of Ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of Aanro (Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."¹²⁶ On a sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead. "I am Tum (p. 51), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name, the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday; I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the gods. I know the name of that great god who is there. Glory of Ra is his name. I am the great Bennu which is worshipped in On. I am Chem in his manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; I have arrived at my land, I have arrived at my dwelling-place."¹²⁷ "The sun-mountain (horizon) of his father Tum is meant," – so run the commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that the great god, existing by his own power, is Osiris; and the great Bennu also is Osiris (p. 69). By Chem is meant Chemhor, i. e., the Horus, who by his own power renews his own youth every day. On the cover of the sarcophagus we find the formula, "When this chapter has been pronounced, he (the dead man) enters into the western land at the time of his resurrection: if entirely unacquainted with it, he cannot enter; for him, as for one uninitiated, there is no resurrection."¹²⁸

Thus we must assume that the Egyptians believed in man's return to his divine origin in the sense that a soul which was not found wanting in weight, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received, after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead, and allowed to be absorbed into the divine power, but was so far deified that it could adopt divine attributes and power, and even assume a divine title.

According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that the soul of the dead passed into an animal, born at the time; from this it wandered into all the other animals on earth, in the air and the sea, and after 3,000 years it was again born with a human body.¹²⁹ That this account is incorrect is proved by the records already quoted; it may perhaps have arisen from the Egyptian conception that the soul of the justified obtained the power to assume every shape. But a purification of the unclean and ignorant soul by passing through the bodies of all kinds of animals could never have been assumed by the Egyptians, since the sacred races were pre-eminent manifestations, and the selected animals continuous incarnations, of the gods. If a pilgrimage through the bodies of beasts was really regarded by the Egyptians as a course of punishment and amelioration, the beasts meant can only be such as were not sacred. But as yet the examination of the monuments and records has by no means completely cleared up the relation of the soul to the body it has left, nor has it attained to any result on the fate in store for the souls which were found wanting when weighed in the balance.