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The Book of the Dead

E. A. Wallis Budge

CHAPTER IV

Thoth, the Author of the Book of the Dead.

Thoth, in Egyptian Tchehuti or Tehuti, who has already been
mentioned as the author of the texts that form the PER-T EM HRU, or
Book of the Dead, was believed by the Egyptians to have been the heart
and mind of the Creator, who was in very early times in Egypt called
by the natives "Pautti," and by foreigners "Ra." Thoth was also the
"tongue" of the Creator, and he at all times voiced the will of the
great god, and spoke the words which commanded every being and thing
in heaven and in earth to come into existence. His words were almighty
and once uttered never remained without effect. He framed the laws
by which heaven, earth and all the heavenly bodies are maintained; he
ordered the courses of the sun, moon, and stars; he invented drawing
and design and the arts, the letters of the alphabet and the art of
writing, and the science of mathematics. At a very early period he was
called the "scribe (or secretary) of the Great Company of the Gods,"
and as he kept the celestial register of the words and deeds of men,
he was regarded by many generations of Egyptians as the "Recording
Angel." He was the inventor of physical and moral Law and became
the personification of JUSTICE; and as the Companies of the Gods of
Heaven, and Earth, and the Other World appointed him to "weigh the
words and deeds" of men, and his verdicts were unalterable, he became
more powerful in the Other World than Osiris himself. Osiris owed his
triumph over Set in the Great Judgment Hall of the Gods entirely to the
skill of Thoth of the "wise mouth" as an Advocate, and to his influence
with the gods in heaven. And every follower of Osiris relied upon the
advocacy of Thoth to secure his acquittal on the Day of Judgment, and
to procure for him an everlasting habitation in the Kingdom of Osiris.


CHAPTER V

Thoth and Osiris.

The Egyptians were not satisfied with the mere possession of the
texts of Thoth, when their souls were being weighed in the Great
Scales in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, but they also wished Thoth
to act as their Advocate on this dread occasion and to prove their
innocence as he had proved that of Osiris before the great gods in
prehistoric times. According to a very ancient Egyptian tradition,
the god Osiris, who was originally the god of the principle of the
fertility of the Nile, became incarnate on earth as the son of Geb,
the Earth-god, and Nut, the Sky-goddess. He had two sisters, Isis
and Nephthys, and one brother, Set; he married Isis and Set married
Nephthys. Geb set Osiris on the throne of Egypt, and his rule was
beneficent and the nation was happy and prosperous. Set marked this
and became very jealous of his brother, and wished to slay him so
that he might seize his throne and take possession of Isis, whose
reputation as a devoted and loving wife and able manager filled the
country. By some means or other Set did contrive to kill Osiris:
according to one story he killed him by the side of a canal at
Netat, near Abydos, and according to another he caused him to be
drowned. Isis, accompanied by her sister Nephthys, went to Netat and
rescued the body of her lord, and the two sisters, with the help of
Anpu, a son of Ra the Sun-god, embalmed it. They then laid the body
in a tomb, and a sycamore tree grew round it and flourished over the
grave. A tradition which is found in the Pyramid Texts states that
before Osiris was laid in his tomb, his wife Isis, by means of her
magical powers, succeeded in restoring him to life temporarily, and
made him beget of her an heir, who was called Horus. After the burial
of Osiris, Isis retreated to the marshes in the Delta, and there she
brought forth Horus. In order to avoid the persecution of Set, who on
one occasion succeeded in killing Horus by the sting of a scorpion,
she fled from place to place in the Delta, and lived a very unhappy
life for some years. But Thoth helped her in all her difficulties and
provided her with the words of power which restored Horus to life,
and enabled her to pass unharmed among the crocodiles and other evil
beasts that infested the waters of the Delta at that time.

When Horus arrived at years of maturity, he set out to find Set
and to wage war against his father's murderer. At length they met
and a fierce fight ensued, and though Set was defeated before he
was finally hurled to the ground, he succeeded in tearing out the
right eye of Horus and keeping it. Even after this fight Set was
able to persecute Isis, and Horus was powerless to prevent it until
Thoth made Set give him the right eye of Horus which he had carried
off. Thoth then brought the eye to Horus, and replaced it in his face,
and restored sight to it by spitting upon it. Horus then sought out the
body of Osiris in order to raise it up to life, and when he found it
he untied the bandages so that Osiris might move his limbs, and rise
up. Under the direction of Thoth Horus recited a series of formulas
as he presented offerings to Osiris, and he and his sons and Anubis
performed the ceremonies which opened the mouth, and nostrils, and the
eyes and the ears of Osiris. He embraced Osiris and so transferred to
him his ka, i.e., his own living personality and virility, and gave
him his eye which Thoth had rescued from Set and had replaced in his
face. As soon as Osiris had eaten the eye of Horus he became endowed
with a soul and vital power, and recovered thereby the complete use
of all his mental faculties, which death had suspended. Straightway
he rose up from his bier and became the Lord of the Dead and King of
the Under World. Osiris became the type and symbol of resurrection
among the Egyptians of all periods, because he was a god who had been
originally a mortal and had risen from the dead.

But before Osiris became King of the Under World he suffered further
persecution from Set. Piecing together a number of disconnected hints
and brief statements in the texts, it seems pretty clear either
that Osiris appealed to the "Great Gods" to take notice that Set
had murdered him, or that Set brought a series of charges against
Osiris. At all events the "Great Gods" determined to investigate the
matter. The Greater and the Lesser Companies of the Gods assembled in
the celestial Anu, or Heliopolis, and ordered Osiris to stand up and
defend himself against the charges brought against him by Set. Isis and
Nephthys brought him before the gods, and Horus, "the avenger of his
father," came to watch the case on behalf of his father, Osiris. Thoth
appeared in the Hall of Judgment in his official capacity as "scribe,"
i.e., secretary to the gods, and the hearing of the evidence began. Set
seems to have pleaded his own cause, and to have repeated the charges
which he had made against Osiris. The defence of Osiris was undertaken
by Thoth, who proved to the gods that the charges brought against
Osiris by Set were unfounded, that the statements of Set were lies,
and that therefore Set was a liar. The gods accepted Thoth's proof
of the innocence of Osiris and the guilt of Set, and ordered that
Osiris was to be considered a Great God and to have rule over the
Kingdom of the Under World, and that Set was to be punished. Thoth
convinced them that Osiris was "MAA KHERU," "true of word," i.e.,
that he had spoken the truth when he gave his evidence, and in texts
of all periods Thoth is frequently described as S-MAA KHERU ASAR,
i.e., he who proved Osiris to be "true of word." As for Set the Liar,
he was seized by the ministers of the Great Gods, who threw him down
on his hands and face and made Osiris mount upon his back as a mark of
his victory and superiority. After this Set was bound with cords like a
beast for sacrifice, and in the presence of Thoth was hacked in pieces.


CHAPTER VI

Osiris as Judge of the Dead and King of the Under World.

When Set was destroyed Osiris departed from this world to the kingdom
which the gods had given him and began to reign over the dead. He was
absolute king of this realm, just as Ra the Sun-god was absolute king
of the sky. This region of the dead, or Dead-land, is called "Tat,"
or "Tuat," but where the Egyptians thought it was situated is not
quite clear. The original home of the cult of Osiris was in the Delta,
in a city which in historic times was called Tetu by the Egyptians and
Busiris by the Greeks, and it is reasonable to assume that the Tuat,
over which Osiris ruled, was situated near this place. Wherever it
was it was not underground, and it was not originally in the sky
or even on its confines; but it was located on the borders of the
visible world, in the Outer Darkness. The Tuat was not a place of
happiness, judging from the description of it in the PER-T EM HRU,
or Book of the Dead. When Ani the scribe arrived there he said,
"What is this to which I have come? There is neither water nor air
here, its depth is unfathomable, it is as dark as the darkest night,
and men wander about here helplessly. A man cannot live here and be
satisfied, and he cannot gratify the cravings of affection" (Chapter
CLXXV). In the Tuat there was neither tree nor plant, for it was the
"land where nothing grew"; and in primitive times it was a region
of destruction and death, a place where the dead rotted and decayed,
a place of abomination, and horror and terror, and annihilation. But
in very early times, certainly in the Neolithic Period, the Egyptians
believed in some kind of a future life, and they dimly conceived that
the attainment of that life might possibly depend upon the manner of
life which those who hoped to enjoy it led here. The Egyptians "hated
death and loved life," and when the belief gained ground among them
that Osiris, the God of the Dead, had himself risen from the dead,
and had been acquitted by the gods of heaven after a searching trial,
and had the power to "make men and women to be born again," and
"to renew life" because of his truth and righteousness, they came
to regard him as the Judge as well as the God of the Dead. As time
went on, and moral and religious ideas developed among the Egyptians,
it became certain to them that only those who had satisfied Osiris
as to their truth-speaking and honest dealing upon earth could hope
for admission into his kingdom.

When the power of Osiris became predominant in the Under World, and
his fame as a just and righteous judge became well established among
the natives of Lower and Upper Egypt, it was universally believed
that after death all men would appear before him in his dread Hall of
Judgment to receive their reward or their sentence of doom. The writers
of the Pyramid Texts, more than fifty-five centuries ago, dreamed of
a time when heaven and earth and men did not exist, when the gods had
not yet been born, when death had not been created, and when anger,
speech (?), cursing and rebellion were unknown. [5] But that time was
very remote, and long before the great fight took place between Horus
and Set, when the former lost his eye and the latter was wounded in
a vital part of his body. Meanwhile death had come into the world,
and since the religion of Osiris gave man a hope of escape from death,
and the promise of everlasting life of the peculiar kind that appealed
to the great mass of the Egyptian people, the spread of the cult of
Osiris and its ultimate triumph over all forms of religion in Egypt
were assured. Under the early dynasties the priesthood of Anu (the On
of the Bible) strove to make their Sun-god Ra pre-eminent in Egypt,
but the cult of this god never appealed to the people as a whole. It
was embraced by the Pharaohs, and their high officials, and some of
the nobles, and the official priesthood, but the reward which its
doctrine offered was not popular with the materialistic Egyptians. A
life passed in the Boat of Ra with the gods, being arrayed in light
and fed upon light, made no appeal to the ordinary folk since Osiris
offered them as a reward a life in the Field of Reeds, and the Field of
Offerings of Food, and the Field of the Grasshoppers, and everlasting
existence in a transmuted and beautified body among the resurrected
bodies of father and mother, wife and children, kinsfolk and friends.

But, as according to the cult of Ra, the wicked, the rebels, and the
blasphemers of the Sun-god suffered swift and final punishment, so
also all those who had sinned against the stern moral Law of Osiris,
and who had failed to satisfy its demands, paid the penalty without
delay. The Judgment of Ra was held at sunrise, and the wicked were
thrown into deep pits filled with fire, and their bodies, souls,
shadows and hearts were consumed forthwith. The Judgment of Osiris
took place near Abydos, probably at midnight, and a decree of swift
annihilation was passed by him on the damned. Their heads were cut
off by the headsman of Osiris, who was called Shesmu, and their
bodies dismembered and destroyed in pits of fire. There was no
eternal punishment for men, for the wicked were annihilated quickly
and completely; but inasmuch as Osiris sat in judgment and doomed the
wicked to destruction daily, the infliction of punishment never ceased.
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