Volume I Part 13 (2/2)
He is as yet unable to observe, to analyse or to generalize He does not perceive the characteristics which distinguish hi in nature but a repetition of hi between life such as he leads it andthan his own As such is the tendency of his intellect, nothing could be ical than the conception to which it leads him in presence of the problerave M Maspero has so thoroughly understood the originality of the solution adopted by the Egyptians that we cannot do better, in atteross and subtle, to which they had recourse for consolation, than borrow his rendering of the texts which throw light upon this subject, together with soested to him[114]
[114] ”_Conference sur l'Histoire des aypte ancienne, d'apres les Monuments du Musee du Louvre_,” in the _Bulletin hebdomadaire de l'association scientifique de France_, No 594 M Maspero has often and exhaustively treated this subject, especially in his nue de France Those lectures afforded the material for the remarkable paper in the _Journal asiatique_ entitled, ”_etude sur quelques Peintures et sur quelques Textes relatifs aux Funerailles_”
(numbers for May, June, 1878, for December-June, and November, December, 1879, and May-June, 1880) These articles have been republished in a single volume with important corrections and additions (Maisonneuve, 1880)
[Illustration:
J Sulpis del et sc
SETI I BAS-RELIEF AT ABYDOS
Were we to affire took place in the ideas of the Egyptians upon a future life, we should not be believed, and, as a fact, those ideas underwent a continual process of refine those centuries when the liht were carried farthest afield, we find traces of doctrines which offer notable variations, and even, when closely examined, actual contradictions These are successive answerscourse of tima As they becayptians modified their definition of the soul, and, by a necessary consequence, of the manner in which its persistence after death must be understood, and as always happens in such a case, these successive conceptions are super-imposed one upon another; the last comer did not dethrone its predecessor but becaination
We refer all those ish to follow yptian intellect to the subtle analysis of M
Maspero That historian has applied hi in a systeh the veil thrown around it by extree and written character, but at the same tiical completeness to which it had no claim By well chosen comparisons and illustrations he enables us to understand how the Egyptian contented hied to harmonize ideas which seem to us inconsistent
We shall not enter into those details We shall not seek to deteryptians attached, after a certain period, to the word _bai_,[115] which has been translated _soul_, nor the distinction between it and _khou_, luarht in its subterranean journey across _Ayptian Hades, to which it entered by a cleft, _Pega_, to the west of Abydos, which was the only portal to the kingdom of the shades; nor shall we accompany them in the successive transformations which made them acquainted with every corner of the earth and sky in the infinite series of their _becoyptian expression); e have to do is to trace out the ious conceptions, the conception which, like the first teachings of infancy, was so deeply engraved upon the soul and intellect of the race as to exercise a er influence than the later more abstract and more philosophical theories, which were superiht to find the deteryptian form of tomb Its constitution was already settled in the time of the ancient Empire, and, froed in principle In this constitution we shall find eyptians when they first attempted to find some eternal element in man, or, at least, some element which should resist the annihilation of death for a period er than the few days which make up our yptians called that which does not perish as the dying h, the _ka_, a term which M Maspero has rendered as the _double_ ”This _double_ was a duplicate of the body in a matter less dense than that of the body, a projection, coloured but aerial, of the individual, reproducing hi from a child, a woman if from a woman, and a man if from a man”[116]
[116] _Conference_, p 381 Mr Herbert Spencer, in the first chapters of his _Principles of Sociology_, has given a curious and plausible explanation of how this conception of a _double_ was forin chiefly in the phenomena of sleep, of dreams, and of the faintness caused by wounds or illness He sho these more or less transitory suspensions of anied interruption of life He also thinks that the actual shadow cast by a man's body contributed to the formation of that belief But had it no other eleeneral disposition of humanity in those early periods of intellectual life? Into that question we cannot enter here further than to say that Mr Spencer's pages make us acquainted with numerous facts which prove that the beliefs in question were not confined to a single race, but were common to all hu suitable to its existence, had to be surrounded by objects which it had used in its former state, had to be supplied with the food which was necessary for the sustenance of its life And all these things it obtained froht the_ or the _eternal dwelling_, which were the phrases used by the Egyptians[117] By these offerings alone could the hungry and thirsty phanto man be kept alive The first duty of the survivors was to take care that this dependent existence should not be extinguished by their neglect, to provide food and drink for the support, if we may use such a phrase, of the precarious life of the dead, ould otherwise be irritated against them and use the almost Godlike power attributed to his rateful posterity[118]
[117] This expression, which is very coreat ie of DIODORUS is well known: ”This refers to the beliefs of the natives, who look upon the life upon earth as a thing of h value upon those virtues of which the memory is perpetuated after death They call their houses hotels, in view of the short time they have to spend in thes_” (i 51)
[118] The dead were put under the protection of, and, as it were, combined with, Osiris; they talked of _the Osiris so and so_ in na one as dead
This conception is not peculiar to Egypt The _double_ of the Egyptian sepulchral records corresponds exactly to the e?d????[119] of the Greeks and the _umbra_ of the Latins Both Greeks and Latins believed that when the funeral rites had been duly accoe or shadow entered upon the possession of a subterranean dwelling and began a life which was no ht[120] The dead thus re, on the one hand by the nourishment which they received, on the other by the protection which they afforded; even in the funeral repast they took their parts, in the strictest sense of the word, in the eating and drinking[121] They looked impatiently forward to these supplies because, for a ave theround and in the sunshi+ne[122] If they were kept waiting too long they becaed thes Woe to the family or city which was not careful to interest the dead in its stability and thus to associate them with its prosperity![123]
[119] ??d??a ?a??t?? (_Il_ xxiii 72; _Od_ xi 476; xxiv
14)
[120] This belief is clearly stated in a passage from Cicero quoted by Fustel: ”Sub terra censebant reliquaithat it subsisted even after the universal establish the bodies of the dead
[121] Texts to this effect abound FUSTEL brought the ether in his _Cite antique_ (p 14) We shall be content with quoting three: ”Son of Peleus,” said Neoptolerateful to the dead; come and drink this blood” (Hecuba, 536) Electra says when she pours a libation: ”This drink has penetrated the earth; my father has received it” (Choephor, 162) And listen to the prayer of Orestes to his dead father: ”Oh my father, if I live thou shalt have rich banquets; if I die thou wilt have no portion of those s feasts which nourish the dead”
(Choephor, 482-484) Upon the strange persistence of this belief, traces of which are still found in Eastern Europe, in Albania, in Thessaly, and Epirus, the works of HEUZEY (_Mission archeologique de Macedoine_, p 156), and ALBERT DUMONT (_le Balkan et l'Adriatique_, pp 354-356),to the funeral feasts of the Chinese are to be found in the _Comptes rendus de l'Acade points of reseypt; in both one and the other the sa theyptians failed to ee from the condition of fetichism
[122] In the eleventh book of the Odyssey it is only after ”they have drunk deep draughts of black blood” that the shades are capable of recognising Ulysses, of understanding what he says and answering The blood they sed restored their intelligence and powers of thought
[123] The speeches of the Greek orators are full of proofs that these beliefs had a great hold upon the popular mind, even as late as the time of Dereat stress upon the dangers which would menace the city if a faainst the failure of the hereditary line; there would then be solected to friends, a neglect which would be visited upon the city as a whole as the accoureat judicial value, but the talent of an Isaeus understood how to make it tell with an audience, or we should not find it so often repeated in his pleadings (see G
PERROT, _L'eloquence politique et judiciare a Athenes Les Precurseurs de Demosthene_, pp 359-364)