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shape it left the body as it grew cold in death, and flew upwards. ©
On reaching heaven, the soul dwelt in the com- pany of the gods and of the souls that had arrived there before it. How a place was assigned it here is a question on which the Egyptians in general do not appear to have had settled convictions, Only the Pyramids of the 5th and 6th dynasties notice it, the dead Pharaoh being here represented as seizing the supremacy of the other world by force. With the aid of his servants he captures the gods on his arrival, causes them to be slaughtered and cooked, and devours them along with their souls and attributes, crowns and brace- lets. In this way their magical power passes over to him, and he becomes the mightiest of the gods. The texts give no indication, it is true, of how he was able to maintain this position against a subse- quently dying Pharaoh, or to avoid being himself captured and eaten in turn.
(0) Under the earth.—Here lay Duat, ‘the deep,’ which the sun passed through by night, and which was divided into 12 parts, corresponding to the 12 hours of night. These were separated from one another by doors, or, according to another view, by massive gates. This realm is described in words and illustrated by pictures in a number of texts, notably in the Book of Am-Duat, ‘that which is in the deep,’ and the Book of the Gates, the be- ginnings of which go back to the Middle Empire, but which were widely circulated above all in Thebes from the 18th to the 20th dynasty. In later times they were less frequently copied. While their accounts are similar in their funda- mental ideas, there are far-reaching differences in details. Through the midst of Duat flows a Nile, upon which floats the bark containing the ram- headed night sun. On the banks to right and left were found innumerable demons of the most varied forms, men, animals, especially serpents, or hybrid forms, human and animal. Many of them attend upon the sun, aiding him in his course. Others, with the great Apepi serpent at their head, labour to destroy the sun, but are always overcome, although this does not prevent their always com- mencing afresh the conflict of darkness with light— a conflict whose end the Egyptians never attempted to"portray, and probably never expected.
he souls of men joined the sun in the west when he entered Duat. The god assigned them fields in the various divisions. Here they lived under conditions that were in general far from enjoyable, and had to render help to the god on subsequent nights. Each of them had the benefit of only a single hour’s sunshine upon their land. As soon as the god had left any division, night reigned in it, illuminated at most by the seas of fire in which enemies of the sun-god were burned, or by fire-vomiting serpents. Originally it was held that all men, good and bad, kings and subjects, would experience much the same lot in these regions. Only those who were expert in magic might escape from Duat and pursue their journey in company with the sun till they reached a new day. In later times Duat became the scene of a process of judgment, in which sentence was pro- nounced concerning good and evil. The good were then allowed to till the fields, the bad were punished by being plunged in seas of water and fire.
Similar and as little reassuring is the account of the future world contained also in other Egyptian works; hence, above all, the numerous exhorta- tions to enjoy life which were in vogue from ancient times down to the closing period of Egyp- tian history. Here the future world is presented as a land of sleep and darkness, whose inhabitants - recognize neither father nor mother, in which they
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pine for water and fresh air, and where there is a reign of absolute death, which shows no tenderness to its worshippers, and regards not the offerer of sacrifice.
(c) On the earth.—On this theory the realm of the dead appears to have been for long sought in the north, in the Delta. This Plain of Peace or Plain of Aalu (t.e. ‘of marsh plants’; later, by popular etymology, explained as Plain ‘of worms’), as it was called, was thought of as a district traversed by a stream and divided by numerous canals and river-arms into islands, which were the abode of the gods and the dead. The latter were mainly occupied with agriculture, which provided them with the necessary food. When the Delta came to be better known, the realm of the dead was naturally banished from it. At first it moved further north, still continuing on earth, but was afterwards transferred to heaven, being located in the region of the Great Bear.
In that form of Egyptian conceptions of the future world which prevailed in later times, above all in the Osirian faith, a realm of the dead, simi- larly thought of and named, lies in another quarter of the heavens, in the west, where the sun sets. Whether this notion is as old as that of the dwell- ing of the dead in the north—which appears most likely—or was of later origin, cannot be made out from the texts. From the time of the Middle Empire the adherents of the Osirian system are likewise at one regarding the western situation of the Plain of Aalu. The dead man, before he could arrive there, must first traverse the desert. In his earthly form, with the traveller’s staff in his hand, he set out on his journey, commencing, according to the commonest view, at Abydos, from which a number of caravan roads ran to the west. Hunger and thirst threatened him; with Divine help he procured refreshment from the presiding deities of isolated trees; by means of magical formulz he overcame the serpents which beset him, and the crocodiles which filled the streams he had to pass through. He was aided by the same kind of formule also when he wished to pass terrible demons, or had to go through mysterious rooms, or was terrified by all kinds of dangers. These formule, consequently, appeared to be in- dispensably necessary for reaching the life beyond ; and they were collected into a compilation called by modern scholars the Book of the Dead. From the time of the Middle Empire it was a favourite practice to commit these formule to the grave along with the body of the deceased, inscribing them at times on the walls of the tomb or on the coffin, at other times entrusting them to the corpse itself, written on papyrus or on the swathings of the mummy. In the various copies extant the terms of the formule are approximately the same, but their order varies very frequently. The Egyptians did not mark off the road to the world beyond with geographical precision; the notions on this subject changed again and again ; the order of the demons to be encountered and of the various realms of the gods is not the same. Only the starting-point is given, the western mountain- chain of Egypt, and the goal, the Hall of Judg- ment, in which the verdict is pronounced on the dead (see below, p. 197%). If this was favourable, they entered the Plain of Aalu, to dwell there for ever, or at least to find a home, which they left only if it was their own wish to do so. In the latter event, they could assume any other form they pleased, visit the earth, or even change them- selves into gods.