The Liturgy of Funerary Offerings
9781465576972
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The tombs, temples, and religious literature of all periods of the history of Egypt proclaim with no uncertain voice that the ancient Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the dead, and that they possessed an innate conviction that the souls of the blessed renewed their existence in the world beyond the grave under circumstances and conditions which gave them happiness and prevented them from dying a second time. The consistent, persistent, ineradicable and unalterable belief in immortality is the chief fundamental of the Egyptian Religion, and the attainment of everlasting life was the end to which every religious ceremony was performed, and every funerary text written. Now, although in the Dynastic Period the Egyptians believed that the dead rose again because Osiris rose from the dead, and that it was indeed he "who made mortals to be born again,"1 and who bestowed upon the "re-born" new life, with new powers, spiritual, mental, and material, they spared no pains in performing the works which they thought would help themselves and their dead to put on immortality and to arrive in the dominions of him who was the "king of eternity and the lord of everlastingness." Every tradition which existed concerning the ceremonies that were performed on behalf of the dead Osiris by Horus and his "sons" and "followers" at some period, which even so far back as the time, of the IVth Dynasty, or about B.C. 3800, was extremely remote, was carefully preserved and faithfully imitated under succeeding dynasties, and for long after Christianity was established in the northern part of the Nile Valley, and Egypt was filled with Christian monks. The formulae which were declared to have been recited during the performance of such ceremonies were written down and copied for scores of generations, and every pious, well-to-do Egyptian made arrangements that what had been done and said on behalf of Osiris should be done and said for him outside or inside his tomb after his death. No ceremony, however trivial, was considered unimportant, and no form of words was thought useless. New ceremonies and words might be added, for it was held possible that they might become a means of salvation, but nothing might be omitted intentionally. The natural result of this religious conservatism was that as centuries rolled on the significance of several funerary ceremonies was forgotten, and the meanings of many liturgical phrases were understood with less and less exactness, until at length they became mere collections of words, which conveyed little to the minds of those who heard them. Now the oldest religious ceremonies and formulae known to us were invented in connection with the presentation of offerings to the dead. In the Pre-dynastic Period men buried offerings of food, unguents, &C., with their dead, believing that, in some mysterious way, such material gifts would assist their relatives and friends to maintain their existence in the Other World. When this custom first arose cannot be said, but it was certainly general in the late Neolithic Period, and it continued to flourish for several thousands of years. Indeed it is probable that modified forms of it exist at the present day among the pagan, Christian, and Muhammadan inhabitants of the Nile Valley. We cannot tell now what ideas existed in the minds of those who gave offerings to the dead as to the way in which such gifts benefited the dead. There is little doubt that at first they believed that the life which was led by the departed in the Other World closely resembled life in this world, and it may be reasonably assumed that they thought that the food which they placed in graves with the dead was actually consumed. They must have known that their funerary offerings would last in the ordinary way but a short time, and it seems as if it was only intended to supply the needs of the departed on their journey to the place of departed spirits.
