EGYPTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL (Chapter VI -II)

SECOND DIVISION OF THE TUAT.
II. THE KINGDOM OF KHENTI-AMENTI-OSIRIS ACCORDING TO THE BOOK OF GATES.

To advance into this Division the Boat of AFU-RA must first pass through the Gate which is guarded by the huge serpent SAA-SET, and this done the god now takes upon himself the form in which he appears in the BOOK AM-TUAT, i.e., that of a ram-headed man. The snake-goddess MEHEN, which surrounded the disk enclosing a beetle, now envelops the shrine in which he stands; it must be noted that SA and HEKAU stand, as before, in the Boat, which is now towed along by four gods of the Tuat, who represent the four quarters of the earth and the four cardinal points. The Boat is received by a company of thirteen gods, who are apparently under the rule of a god who holds a staff. The object of the visit of AFU-RA is to "weigh words and deeds in Ament, to make a distinction between the great and little gods, to assign thrones to the Spirits [who are pure], to dismiss the damned to the place set apart for them, and to destroy their bodies." (vol. ii., p. 91). Now this is an important statement, for it distinctly implies that a judgment of the dead takes place in the Second Division, or Hour, of the Tuat,

EGYPTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL (CHAPTER VI)

SECOND DIVISION OF THE TUAT.

I. THE KINGDOM OF KHENTI-AMENTI-OSIRIS ACCORDING TO THE BOOK AM-TUAT.

THE god AFU-Ra now enters the region URNES which derives its name from that of the river flowing through it; it is 309, or 480 atru or leagues in length, and 120 wide. URNES is a portion of the dominions of OSIRIS-KHENTI-AMENTI, the great god of Abydos, and it, no doubt, formed a section of the SEKHET-HETEPET according to the old theology of Egypt. The Boat Of AFU-Ra is now under the direction of the goddess of the second hour of the night, SHESAT-MAKET-NEB-S, and the uraei of Isis and Nephthys have been added to its crew. Immediately in front of it are four boats, which move by themselves; the first contains the full moon, of which Osiris was a form, the second the emblem of a deity of harvest, the third the symbols of another agricultural deity, and the fourth the Grain-god personified. All four boats contain either forms or symbols of Osiris, in his different aspects, as the god of ploughing, sowing, and reaping, and of the

EGYPTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL (CHAPTER V)

THE CONTENTS OF THE BOOK AM-TUAT AND THE BOOK OF GATES COMPARED.

THE WESTERN VESTIBULE OR ANTECHAMBER OF THE TUAT.

HAVING already briefly described the general character of the BOOK AM-TUAT and the BOOK OF GATES we may pass at once to the comparison of their contents. For the sake of convenience, in describing the various divisions of the Tuat let us assume that we are occupying the position of a disembodied spirit who is about to undertake the journey through the Tuat, and that we are standing at the entrance to the First Division awaiting the arrival of the BOAT OF THE SUN-GOD, on which we hope to have permission to travel. Every funeral rite has been duly and adequately performed, the relatives and friends of the deceased have made the legally appointed offerings, and said all the prayers proper for the occasion, amulets inscribed with magical names and formulae have been attached to the body, copies of sacred writings have been laid on it or near it in the tomb, the priests have said the final words which

EGYPTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL (CHAPTER IV)

THE BOOK AM-TUAT AND THE BOOK OF GATES

"AM-TUAT," or SHAT AM-TUAT, i.e., the "Book of what is in the Tuat," is the name given by the Egyptians to the large funeral book in which the priests of Amen describe the Other World according to the views of their order, and the passage of their god Amen-Ra, through the mysterious country which he traversed during the hours of the night. Its object, in the first place, was to impress the followers of Amen and others with the idea of the absolute supremacy of that god in the realms of the dead, and to show that all the gods of the dead in every place of departed spirits throughout Egypt rendered to him homage in one form or another, and in return received benefits from him. And in the second place, the book, being an actual "guide" to the Underworld, with pictures of its various divisions and of the gods and demons of every kind that were to be met with in them, was invaluable for the faithful, who were able to learn from it, whilst they were living upon earth, how to find their way from this world to the next, and how to identify the beings who would attempt to bar their way, and what to say to

EGYPTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL (CHAPTER III)

THE REUNION OF THE BEATIFIED AND THEIR RECOGNITION OF EACH OTHER IN THE OTHER WORLD.

HAVING now described Sekhet-hetep and the Halls and Gates of the Other World according to the Book of Coming Forth by Day (PER-EM-HRU), We may pass on to consider how far souls in Sekhet-hetep had the power to know and recognize each other, and to enjoy intercourse with relatives and friends. From many scenes and passages in texts it has for some time past been clear that husband met wife, and wife met husband again beyond the grave, for in the Papyrus of Ani we see Ani accompanied by his wife in the House of Osiris and in many other places, and in the Papyrus of Anhai 1 we see Anhai bowing before two mummied forms, which represent her father and mother, and seated in a boat side by side with her husband. From the Papyrus of Nebseni 2 we know that the meeting of the deceased with his mother, father, and wife was believed to take place on the island in the first division of Sekhet-hetep called Qenqentet, for he says,

EGYPTIAN HEAVEN AND HELL (CHAPTER II)

THE EARLIEST EGYPTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE OTHER WORLD.

HAVING briefly referred to the origin and development of the magical, religious, and purely funeral texts which, sometimes with and sometimes without illustrations, formed the "Guides" to the Ancient Egyptian Underworld, the form of the conceptions concerning the place of departed spirits as it appears in the Recensions of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties must now be considered. To reconstruct the form which they took in the Predynastic Period is impossible, for no materials exist, and the documents of the Early Empire are concerned chiefly with providing the deceased with an abundance of meat, drink, and other material comforts, and numbers of wives and concubines, and a place in Sekhet-Aaru, a division of Sekhet-hetepet, to which the name "Elysian Fields" has not inaptly been given. In later times Sekhet-Aaru, or Sekhet-Aanru, comprised all Sekhet-hetepet. Of Sekhet-hetepet as a whole the earliest known pictures are those which are painted on the coffins of