The Book of the Dead | Page 7

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