The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Papyrus of Ani) · 283 of 357 · tr. E.A. Wallis Budge
Chapter 43 (part 44)
The preservation of the corruptible body too was in some way connected with the life in the world to come, and its preservation was necessary to ensure eternal life; otherwise the prayers recited to this end would have been futile, and the time honoured custom of mummifying the dead would have had no meaning.
The never ending existence of the soul is asserted in a passage quoted above without reference to Osiris; but the frequent mention of the uniting of his bones, and of the gathering together of his members, and the doing away with all corruption from his body, seems to show that the pious Egyptian connected these things with the resurrection of his own body in some form, and he argued that what had been done for him who was proclaimed to be giver and source of life must be necessary for mortal man.
The khat or physical body.
The physical body of man considered as a whole was called khat , a word which seems to be connected with the idea of something which is liable to decay.
The word is also applied to the mummified body in the tomb, as we know from the words "My body ( khat ) is buried." Such a body was attributed to the god Osiris;" in the CLXIInd Chapter of the Book of the Dead "his great [1.
Recueil de Travaux , t.
v., p.
43 (l.
304).
2.
Horrack, Lamentations d'Isis et de Nephthys , Paris, 1866, p.
6.
3.
Already in the pyramid texts we have "Rise up, O thou Teta!
Thou hast received thy head, thou hast knitted together thy bones, thou hast collected thy members." Recueil de Travaux , t.
v., p.
40 (1.
287).
3.
Book of the Dead, Chapter LXXXVI., 1.
11.
4.
Papyrus of Ani, pl.
vii., 1.
28, and pl.
xix., 1.
8.] divine body rested in Annu." In this respect the god and the deceased were on an equality.
As we have seen above, the body neither leaves the tomb nor reappears on earth; yet its preservation was necessary.
Thus the deceased addresses Tmu: "Hail to thee, O my father Osiris, I have come and I have embalmed this my flesh so that my body may not decay.
I am whole, even as my father Khepera was whole, who is to me the type of that which passeth not away.
Come then, O Form, and give breath unto me, O lord of breath, O thou who art greater than thy compeers.
Stablish thou me, and form thou me, O thou who art lord of the grave.
Grant thou to me to endure for ever, even as thou didst grant unto thy father Tmu to endure; and his body neither passed away nor decayed.
I have not done that which is hateful unto thee, nay, I have spoken that which thy ka loveth: repulse thou me not, and cast thou me not behind thee, O Tmu, to decay, even as thou doest unto every god and unto every goddess and unto every beast and creeping thing which perisheth when his soul hath gone forth from him after his death, and which falleth in pieces after his decay .
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[auto] The passage is explicitly from the Book of the Dead and describes the deceased's journey to a remote place to converse with a god regarding eternal existence.
Guided passage of the soul through afterlife realms.
[auto] The text depicts the deceased traveling to a distant realm to hold converse with the great god Tmu, indicating a guided passage through afterlife realms.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text proclaims the divine nature of the soul and its coeval existence with gods like Tmu-Ra, suggesting transformation into a divine state.