Chapter 4 (part 8)

It is unnecessary to describe in detail the growth of the cult of Amen under the XVIIIth Dynasty, and it will suffice to say that the history of his cult is, practically, the history of Egypt for nearly one thousand years. His priests made him possessor of the principal attributes and titles of all the ancient gods of Egypt, and their absolute power enabled them to modify the old systems of belief of the country. They introduced the primitive gods of the land into their own system of theology, but assigned to them subordinate positions and powers inferior to those of Amen, or Amen-Ra, as he was called, and the new editions of most of the old religious works which appeared at Thebes bore the traces of having been edited in accordance with their views and opinions. In many of its aspects the cult of Amen was less material than that of many of the old gods, and the religion of the priests themselves ruthlessly rejected many of the primitive beliefs which survived among the populace p. 19 in general. They were obliged to tolerate and respect the universal belief in Osiris as the judge, king, and god of the dead, for they, of course, found it impossible to eliminate from the minds of the people the effect which the traditions of a material heaven, handed down for untold generations, had made upon. them. Among the servants of Amen and his temple, however, there were some who preferred to put their faith in the religious writings which had satisfied their ancestors many centuries before, and to these we owe the great collection of religious and funeral texts called PER EM HRU, "[The Book of] Coming forth by Day," which is now commonly known as the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead. It is true that the subject matter of many of the texts is older than the IVth Dynasty, and that the phraseology of some dates from the period of the Vth and VIth Dynasties, and that the forms in which most of them are cast are not more recent than the XIth or XIIth Dynasty, but it is equally true that the editing and arrangement of them by the Theban priests, to say nothing of the addition of supplementary hymns, Chapters, and coloured illustrations, produced a very decided change in the general teachings of the collection. "The Book of Coming Forth by Day," in its Theban form, was an illustrated guide to the kingdom of Osiris, but its teachings did not satisfy the strict followers of Amen-Ra, and they brought into use a Recension of a work in which they were able to promulgate the p. 20 particular ideas of their order as to the future state of the dead. The followers of Osiris believed that the righteous dead would find their everlasting abode in the kingdom of that god, and would enjoy in a fertile land, with running streams, a life very like that which the well-to-do Egyptian lived upon earth. The followers of Amen-Ra aimed at securing a place in the boat of the Sun-god, i.e., the "Boat of Millions of Years," so that they might sail over the sky with him each day, and enjoy the sight of the earth on which they had lived, and might, under his all-powerful protection, pass through the regions of darkness by night, and emerge in heaven, being reborn each day. In the kingdom of Osiris the beatified dead ate bread-cakes made from one wonderful kind of grain, and drank beer made from another kind, and enjoyed conjugal intercourse, and the company of their relations and friends; all their material comforts were supplied by the use of words of power, &c., by which they even obtained entrance into that kingdom.