The Egyptian Heaven and Hell · 17 of 96 · tr. E.A. Wallis Budge
Chapter 4 (part 11)
The net result of the facts stated in the last two paragraphs proves that Seti I.
relied for salvation upon the protection, part magical and part religious, afforded by the sacred writings of two great schools of religious thought, the leaders of which in his day preached opposing and contradictory doctrines.
It may be argued that by filling the walls of his tomb and sarcophagus with the texts of such books he was merely acting from the point of view of religious expediency, wishing to indicate his impartiality in respect of the followers of Amen and the followers of Osiris, and his respect for the ancient traditional beliefs, however material, crude, and impossible they may have appeared to him personally.
This, however, is unlikely to have been the case, and it is far more probable that he believed every religious or funeral text to have its own special value as a means of p.
26 salvation, and that he selected for inscribing on the walls of his tomb and sarcophagus those which he thought would bc the most likely to secure for him in the next world an existence which would be at once happy and everlasting.
Therefore Seti I.
provided himself with amulets, ushabtiu figures, magical formulae, pictures of gods and fiends to be used in working sympathetic magic, religious formulae and copies of hymns and funeral works, an inscribed tomb and sarcophagus, &c.; in fact, he was painfully anxious to omit nothing from the inscriptions in his tomb which would propitiate any god, or appease the wrath and turn aside the opposition of any of the fiends wherewith he had filled his Underworld.
Footnotes 8:1 See a letter in the Times of June 22nd, 1905 (p.
4), on the "Most Ancient Temple at Thebes," by Prof.
E.
Naville and Mr.
If.
R.
Hall.
11:1 See Birch, Ancient Egyptian Texts front the Coffin of Amamu in the British Museum , London, 1886.
12:1 Schack-Schackenburg, Das Buch von den Zwei Wegen des Seligen Toten , Leipzig, 1903.
13:1 See page 49, l.
9-p.
51, l.
11.
13:2 See page 49, ll.
4-9.
17:1 See Maspero's Recueil de Travaux , tom.
xxvii., p.
67.
17:2 According to M.
Legrain, the IIIrd Dynasty ( Recueil , tom.
xxvii., p.
67).
23:1 See within, Chapter IV., p.
85 .
Themes
◆Cosmic Sympathycosmology
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The passage explicitly mentions the use of pictures and figures for 'working sympathetic magic,' implying a belief in hidden affinities between symbols and reality.
Iamblichean ritual practice that engages the gods directly through consecrated material symbols and actions, on the premise that divine power descends into properly prepared matter — distinct from philosophical contemplation alone.
The text describes the use of amulets, ushabtiu figures, and magical formulae to engage divine power and propitiate gods through material symbols.
[auto] The passage centrally focuses on the use of specific texts like the Book of Coming Forth by Day and Book of Gates inscribed on burial items to guide the deceased.