Chapter 5 (part 1)

p. 27 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 p. 28 Al-Barsha, and of no portion of this region have we any detailed illustrations of the occupations of its inhabitants older than the XVIIIth Dynasty. To the consideration of Sekhet-Aaru, which was the true heaven of every faithful worshipper of Osiris, from the time when he became the judge and benevolent god and friend of the dead down to the, Ptolemaïc Period, that is to say, for a period of four thousand years at least, the scribes and artists of the XVIIIth Dynasty devoted much attention, and the results of their views are set forth in the copies of PER-EM-HRU, or the Theban Book of the Dead, which have come down to us. In one of the oldest copies of PER-EM-HRU, i.e., in the Papyrus of Nu, 1 is a vignette of the Seven Arits , or divisions of Sekhet-Aaru; the portion shown of each Arit is the door, or gate, which is guarded by a gatekeeper, by a watcher, who reports the arrival of every comer, and by a herald, who receives and announces his name. All these beings save two have the head of an animal, or bird, on a human body, a fact which indicates the great antiquity of the ideas that underlie this vignette. Their names are:-- Arit I. Gatekeeper . SEKHET-HRA-ASHT-ARU. Watcher . SEMETU. Herald . HU-KHERU. p. 29 Click to view The Seven Arits, each with its Gatekeeper, its Watcher, and its Herald . p. 31 Arit II. Gatekeeper . TUN-HAT. Watcher . SEQET-HRA. Herald . SABES. Arit III. Gatekeeper . AM-HUAT-ENT-PEHUI-FI. Watcher . RES-HRA. Herald . UAAU. Arit IV. Gatekeeper . KHESEF-HRA-ASHT-KHERU. Watcher . RES-AB. Herald . NETEKA-HRA-KHESEF-ATU. Arit V. Gatekeeper . ANKH-EM-FENTU. Watcher . ASHEBU. Herald . TEB-HER-KEHAAT. Arit VI. Gatekeeper . AKEN-TAU-K-HA-KHERU. Watcher . AN-HRA. Herald . METES-HRA-ARI-SHE. Arit VII. Gatekeeper . METES-SEN. Watcher . AAA-KHERU. Herald . KHESEF-HRA-KHEMIU.