Chapter 6 (part 5)

The Rubric had, in fact, so far back as B.C. 2600, become a traditional magical formula of a most powerful character, and it must have been composed at the time when the abode of the blessed was supposed to resemble the "great field" in which the men of a village assembled to celebrate a festival, and before the ideas concerning Sekhet-Aaru and Sekhet-hetep, with which we are familiar from the "Book of Coming Forth by Day," were evolved. The texts of the Chapter and Rubric are of such interest that copies of them are printed as an Appendix to the present section ( Note: these hieroglyphic sections are omitted from the etext --JBH). We have now before us all the principal facts which are necessary for forming an opinion as to the kind p. 74 of heaven which the primitive Egyptian hoped and expected to enjoy, and of the means which he took to obtain admission therein. He either bought, or persuaded, or forced, the "servant of the god," or priest, to give him words of power, i.e., names of gods, and magical formulae, which he learned, or had written down for him, and he relied for admission into the next world upon his knowledge of these, or copies of them which were buried with him, and upon the recitals of them at proper times and seasons by his relatives and friends, and upon offerings made upon earth to the gods on his behalf. Once in the abode of the blessed he was free to go wherever he pleased, to travel from one sacred place to another, to visit his friends, to eat, to drink, to enjoy the society of his wives and women of pleasure, and to rejoice in a family life which was only a glorified duplicate of that which he had known on earth. The gods he knew there were much like himself, and the extent and fervour of the worship which he devoted to them was exactly in proportion to the assistance which they rendered to him; his chief anxiety was not to forget the words of power which he had learned. His occupation consisted in watching the growth of crops, for all the necessary work was performed by beings who carried out his every behest. We now pass on to describe the abode of the blessed according to the "Book Am-Tuat" and the "Book of Gates." Footnotes 64:1 See page 59 . 64:2 Book of the Dead , Chapter CX., line 39. 65:1 From this passage it seems that a man who died before his expected to find another woman in Sekhet-hetep whom he might marry. 66:1 See my edition of the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day , text, pp. 124, 493. 67:1 See RECUEIL, 1904, pp. 67-72, and La Réunion de la Famille , by M. J. Baillet, in Journal Asiatique , Xème Série, tom. iv., p. 307, where a rendering of the Chapter into French will be found. 67:2 They bear the numbers 28083 and 28087. 67:3 A name of the Underworld. 67:4 Perhaps "his uncles and aunts," or "foster-parents." 67:5 Or "connexions." 69:1 Or, It is Seb who is the funeral chest, or sarcophagus, the allusion being to the fact that it was in the body of Seb, i.e., the earth, that the deceased was laid. 69:2 The meaning of this line is not clear to me. The word khet is often applied to wheat or barley, as the "wood," or "plant" of life. By "Great Field" I understand Sekhet-hetep. 70:1 I.e., Shu and Tefnut.