Chapter 21 (part 1)

p. 158 CHAPTER XI. SIXTH DIVISION OF THE TUAT. II. KINGDOM OF OSIRIS ACCORDING TO THE BOOK OF GATES. THE Boat of AFU-RA, having passed through the first five DIVISIONS of the Tuat, now, according to the BOOK OF GATES, arrives near the southern part of the Delta, and near the kingdom of Osiris, lord of Mendes and Busiris. Before, however, the god can enter it, he must pass through the Gate of the SIXTH DIVISION, which is called NEBT-AHA, and which is guarded by the monster serpent SET-EM-MAAT-F. In the Gate or close to it, is the JUDGMENT HALL of OSIRIS, and it is tolerably certain that no soul entered his kingdom without being weighed in the balance of the god. The scene in which the Hall is depicted is of great interest, for it is different in many important particulars from the representations of the Judgment which we find on papyri, even in those which belong to the period of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties. All the texts which describe it are written in hieroglyphics, but in many of them the hieroglyphics have, as Champollion pointed p. 159 Click to view Nebseni being weighed against his heart . out, special and very unusual values, and the title "enigmatic writing" given to them by Goodwin is appropriate. In the ordinary Judgment Scenes we find that the heart of the deceased is weighed in the balance against the feather symbolic of Maat or righteousness, that the operation of weighing is carried out by Thoth and Anubis in the presence of the great gods, the owner of the heart himself sometimes looking on, that the gods accept and ratify the verdict of Thoth, and that the deceased is then led into the presence of Osiris by Horus. Sometimes the heart of the deceased is weighed against his whole body, as in the Papyrus of Nebseni, and at other times the pans of the scales only contain weights. In the scene before us the arrangement is quite different. Osiris is seated on a chair of state, and wears the crowns of the South and North united; in Nebseni being weighed against his heart. Click to view The Scales of Osiris, with weights . p. 160 his hands are the symbols of "life," and "rule," . His chair stands on a raised platform, on the nine steps of which stand the nine gods who form his company; beneath the feet of the god, perhaps under his platform, are the dead, i.e., the damned, or his enemies. The top of the Hall is protected with a row of spear beads, and from the ceiling hang four heads of gazelle, or oryges; according to a legend certain enemies of Osiris transformed themselves into these animals, and were slain by the god. On the platform, immediately in front of the god, stands THOTH, in the form of a mummy, and be serves as the standard of the balance; the object in the pan is being weighed against the symbol of "evil," , which it seems to counterbalance exactly. This being so, it seems that the wickedness of the deceased did not go beyond a recognized limit. ANUBIS, in the upper corner of the scene, addresses some words to THOTH, who bears the Balance on his shoulders. In the small boat near the Balance is a pig being beaten by an ape; 1 the name of the pig is AM-A, but neither his functions, nor those of the ape are clearly known.