Chapter 21 (part 3)

165 wheat grew luxuriantly, and food made of the same could be had in abundance, was evolved in their mind after the introduction of wheat into Egypt from Asia, and after the Egyptians had settled down to agricultural pursuits. The god of such a heaven was naturally the Corn-god NEPRA, but it seems as if Osiris were identified with him at a very early period, and as if, finally, he absorbed all his attributes. The idea of a heaven of this simple character must of necessity be very old, and it presupposes the existence of beliefs concerning the future life which the later Egyptians must often in their secret hearts have repudiated. In the BOOK OF GATES we find NEB-AUT-AB, i.e., RA, decreeing that the wheat of this region should germinate, and that the plants should grow to a large size, and those who are tending the crops beseech him to shine upon them, for when he shines the grain sprouts and the plants grow. Now, though Osiris was from a material point of view the Grain-god, or Corn-god, and the wheat was his members, which were eaten by his followers, he was also the lord of MAAT, i.e., "righteousness" and "integrity," and even the personification of those abstract qualities. When, addressing the MAATI gods, he declares they are "MAAT OF MAAT," he makes it clear that he considers them to be beings of like nature to himself, and that they will live upon MAAT; in other words, they have become Truth, and they will live upon Truth, and exist as Truth for ever. The MAATI p. 166 gods apparently represent the highest conception of spiritual beings which the Egyptians arrived at in the early period, and which is only paralleled by that of a later period, according to which the followers of the Sun-god, who travelled with him in the Boat of Millions of Years, eventually became beings consisting of nothing but light. It would be useless to contend that either conception was believed in throughout the country generally, for the Egyptians as a nation believed in a heaven wherein happiness of a very material character was to be found; still there must have been among the educated and priestly classes devout men and women whose yearnings for future happiness would not be satisfied with promises of cakes, and ale, and love-making, and to whom the idea of becoming the counterpart of the eternal god of the dead would afford consolation and hope. Footnotes 160:1 The boat sometimes contains two apes (see Sharpe, Eg. Inscriptions , part ii., pl. 9), and in a tomb at Thebes one ape is in the boat and one outside it (see the illustration opposite). 164:1 Prof. Wiedemann has collected a number of important facts on this subject in his most interesting paper "OSIRIS VÉGÉTANT."