Chapter 25 (part 3)

Considered from this point of view, the Four Tuats only contain Ten Divisions, or Hours, which corresponded roughly with the Ten GATES of the Kingdom of Osiris, as set forth in many copies of the p. 180 [paragraph continues] Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead. Strictly speaking, the addition of a forecourt to the world of light was unnecessary, but as the Theban priests had added one at the beginning of the Four Tuats, symmetry demanded that there should be another supplementary region at their end. If now we treat the Ten Divisions of the Four Tuats as Hours, and assume that the Book of AFU-RA began its journey through them on an average between six and seven o'clock in the evening, it follows that the god reached the abode of Osiris about midnight, together with those souls who travelled with him. The souls who chose to be judged by Osiris, preferring a heaven full of material delights to spiritual happiness, disembarked, and passed into the Judgment Hall, where they received their sentence, and were made joyful or miserable. For the blessed homesteads were provided, and for the wicked slicings and gashings with knives, and pits of fire, wherein their bodies and souls and shadows were destroyed for ever. The evidence indicates that Osiris passed judgment on souls each day at midnight, and that the righteous were rewarded with good things shortly afterwards; the wicked also were punished with tortures and burnings, probably soon afterwards, or at all events before the Sun rose on the following day. Thus Osiris in the Tuat, and Ra in the world of light, would rejoice in freedom from foes until the time arrived for a new "weighing of words" to take place, and, according to one view, the enemies of Osiris, and p. 181 the foes of Ra, were consumed in fire together, and it was the smoke and fire of their burning which were seen in the heavens at sunrise. We may now consider the vestibule at the end of the Four Tuats, and describe the beings who were in it.