The Egyptian Heaven and Hell · 95 of 96 · tr. E.A. Wallis Budge
Chapter 30 (part 2)
When the disk is on the horizon all men know that the monsters of the Tuat have failed to destroy AFU-RA or to obstruct his passage, that the god has, with the aid of KHEPERA, made all his transformations, that he has appeared in the sky again, full of light, and fire, and life, and that for another day at least all will be well with the world.
Meanwhile the souls of the blessed who have travelled through the Tuat in the Boat with AFU-RA have escaped with him from all its dangers, and have made their transformations p.
198 as he has done, and now they rise with him above this earth, and are able to look once again upon their own homes and haunts, and friends.
Their companions are the gods who minister to Ra, and as they live upon the food of Ra, and are arrayed in his apparel, they become in all respects like him.
For the beings who were left in the Tuat, i.e., for those who were not provided for by Osiris in SEKHET-AARU and SEKHET-HETEPET, existence must have been a sad one, for they were obliged to sit in darkness and misery, except for the brief space each night when AFU-RA passed through their DIVISIONS, when the gods who were in his train lightened the darkness with the fire which proceeded from their bodies, and the god himself, taking pity on those to whom the making of offerings on earth had ceased, spoke the words which procured sustenance for them.
Such acts of grace, however, cannot have been sufficient to secure the happiness of those upon whom they were bestowed, for, with every mention in the texts of the closing of the door of a DIVISION after the god has passed through it, we read that the souls who were outside the door uttered cries of lamentation and wailed bitterly.
It must be remembered that views such as are here described were held only by the priests Of AMEN-RA, who, as we have seen, tried to show that their god was lord of all the Tuats of Egypt, and that all the gods of the dead, including even Osiris, and all the blessed, depended upon him for light and food, which they received from p.
199 him in return for the services which they rendered to him as their overlord.
Those who held not these views, and were not followers of Osiris, believed, as did all the primitive Egyptians, that the Tuat was a place of darkness, hunger, thirst, and misery, and finally of annihilation.
They had no belief either in purgatory or in everlasting punishment; the beings in the Tuat lived just so long as their friends and relatives on earth made the prescribed funeral offerings on their behalf, and no longer.
The shadows, souls, and bodies of those who were without food in the Tuat were, together with the fiends and monsters which opposed the progress of the Sun-god, destroyed by fire each day, utterly and finally; but each day brought its own supply of the enemies of Ra, and of the dead, and the beings which were consumed in the pits of fire one day were not the same , though they belonged to the same classes , as those which had been burnt up the day before.
The Egyptian principle of truth, balance, and right order underlying both the cosmos and human conduct; the parallel to Zoroastrian asha and Greek dike.
The narrative depicts the restoration of order through Ra's victory over the chaotic serpent APEP and the maintenance of cosmic balance.
Divine names or formulas that carry ontological power, used in prayer, liturgy, or magical practice.
[auto] The passage lists numerous specific divine and place names (e.g., KHEPER-KEKIU-KHAU-MESTU, THEN-NETERU) which hold ontological significance in Egyptian tradition.