History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 3

3.1 The Concept of God in the Egyptian Language

Was Egypt monotheistic or polytheistic? The question is an unusual one, since ancient Egypt is customarily described as polytheistic, yet serious scholarship raises more complex issues.

From prehistoric times, God is represented by a sign that has received a wide variety of interpretations; it is pronounced nṯr (neter), a pronunciation reconstructed by way of Coptic, in which the word noute is attested. Both the sound of this hieroglyph and its visual form are significant. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857–1934), in his Egyptian Religion and Egyptian Magic, holds that this sign depicts a stone axe. In the larger and earlier renderings, the shaft and the thongs binding the stone head to the wooden haft are visible. Budge believed that in the New Kingdom these cords ceased to be depicted, and the axe became metal.

Sir Alan Gardiner proposed a new interpretation: that the sign is not an axe but a flag, since flags were often set on poles before Egyptian temples. It remains unclear, however, whether the hieroglyph originated from the flag or the flag arose in imitation of the hieroglyph.

In Coptic, God is noute (Sahidic dialect) and noyt (Bohairic), pronounced almost exactly like the word nouyen, which means natron (sodium carbonate), the principal ingredient of soap. The word also denotes purity and cleansing. It has been suggested (first by von Bissing at the beginning of the twentieth century) that the word nṯr denotes purity. For the ancient Egyptian, God was the Pure One. The 25th utterance of the Pyramid Texts contains the following play on words: “O Neferkare, receive the natron destined for thee, that thou mayest become a god (neter).”

3.2 Polytheism and Monotheism in the Religion of Ancient Egypt

We are accustomed to opposing monotheism to polytheism, but in the context of ancient Egypt, this dichotomy is ambiguous.

The word nṯr was used with reference to a whole range of beings. First, it designates the one who created the world. Second, it denotes the numerous spirits created by God to carry out His will—His servants. The Egyptian texts say that they came forth from the sweat of God. Third, it refers to the dead—those who have attained divine being and become illuminated (Akhw—the shining ones). They are depicted in the form of an ibis. They, too, are all gods. Finally, it refers to certain living people, for example, the king.

The argument for polytheism rests likewise on the distinctive iconography of the gods (each god is assigned a definite appearance) and on the different centers of veneration (Amun was venerated at Thebes, Ptah at Memphis, and Ra- Atum chiefly at Heliopolis).

Yet many Egyptologists have argued for the monotheistic character of Egyptian religion. Among them are Junker and Vergote. The French scholar Alexandre Moret held that in Egypt, monotheism was the religion of the priests, while the people remained polytheists.

The aforementioned Wallis Budge said the following on polytheism and monotheism: “By studying the ancient Egyptian religious texts, the reader may convince himself that the Egyptians believed in one God, self-existent, immortal, invisible, incomprehensible—the Creator of heaven, earth, and the underworld, the maker of the sea and the dry land, of men and women, of animals and birds, and of fish and creeping things, and also of incorporeal beings, messengers fulfilling His will and word. It is precisely this part of their views that must be recognized as fundamental, for on it religion and theology as a whole rested. It must also be noted that no matter how deeply into the past we delve in studying the Egyptian texts, we shall scarcely ever reach the epoch when this remarkable belief did not exist.”

The pre-revolutionary Russian scholar I. G. Frank-Kamenetsky says virtually the same: “Amun-Ra was, in the true sense of the word, the national God. Upon Him preeminently was concentrated the religious consciousness of the age, vaguely divining Him in the image of the One Creator and Sovereign of the world incarnated in national features. The monotheism of the solar god identified with Amun was no longer a theological doctrine accessible only to a few initiates, but became the living religion of the people. However, this cosmic monotheism, which attained its highest development in Thebes in the era of the New Kingdom, is not a regional product of the religious creativity of this age, but represents only a further development and deepening of religious views. In its roots stretching back to deep antiquity, Egyptian religion has from the most ancient times harbored within itself a striving to apprehend the one God” [Monuments of Egyptian Religion, Issue One, Moscow, 1917].

Alexandre Piankoff, who worked extensively in Egypt in the 1920s, wrote: “Historically, each god in Egypt was inclined to grow into Omnipotence, into the all-encompassing fullness of the divine. All other deities were then absorbed by this God, becoming one of His qualities, His particular manifestation” [Egyptian Religious Texts and Representations, New York, 1964].

The arguments of the proponents of Egyptian monotheism may be summarized as follows:

The Egyptians combined individual gods into long strings addressed in the singular. For example, alongside Amun, Atum, Ptah, Ra, and Horus, who appear to be distinct gods, one also finds Amun-Ptah-Atum-Ra-Horus-Akhty addressed as a single person.

The Egyptian texts contain direct identifications of one god with another.

The Egyptian texts periodically invoke individual gods as sole and supreme.

Thus, the question of the typology of Egyptian religion remains open to this day. A similar problem arises in other ancient religions, for example in Vedic religion. There is a separate term, henotheism (from the Greek ἑνός, the genitive of εἷς—“one,” and θεός—“god”; Lat. henotheismus), used to denote a form of religious consciousness that recognizes many gods while simultaneously acknowledging one of them in ritual as the highest, and sometimes the only. This artificial term, however, cannot be considered entirely satisfactory or exhaustive either.

“Praise be to Thee, Amun-Ra-Atum-Horus-Akhty!

Thou didst speak with Thy mouth—and all people came into being, all gods,

All beasts, great and small, and all that flies and all that moves.

Thou art as a shepherd at the head of all, caring for Thy creatures forever.

Bodies are full of Thy beauty, eyes look by Thy means,

Fear of Thee is granted to every womb,

And all hearts turned toward Thee are forever blessed.

Each lives only by looking upon Thee” [Chester Beatty IV Papyrus, 5–10].

3.3 Egyptian Cosmogonies

The Egyptian texts that disclose the theology of ancient Egypt are varied and numerous. Special importance attaches, however, to the funerary collections of the three Egyptian Kingdoms: the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom (27th–22nd centuries BC); the Coffin (Sarcophagus) Texts of the Middle Kingdom (21st–17th centuries BC); and the Book of the Dead (originally entitled the Book of Coming Forth by Day) of the New Kingdom (16th–11th centuries BC).

Several cosmogonic models from ancient Egypt have been preserved. The first image of the Egyptian cosmogonies is the god Nun, who represents the abyss of transcendent being in which all things were born. In Him everything arose and to Him all things will return at the end of time—so the Egyptian texts say. Symbolically, Nun was likened to the Nile in flood; that is, He has no concrete image and resembles a watery abyss. He is nevertheless the source of life, and characteristically He stands alone at the beginning, with no second principle alongside Him. In the 17th utterance of the Book of the Dead, a certain primordial God says of Himself:

“Says the Lord Almighty: I was Atum when I dwelt alone in Nun.

I was Ra in His glorious manifestations when He began to rule that which He had created (that is, in the earthly world).

I am the Great God who created Himself.

Who is this?

The Great God who created Himself is the waters, is Nun, the Father of the gods,

Otherwise, this is Ra.”

This text clearly displays the unity between the supra-existential category of Nun (here called “the waters”) and Ra. Atum is the fullness that resides within Nun and then manifests Himself in this world as the god Ra. In Coptic, the word noun means “the abyss,” a later form of the ancient Egyptian Nun.

In Nun all things are born, including earthly people. The famous Pyramid Text, paragraph 1040 a–c, reads:

“Pepi was born in Nun

Before the sky came into being,

Before the earth came into being,

Before the pillars of heaven came into being.”

Pepi is the earthly king. At the same time, he was born in Nun—that is, in transcendent being. He was born before the sky and the earth came into being. In the Coffin Texts (the later texts of the Middle Kingdom), King Pepi is replaced by any other deceased person, even one of wholly non-royal origin, but the sense remains the same. Nun, moreover, is also the highest goal: having been born in Him, man strives to return to his divine being. To this end, the deceased appeals to the “Ogdoad” of the gods of the abyss, asking them to become for him a ladder by which he will return to his original being. In the 76th utterance of the Coffin Texts we read:

“O you eight gods of the abyss…

Whose names were given by Atum by the word of Nun on that day

When Atum spoke with Nun in the abyss, in the darkness and the gloom,

Come with joy to meet this Thothnacht (the name of the deceased),

Give him your hands,

Bind together the ladder of Shu for Thothnacht,

As you did for the father of this Thothnacht—Atum,

For Thothnacht is weary.”

One of the principal texts that disclose the cosmogony of ancient Egypt is the Memphite Theological Treatise, also known as the Shabaka Stone. Shabaka, a king of the 25th Dynasty, found in the library a worm-eaten ancient scroll and ordered it to be carved in stone; thanks to this, the text has been preserved. On linguistic grounds, the text is dated to the third millennium BC. It describes the creation of the world by the god Ptah. Ptah is identified with Nun and creates the gods by his word. James Henry Breasted, the pioneering American scholar and first translator of the text, wrote:

“The conception of the Creating Word given in the monument creates a fully sufficient basis for leading up to such later concepts as nous (mind) and logos (word)—of which until recently it was held that they came to Egypt from outside and significantly later, from Greece. Thus the Greek tradition of seeing the sources of its philosophy in Egypt looks, in the light of the foregoing, much more plausible than has been thought heretofore. The custom that prevailed among the Greeks of late antiquity of philosophically interpreting the functions and relationships of the Egyptian gods, lending deep meaning to that which in reality, as was supposed, never possessed such meaning—this custom, it turns out, took shape already in Egypt many centuries before the birth of the most ancient Greek texts. And it is by no means impossible that the Greek custom of similarly interpreting their own gods received its first impulse from Egypt.”

The cosmogonic section of the text:

“The gods that came into being in Ptah:

Ptah upon the great throne, who begot the gods.

Ptah-Nun—the father who conceived Atum, who begot the gods.

Ptah-Nunet—the mother who bore Atum.

Ptah the Great—this is the heart and tongue of the Ennead.

Nefertum at the nose of the god Ra every day.

The image of Atum is created by the heart, is created by the tongue.

Great is Ptah, who has manifested all the gods and their essences,

Truly by this His heart and this His tongue.

His heart—Horus—is the manifestation of Ptah,

His tongue—Thoth—is the manifestation of Ptah…

By the sight of the eyes, by the hearing of the ears,

By the smell of the nose the heart is informed,

And, having understood, it discloses what is known.

And the tongue—it announces that which the heart has conceived.

Thus were all the gods made,

And His Ennead was created.

His (Ptah’s) Ennead is before Him as teeth and lips.

Truly, every word of God

Came forth from the conception of His heart and from the command of His tongue.

By this word, then,

all kau were created

and all hemut determined.

From them comes all food

and all that is needful,

both for those who do that which is pleasing

and for those who do that which is hated.

But life is given to the peaceable,

and death—to the transgressor.”

The process of the creation of the world according to the Shabaka Stone may therefore be summarized as follows. Ptah-Nun conceives within Himself Atum and the Ennead, who are called His lips and teeth, while Horus and Thoth are His heart and tongue respectively. These gods, conceived within Ptah and not separated from Him, become the instruments of creation: just as a word is uttered by means of the lips and tongue, so the world appears as a word spoken by the divine lips through these gods. Accordingly, these gods are not independent agents but auxiliary parts of God in the process of creating the world.

3.4 The Heliopolitan Ennead

1. Ra-Atum

2–3. Shu — Tefnut

4–5. Geb — Nut

6–7. Osiris — Isis

8–9. Set — Nephthys

The Ennead represents the principal gods who take part in the creation and maintenance of the cosmos. Shu and Tefnut are the first divine pair, created by Atum. He creates them out of Himself. Tefnut is that which was spat forth, that which came out from within, from the very womb. Here her one-natured-ness with Atum is emphasized. These images are, of course, only human analogies, but they serve to show that the first pair came forth from the one God—that is, that God had no consort. It is also important to stress that they came forth from within Himself, that they are part of His essence, and yet at the same time are distinct persons.

Shu is light. The texts show that what is called Tefnut is qualitatively designated as Maat (truth). Thus the first two qualities are light and truth. Light stands as the opposite of non-being, of the absence of being; truth as orderliness. Shu and Tefnut are repeatedly said to have created the other four pairs, for they are the foundation of the world. Shu and Tefnut are not the world; they are the unfolding deity, which is capable of creating.

Shu and Tefnut, now as a pair, bring forth a second pair: Geb and Nut. The Egyptian texts say that they are conceived by the phallus of Shu and born from the womb of Tefnut. What is meant is that this is now creation out of one another through the conjoining of two into one. Geb and Nut are earth and sky—that is, supra-earth and supra-heaven. Geb is the ideal earth on which truth abides—matter, but matter destined for eternity. Nut is the perfect heavenly, angelic world, the world of the highest spiritual forces. Notably, in Egypt, in contrast to earlier conceptions, the earth has masculine gender and the heaven feminine. In images, Geb and Nut are often shown joined together, with Shu standing between them, lifting Nut up from Geb—that is, separating heaven and earth, which symbolizes the completion of creation. There is also a deeper sense in which the earth is the masculine principle and the heaven the feminine. These are stages from the perfect created world to the heavenly uncreated world, and from the heavenly uncreated world through truth and light to the fullness of Atum.

Geb and Nut bring forth four more children: Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Osiris is the divine image closest to man. He was depicted as a throne over which an eye reigns. The eye is the image of creation, the throne the sign of might and authority. The name Usir means precisely “eye and throne.” Osiris is called the grain, the creator of all earthly good. He is, of course, a god, but at the same time also the perfect king and the perfect human being. He creates only good, only fashions, only brings forth. Osiris is the one who gives life to all that is earthly, while already being on the earth. We have no ancient testimonies regarding the activity of Osiris—that did not interest the Egyptians—but we do have other accounts of Osiris in the sacred ritual texts. And that Osiris is life, the Egyptians said unambiguously. The accounts that describe the life of Osiris are the testimonies of Plutarch. Osiris was a great king who gave the whole world culture, knowledge, and a way of life. That is, he brought truth into all the bounds of the world. His wife and sister—they became husband and wife already in the womb of Nun—is Isis. Isis is the descending energy of Osiris, his power that gives life to all. She is the ideal wife. Osiris’ brother is Set. Set is the force of destruction, also at work in the world, and without which no development and no motion are possible.

3.5 The Myth of Osiris and the Victory of Life

The myth of Osiris has come down to us in several versions: the Greek version retold by Plutarch, and the ancient version preserved in fragmentary form in the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Plutarch recounts that Osiris reigned on earth for twenty-eight years, during which time he civilized humankind, made them cultured, gave them agriculture and animal husbandry, taught them the use of fire, and, most importantly, taught them the worship of God. He was king of Egypt and king of all things, and he was not confined to the Nile valley but went out of Egypt and traveled through the whole East, bringing to all peoples the good news of an ordered life. Plutarch asserts that humankind existed before Osiris, but in a wild and miserable state.

When Osiris returns to Egypt, he organizes a feast to which all the Egyptian nobles are invited; Osiris’ brother Set, who is envious of him, is naturally invited as well. If Osiris is life, then Set is the principle opposed to life. That Osiris is life is stated many times, in particular in the Pyramid Texts: “Glory to thee, lord of abundance, keeper of food; thou sittest before the greening field, and behind thee is the lord of the outpouring of light. Grant me to taste of the grains growing here, O Osiris, great flood…”. Set, by contrast, is the opposing force, the force of destruction, the force that brings life to an end. Osiris was depicted as green (the color of the greening fields) or black (the color of the fertile earth), while Set was depicted as yellow-red (the color of the barren desert). If the sign of Osiris was the Djed pillar—that is, the joining of heaven and earth—then the sign of Set, scholars suggest, has a very characteristic opposite meaning. The sign of Set denoted either a sluice gate that halts the flow of water or an instrument for the castration of animals. Whatever the sign was, it is a sign of cessation, of cutting off. In the most ancient texts, Set is not perceived as an unambiguously evil being; although all these epithets are characteristic of him, Set is nevertheless also mentioned as the one who leads the king up to heaven. In the Old Kingdom, the queen’s titulary included the formula “she who looks upon Horus and Set”—that is, both deities were also present in the king.

Plutarch recounts the murder of Osiris with artistic beauty, but within this artistic embellishment there are elements that show he is recounting something Egyptian and not invented by himself. Set does not dare simply to kill Osiris; for some reason he chooses a more elaborate method. He commissions a luxurious sarcophagus made to his brother’s measurements, and at some point during the feast he orders this coffin to be brought in and declares: “To whomever it fits, to him I give it.” It should be said that in Egypt a coffin was often brought out at feasts. In ancient Egypt the conviction had not yet been lost that everything connected with the funerary ritual is a sign not of perishing but of resurrection, a sign of victory over death. To reward a noble, the king did not pin a medal upon him but gave him a place in the necropolis closer to his own—that is, things bound up with the funerary cult were the highest of rewards, because the king, as the one who joined heaven and earth, thereby confirmed that the noble was worthy of salvation.

When the guests begin trying the coffin on, it turns out to fit Osiris exactly, and the moment he lies down in it, Set nails it shut, pours in lead and caulks the seam, after which he throws the coffin with the living Osiris into the Nile. It is borne out into the Mediterranean Sea through the easternmost mouth, which the Egyptians considered unclean and which ships did not navigate. Osiris’ wife Isis sets out in search of him—this is a very important image, but it is not in the Egyptian texts. They say that Set killed Osiris, that Set overthrew Osiris, that Set drowned Osiris. The fact that he drowned him is a sign of complete annihilation—that is, so that no giver of life should remain at all, in order that Set might possess all things. Thereafter Set possesses both heaven and earth. Only the faithful wife Isis, together with Nephthys, goes in search of Osiris, and after long wanderings they come to Lebanon, to the city of Byblos. In the Pyramid Texts the Phoenicians are mentioned as “those who found Osiris.” Isis comes to the king of Byblos, who shows her his palace and his newly built throne hall, the ceiling of which rested upon a huge column. He tells her that on his shore a huge willow had grown, out of which he made the column for his throne hall. But Isis, experienced in secret knowledge, understands that inside this tree is a coffin with the body of Osiris. She asks the king to give her this column, to which he agrees. Isis carries the column outside the city, and when she opens the coffin, she sees the body of her husband and weeps over him (in the Egyptian tradition he is mourned by Isis and Nephthys). Isis then revives Osiris, unites herself with him as his wife, and conceives a son from him, dead as he is; and after a certain period Horus is born—Horus, who is the heart of Ptah, in whom the creation of the world was conceived. The Egyptians know Horus in two images: Horus the Great—the heart of Ptah—and Horus the child. Thus the whole of the creative world is brought together.

The story of the Osiris found by Isis and of the birth of Horus is a very important moment in the entire religious understanding of Egypt. The Pyramid Texts speak of this as follows: “O Osiris-Pepi (that is, Osiris + the name of the deceased, in this case Pepi), arise, raise thyself up; thy sister Isis comes to thee, exulting in love… Blessed is she, for she is Sothis (Sirius), and Horus has gone forth from thee; as Horus he raises thee up… he saves thee, for his name is Horus—the son, saving his father.”

The further development of the myth runs as follows: Horus grows up, defeats Set in single combat by castrating him, but loses an eye. After judgment with Set, the eye is restored to Horus; he places it in the mouth of his dead father, and Osiris comes to life. The significance of this myth is great, inasmuch as all the dead were identified with Osiris, the burial was identified with the rites for Osiris, and, like Osiris come to life, every deceased was to come to life in the divine world, escaping the second death (the category of the “second death” was known in ancient Egypt).

3.6 General Conception of the Human Being

In a text from the end of the third millennium BC (the composition of which is dated approximately to the twenty-first century BC, the period of the IX–X Dynasty, and known from three hieratic papyri of the New Kingdom), composed in the form of a testament—the Instruction of the King of Heracleopolis to His Son Merikare—we read:

“Surrounded with care are people, the flock of God.

For their sake He created heaven and earth,

And He subdued the watery monster,

He made the breath in their nostrils—that they might live.

They are His images, who came forth from His body.

For their sake He shines in the heavens;

For them He created plants and cattle, birds and fish, to feed them.

He smote His enemies, He humiliated His own children,

When they devised rebellion.

For them He created the light of day,

And He sails in the heavens, that He may see them.

He raised up for Himself a temple about them (a chapel, the abode of God; perhaps this is the created world),

And when they weep, He hears them.

He created for them rulers from the egg,

A leader to support the back of the weak.

He created for them a mighty power (heka—the power that can create reality through words (incantations))

To turn aside the hand of coming events.

He watches over them day and night,

He smites the treacherous among them,

As a man strikes his son for the sake of his brother.

For God knows every name” [Merikare 131–138; here and hereafter all Egyptian texts are given in the translation of A. B. Zubov and O. I. Zubov].

It is, as it were, the deceased father reading his testament to the heir-king. This monument shows as well as any the depth of Egyptian anthropology. “A hymn to God as a good shepherd and the keeper of the well-ordered world He has created,” wrote the eminent German Egyptologist Jan Assmann of this text [Jan Assmann. Egypt. The Theology and Piety of an Early Civilization. Moscow, 1999, p. 256]. But let us look at the text more closely. From this passage we learn that people are “the flock of God.” Nor is this an isolated case: the Egyptian texts frequently call people in this way. “The people I have created are My cattle,” says Ra-Atum in the Coffin Texts [CT, 714 (VI, 314)]. In the Westcar Papyrus, for example, people are called “the precious flock” [Westcar Papyrus 8, 17].

According to the Instruction of the King of Heracleopolis, the entire universe was created for the sake of man, and not the other way around. The world is anthropocentric. The cosmos is created for man, and the mysterious enemies of God are overcome for his sake. Allusions to these conceptions are found in Egypt as early as the Pyramid Texts, and they evidently existed in an even earlier period that cannot be determined precisely.

3.7 The Origin of Man

People are “the images of God, who came forth from His body.” The Egyptian word for “image” (senen) was used of statues and representations, and consequently man is a kind of statue or icon of God. “This Sepi is Thy likeness (setut). I am Thy image (tut),” it is said in the 1131st utterance of the Coffin Texts [CT, VII, 473].

Thus, in the Egyptian conception, man is the image and likeness of God who came forth “from His body.” While the first part of this statement is similar to the Old Testament account, the second is different. Egyptian theology knew as well as any other that God is a spirit, and the “body of God” is most likely a metaphor. In other texts contemporary with the Instruction of Merikare, but ritual in character, it is stated directly that people are the flesh of God. This is no accident. Deriving the origin of man from the body of the Creator, from His eyes, or from the breath of His nose is a favorite motif of the Egyptian texts. Man is consubstantial with his Creator.

People are the tears of God that came forth from His eyes. In the Coffin Texts we read: “I produced My flesh by My might. I, who created Myself, created Myself according to My desire. That which came forth from Me remains under My supervision… The tears are that which I created in My anger at Me. The people of the blind one are My cattle” [CT, VI, 344]. The same image is found in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus, in the text entitled On the Expulsion of Apophis, the Enemy of Ra, the Enemy of Osiris: “There came into being people from the tears that I shed from My Eye.” Of interest in this text is the order of creation—people appeared before the appearance of many of the gods. More precisely: after Shu and Tefnut, but before Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus—that is, after the first pair of the Ennead but before earth and heaven. See P. Bremner-Rhind, xxvii, 1–6.

Man is born within Nun, in divine transcendent being. This is a very ancient tradition, going back to the Pyramid Texts:

“This Neferkare was conceived by his father Atum

Before the sky came into being,

Before the earth came into being,

Before people came into being,

Before the gods were born,

Before death came into being” [Pyr., 1466; cf. also Pyr., 1040].

A number of Egyptologists have held that so exalted a description of man in the Pyramid Texts should be referred exclusively to the figure of the king. This view rests above all on the very nature of the texts inscribed in royal tombs. However, the king in the ancient Near East was from of old the plenipotentiary representative of the people, above all before God, and consequently what relates to him relates also to the whole people. Moreover, texts of similar content are known that do not refer to the king.

“Man is clay and straw, and God is his creator. He weeps and creates (people) every day” [British Museum Papyrus 10474, XXIV, 13–15]. But the tears of God, His essence, are not “clay and straw,” and so man consists of two natures. In Egyptian religion in general, man is a complex composite being. We are more accustomed to hearing that man consists of two or three “parts,” but in Egypt everything is much more finely articulated.

3.8 The Constituents of Man

The first and perhaps the chief constituent of man is the Ka. This is a very complex concept, rendered by various Egyptologists in various ways (“soul,” “spirit,” “the essence of the being,” “the personality,” “the good genius,” and so on). G. Maspero called it a double formed from “less dense substance” than the man himself; this rendering remains very popular. There are many variants; following Professor A. B. Zubov, I shall settle on the concept of the divine “essence.”

Everything in this world has its Ka, but the Ka of human beings and gods differs from all the rest, and it is precisely the Ka of man that interests us here. Very briefly, the Ka of man appears as a kind of really existing, ideal divine plan of man. It is the pre-eternal personality in God whose earthly image is the empirical mortal man. The Ka is primary; man in his earthly being is secondary, just as a seed is primary in relation to the man born from this seed. The kau of human beings are born in Nun before earthly conception. The sign of the Ka is hands raised in prayer. When a man dies and at the same time deserves a blessed posthumous existence, it is said of him:

“So-and-so goes to his essence (Ka), Osiris goes to his essence; Set goes to his essence; the One Having the Eye Before Him goes to his essence, and thou goest to thy essence” [Pyr. 826, b]. “To go to one’s essence” means to go into divine being, a point repeatedly emphasized in the Egyptian funerary texts. In the 215th utterance of the pyramid of Unas we read: “O Imperishable! Thou shalt not perish, and thy essence shall not perish, for thou art the essence.” The Ka, then, lies at the very core of the Egyptian conception of man.

Children are conceived by the essences (kau) of their fathers. In the Wisdom of Ptahhotep we read:

“If thou art a worthy husband,

And hast begotten a son by the mercy of God,

If he is upright like thyself,

Hearkens to thy counsels.

Looks well after thy possessions,

If his conduct is blameless in thy house,

Show him in all things thy mercy.

For he is thy son, conceived for thee by thy Ka.

Do not separate thy heart from him” [Prisse Papyrus 197–218].

Man must correspond to his essence, to his divine Ka, and then he will share Osiris’ kingdom with him; or else he may renounce the divine commands and live as he pleases. In verse 57 of the Memphite Theological Monument we read: “Thus, by this Word all the kau were made and all the hemut determined, from which is all food and all that is needful, both for those who do that which is pleasing and for those who do that which is hated; but life is given to the peaceable, and death—to the transgressor.” Just as “the sun shines on the evil and the good,” God grants His blessings to His creatures, both to those who freely choose what is “pleasing” to God and to those who violate the divine good will by choosing what is “hated” by God. But the outcome for them is different. To the one who is at peace with God is given ankh—eternal, blessed life; to the transgressor of God’s will is given death (mut).

The next anthropological category is Ba. The word has been variously rendered as “soul,” though this rendering is not unambiguous. Ba is the divine power, the energy that enters into man from God and animates him. It is the breath of life, that which makes a man living, and that of which blood is the symbol. Ba remains with a man if the man, through his free will, directs the divine power in accordance with the divine will. It is important to note that what is judged at the posthumous trial is not Ba but precisely the will. If the trial ends in the deceased’s favor, his Ba remains with him forever. The divine power can act within man only through his will, and not contrary to it. Man does not become a marionette; he directs his will toward God’s will and thereby directs the divine power to certain creative actions.

If, however, a man does not join his will to the divine power, if he tries to use it not in accordance with the divine plan, then Ba—the power—does not unite with him but leaves him after the trial. The power is given to him; he can use it, he can even kill and destroy with the aid of the divine power, but after the trial it leaves him and the man dies.

In many texts Osiris and Ba are practically synonymous. The Ba of man is Osiris—that is, the one who knew death and rose again thanks to Horus, because in his life he did not create evil and falsehood, because he employed his divine nature only for good, and therefore was able to obtain life. Every Egyptian during life is therefore Horus, and after death Osiris, if his Ba is the Ba of Osiris. Thus Ba is not the personality of man but a personally oriented divine power.

Besides Ka, Ba, and the will, the Egyptians distinguished Ib—the spiritual heart of man. Ib is precisely the spiritual heart, which is weighed in the scales of the posthumous trial; the physical or medical heart is called Haty.

The physical body, too, figures importantly in the religious aspirations of the Egyptians, since many preserved texts accompanied the ritual of mummification and speak of the divine existence of the body after death. For example:

“This Neferkare is one of those four who were conceived by Atum and born of Nut (that is, Osiris is one of the four children of Nut). He does not decompose—and therefore this Neferkare shall not decompose; he does not corrupt—and therefore this Neferkare shall not be corrupted. He does not fall to the earth—and therefore this Neferkare shall not fall from heaven to the earth” [PT 684, Pyr. § 2058].

In the famous 539th utterance of the Pyramid Texts the twenty-six members of the body of the deceased king Pepi are enumerated in succession. Each element of the body is bound up with one of the divine persons, so that it may not corrupt or be destroyed.

“Utterance of words:

The head of this Merire—(the head) of the falcon—