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The Egyptian Afterlife (continued - Page 2)

The Soul’s Journey to Paradise
By Donald A. Mackenzie

Plutarch, commenting on these conceptions, and on the resemblance which the Egyptians "..imagined between Anubis and the dog," said it was because it had been observed that the jackal "...is equally watchful by day as by night" that Anubis was regarded like the Greek Hecate as "a deity common both to the celestial and infernal regions."

Apuleius tells, in the romance of "The Golden Ass," that when the worship of Osiris and Isis had been established in Rome, the dog-god was represented in the Procession of Isis, rearing his head and neck. And he refers to the dog-god as " that messenger between heaven and hell, displaying alternately a face black as night and golden as day."

The ceremonies over and the mourners departed, the soul is now free to go forth on its perilous journey to paradise. This illustration from the Papyrus of the Scribe Ani shows the dead man standing at the door of the tomb, accompanied by his shadow, or "khabit." The human-headed hawk, as usual, symbolises the soul. Papyrus held by British Museum.

But the dual character of Anubis was due mainly to the fusion of two ancient Egyptian cults: that of Osiris (which originally believed in a Paradise in the West); and that of the sun-worshippers (Ra) who believed in a Celestial Paradise in the East (“to the east of the sky," as the old Pyramid texts emphasise).

The early conflict between the two cults is echoed in the mortuary texts dating back to 2700 B.C.

"Go not on those currents of the west," a Pharaoh is warned. "Those who go thither, they return not again." In another passage, translated by Breasted, the dead pharaoh, however, is advised to go to the West in preference to the East. A third passage effects a compromise by stating that "King Unis rests from life (dies) in the West…King Unis dawns anew in the East."

The soul ascends the western mountain which divided Egypt from the fabled land of Amenti. After a drawing in Navile's "Das Aegyptische Todtenbuch".

Osiris, …was identified with the god of the Western cult called "First of the Westerners." And it would appear that the story of his dismemberment was a dim memory of an ancient burial custom which had for its aim the release of the soul, so that it might go Westward, led by the wild dog-scout of the night.

According to the Eastern cult the soul entered the boat of the sun-god Ra, passing at night into the Mount of the West and partaking of fresh life with him each morning in the east. After a photograph in the Minutoli Catalogue.

continued...

Page 2 of 8