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In the Ptolemaic-Roman period we see the final stage of the Osiris
cult. Every dead man is laid in his grave without furniture, prepared as a
simulacrum of Osiris. The wealthiest people have gilded and painted mummy
cases with amulets and funerary papyrus. The poorer are merely bundles of
wrappings. Every dead man is Osiris, and no doubt carried with him words
learned on earth to gain his way to a place in the kingdom of Osiris. The
offering places above the grave are still made and offerings are still
brought.
To gain some idea of the way in which these two conceptions of the
living dead were worked out in actual life, one has only to turn to the
funerary customs of the modern Egyptians. In the case of both Christians
and Moslems, the grave rites are similar; but with those of the Moslems I
am more familiar. The grave consists still of the two parts, the burying
place and the offering place. The swathed body is laid on the right side,
with the right hand under the cheek and the face towards Mecca. At the
burial the confession of the faith is recited over and over, lest the dead
forget it.
Korans are sometimes placed in the graves; and I have even seen a
confession of the faith written on paper and placed on a twig before the
face of the dead. At the appointed seasons— especially at the great Feast
of Sacrifice—offerings are brought to the grave. The family party passes
through the cemetery, the women bearing baskets of bread and bottles of
water, the men turning the head to the right and to the left and reciting
the fatha in propitiation of the spirits. The party enters the
offering inclosure of the grave of their relative. The wives greet the
dead—“Peace unto thee, oh, my husband, oh, my father, we have wept until
we have watered the earth with our tears on thy account.” The offerings
are laid before the tomb. A scribe is called and recites or reads some
chapter of the Koran over and over, one hundred, one hundred and fifty,
five hundred, one thousand times, and concludes: “I have read this for
thee, oh, such and such a one.” Or, “I have transferred the merit of this
to thee.” When you question these people as to the particulars of their
belief, you find their ideas vague and indefinite. Among the men a dispute
quickly starts,—the people who have been found good by the examining
angels on the night of the burial are there, but the bad are somewhere
else. No, says another, they are all in their graves, but the bad suffer
torment. Still another maintains that the good have already passed to the
lowest heaven. These are all mere remnants of theological discussions
caught from the sheikhs. The women stolidly maintain that the dead are in
their tombs and the offerings must be brought. When you inquire which are
the good and which are the bad, there is again a great divergence of
opinion; but it is clear that every man believes in his heart that a
knowledge of the prayers and forms of the Moslem religion is absolutely
essential and entirely sufficient to gain a desirable future life. The
great master word is the confession of faith—there is no god but Allah and
Mohammed is his prophet.
So it must have been in the last stage of the Osiris cult. Immortality,
a glorified future existence as an Osiris in the kingdom of Osiris, with
all the pleasures and comforts of life, was secured to him who was buried
with the proper rites and knew the magic words. And yet the old feeling
was never lost that the dead was somehow in the grave and might suffer
hunger and thirst.
When Christianity came into Egypt, all the gaudy apparatus of the
Osiris religion was swept out of existence. The body was to rise again and
might not be mutilated. Mummification, which destroyed the body in order
to preserve a conventional simulacrum, ceased abruptly. Grave furniture
was of course unthinkable. But the use of charms did not cease. Crosses
were embroidered in the gravecloths; or small crosses of metal or wood
placed on the breast or arm; the gravestone bore a simple prayer to the
Holy Spirit for the peaceful rest of the soul. But the offering place was
still maintained; prayers were recited on the feast days; lamps were
allowed to remain at the grave; food was brought, but given to the poor.
In all periods there are thousands of graves of poor people without a
single thing to secure their future life,—people who were probably content
simply to lay down the burdens of life. In the Christian period these
thousands of unnamed dead all have one mark. They are laid with their feet
to the east. Each one was a Christian and secure in his future life,
according to his faith and his life on earth. |
