Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt

504 Pages·2005·2.82 MB·English

by  Jan Assmann

Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt

Death and Salvation
in Ancient Egypt
by JAN ASSMANN
Translated from the German by
DAVID LORTON
Abridged and updated by the author
cornell university press
Ithaca and London
Original German edition, Tod und Jenseits im alten Ägypten, copyright
© 2001 by C. H. Beck, Munich. All rights reserved.
English translation copyright © 2005 by Cornell University
The translation of this work was published with the assistance of Inter
Nationes.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or
parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission
in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell
University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York
14850.
English translation first published 2005 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Assmann, Jan.
[Tod und Jenseits im Alten Ägypten. English]
Death and salvation in ancient Egypt / by Jan Assmann ; translated
from the German by David Lorton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-8014-4241-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Eschatology, Egyptian. 2. Egypt—Religion. 3. Death—Religious
aspects. I. Title.
BL2450.E8A8813 2005
299¢.3123—dc22
2005002783
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Permit me, permit me, my good engineer, to tell you
something, to lay it upon your heart. The only healthy and
noble and indeed, let me expressly point out, the only religious
way in which to regard death is to perceive and feel it as a
constituent part of life, as life’s holy prerequisite, and not to
separate it intellectually, to set it up in opposition to life, or,
worse, to play it off against life in some disgusting fashion—for
that is indeed the antithesis of a healthy, noble, reasonable, and
religious view....Death is to be honored as the cradle of life,
the womb of renewal. Once separated from life, it becomes
grotesque, a wraith—or even worse.
Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, translatedby John E. Woods
(New York, 1997), p. 197.

Contents
Translator’s Note xi
Introduction: Death and Culture 1
1. Death as Culture Generator 2
2. Principal Distinctions in the Relationship between Death and Culture 9
a) This Life and the Next Life as Lifetime-Encompassing
Horizons of Accomplishment 10
b) Death Pieced-on to Life and Life Permeated by Death 11
c) World of the Living, World of the Dead: Border Traffic
and Exclusion 14
d) Images and Counterimages, Death and Counterworld 16
Part One. Images of Death
Chapter 1. Death as Dismemberment 23
1. The Opening Scene of the Osiris Myth 23
2. The Egyptian Image of the Body 26
3. Salvation from Death by Piecing Together 31
Chapter 2. Death as Social Isolation 39
1. The Physical and Social Sphere of Man 39
2. “One Lives, if His Name is Mentioned” 41
3. “One Lives, if Another Guides Him” 53
4. Subjection to Death through Social Isolation 56
5. “I Am One of You”: Salvation from Death through Inclusion 58
Chapter 3. Death as Enemy 64
1. The Lawsuit in Heliopolis 64
2. The Moralizing of Death: The Idea of the Judgment of the Dead 73
3. Death as Enemy and the Life-giving Significance of the Judgment of
the Dead 77
vii
Contents
Chapter 4. Death as Dissociation: The Person of
the Deceased and Its Constituent Elements 87
1. The Ba 90
a) The Ba in the Sky, the Corpse in the Netherworld 90
b) The Uniting of Ba and Corpse 95
2. The Deceased and His Ka 96
3. The Heart 102
4. Image and Body 105
a) Image and Death, Statue and Mummy 105
b) Reserve Head and Mummy Mask 106
c) Shabty and Golem 110
Chapter 5. Death as Separation and Reversal 113
1. Separation from Life: Death as Parting and Inversion 113
a) The Widow’s Lament 113
b) Death—“Come!” is His Name 119
2. Out of the Realm of Death and into the Place of Eternal Nourishment 128
a) The Food of Life 128
b) The Dialogue between Atum and Osiris 134
3. Inversion as a State of Death 138
Chapter 6. Death as Transition 141
1. Transition as Ascent to the Sky 141
2. Transition as Journey to Osiris 147
3. Assistance from Beyond: The Image of Death as Transition and the
Realm of the Living 158
Chapter 7. Death as Return 164
1. Nut Texts: Laying to Rest in the Coffin as Return to the Womb 165
a) The Inscription on the Coffin of King Merneptah 165
b) Goddess of the Coffin, Goddess of the West, Goddess of
the Tree: Figurations of the Great Mother 170
c) Renewal and Vindication: Re and Osiris 173
2. “The Place Where My Heart Returns”: The Tomb in the Homeland 176
a) Return to the Tomb 176
b) Death as Return and the Mystery of Regeneration 182
Chapter 8. Death as Mystery 186
1. The Mystery of the Sun: Renewal and Rebirth 186
2. The Mystery of Osiris 189
3. The Tomb as Sacred Place 192
4. Initiation and Death 200
viii
Contents
Chapter 9. Going Forth by Day 209
1. This Life as the Afterlife: The “Reversed Polarity” of Mortuary Belief
in the New Kingdom 209
2. Festival and Garden as Elysian Aspects of the Realm of the Living 218
a) Visits Home 218
b) Visiting the Garden 221
c) Participation in Major Divine Festivals 225
Part Two. Rituals and Recitations
Chapter 10. Mortuary Liturgies and Mortuary
Literature 237
1. Provisioning and Transfiguration: The Recording of Recitation Texts
in Old Kingdom Pyramids 237
2. Writing as Voice and Recollection: The Recording of Mortuary Texts in
Middle Kingdom Coffins and in the Book of the Dead 247
3. Greetings, Requests, and Wishes 252
Chapter 11. In the Sign of the Enemy: The
Protective Wake in the Place of Embalming 260
1. The Night before the Funeral 260
2. Coffin Texts Spell 62 270
3. Wakes and Coffin Decoration 278
Chapter 12. The Night of Vindication 280
1. Liturgy A, Part 1: The Judgment Scene 280
2. Liturgy A, Part 2: The Transfiguration of the Vindicated One 288
3. Liturgy A, Part 3: The Vindicated One as Companion of the Gods 290
4. Liturgy B: Embalming and Provisioning 292
Chapter 13. Rituals of Transition from Home
to Tomb 299
1. Artistic and Textual Depictions of the Funeral 299
2. From Home to Tomb 304
a) Crossing Over to the West 304
b) Embalming, Cult Drama in the Sacred Temenos, and
Rituals in the Garden 305
c) The Procession to the Tomb 308
3. The Rites of Opening the Mouth at the Entrance of the Tomb 310
a) The Opening of the Mouth Ritual 310
b) Setting up the Mummy “before Re” 317
c) Offering of the Heart and Leg 324
ix
Contents
Chapter 14. Provisioning the Dead 330
1. Pyramid Texts Spell 373 331
2. Summoning the Dead 337
3. Presentation of Offerings 343
Chapter 15. Sacramental Explanation 349
1. On the Semantics of Transfigurative Speech 349
2. The Discharge of the Corpse of Osiris: On the Sacramental
Explanation of Water 355
3. Mortuary Rituals for Egypt 363
Chapter 16. Freedom from the Yoke of
Transitoriness: Resultativity and
Continuance 369
1. Resultativity 369
2. “Trust Not in the Length of the Years”: Salvation through
Righteousness 379
3. “Make Holiday! Forget Care!” 384
Chapter 17. Freedom from the Yoke of
Transitoriness: Immortality 389
1. Realm of Death and Elysium: The Originally Royal Sense of
This Distinction 389
2. Redemption through Unio Liturgica 392
3. Salvation through Divine Grace 404
Afterword: Egypt and the History of Death 407
Notes 418
Index 479
x