Death and Salvation in Ancient Egipt -Jan Assmann

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Jan Assrnann •

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Original German edition, tbd undJrnsejlJ jm alten Agyplm, copyright C 200 1 by C. H . Beck, Mu nich . All rig hts resen'ed . English translatio n copyright © 2005 by Cornell University The p ublication of this wo rk was supponed by a grant from the Goetlle-Instl tll t.

All righ ts reselTed. Excep t for brief quota tions in a review, this book, or parts thereof, mus t no t be rep rod uced in any form wi thoUl permission in writing from the publisher. For information, add ress Cornell Un iversity Press, Sage House, 5 12 East St.·u e Street, Ithaca, New York 14 8 50 . English translation first published :w05 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United Stales of America Libmry of Congress Cat."lloging-in-Publication Data Assmann, J an. (Tod und J enseits im Alten Ag),p tell. English ] Death and salvation in ancient Egypt / by .Ian A~mann ; translated from the German by David Lonon. p. em. Includes bibliographical refe rences and indexes. ISBN-I 3: 978-0-8014-424 1-4 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN- Lo: 0-8014-424 1-9 (d oth: alk. pape r) l. E.lon. 3. Death-Religious aspeCts. I. T itle. BL2450.E8A8813 2005 299'.3 123-erween two ideal cultural types; cultures that acce pt death and cul lure~ that rebel "gainst it." Cu ltu res th at accept death tend to accord no special status to m;!n among living beings. out rathe r to place h im on the same level as e,·erylhing alive and to vicw him as a p! to be imperishable fOTe\...:r and e\..:r.lo Here, we lind lhe ~Ille segmen u o f the ritual: ( I) the seve n ty day e mbalmi n g process, ( 2) the procession with cattle, he re specifie d as "whi te oxen," which arc preced ed by a priest who libates with milk to ~o pen the way," and (3) the recep tio n at Ule tomb, which is d escri bed witll spedal d etail: the m ourning of the family, lh e Opening o f the Mo uth, purification by the .sem-priest and the ch ief lector priest, the Opening of the Mouth by H orns (which again refers to rites carried out by the _ p riest ) , the recitatio n o f rransfiguration spells (whic h agai n refers to the chief lecto r priest), t he carrying o ut o f the o ffering rimal, a nd placement in the to mb with the hel p o f the sa-IMF-priest (literally translated, ~ l ovi n g son~) , lhe ~ frien ds,~ and the muu, whose dance was a lread y me ntioned in the Story of Sinuhe. He re, we must add a few words regarding the various priests who concem e d t he mselves wi th the deceased. As we can see, lhe Open ing o f Lhe Mouth and fu neral rituals were com plex affairs in wh ich a number o f persons par ticipated in various roles. A mortuary spell fro m the tom b o f ute royal e pisto lary scribe Tjay (The b."ln Tomb 23, G1. 12 20 !J.c.E. ) contai ns a list of the "dramatis personae~ of these r imal.s: Chi e.f lector priest,

snr~prie5t,

im,.u.priest, il7lJ'"khmf.pries t,

nine friends, ~fpriest, fo llowe r of Horns.

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Ritu.als oJ Transition from H()/IIe 10 Tomh Ku lpto r, (aryer. crafl$man (?). carpen ter, th e t....,o mourning hirtll. mourning women. the berea\'ed,

who are present in the hall .. ,II Of all these, we see only the stm-p riest and the ch ief lector priest engaging in other activities, in particular. the mortuary o fferings. Both wo re special cloth ing: the SfflI-priest a panthe r skin , and the chief lector priest a special wig and a sash that crossed the breast. Only these two were mortuary priests in the strict sensc o f the term; the o then bore their ti tles ;u roles in the cult drama but not in their professional life. In the offering ritual , there was a third participant, the &e mbalme r~; he is ofte n represented in O ld Ki ngdom tombs, and he is perhaps to be recogn ized in the figure of ·Anubis ,~ who supports th e upright mUlllmy at the entrance to the tomb in New Kingdo m re presentations, and who is the on ly one of the three who wean; a mask as his characteristic garb. The o ther IWO priests also played divine roles. The sem-priest was Horus, the mythic son , the successor to the priest o f the Archaic Period who bore the title Mseeker/ embracer o f the ancestral spiril.M The chief lector priest was TIlOth, the mytllic 5a\'ant, ritualist, and magus, tlle master of the s..1crcd texts. With their many participants, these rituals differed from the normal mortuary cult in the tomb. The latter was always carried out by a single participant whom we o hen sec rep resented wearing the panther skin o f the sem-pril.."st.. He was the actual mortuary priest who was responsible, after the fun eral, for carrying out the mortuary cult. In life, he bore the title "'fta.scrvant- Olin-H) , in imalogy wi th the tille Mservant of the god" in the tem ple cult, and in the representations in the to mbs, he played the rolc o f sem-priest. His duties consisted of making libations and censings o\'er such food offerings as vegetables, meat. ~pes, figs, bread, beer, and similar foods, but which might never or only seldom ha\'e actually been brought, as opJX>scd to simply representing them on o ffering tables, ready to be activatcd on behalf of the deceased by lhe pouring of water. The figure o f the .mI.-priest was systematically hacked out of tombs dating to before the Amarna Period. Amarna arl did away with all histOrical costumes: o nl y reality was 10 be re presented. Re presenl.'ltio nallevei I of the ~vi rtual ritual ,~ which recalled the O ld Kingdom and was more a m edium of cultural memory than a representation of reality, was ban ned from lhe canon of Amama art. The .YI~priest with his linen panther ski n was an especially stri king manifestation of this principle of sh unn ing historical costumes.

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RIT UALS AND REC I TAT I ONS 2.

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a ) C rossi ng O':er to the West We have information regarding the first stage o f the fun eral. the crossing of the Nile from the place o f dealh to the embalming hall, exclusively from representations in tombs at Thebes. In the captions that commen t on the ac tion (e.g., in tomb 133) , the boat cartying the coffin is sometimes equated with the ~grea t fe rry~ t hat the deceased will use in the afte rlife to make the transition from the realm of death to Elysium. The crossing to the necropolis ....'aS th us inte rpreted as a passage Ihat bro ught Sidvation from death and led to immortality. But, as the lext indicates, this salvation was only for the righteous: Fare across, great ferry of the West. Fare in peace across to the West! I gave bread to the hungry, water w the thirst)', dothing to the naked ..

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In Theban Tomb 347. the re is a caption that designates the boat cafTYing the coffin as ntshm