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 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10987654321 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, translated by 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 Translator’s Note In this book, the following conventions have been followed in the cita- tions from ancient texts: Parentheses ( ) enclose words or brief explanations that have been added for clarity. Square brackets [ ] enclose words that have been restored in a lacuna. An ellipsis ...indicates that a word or words in the original text have been omitted in the citation. An ellipsis in square brackets [. .] indicates the presence of a lacuna for which no restoration has been attempted. A question mark in parentheses (?) indicates that the translation of a word or phrase is uncertain. English-speaking Egyptologists have no single set of conventions for the rendering of ancient Egyptian and modern Arabic personal and place names. Most of the names mentioned in this book occur in a standard reference work, John Baines and Jaromír Málek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (New York, 1980), and the renderings here follow those in that volume. The principal exception is the omission of the typographical sign for ayin; this consonant does not exist in English, and it was felt that its inclusion would serve only as a distraction to the reader. In this volume, biblical passages are cited from the New Revised Stan- dard Version. D.L. xi {introduction} Death and Culture he thesis that underlies this book can be reduced to an extremely simple formula: death is the origin and the center of culture. My Taim is to illustrate this thesis employing ancient Egyptian culture as my example. When it comes to the importance of death, this culture is admittedly an extreme example. But this has largely to do with the fact that we view ancient Egypt from the standpoint of a culture that is equally extreme, but in the opposite direction.