Coffin Texts

Coffin Texts — Breasted 1912 selected English quotations and context — sourcepage 296

274 RELIGION AND THOUGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT In so far as these Coffin Texts are identical with the Pyramid Texts we are already familiar with their general function and content.1 The hereafter to which these citizens of the Feudal Age looked forward was, therefore, still largely celestial and Solar as in the Pyramid Age. But even these early chapters of the Book of the Dead disclose a surprising predominance of the celestial here after. There is the same identification with the Sun-god which we found in the Pyramid Texts. There is a chap ter of "Becoming Re-Atum," 2 and several of "Becoming a Falcon." 3 The deceased, now no longer the king, as in the Pyramid Texts, says : " I am the soul of the god, self- generator. ... I have become he. I am he before whom the sky is silent, I am he before whom the earth is r. . . 1 ... I have become the limbs of the god, self-generator. He has made me into his heart (understanding), he has fashioned me into his soul. I am one who has ^breathed1 the form of him who fashioned me, the august god, self- generator, whose name the gods know not. ... He has made me into his heart, he has fashioned me into his soul, I was not born with a birth." 4 This identification of the deceased with the Sun-god alternates with old pictures of the Solar destiny, involving only association with the Sun-god. There is a chapter of "Ascending to the Sky to the Place where Re is,"5 another of "Embarking in general . . . du Musee du Caire, Cairo, 1904, pp. vi/. An ex haustive comparison and study of this entire body of mortuary texts is very much needed, and the work of LACAU is a valuable contribu tion to this end. 1 See above, pp. 84-141. 2 LACAU, LII, Rec. 31, 10. 3 A Solar symbol. LACAU, XVI, Rec. 27, 54 /. ; LACAU, XXXVIII, Rec. 30, 189 /.; LACAU, XVII, Rec. 27, 55 /. The last is largely Osirian, but Re-Atum is prominent. 4 Annales du Service, V, 235. 6 LACAU, VI, Rec. 26, 225.