Coffin Texts

Coffin Texts — Breasted 1912 selected English quotations and context — sourcepage 303

\3 TRIUMPH OF OSIRIS 281 everything belonging to a man, with him in the Nether World." ! The rehabilitation of a man's home and household in the hereafter was a thought involving, more inevitably even than formerly, the old-time belief in the necessity of food. It reminds us of the Pyramid Texts when we find a chapter of "Causing that X Raise Himself Upon his Right Side." 2 The mummy lies upon the left side, and he rises to the other side in order that he may partake of food. Hence, another "Chapter of Eating Bread in the Nether World," 3 or "Eating of Bread on the Table of Re, Giving of Plenty in Heliopolis." 4 The very next chapter shows us how "the sitter sits to eat bread when Re sits to eat bread. . . . Give to me bread when I am hungry. Give to me beer when I am thirsty." 5 A tendency which later came fully to its own in the Book of the Dead is already the dominant tendency in these Coffin Texts. It regards the hereafter as a place of innumerable dangers and ordeals, most of them of a physical nature, although they sometimes concern also the intellectual equipment of the deceased. The weapon to be employed and the surest means of defence available to the deceased was some magical agency, usually a charm to be pronounced at the critical moment. This tendency then inclined to make the Coffin Texts, and ultimately the Book of the Dead which grew out of them, more and more a collection of charms, which were regarded as in evitably effective in protecting the dead or securing for him any of the blessings which were desired in the life beyond the grave. There was, therefore, a chapter of 1 LACAU, II, Rec. 26, 67-73. 2 LACAU, XXXIX, Rec. 30, 190 /. 3 LACAU, XLV, Rec. 30, 193 /. 4 LACAU, III, Rec. 26, 73 jf. 6 LACAU, IV, Rec. 26, 76 ff.