Coffin Texts

Coffin Texts — Breasted 1912 selected English quotations and context — sourcepage 306

284 RELIGION AND THOUGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT was supplied with a " Chapter of Not Walking Head Down ward." l These unhappy dead who were compelled to go head downward were the most malicious enemies in the hereafter. Protection against them was vitally neces sary. It is said to the deceased : " Life comes to thee, but death comes not to thee. . . . They (Orion, Sothis, and the Morning Star) save thee from the wrath of the dead who go head downward. Thou art not among them. . . . Rise up for life, thou diest not; lift thee up for life, thou diest not." 2 The malice of the dead was a danger constantly threatening the newly arrived soul, who says: "He causes that I gain the power over my enemies. I have expelled them from their tombs. I have overthrown them in their (tomb-) chapels. I have expelled those who were in their places. I have opened their mummies, de stroyed their kas. I have suppressed their souls. . . . An edict of the Self-Generator has been issued against my enemies among the dead, among the living, dwelling in sky and earth." 3 The belief in the efficacy of magic as an infallible agent in the hand of the dead man was thus steadily growing, and we shall see it ultimately dominat ing the whole body of mortuary belief as it emerges a few centuries later in the Book of the Dead. It cannot be doubted that the popularity of the Osirian faith had much to do with this increase in the use of mortuary magical agencies. The Osiris myth, now universally current, made all classes familiar with the same agencies employed by Isis in the raising of Osiris from the dead, while the same myth in its various versions told the people how similar magical power had been employed by Anubis, Thoth, and Horus on behalf of the dead and persecuted Osiris. 1 LACAU, XLIV, Rec. 30, 193. 2 LACAU, LXXXV, Rec. 32, 78. 8 LACAU, LXXXIV, Rec. 31, 175.