CONCEPTS OF DEAD AMONG ANCIENT CIVILIZATION 25 



Isis. Ra, the sun-god, heard her wailing and lamenting for her 

 lost husband, took pity upon her, and sent Anubis, a mortuary 

 god, conceived as a jackal which ordinarily devoured the dead, 

 to inter Osiris. Anubis assembled the various bones of Osiris, 

 and bound them with a cloth in preparation for burial. Isis then 

 fanned her wings and Osiris came to life, possessed of immortality. 

 Thus, he had suffered, died and risen again to become judge of 

 the dead as well as sovereign of the living. In the latter capacity 

 he was associated with the fertility of the earth, the supply of 

 ^vater and the growth of vegetation. By some, he was also re- 

 garded as the procreator of man. Eventually, all of Egypt bowed 

 down to him because belief in this tale gave each individual 

 hope that he, too, could attain immortality by resurrection of 

 his body after death. Its doctrine surpasses any other ever con- 

 ceived in its preciseness and extent; it dates from remote an- 

 tiquity, having been complete in pyramid times. 



The important factors in the Osiris myth were that it out- 

 grew all others, that it opened the door of hope to all Egyptians, 

 that it became associated with the idea that how a person lived 

 in this world could be important in respect to the way he was 

 treated in an afterlife. It came to be understood that upright- 

 ness and goodness commended a person to that god. All that was 

 necessary, was to simulate the steps which made this deity im- 

 mortal. This constituted the road to heaven (Moore, '13). 



Mummification, or preservation of the human body, by a spe- 

 cial technique, accompanied the spread in the belief of Osirian 

 immortality; it became general about 1600 B.C. 



The Egyptian particularly regarded some parts of himself 

 as immortal: his personality, soul, shadow and heart. He an- 

 ticipated that all of these could be brought together again in 

 the other world by revitalization of his mummy, providing his 

 soul, which he thought of as being winged, could pass certain 

 tests. He considered death as being a long break in life without 

 altering any of his former conditions of existence, during which 

 his spirit would have to pass through different kinds of terrestrial, 

 marine and aerial beings before it could again enter his remains. 

 This transmigratory cycle might take 3,000 years. Destruction 



