345 
accordingly, on the triple mummy-case of yEroai,* as Mr. Sharpe prefers to 
call it, or Harsiesi, as it should properly be written, the latest phase of the 
dogma of the resurrection is represented in one of the vignettes on the outer 
coffin. This vignette shows three figures : one the goddess Neith, or the 
Heavens, in a curved attitude, resting upon her hands and feet, her face beam 
downward, and her body being coloured blue. Beneath is a procumbent figure 
of an Egyptian, apparently just fallen to the ground ; he is painted red. At 
his side, and touching the form of the heavenly goddess with his outstretched 
hands, is a third figure, also of a man, but smaller in stature and standing erect. 
This man is, like the goddess, coloured blue. Evidently, therefore, argues 
Mr. Sharpe, the subject of this vignette pictoriallv represents the advanced 
idea of the resurrection. The body of the dead man perishes ; the soul, being 
itself a part of the heavenly deity, rises to the skies again.f But Mr. Sharpe 
does not notice what is equally obvious, that this heavenly soul was of a pan- 
theistic nature, since its hands are extended not to Ra, the spiritual deity, but 
to Neith, the goddess of the material firmament. Thus, then, there appear 
to have been both a development and a reaction in the Egyptian idea of the 
doctrine of the Resurrection. First, that the soul only lived while the body 
remained intact ; secondly, that the soul existed and reinhabited the body, 
and ultimately lived in a reunited condition in bliss till its own ultimate 
absorption into deity, while— which is to be noticed— it yet preserved its 
own personal consciousness ;£ then, lastly, the soul was supposed to be a 
portion of the great soul of nature, to be independent of the body, which it 
used only as a tenant, and after death and purification by purgatorial fires 
it then itself became merged into the abstract forces of nature itself. Of the 
Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body in a glorified form, alike, 
and yet not alike, to the present conditions of the human frame, there is no 
certain evidence in Egyptian theology. A few advanced thinkers may have 
held the doctrine, or may have received it from primitive revelation. The 
future of the body and the soul must always have [been to their wisest 
philosophers what it even now is to the ablest scientists of the present day, 
an inscrutable mystery — a mystery which inspiration has only partially 
revealed, and which faith and reason alike teach us to leave with confidence 
in the hands of the great All-wise, All-pitiful, and All-good. 
* See Bononii and Shaipe, Trifle Mummy-ease of Aroeri Ai. — This was 
formerly the chief treasure of the Egyptian! museum of the late Dr. J. Lee, 
of Hartwell, and it s now in the collection of Mr. Tj'ssen Amhurst at Did- 
lington Park. 
t figured also in Sharpe’s Egypt, Bible Texts, and Alexandrian Chris- 
tianity. 
■ t See again Ritual of the Bead, section the Cods of the Orbit; and also 
Pierret, Bogme, de la Resurrection . 
