Among the songs that have survived from these banquets are laments on the shortness of men’s lives and the inevitability of death. The subject was an appropriate one. The serenity and sophistication of life for the richer classes cannot conceal the fact that death was often sudden. Texts survive from the beginning of the first millennium in which the gods are petitioned to protect a child against the dangers of
Everyday life, which are spelt out in detail. There is the threat of disease, of course, but also walls that fall on one, scorpion and snakebites, drowning, or being eaten by crocodiles. Among those who can bring harm are Syrians, Nubians, and western nomads, and there was a fear of being spoken to in foreign languages, presumably because evil words could be passed on without the Egyptian listener recognizing them. Then there are more mysterious powers to guard against—gods who can seize people in the countryside and kill them in the town and a general fear that heka, a creative power which can be used for good or ill, will be turned against a child. These texts need to be set within the growing sense of personal piety found in the New Kingdom after the disruption brought by Akhenaten. It is ultimately the gods, not a strong pharaoh, who will protect and so they must be petitioned to do so. There is a rise in the use of oracles in an attempt to find out the will of the gods.
The awareness of the inevitability of death can be seen in the custom of planning one’s own tomb from about the age of 20. In the New Kingdom, as has already been mentioned, these tombs consisted of a court in front of the rock face (in the hills west of Thebes, for instance), a series of chambers, halls, and chapels cut into the rock where offerings could be left, and then a descending tunnel to the underground chambers where the body was to rest. This was sealed with warning texts in the hope it would remain undisturbed. As in earlier periods, the tomb contained a stele, a gravestone, with the name and exploits of the deceased on it.
The rituals that led to the reception of the deceased into the realm of Osiris were formalized in the Book of Going Forth by Day (usually known as The Book of the Dead and first found in the Middle Kingdom), a copy of which was left in the tomb. The finest of these, such as the papyrus of Ani, a scribe and accountant from the reign of Rameses II, now in the British Museum, contain both the spells and prayers and illustrations of the stages towards the judgement. The deceased pleads to be accepted. ‘Here I am in your presence, O Lord of the West. There is no wrongdoing in my body, I have not wittingly told lies, there has been no second fault. Grant that I may be like the favoured ones who are in your suite, O Osiris, one greatly favoured by the good god, one loved of the Lord of the Two Lands, vindicated before Osiris’ (Spell 30 from The Book of the Dead). There were forty-two judges before whom the deceased had to plead his or her case. High standards were expected and covered every area of moral behaviour. He had to prove he had not killed or stolen, committed adultery, or had sex with a boy. He must never have insulted the king, trespassed, damaged a grain measure, or harmed his neighbours’ land. At the end of the trial the heart of the dead man, the seat of the emotions and the intellect, was weighed against a feather by the jackal-god Anubis. If it was too heavily weighed by sin and the scale tilted downwards the heart was devoured by a monstrous animal. If not, the way was open to the Field of Reeds, the lush fertile land somewhere beyond the western horizon. (See Raymond Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, London, 2010.)
The tombs were also decorated with the rituals of transformation from the life of the real world into that of the next. Perhaps the finest set of wall paintings come
From the tomb of Nefertari, the chief queen of Rameses II, which was discovered at Thebes in the Valley of the Queens by the Italian archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli in 1904. The tomb is treated as the dwelling place of the gods, presided over by Osiris, and the paintings show the welcome of Nefertari. In one of the ante-chambers she, in her turn, makes him a magnificent offering of meat, bread, and vegetables. A staircase descends to the inner chamber and here Nefertari has to show that she has mastered the spells that will see her through each of the doors that will lead to the realm of Osiris. In the paintings around the depression in which the coffin was laid, Osiris is shown in his different manifestations and a text promises that Nefertari will always inhabit his sacred land. Other gods and goddesses, Isis, Hathor, and the jackal-god Anubis, offer their protection to the queen. (For an illustrated guide to the tomb, see John MacDonald, House of Eternity: The Tomb of Nefertari, London and New York, 1996.)
None of this transformation would have been possible without a preserved body—in fact, there could be no more devastating fate for the soul than for the body not to be recoverable after death. The skills of the embalmers reached their peak in the New Kingdom. Soon after death the brain and internal organs of the body were removed, although the heart, as the core of the body, was left in place. All were packed with dry natron, a mineral obtained from deposits west of the Delta, which absorbed the fluids. The body was left to dry out for forty days and then was repacked with linen or sawdust so that its shape was retained. The other organs, including the natron now impregnated with body fluids, were packed separately, the organs in so-called Canopic jars, which were placed under the protection of four sons of Horus. The body was then bound in cloth. This was an important ritual in itself, taking as many as fifteen days. The head had a funerary mask, in the case of a king in gold, placed over it. The hope was that this would allow the body to be recognized by the ka, the spirit, on the occasions it returned to the tomb.
The completed mummy (the word comes from the Arabic word for bitumen, mummiya, a substance not in fact used for embalming until much later) would then be placed in a coffin. In the case of a royal burial there would be three coffins, the first of gold, the other two of gilded and inlaid wood. The whole would be secured in a stone sarcophagus. The coffins of New Kingdom commoners tended to be only of wood. All coffins were decorated with ritual texts. Common too were a pair of eyes, on one side of the box, supposedly to allow the occupant to see the sun rising in the east. The whole process from death to completion of the mummy was prescribed to take place within seventy days. If the death was sudden this was the only time the workmen had to finish off the tomb. In some there are clear signs of the building having been finished in haste to meet the deadline. The sarcophagus was sealed at the base of the burial shaft.
The tomb would also be stocked with the possessions a man might need in the next life. The wealthy elite took no chances and provided themselves with tables, beds, chairs, even chariots and boats. In the tomb of Tutankhamun, the only royal tomb to have been found largely intact, there was a throne of gilded wood, clothes, writing palettes, gaming boards, fans, and jewellery in addition to his sarcophagus
And full set of three coffins with the gold mask which covered his head. There was an obsessive fear that the deceased might demean his status by having to engage in physical labour. By the last years of the New Kingdom it had become usual to provide 365 shabtis, one for each day of the year, together with thirty-six supervisors. They were made in pottery, glass, or metal and could even be provided with their own equipment—hoes, baskets for grain, or water-pots on yokes.
There is no more lasting reminder of the underlying prosperity of ancient Egypt than its capacity to divert so much of its wealth into closed tombs. The art of balancing the needs of the living with those perceived ones of the dead is a fine testimony to the stability and sophistication of the state. Life in ancient Egypt had as many tensions and fears as in any other society but the Egyptians had evolved ways of coping with insecurity and accepting the realities of life. One must live within one’s limits. As The Instruction of Ptah-hotep, an early text revived in the late New Kingdom, puts it: ‘Have no confidence that you are a learned man. Take counsel with the ignorant as with the wise, for the limits of excellence cannot be reached and no artist fully possesses his skill.’ This is perhaps where Egyptian wisdom was to be found.
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