Lecture VIII. The Sacred Books. 175
that of the Osirian, and describe the transformations which it can
undergo if fortified with the words of the ritual. It may at will
transform itself into a hawk of gold, a lotus flower, the moon-god
or Pta%, even into a viper, a crocodile, or a goose. But first it
must fly to Heliopolis and the solar deities who reside there, and
it is in Heliopolis that its transformation into the god Pta%is to
take place.
The next chapter, the 91st, transports us into a different
atmosphere of religious thought. It deals with the reunion of the
soul and the body. But the two which follow forbid the Egyptian
to believe that this meant a sojourn of the soul in the tomb. On
the contrary, the soul, it is said, is not to be“imprisoned”; while
the 93rd chapter“opens the gates of the sepulchre to the soul
and the shadow (khaib), that they may go forth and employ their
limbs.”And the land to which they were to go was a land of
sunlight.
From this point onwards the Book of the Dead is purely
Osirian in character. But beliefs derived from the solar cult
have been allowed to mingle with the Osirian elements; thus
the bark of the sun-god has been identified with the bark which
carried the Osirian dead to the fields of Alu, and Osiris is even
permitted to assign a place to his faithful servants in the boat of
Ra instead of in the paradise over which he himself rules. And
the Osirian elements themselves belong to two different periods
or two different schools of thought. In the earlier chapters the
paradise of Osiris is gained like the paradise of Ra, by the magical
power of the words of the ritual and the offerings made by the
friends of the dead; from the 125th chapter onwards the test of
righteousness is a moral one; the dead man has to be acquitted
by his conscience and the tribunal of Osiris before he can enter
into everlasting bliss. [191]
The bark which carried the followers of Osiris has been
explained by the Pyramid texts. When the dead man had
ascended to heaven, either by the ladder which rose from the