The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

64 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

accommodated to them, that it was possible for an Egyptian to
speak of meeting his disembodied heart, or of the testimony it
could give for or against him before the judges of the dead. The
fact that the use of the scarab does not seem to extend further
back than the age of the Memphite or Theban dynasties, may
imply that it was only then that the Osirian beliefs were officially
fitted on to earlier forms of faith. However this may be, the
worship of Osiris and the beliefs attaching to it must be left
to another lecture, and for the present we must pass on to the
mummy itself, the last part of man which it was hoped would be
immortal.
The mummy or Sâ%u has to be carefully distinguished from
the Khat or natural body. The latter was a mere dead shell, seen
by the soul but not affording a resting-place for it. The mummy,
on the other hand, contained within itself the seeds of growth
and resurrection. It could be visited by the soul and inspired by it
for a few moments with life, and the Egyptian looked forward to
a time when it would once more be reunited with both its heart
and its soul, and so rise again from the dead.
It is impossible to say how far back in the history of the
Egyptian religion this belief in the immortality of the mummy
may go. It can hardly have originated in the same circle of ideas
as the doctrine of the Ka, though the doctrine of the Ka could
[068] easily be reconciled with it. On the one hand, it seems connected,
as we shall see, with the cult of Osiris; but, on the other hand,
there are no traces of mummification in the prehistoric graves,
and it is doubtful whether there are any in the royal tombs of
Negada and Abydos which belong to the age of the First and
Second Dynasties. At all events, the scarab, which accompanied
embalmment, first appears at a much later date, and perhaps
had a Memphite origin. There are, however, indications that the
process of embalming first arose among the pre-Menic rulers of
Nekhen, in the neighbourhood of El-Kab. The soil of El-Kab
literally effloresces with the natron, which, it was discovered,