Lecture VII. Osiris And The Osirian Faith. 157
materialised, underlay the belief in the Osiris, the practice
of embalming was equally responsible for it. The continued
existence of the double was dependent on the continued existence
of the body, for the one presupposed the other, and it was only
the mummified body which could continue to exist. As long as
the double was believed to haunt the tomb, and there receive
the food and other offerings which were provided for it, the
connection between it and the mummy presented no difficulties.
But when the Egyptian came to look forward to the heaven of
Osiris, first on this nether earth and then in the skies, the case
was wholly altered. The mummy lay in the tomb, the immortal
counterpart of the man himself was in another and a spiritual
world. The result was inevitable: the follower of Osiris soon
assured himself that one day the mummified body also would
have life and action again breathed into it and rejoin its Osiris in
the fields of paradise. Had not the god carried thither his divine
body as well as its counterpart? and what the god had done those
who had become even as he was could also do.
In this way the doctrine of the resurrection of the body became
an integral part of the Osirian faith. The future happiness to
which its disciples looked forward was not in absorption into
the divinity, or contemplation of the divine attributes, or a
monotonous existence of passive idleness. They were to live as
they had done in this life, only without sorrow and suffering,
without sin, and eternally. But all their bodily powers and
interests were to remain and be gratified as they could not be
in this lower world. The realm over which Osiris ruled was the
idealised reproduction of that Egypt which the Egyptian loved so
well, with its sunshine and light, its broad and life-bearing river,
its fertile fields, and its busy towns. Those who dwelt in it could [171]
indeed feast and play, could lounge in canoes and fish or hunt,
could read tales and poems or write treatises on morality, could
transform themselves into birds that alighted among the thick
foliage of the trees; but they must also work as they had done