The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

158 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

here, must cultivate the soil before it would produce its ears of
wheat two cubits high, must submit to the corvée and embank the
canals. The Osirian heaven had no place for the idle and inactive.
No sooner, indeed, had the dead man been pronounced worthy
of admittance to it, than he was called upon to work. At the very
outset of his new existence, before any of its pleasures might be
tasted, he was required to till the ground and guide the plough.
This was no hardship to the poor fellah who had spent his life
in agricultural labour. But it was otherwise with the rich man
whose lands had been cultivated by others, while he himself had
merely enjoyed their produce. In the early days of Egyptian
history, accordingly, it was the fashion for the feudal landowner
to surround his tomb with the graves of his servants and retainers,
whose bodies were mummified and buried at his expense. What
they had performed for him in this world, it was believed they
would perform for him in the world to come. There, too, the
Osiris of the fellah would work for the Osiris of the wealthy,
whose necessary task would thus be performed vicariously.
But as time went on a feeling grew up that in the sight of
Osiris all those who were assimilated to him were equal one to
the other. Between one Osiris and another the distinctions of
rank and station which prevail here were no longer possible. The
old conception of the ka came to the help of the believer. The
[172] place of the human servant was taken by theushebti, that little
figure of clay or wood which represented a peasant, and whose
double, accordingly, was sent to assist the dead in his tasks
above. The human Osiris, whatever his lot in this life had been,
was henceforth free from the toils which had once awaited him
in the fields of Alu; he could look on while thekaof theushebti
performed his work. Theushebti-figures become especially
numerous after the expulsion of the Hyksos. The domination of
the foreigner and the long war of independence which put an end
to it, had destroyed the feudal nobility, and therewith the feudal
ideas which regarded mankind as divided, now and hereafter,