The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

160 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Those only were admitted into the kingdom of Osiris who, like
their leader, had done good to men. A knowledge of the Ritual
with its divine lore and incantations was not sufficient to unlock
its gates. The Osiris who entered it had to be morally as well as
ceremonially pure. Osiris was not only a king; he was a judge
also, and those who appeared before him had to prove that their
conduct in this life had been in conformity with one of the highest
of the moral codes of antiquity.
This moral test of righteousness is the most remarkable fact
connected with the Osirian system of doctrine. The Egyptian
who accepted it was called on to acknowledge that orthodoxy
in belief and practice was not sufficient to ensure his future
salvation; it was needful that he should have avoided sin and
been actively benevolent as well. Unlike most ancient forms
of faith, morality—and that too of a high order—was made an
integral part of religion, and even set above it. It was not so much
[174] what a man believed as what he had done that enabled him to
pass the awful tribunal of heaven and be admitted to everlasting
bliss.
The Book of the Dead was the guide of the dead man on his
journey to the other world. Its chapters were inscribed on the rolls
buried with the mummy, or were painted on the coffin and the
walls of the tomb. It was the Ritual which prescribed the prayers
and incantations to be repeated in the course of the journey,
and described the enemies to be met with on the other side of
the grave. Thanks to its instructions, the dead passed safely
through the limbo which divides this earth from the kingdom of
Osiris, and arrived at last at the Judgment Hall, the hall of the
Twofold Truth, where Mât, the goddess of truth and law, received
him. Here on his judgment throne sat Osiris, surrounded by the
forty-two assessors of divine justice from the forty-two nomes
of Egypt, while Thoth and the other deities of the Osirian cycle
stood near at hand. Then the dead man was called upon to show
reason why he should be admitted to the fields of Alu, and to