The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

170 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

the Dead.^152 But the combination is that of two mutually
exclusive systems of theology which have been brought forcibly
side by side without any attempt being made to fuse them into
a harmonious whole. They display the usual tendency of the
Egyptian mind to accept the new without discarding the old, and
without troubling to consider how the new and old can be fitted
together. It was enough to place them side by side; those who
did not think the Osirian creed sufficient to ensure salvation, had
the choice of the solar creed offered them with its prayers and
incantations to the sun-god. But it was not an alternative choice;
the heaven of the solar bark in its passage through the world of
the night was attached to the heaven of Alu with its fields lighted
by the sun of day.
It is evident that the chapters which introduce the doctrines of
the solar cult are a later addition to the original Book of the Dead.
[185] That was the text-book of the Osirian soul, with whose beliefs the
doctrines of the solar cult were absolutely incompatible. While
the one taught that the dead, without distinction, passed to the
judgment-hall of Osiris, where, after being acquitted, as much on
moral as on religious grounds, they were admitted to a paradise
of light and happiness, the other maintained that only a chosen
few, who were rich and learned enough to be provided with the
necessary theological formulæ, were received in the solar bark
as it glided along the twelve hours of the night, thus becoming
companions of the sun-god in his passage through a realm of
darkness that was peopled by demoniac forms. The Osirian and
solar creeds issued from two wholly different religious systems,
and the introduction of conceptions derived from the latter into
the Book of the Dead, however subordinate may be the place
which they occupy, indicates a revision of the original work.
It was not until the book had gained a predominant position

not occur in the standard text (Petrie,Dendereh, 1898, pp. 56-58).

(^152) We even read in them of Ra being“purified in the fields of Alu”(Unas
411).