The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

172 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

at least as old as the Fourth Dynasty; and the belief is supported
by the fact that on the monuments of the Eleventh Dynasty it is
already an integral part of the book. If, then, a chapter which
is relatively modern was nevertheless embodied in the book in
the age of the earlier dynasties, we can gain some idea of the
antiquity to which the book itself must reach back, even in its
composite form.^153
The first fifteen chapters, as Champollion perceived, form
a complete whole in themselves. In the Theban texts they are
[187] called the“Chapter of going before the divine tribunal of Osiris.”
In the Saite period this is replaced by the more general title of
“Beginning of the Chapter ofgoing forth from day.”^154 They
describe how the soul can leave its mummy, can escape forced
labour in the other world through the help of theushebti, can pass
in safety“over the back of the serpent Apophis, the wicked,”and
can acquire that“correctness of voice”which will enable it to
repeat correctly the words of the ritual, and so enter or leave at
will the world beyond the grave. The 15th chapter is a hymn to
the Sun.
The 17th chapter begins a new section. It sums up in a
condensed form all that the soul was required to know about
the gods and the world to come. But it has been glossed and
reglossed until its first form has become almost unrecognisable.
The commentary attached to the original passages became in
time itself so obscure as to need explanation, and the chapter
now consists of three strata of religious thought and exposition
piled one on the top of the other. As it now stands it unites in
a common goal the aspirations of the followers of Osiris and of
those of the solar cult; the dead man is identified with the gods,
and so wends his way to the divine land in which they dwell,

(^153) Maspero,Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie égyptiennes, pp. 367-370.
(^154) Various interpretations have been given of the phraseper m hru. I have
adopted that which seems to me most consonant with both grammar and logical
probability.