Gerald Massey EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD AND THE MYSTERIES OF AMENTA Copyright © SEO-Ebooks http://stores.ebay.com/seo-ebooks Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 2 of 161 From: Gerald Massey’s Lecturtes Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta Originally published in a private edition c. 1900 This Edition Copyright  2006 SEO–Ebooks Editing, corrections, translations Copyright  2006 SEO–Ebooks All rights to the original material, textual typesetting, format and visual layout and arrangement are expressly restricted and reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: SEO–Ebooks http://stores.ebay.com/SEO–Ebooks All rights reserved. This product is for personal use only and not for resale. Copyright violations will be prosecuted by law. Toutes les droites sont réservés. Tutti i diritti riservati. Todos les derechos reservados. Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 3 of 161 EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD AND THE MYSTERIES OF AMENTA The Egyptian Book of the Dead contains the oldest known religious writings in the world. As it comes to us it is mainly Osirian, but the Osirian group of gods was the latest of all the divine dynasties, although these, as shown at Abydos (by Prof. Flinders Petrie), will account for some ten thousand years of time in Egypt. The antiquity of the collection is not to be judged by the age of the coffins in which the papyrus rolls were found. Amongst other criteria of length in time the absence of Amen, Maut, and Khunsu supplies a gauge. The presence and importance of Tum affords another, whilst the persistence of Apt and her son Sebek–Horus tells a tale of times incalculably remote. As a key to the mysteries and the method of the book it must be understood at starting that the eschatology or doctrine of Last Things was founded in the mould of the mythology, and that the one can only be unravelled by means of the other. Moreover, there is plenty of evidence to prove that the Ritual was based on the mythology, and not the mythology upon the Ritual. The serpent, of darkness, was the evil reptile in mythology. In theology it becomes the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 4 of 161 deluder of mankind. Here the beginning was with darkness itself, which was the deceiver from the first. The serpent, being a figure of darkness, was continued by theology as the official adversary of souls in the eschatological domain. The eschatology of the Ritual, then, can only be comprehended by means of the mythology. And it is the mythos out of view that has made the Ritual so profoundly difficult to understand. Reading it may be compared with a dance seen by a deaf man who does not hear the music to which the motion is timed, and who has no clue to the characters being performed in the dumb drama. You cannot understand what they are doing and saying as Manes in another world without knowing what was thought and said by human beings in this concerning that representation of the nature powers, the gods and goddesses, which constitutes mythology. Amenta is a huge fossil formation crowded with the dead forms of a past life in which the horny conspectuities of learned ignorance will only see dead shells for a modern museum. As a rule, Egypt is always treated differently from the rest of the world. No Egyptologist has ever dreamed that the Ritual still exists under the disguise of both the gnostic and canonical gospels, or that it was the fountain–head and source of all the books of wisdom claimed to be Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 5 of 161 divine. In the mythology – that is, in the primitive mode of rendering the phenomena of external nature – Osiris as light–giver in the moon was tom in fourteen pieces during the latter half of the lunation by the evil Sut, the opposing power of darkness. He was put together again and reconstituted by his son, beloved Horus, the young solar god. This representation could not have been made until it was known that the lunar light was replenished monthly from the solar source. Then Horus as the sun god and the vanquisher of Sut, the power of darkness, could be called the reconstituter of Osiris in the moon. In that way a foundation was laid in natural fact according to the science of mythology, and a mystery bequeathed to the eschatology which is doctrinal. For as it had been with the dismembered, mutilated god in the mythos, so it is with the Osiris deceased, who has to be reconstructed for a future life and put together bit by bit as a spiritual body in one of the great mysteries of Amenta. In the mythos Har–Makhu was the solar god of both horizons, or the double equinox, who represented the sun of today that rose up from the nether world as conqueror of darkness to join the west and east together on the Mount of Glory, as the connecting link of continuity in time betwixt yesterday and tomorrow. The type was continued in Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 6 of 161 the eschatology, when Har–Makhu became the Horus of the greater mysteries, Horus of the religious legend who suffered, died, and was buried in Amenta, and who rose again from ,the dead like the winter sun, as Horus in spirit, lifting aloft the insignia of his sovereignty. This was he who made the pathway, not merely betwixt the two horizons, but to eternal life, as son of Ra, the holy spirit in the eschatology. The intermediate link in the mythos, which “connects the solar orb with yesterday”, is now the intermediary betwixt the two worlds and two lives in time and eternity. This is he who exclaims, “I am the link! I am the everlasting one! I am Horus who steppeth onwards through eternity.”(Rit., ch. 42.) This was he who, in the words of the gnostic Paul, “broke down the wall of partition” and “made both one”, “that he might create in himself one new man” and reconcile them both in one body”, even as the double Horus, Har–Sam–Taui, was made one when blended and established as one person in another mystery of Amenta (Rit., ch. 42). The mythology repeated in the Ritual is mainly solar and Osirian, but with glimpses of the lunar and the stellar mythos from the beginning. For example, Apt the ancient genetrix, as goddess of the Great Bear constellation, and leader of the heavenly host, was the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 7 of 161 kindler of the starry sparks by night in the mythology. In the eschatology she is continued as the mistress of divine protections for the soul, and she who had been the kindler of the lights in the darkness of night was now propitiated as rekindler of life from the spark in the dark of death (Rit., ch. 137B). Ra in the mythos is the solar god represented by the sun in heaven, and in the eschatology he became the god in spirit who is called the holy spirit and first person in the trinity which consisted of Atum the father god, Horus the son, and Ra the holy spirit; the three that were also one in the Osirian cult, first as three forms of the solar god and next as three forms of the god in spirit. It is thus we are enabled to trace the formation of the Egyptian eschatology in the mould of the mythology. There is no death in the Osirian religion, only decay and change, and periodic renewal; only evolution and transformation in the domain of matter and the transubstantiation into spirit. In the so–called death of Osiris it is rebirth, not death, exactly the same as in the changes of external nature. At the close of day the solar orb went down and left the sun god staring blankly in the dark of death. Taht the moon god met him in Amenta with the eye of Horus as the light that was to illuminate the darkness of the subterranean world. In the annual rendering on the third day light Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 8 of 161 was generated by renewal in the moon. Thus Osiris rose again, and a doctrine of the resurrection on the third day was bequeathed to the eschatology. The sun in sinking was buried as a body (or mummy) in the nether world of Amenta. When rising again at dawn it was transformed into a soul, a supreme elemental soul, that preceded the god in spirit. This was in the mythology. In the eschatology the same types were reapplied to the human soul, which was imaged in the flesh as the inarticulate, blind, and impubescent Horus, who died bodily but was preserved in mummy form to make his transformation into the luminous Sahu, when he rose again in glory as Horus the divine adult. “I am the resurrection and the life” is the perfect interpretation of an Egyptian picture that was copied by Denon at Philæ. (Egypt, vol. ii., pl.40, No.8, p. 54–) (Lundy, fig. 183.) Divine Horus is portrayed in the act of raising the deceased Osiris from the bier by presenting to him the Ankh sign of life. He was the life in person who performed the resurrection, and therefore is “the resurrection and the life”. As such he simply stands for a soul considered to be the divine offspring of god the father, not for any historical character that makes preposterous pretensions to possess miraculous power. Previously he had been the resurrection and the life as solar vivifier in the physical Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 9 of 161 domain, or otherwise stated in the mythology. It was this difference betwixt the mythology and eschatology that constituted the lesser and the greater mysteries. The lesser in their origin were partly sociological. They were the customs and the ceremonial rites of totemism. The greater mysteries are eschatological and religious. For instance, the transformation of the youth into the adult or the girl into a woman in the totemic mysteries was applied doctrinally to the transformation of the soul in the mysteries of Amenta. With the more primitive races, such as the Arunta of Australia, the mysteries remain chiefly totemic and sociological, though interfused with the religious sentiment. The greater mysteries were perfected in the Egyptian religion, to be read of in the Ritual as the mysteries of Amenta. From the beginning to the end of the written Ritual we shall find it is based upon the mythical representation which was primary.The mythical representation was first applied to the phenomena of external nature, and this mode of representation was continued and re–applied to the human soul in the eschatology. Egyptian myths, then, are not inventions made to explain the Ritual. Totemic representation was earlier. This mode was continued in the mythology. Ritual arose from the rendering becoming Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 10 of 161 religious in the phase of eschatology, and did not originate as an explanation of mythology and totemism. But not until the different phases are discriminated can the Ritual be read, that which has been founded on it under–stood, or the mental status of the thinkers ascertained. In the mythology the solar god, who in his primary form was Ptah (Khepr), is the maker of a complete circle for the sun as founder and opener of the nether earth, this solar pathway being a figure of for ever, a type of the eternal working in time. In the eschatology the god in spirit who is Ra the holy spirit is “the god who has created (or opened out) eternity” (Rit., ch. 15). The one is on the physical basis, the other on the spiritual plane. In the mythology the seven primordial powers that pass through various phases, elemental, stellar , or lunar, always in a group of seven, finally become the seven souls of Ra, who attained supremacy as the sun god in mythology and also as the holy spirit. Thence came the doctrine of the seven souls in man, as seven gifts of the holy spirit in the eschatology. In the mythical representation Sothis on New Year’s Day was the bringer forth of the child that was mothered by Hathor or Isis. The type is employed in the eschatology of the Ritual when the Manes in Amenta prays for rebirth as a pure spirit and says, “May I live ( or rise up and go forth) from Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 11 of 161 between the closed knees of Sothis”. The rebirth of the child in Sothis was the renewal of the year, Sothis being represented in the feminine character by Hathor as the bringer forth from betwixt her knees or, as elsewhere rendered, her kheptu, i.e., her thighs. So the Manes are reborn from between the thighs of Nut in the mysteries of Amenta, and here the visible birthplace of spirits perfected is localized in Sothis, the opener of the year and bringer of the babe to birth upon the horizon or the mount of glory. In this way the skies of night were made luminous with starry lore that was mythical in the astronomy and the words of a divine wisdom in the later eschatology when the mysteries were represented in Amenta. Instead of flashlights showing pictures on the housetops of a city after dark, the stars were used by the Egyptians to illustrate the mysteries that were out of sight. The triumph of Horus over Sut or over the Apap dragon of drought and darkness was illustrated in the stellar mythos when in the annual round Orion rose and the Scorpion constellation set upon the opposite horizon. The Egyptian nearing death could lie and look upon a future figured in the starry heavens.As it was with Osiris or Horus so would it be with him. The way had been mapped out, the guiding stars were visible. His bier or coffin of new birth could be seen in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 12 of 161 mesken of the mother. He rose again in spirit as the babe of Sothis. “He joined the company of the holy Sahus” in Orion with the pilot Horus at the look–out of the bark. He saw the golden isles in a heaven of perpetual peace to which the pole was the eternal mooring post. Whilst he was passing from this life the bark of Ra was making ready for his soul to go on board. The foundation of Amenta itself has yet to be delineated. It is a tangible threshold to the other world, the secret but solid earth of eternity which was opened up by Ptah when he and his seven Khnemmu erected the Tat pillar that was founded in the winter solstice as the figure of a stability that was to be eternal. In the mythos the Tat is a type of the sun in the winter solstice that has the power of returning from the lowest depth and thus completing the eternal road. In the eschatology it is the god in person as Ptah–Sekeri or Osiris, the backbone and support of the universe. Horus erecting the Tat in Sekhem was raising Osiris from the sepulchre, the father re–erected as the son in the typical resurrection and continuity of the human spirit in the after life. The figure of Amsu– Horus rising in the resurrection or “coming forth”, with member erect, has two characters, one in the mythology, one in the eschatology. In the mythology Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 13 of 161 he images the phallus of the sun and the generative force that fecundates the Mother–earth. In the eschatology the image of erection is repeated as a symbol of resurrection, and in this phase the supposed phallic god, the figure of regenerative force, is typical of the resurrection or re–erection of the mortal in spirit. Horus the child with finger to mouth is portrayed in the sign of the Scales at the autumn equinox, the point at which the sun begins to lessen and become impotent. This the Egyptians termed the “little sun”, which when personified was infant Horus, who sank down into Hades as the suffering sun to die in the winter solstice and be transformed to rise again and return in all his glory and power in the equinox at Easter. This was matter of the solar mythos, also of life in vegetation and in the water of the inundation. In the eschatology Horus the child is typical of the human soul which was incarnated in the blood of Isis, the immaculate virgin, to be made flesh and to be born in mortal guise on earth as the son of Seb, and to suffer all the afflictions of mortality. He descended to Amenta as the soul sinking in the dark of death, and as the soul he was transfigured, changed, and glorified, to rise again and become immortal as a spirit perfected according to the teachings in the eschatology. A brief Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 14 of 161 list will show how certain zootypes that were founded in the mythological representation were continued in the eschatology : Type of power Mythical Eschatological The beetle = The sun as transformer = The god as self– evolver The serpent = Renewal = Eternal life The ibis = Messenger = Word or logos The jackal = Seer in the dark = Guide in death The heifer =The moon =Virgin mother The hawk = Soul of the sun = Ra the divine spirit Fish,calf,or lamb = Youthful solar god re–born =The messiah In the mythology the Apap reptile lies in the Lake of Darkness, where the sun goes down, as the eternal adversary of the light with which it is at war all night and all the winter through. He seeks to bar the way of the sun in the nether world. In the eschatology it is the human soul instead of the sun that has to struggle with Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Mysteries of Amenta 15 of 161 the opposing monster in making the passage of Amenta. The same scenery served, as already shown, to illustrate the mystery in a religious and spiritual phase. Chapter 64 of the Ritual is known to have been extant in the time of King Septi, of the first dynasty, the Usaiphais of Manetho. That was over 6,000 years ago. It is a chapter from the Book of Life “to be recited on coming forth to day, that one may not be kept back on the path of the Tuat, whether on entering or in coming forth; for taking all the forms which one desireth, and that the person may not die a second time”. If this chapter be known, the person is made triumphant on earth (as in the nether world), and he performeth all things which are done by the living. The chapter was then so ancient that it had been lost sight of, and was discovered “on a plinth of the god of the Hennu (or Sekru) bark, by a master builder in the time of King Septi the Victorious”. When this chapter was composed the primary nature powers had been unified in the one god, who was represented as the lord of two faces, who “seeth by his own light”, the “Lord of Resurrections, who commeth forth from the dusk, and whose birth is from the House of Death”. That is, as the solar god who was Atum on one horizon and Horus on the other; hence the lord of two