Anubis Speaks!: A Guide to the Afterlife by the Egyptian God of the Dead (22 page)

people prayed to their own hearts for help in passing my test.

O my heart, which I had from my mother;

O my heart, which I had upon earth; do not
rise up against me as a witness in the presence
of the Lord of Things.

Do not speak against me, concerning what
I have done; do not bring up anything against
me in the presence of the Great God, Lord of
the West.

Some of you may notice that in just about every depiction of me weighing hearts, I am shown sneakily pulling down the chain on the side with the Feather of Truth. Why? It made the Feather of Truth weigh more than your heart, just in case you hadn’t lived a perfect life. Despite my steely-eyed glare, and fangs sharper than diamonds, it turns out my own heart was a tad soft when it came to my people.

After all, nobody is perfect, right? My people believed that when it came right down to it, I was on their side, which was often true. . . . Unless you made me angry, of course.

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The Egyptian Afterworld

Was Not a Hell

Although there are plenty of demons and pits of fire, Duat, or the Egyptian underworld, was not a place of everlasting suffering and punishment.

Those who failed my test did suffer, of course, but they didn’t typically dwell in our afterworld and experience an eternity of misery. After their hearts were consumed, their heads squeezed, and their innards chomped near the Lake of Fire, they generally disappeared from our afterworld.

Good riddance, I say!

I make this distinction so that you moderns

understand that while Ra’s Land of the Dead may seem like a hell, it is not. Instead, it is the land through which the sun god journeys on his way to be reborn. It always has a happy ending (sunrise!).

However, during the Greek and Roman periods

of Egypt’s history, some stories were written that sounded a bit more like a kind of hellish place of eternal punishment. Here’s one example:

Rich Man, Poor Man

ONE DAY, A FATHER AND HIS YOUNG SON heard

wailing outside their window. They looked out and saw the coffin of a rich man being carried to its resting place. Great crowds of people followed the coffin, 60

wailing loudly. Soon after followed the body of a poor man, wrapped only in an old mat. No one walked behind him.

The father said, “The rich man who is honored with the sound of wailing is much better off than the poor man who has nobody!”

The boy turned to his father and said, “May you experience the afterworld like the poor man, and not like the rich one.”

The father was saddened by his son’s words, and did not see what he meant.

“Let me take you to the western desert and show you the fates of each man,” the son said.

In the afterworld, the father and son entered one hall where they saw people plaiting ropes while donkeys chewed them up just as quickly as they were finished.

In another, starving people reached for bread and water hung over their heads, but people at their feet dug pits that made it impossible for the starving people to reach the food and water. In yet another hall, the corner of a door was slammed—over and over again—

into the right eye of a criminal who wailed loudly at the horrible pain.

Finally, the father and son entered the hall where they saw Osiris, the god of the dead, seated on his golden throne. Anubis stood on his left and Thoth was on his right. The scale for weighing the heart against Ma’at’s Feather of Truth stood before them.

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The father saw a rich man clothed in fine royal linen standing near Osiris, and was impressed by the man’s status. He assumed the man was the wealthy one they had seen earlier.

His son, however, set him straight. “My father, did you not see that rich man in royal linen standing by Osiris? He is the poor man you saw wrapped in a mat.

Anubis weighed his heart and found that his good deeds far outweighed his misdeeds. Osiris gave to him all the riches of the wealthy man.”

“What happened to the rich man?” the father

asked.

“Do you remember the criminal who had a door slammed into his right eye repeatedly? That was the rich man. When Anubis weighed his heart, his misdeeds far outweighed his good deeds. And so he suffers. Now, do you understand why I said I hope you experience the afterworld like the poor man and not the rich one?”

“Yes, my son. But now tell me—what is happening to the people who are plaiting the rope eaten by donkeys, and the starving ones with pits at their feet keeping them from reaching the food?”

“Their misdeeds were found to be more numerous than their good deeds also,” said the boy. “How they lived on earth determined how they’ll live in the afterworld. He who lives a good life on earth lives a good life in the afterworld,” the boy continued. “And he who is evil, to him the afterworld is evil.”

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When they left the land of the west, the father marveled at what he had experienced and learned. The boy would later grow to be a powerful magician.

Ra Goes for a Swim

Watch.

As Ra leaves the boat and enters the water, a serpent with five heads slithers up from the depths to surround him. But don’t worry. It’s not a bad-guy serpent. This giant snake is here to protect Ra. When Ra emerges from his snake-encircled cocoon, he will be closer to his rebirth as Khepri. He will be young and vital and fierce!

Ra’s Khepri form is often represented as a scarab beetle. Having Ra symbolically emerge as a giant bug, by the way, is a good thing. The scarab beetle was one of the most revered and sacred symbols in Egyptian religion. My people’s respect for the critter came out of their observations of its interesting behavior.

The beetle pushes a ball of dung (fancy word for poop) across the desert with its little legs. It’s hard work, too. Impressed by the bug, the early Egyptians imagined that the sun was like that dung-ball, and that Ra was pushing it across the sky. Then they noticed that the scarab beetle laid its eggs inside the ball of poop. And from that ball of waste burst new baby beetles. This explosion of life from dead matter became a powerful metaphor for rebirth.

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