Second part of the study on Egyptian Book of the Dead (follows from the first). A focus on the "solar monotheism" established by the pharaoh Akhenaten and on the probable contacts between the Egyptian solar cults and the Jewish religion, through the analysis of Egyptian and Judeo-Christian sources.
di Pier Vittorio Formichetti
Follows from first part
Chapter XXIII of the Book of the Dead of Turin, titled Formula for opening a person's mouth in the Necropolis, therefore opens with a wish that seems to have been foreseen for someone who has always been afflicted with a difficulty in speaking:
Let my mouth be opened by Ptah, and let Ammon, god of my city, loosen the shackles of my mouth since I came out of my mother's womb.
The deceased then turns, before Ammon, to the cosmic god patron of the voice and the word. In Book of Exodus, when Moses hears the voice of YHWH coming from the burning bush who instructs him to speak to Pharaoh to let the Jews go out of Egypt, the man replies:
My Lord, I'm not a good talker, I've never been before [...] I'm clumsy with my mouth and tongue.
Exodus, 4, 10
And later, after the first "no" from the pharaoh and the discontent of the Jews:
Behold, the Israelites have not listened to me: how will Pharaoh want to listen to me, while I am embarrassed to speak?» [...] Moses said in the presence of the Lord: "Behold, I am embarrassed to speak, how will Pharaoh want to listen to me?"
Exodus, 6, 12; thirty
The tradition, based on these sentences, according to which Moses would have been a stutterer or a speech impediment since he was a child, is relatively well known. According to theExodusMoses was born during the Pharaoh's elimination of a quantity of Jewish infant males—an event historically controversial, but not impossible. If, as we assumed previously, Moses was probably born around 1305 BC. c. [39], the pharaoh of the infanticide would be the former general Horemheb, perhaps reigning from 1319 and died in 1292 BC. c.. This king decreed the damnatio memoriae of Amenhotep (or Amenofi) IV Akhenaton (1357-1335), father of Tutankhamun and initiator of the solar monolatry of Aton: it would therefore not be absurd that Horemheb wanted to stamp out any possible monotheistic return among the Egyptians even with this bloody deterrent; for their part, the Jews, predominantly monotheistic, appeared "dangerous". In this situation, Moses' mother, Yocabed, managed to keep her son hidden for three months (Exodus, 2, 2), and this could indirectly indicate to us that the child had some phonation problems: a newborn who does not wail and cry like the others, but with a lowered or strained voice, is less easy to locate [40]. It would therefore not make sense to argue that the words of Moses would have been attributed to him by an author who "recycled" those of the Book of the Deadbut the comparison is interesting.
Moses was then raised by the "daughter of Pharaoh" – remembered only by theExodus and from First Book of Chronicles (4, 18) not with the Egyptian name, which is unknown to us, but with the Hebrew Bitia or Bityà ("daughter of YHWH") – while her mother Yocabed, with the role of wet nurse, nursed him (Exodus, 2, 5-10). He therefore spent the first 25-30 years of his life around the pharaohs Horemheb, Ramses I and Seti I (approximately from 1305 to 1280 BC) evidently without anyone suspecting his Jewish origins, and therefore became "a man highly regarded in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of Pharaoh's ministers and of the people" (Exodus, 11, 3), «educated in all the science of the Egyptians [and] mighty in word and deed" (Acts of the Apostles, 7, 22). A technical aspect of such an education could be the construction of the Ark of the Covenant, the famous portable reliquary – whose measurements had been established with the «royal cubit» (about 52 cm) used in Egypt for sacred constructions – in which, after leaving Egypt, Moses deposited the two stone tablets engraved the Ten Words: Ten Commandments. The Ark was made of acacia wood covered with gold foil inside and out (Exodus 25, 10-11).
There is indeed a trace of this technique in the CLV chapter of the Book of the Dead (Formula for the golden Djed to be placed around the neck of the deceased), concerning an amulet in the shape of column Djed, the famous symbolic object (often carved in hard stone) which combines the images of the spine of Osiris and the leafless tree: both symbols of theaxis beat, the conjunction of the various levels of the cosmos (the Djed columns have from three to five) guaranteed by the representative of the cosmic and political order, i.e. the Pharaoh [41]. In fact, the Rubric of this chapter begins with the prescription: «To be said above a golden Djed carved in the pith of the sycamore tree» [42], i.e. in the wood of a plant also mentioned in the Bible (for example in the Book of Amos 7, 14-15, and in the Gospel according to Luke, 19, 4) covered with what today we would call gold leaf. It is therefore not absurd to think that Moses could express himself with phrases similar to those he had heard from priests, scribes, architect-mathematicians and the "magicians" of the Egyptian court, whose practices he knew, as indicated by the episodes of the sticks transformed into snakes (Exodus 7, 8-13) and those of the "plagues of Egypt" (events that occurred during the entire period of Jewish settlement in Egypt, but "compressed" and postponed by the Jewish narrative to the time of Moses only) [43].
In chapter XLII (Formula to repel all evil and to repel the wounds that are made in the Necropolis), the deceased, as assimilated to the Deity and now forming part of it, is defined as «the force [literally «the wall»] which proceeds from the force, the One which proceeds from the One» [44]: a definition that seems almost taken from some Gnostic or Neoplatonic text, but also recalls the formulas of Credo Christian in the form of Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol (established in the year 325) which defines Christ «Light from Light; true God from true God; begotten, not created; of the same substance as the Father". In the next chapter, the XLIII (Formula for not having a man's head removed from the Necropolis), the voice of the deceased begins in a similar way: «I am the Great [Wr] son of the Great, the Flame daughter of the Flame…» [45]. In chapter CXV (Formula to go out to Heaven, to penetrate the Ammahit [?] and to learn about the Spirits of Heliopolis) the deceased, during his otherworldly declaration, briefly recounts a myth (the origin of the "Child's Braid", the characteristic hairstyle of Egyptian children with a braid on one side of the shaved skull until they come of age) including this sentence : «The active in Heliopolis, the heir of the heir, is the All-Seeing, because he has the divine power as Son begotten by the Father» [46]. Although the context is very different, these words again appear very "Christian", recalling the concept of substantial identity (homousia) between God the Father and Christ the Son:
The Father loves the Son and has given everything into his hands (Gospel according to John, 3, 35)
As the Father has life in himself, so he granted the Son to have life in himself, and gave him power to judge (5, 26-27)
The Father and I are one […] The Father is in me and I am in the Father (10, 30; 38)
The Father who is in me does his works. Believe me: I am in the Father and the Father is in me (14, 10-11).
Christianity was born within Judaism, which - we are seeing - is not totally free from ties to some Egyptian elements, but it does not include any conception of divine sonship or of God's identity with other creatures, not even the Messiah; it is therefore to be excluded that the first Christians, almost all Jews, appropriated an Egyptian concept and reworked it. In chapter LXXXV (Formula to transform into Soul [«Ba»] and to avoid entering the Hall of Torture) the deified deceased still expresses himself in such a way as to bring to mind the language of the Gospels:
I am the Lord of Truth, and I live by it. I am the Divine Food that does not perish [...]. I am the Light, and what I hate is Death.
[47]
Let us compare with some analogous phrases of Jesus from the Gospel according to John:
The bread of God is the one who descends from heaven and gives life to the world. [...] I am the bread of life: whoever comes to me will never be hungry [...]. I came down from heaven to do not my will, but the will of the One who sent me. […] I am the bread of life. […] I am the living bread, which came down from heaven: whoever eats this bread will live forever (6, 33-38; 48-51)
I am the light of the world (8, 12)
I am the way, the truth and the life (14, 6)
In chapter XXXIX, entitled Formula to repel the Refref snake in the Necropolis, appears the very ancient image of the snake in its evil aspect, which will be decisive in the Judeo-Christian context as the image par excellence of the devil, the adversary - in Hebrew Satan - of God. The deceased, strengthened by his assimilation to the gods (in this case to Ra), confronts him by intimidating him:
Back off!, Walker being pushed back, from Apep [mythological dragon-snake]! Be submerged in the lake of Nu, in the place determined by your father for your destruction. […] Back off! It destroys your poison! Ra has struck you down and your head is thrown down by the gods [...] while Maat has ordered your destruction. [...] O detested by Ra, [...] Let no malice against me come from your mouth in what you do to me!
[48]
Right: the serpent in Eden, Cappella Palatina, Palermo
Similarly, in chapter CVIII (Formula to know the Spirits of the Amenti, i.e. the demonic entities – «boo» – of the «West», i.e. of the Underworld) we read against dthe Sets, the divinity personifying the forces of chaos, who in this case is the synthesis figure of all evil spirits:
Set is placed in his prison and an iron chain is placed around his neck, and he is forced to vomit up everything he has swallowed. […] Retreat!, before the justified Osiris Jeuf-Ankh […] The justified Osiris Jeuf-Ankh truly walks on you […] You are in stocks [variant: «you are pierced by harpoons»] as ordered in the presence of Ra.
[49]
Another set of conjurations of this kind is present in chapter CXLIX (untitled), where the serpent returns:
There is a serpent there, Rerek is his name. He is seven cubits long on his back and lives on the Glorified [the dead], annihilating their akh ["magic power"]. Retreat!, O Rerek, when you bite with your mouth [...] and weaken with your eyes. Your teeth are pulled out and you throw up your poison! You will not come against me, and your poison will not penetrate me to paralyze me, but it will lie harmless in this earth.
[50]
The reader may have already guessed what, in this case, the relatively possible conceptual and linguistic parallelism between the Book of the Dead and the Judeo-Christian tradition: in fact, these sentences can recall some "imperative formulas" in the exorcism against Satan in the form codified by the Catholic Church (based on some exorcisms performed by Jesus himself):
I expel you, unclean spirit, and together with you I drive out every satanic power of the Enemy, every specter of hell and all your ferocious companions! In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, go away, and stay away from this creature of God!
I command you, cursed serpent: in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, abandon this creature and withdraw from her! Christ commands you, who from the height of his power has plunged you into eternal darkness!
[51]
In chapter CIX (Formula to know the Spirits of the East) we find an expression that again recalls theApocalypse, namely the definition of otherworldly annihilation as "second death": «What I hate is the Second Death» [52]. In the Directory at the end of chapter CXXX (Formula to make the Soul alive in eternity, making it board the Boat of Ra, etc.) then reads:
He will be together with his soul and will live forever, he will not die a second time in the Necropolis, and no harm will happen to him on the day of the "Weighing of the words". And his words will be truth about his enemies…
[53]
And in the Rubric following chapter CLIII: "His soul will be alive for eternity and will not die a second time" [54]. We compare with theApocalypse [55]:
The victor [over the forces of Evil] will not be affected by the second death (2, 11)
Blessed and holy are those who take part in the first resurrection; over them the second death has no power (20, 6)
… the lake burning with fire and brimstone. This is the second death (21, 8)
Twelve centuries later, Francis of Assisi will still use this expression in the famous Canticle of the creatures: «Blessed are those who [death] will find in Your most holy wills, ka la morte secunda won't hurt them».
In the approximately four centuries that the Jews lived in Egypt, they probably kept alive their primitive religious tradition, centered on a God pre-eminent over the various gods of the local populations, called El (the God) and sometimes The Shaddai, "God of the Mountain",
according to the widespread idea that the divinity's dwelling was located in the high mountains; in this case it would express the concept of the highest and transcendent God, or of the God stable as a rock for those who entrust themselves to him (Cfr. Deuteronomy, 32, 4).
[56]
The nascent Jewish monotheism therefore found a sort of encouraging confirmation in the solar monotheism established by the pharaoh Akhenaten, in the short period in which this cult was in force and for a few decades after its suppression, i.e. in the last years of the fourteenth century BC. C. and in the early thirteenth, when the successors of the "heretical pharaoh" brought the Egyptian religion back to traditional polytheism: in essence, even during Moses' childhood "the spirit of the Amarna reform survived [was] in substantial facts of the language , of art, of theology» [57]. A passage from chapter CXII of the Book of the Dead (Formula to know the Spirits of Pu) is extremely interesting from the point of view of the probable contacts between the Egyptian solar cults and the Jewish religion. In the passage in question a myth is briefly told - evidently well known by the Egyptians already centuries before the drafting of the Book of the Dead of Turin – in which the sun god Horus, son of Ra, was temporarily blinded in one eye:
Ra said to Horus, "Let me see what is happening in your eye today." And he looked at it. Ra said to Horus, "Look at this black pig, then." He looked at him, and a serious affliction afflicted his eye. Horus said to Ra: «Behold, my eye is as if Anubis [in other texts: «Set»] has inflicted a wound in my eye!». And anger devoured his heart. Then Ra said to those gods: "The pig is an abomination to Horus. May his eye improve!" And the pig became a great abomination.
[58]
«Eye of Horus» was synonymous with the Sun, but also a poetic name of Egypt itself, as is known from at least one of the ancients Texts of the Pyramids (written on the inner walls of some pyramids from about 2360 BC onwards), theHymn to Egypt, which begins: «Hail, Eye of Horus, whom Atum has adorned perfectly…» [59]. It is then possible that, by recounting that Ra looked into his son's eye, we mean that the god looked at his entire territory; therefore the pig with black bristles (they exist even today) would constitute something detestable for his land. And in fact, in the Rubric following chapter CXXV (To be said about a purified person, etc.), in relation to the sacrificial offerings of "loaves, beer, oxen, geese, incense for the flame and vegetables of all kinds" already performed, it is prescribed:
Then thou shalt make a picture of it [of the sacrifice], drawn upon a brick of pure clay taken from a field where no pig shall have marched.
[60]
Such a rule in a Book of the Dead which dates back to the fifth century BC. C. may be a clue that, in the Egyptian mentality, a certain incompatibility of the pig with the sphere of the Sacred also remained in the late period, when pigs were sometimes used instead of the plow to till some arable land for seed [61]. We know that one of the most characteristic and ancient rules of purity (kashruth) of Judaism consists of not touching pigs (living or dead) and not eating pork (Leviticus, 11, 7-8), a rule that certainly did not arise out of nowhere; it is almost impossible that the Jewish tribes that immigrated to Egypt in the period of the pharaohs of Hyksos lineage - the "Shepherd Kings" ethnically related to the Jews who entered Egypt violently in the XNUMXth century BC. C. - or at least the tribal chiefs and those Jews who were more important in terms of seniority or authority, have never had acquaintances with some Egyptian citizens, both ordinary and belonging to the ruling class [62]. In the Bible, these contacts can be represented by the accounts of the meeting between Pharaoh and Abraham (Genesis, 12, 10-20), between his nephew Jacob and a later pharaoh (Genesis, etc. 46-47) and in the famous story of Joseph son of Jacob.
The story of Joseph, sold by his brothers and then became "viceroy" in Egypt, probably dates back to the years between 1750 and 1650 BC. C, that is the first century of the Hyksos kingdom established in northern Egypt by the so-called XNUMXth dynasty pharaohs. In this same century lived what has been called the probable "vassal" of a Hyksos pharaoh: a king called Meri-wser-Ra Yakub-har, or Iakob-her, in Egyptian language «Love and power of Ra, Protected by Horus» [63]: a name very similar to Yahakob (Jacob) at the same time that a son of Jacob (Joseph) was "viceroy" of Egypt. So were Yakub-har and Joseph son of Jacob the same person? Jacob moved to Egypt (where he found Joseph who in the meantime had been elevated to «viceroy») in extreme old age (we will perhaps never know if he really reached the age of 130 and died there at 147, as handed down by the Genesis (ch. 47), with his vision so blurred as to not be able to distinguish the children who accompanied him (48, 10); And the eye and sight were connected to the god Horus. So Meri-wser-Ra Yakub-har could be the Egyptian name of Joseph, made up of a forename dedicated to Ra and a name with which, in some way, they wanted to place him under the protection of Horus, god wounded by the sight, also because the pharaoh could remember having received a blessing from his father Jacob, an almost blind old man (47, 10). The Egyptians may also have noticed the assonance between the word ruby (protected) and the name Yahakob; on the other hand the Jews may have interpreted the acquired name Yakub-har as an Egyptian form of the Hebrew patronymic Ben Yahakob, "Son of Jacob", with the name of Horus added (Har) [64]. The reference to the falcon god could also be linked to Joseph's intelligence, as acute as the sight of the bird of prey: the biblical stories celebrate his wisdom and the dowry of being able to reveal the hidden meaning of dreams, and this can be connected to the name public of Joseph, with which the pharaoh confirmed the high government office entrusted to him: Zafnat-paneah, which in the Egyptian language would mean «The God says: “He is alive”» (Genesis, 41, 39-45), but according to another opinion, it derives from the Hebrew Tzafun-paneach, "The hidden is revealed" [65].
It is also noteworthy that the Egyptian Rubric implying the impurity of the pig and of the ground on which the pig walked was placed at the conclusion of Formula CXXV, which in a certain sense is the thematic core not only of the whole Book of the Deadbut also of the same Egyptian doctrine of afterlife judgment. The long chapter CXXV, entitled Text to enter the Hall of Truth and Justice [Maat], to separate the person from the sins committed and to see the face of the gods, it is in fact the one in which the link between the purity of the conscience of the individual and his destiny in the afterlife: a conception that in Judaism was absent until the time of King Solomon (XNUMXth century BC) and beyond. An individual judgment was not conceived postmortem on the part of the divine Entity, nor a consequent destination of the virtuous soul to eternal bliss, nor a condition of suffering or destruction in case of an evil life: the only Afterlife imagined was there Sheol, "immense cavern placed in the basement of the cosmos", a bare and misty place in which good and evil alike wandered "like shadows", or rested "asleep" (rephaim) [66].
The departed soul of the ancient Egyptian therefore declares in chapter CXXV, through the voice of the priest-reader, that his conscience is not burdened by bad deeds; and from his words it emerges the clarity of Egyptian thought in introspection and discernment of good and evil. After a tribute to the Forty-two Gods - the deities present in the supernatural court – there is a first long introductory declaration of innocence, composed of statements such as «I have not oppressed my blood relatives», «I have not been a lie» and the like. A series of invocations then opens, followed by a declaration of innocence, to each of the twenty-one gods acting as "Judges of the Dead": the number of Judges is the same as the Pillars of the Beyond who questioned the soul in Formula CXLV (see the first part of this article) and, like the twenty-one Pillars, the twenty-one Judges are also called with a metaphorical-esoteric name, sometimes linked to the locality of the temple dedicated to their cult or to its mythological place; eg:
O you Nostril appearing in Hermopolis: I have not been envious!
[67]
O you who Look Back, who appear in the Ro-stau: I have not killed any man treacherously!
O you of the Eyes of Fire appearing in Khem: I have not defrauded!
O you Bone Crusher who appears in Het-nen-nesut: I have not been a liar!
O Wind of Fire appearing in Memphis: I have not stolen food!
O Bastet appearing in Shehait: I have not caused tears!
O you from the Face Back, who appear in the Cave: I have not committed acts against nature!
O thou Ady appearing in Heliopolis: I am not one to talk nonsense!
O Uammit appearing at the Place of Immolation: I have not committed adultery with a married woman!
O Kenememti appearing in Kemenit: I have not blasphemed!
O Bringer of Offerings appearing in Sais: I do not act violently!
O thou Lord of Faces appearing in Nedjet: I was not hasty in judgment!
O Neheb-nefru appearing in Heliopolis: I have not reduced offerings for the gods, nor have I made a servant mistreat his master!
It is noted how some of these professions of innocence concern identical or similar transgressions to those prohibited by Ten Commandments, being faults literally as old as human beings and spread all over the world. Then follows a positive declaration in the third person, or pronounced by the priest reader, which includes some equally universal gestures of charity and solidarity expressed in words similar to those of Jesus' discourse on the judgment of humanity at the end of time (Gospel according to Matthew , 25, 35-36: «I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was naked and you clothed me…»):
He has done what is prescribed for men and in which the gods rejoice. He has propitiated the god with what he loves: he has given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked and a boat to those without it. He made offerings to the gods and "Exits to the Voice" for the deceased. So save him! So protect him! Do not act against him in the presence of the Lord of the Dead [Osiris], for his mouth is pure, his hands are pure, he is a pure one, to whom it is said "Welcome!"
[68]
Finally, a last interrogation on the knowledge of the metaphysical dimension, similar to that, already seen, of the Barca del Nu (Formula XCIX), but this time by the nine architectural elements that make up the Sala della Maat (a few examples below), plus a tenth element, the Gate Guardian, which finally concludes the otherworldly judgment with the acceptance of the past:
I won't allow you to pass by me, says the Latch of the Door, if you don't say my name! – «Libra Index of the Place of Truth and Justice» is your name!
I won't allow you to pass by me, says the Right Panel of the Door, if you don't tell me my name! – «Defender of Maat [variant: «Plane of the Libra of He who raises Justice»]» is your name!
I won't allow you to pass by me, says the Left Panel of the Door, if you don't say my name! – «Defender of Judgment of the Heart» is your name! […]
You will not walk on me, says the Floor of the Hall, because I am clean and because I do not know the name of your two feet […]. So tell me the names! – «Girdle [?] of Min» is the name of my right foot, «Tree of Neftis» is the name of my left foot!
I won't announce you, says the Guardian of the Gate, if you don't say my name! – «He Who Knows Hearts and Explores People» is your name! – Then I will announce you! […] But who is He whose Roof is of fire, whose Walls are living Ureas, whose Ground of Dwelling is of flowing water? It's Osiris! – Advance, therefore, since you have been announced! […] The Osiris Ieuf-Ankh son of Ta-Shrit-Min is justified, for eternity!
[69]
One of the explanatory notes that Boris de Rachewiltz affixed to his translation of the is also very interesting Book of the Dead of Turin: in relation to the title of chapter CXXXVII (Formula to keep the flame from rising), he explains that it is a reference to an «important magical ceremony» (described in other Egyptian sources, cited by the archaeologist) in which «the flames in question are produced by torches made of cloth impregnated with ointment, held by four officiants on whose shoulders the names of the pillars of Horus are inscribed» [70]. We have seen how the conception of the "abominable" pig, an element in common with Judaism, was linked to the god Horus, the solar falcon; in this description of the funerary cult we again find a possible link between Horus and the Jewish cult. By "pillars of Horus" we should mean the four sons of Horus, called the Four Pillars of Heaven: Amset, Hapi, Duamutef, Kebekhsenuef [71], the name of each of which was written, in some way, on the shoulders of each of the four priests; so there can be an analogy with the names of the sons of Jacob (the twelve progenitors of the tribes of Israel) engraved on the two stones inserted in the shoulder straps of theephod, the priestly surcoat worn by Aaron, the first high priest of the Jews, and then by his successors, according to what God - according to the Bible - had ordered to Moses:
You will take two onyx stones and inscribe the names of the Israelites on them: six of their names on the first stone and the other six names on the second stone, in order of birth. You will carve the two stones with the names of the Israelites following the art of the stone carver for engraving a seal: you will set them in gold settings. You shall fasten the two stones on the shoulder straps of the ephod, as stones to commemorate the Israelites with me; so Aaron will bear their names on his shoulders before the Lord, as a memorial.
Exodus, 28, 9-12
These historical-cultural elements of the Book of the Dead, comparable with the Judeo-Christian tradition, can essentially indicate that i links of thought and language between ancient Egypt, the peoples of the Fertile Crescent, Judaism and Christianity were more important than commonly thought. But this does not mean that the entirety of the Jewish religion - different from the religions of the surrounding peoples not only because it is monotheistic, but also because it is characterized by the "absence of mythological formulations" [72] – is an imitation built with other people's materials and devoid of one's own experiences, intuitions and elaborations. The important archaeologist Paolo Matthiae, discoverer of the Syriac civilization of Ebla, rightly pointed out:
The religion of Israel constitutes an exceptional historical phenomenon, which is the result of unrepeatable intuitions and experiences, whose absolute and immutable values must be identified and kept separate, which place it on a very singular level in the fruitful ancient oriental religious speculation and of which it is extremely complex to discern the genesis, and those elements which, in historical development, continually enrich and elevate its essential content. The origins of these elements […] would be ill understood outside a precise historical context.
[73]
On the other hand, reading some expressions of the Book of the Dead yes you have the impression that the ancient Egyptians were more "prone" than other Middle Eastern civilizations to theological-metaphysical study, but at the same time they never felt the need to overcome the polytheistic form of their religion and the mythology intertwined with it, so that their major religious insights appear to have remained unorganized and present occasionally in references to individual deities.
An example of this situation can be given by a passage from the fundamental chapter CXXV, in which the god Thoth is defined as "the god who resides in his own hour", while the deceased defines the living as "those who reside in their own day". knowing each other "no longer among them" [74]. A periphrasis like this may be unclear, but since "the Egyptian eye is no less inquisitive than the Greek one, and it cannot be said that the ancient Land of Kemet lacked theoretical aptitude" [75], it seems to be based on a profoundly philosophical idea: the deceased, being now out of time, no longer "resides" in the his "day", that is, his life is no longer circumstantial by its own temporal limits like that of the living, who "reside in the their same day» (that is, they are present, so to speak, for a fixed time), while the god (in this case Thoth) «resides» stably «in his own hour», that is to say that the US temporal dimension is not like that of the deceased (which is acquired), nor like the precarious one of the living: it is an immutable time, in which the "now" (that is, the fragment of time) has no limits, and therefore coincides with the eternity.
In Egyptian thought, therefore, there seem to exist at least two concepts of time: the eternal "hour" of the gods and the limited "day" of the human being; who, dying, frees himself from temporal limits and the precariousness of life; he, if he will be assured of a clear conscience and accompanied by the timely recitation of the Book of the Dead, will escape all the dangers of the Underworld, «he will drink the running water of the river and will shine like a star in the Sky» [76]. This sentence, at the end of the Rubric in chapter CLXV, once again recalls the biblical language: «On the day of their judgment the righteous will shine like sparks» (Wisdom, 3, 7), "they will shine like the stars forever" (Daniele, 12, 3). The sacred water which, drunk and/or crossed, reunites and reconciles the man-son and the God-father, is also found at the end of theApocalypse (the «river of living water», 22, 1), in the last cantos of Purgatorio Dantesco (the rivers Lethe and Eunoe) and in conclusion to the famous Neverending Story by Michael Ende (chapter XXVI, The Waters of Life). With this hope of eternity ends the whole Book of the Dead of Turin, and like each of the three songs of the Divine Comedy, even the ancient Egyptian papyrus ends with a vision of the starry sky.
NOTE:
(Continued from the notes section of the part I)
[39] The relative reliability of Moses' birth in this middle year is also supported by the historical chronology at the end of Pierre Do-Dinh, Confucius and Chinese humanism, Milan, Mondadori, 1962, p. 185.
[40] A Jewish tradition (known for example by the actor Moni Ovadia), maintains that Moses' verbal difficulty was due to his modesty and emotionality, which made it very difficult for him to speak in public (and this agrees with his reluctance in present himself to Pharaoh at the command of YHWH). According to a fabled version, the stuttering was caused by a burning coal with which the infant Moses burned his mouth (cf. Michèle Kahn, Bible stories and legends. From the Garden of Eden to the Promised Land, Milan, Bompiani, 1995, pp. 111-112).
[41] The Djed column is curiously very similar, both in form and meaning, to the Chinese ideogram wang (three horizontal lines crossed by a vertical line), which means «king» and symbolizes the figure of the emperor as a living image of the cosmic-social law (vertical line) which unites the earth (bottom line), humanity (bottom line) median) and the sky (upper line).
[42] The Book of the Dead (BdR), p. 133.
[43] In particular, the "plagues of Egypt" seem to be memories of the brief ecological upheaval that struck the Eastern Mediterranean countries as a result of the catastrophic volcanic eruption that destroyed the Greek island of Thera-Santorini around 1603 BC. C., that is in a period in which the Jewish tribes had already been present in Egypt perhaps for two-three generations. The series of events has been reconstructed by the biologists Augusto Mangini and Siro Trevisanato (interviewed for Atlantis-Stories of men and worlds, La 7, episode of 14 April 2011): see Siro Trevisanato, L'historicité des textes bibliques: les plaies d'Égypte. A link on similar conclusions is www.theblueplanetheart.it/2017/07/léruta-distruttiva-del-vulcano-thera-dellisola-santorini/.
[44] The Book of the Dead (BdR), p. 61.
[45] Ibid, p. 62.
[46] Ibid, p. 98.
[47] Ibid, p. 82.
[48] Ibid, p. 58.
[49] Ibid, pp. 93-94.
[50] Ibid, p. 127. The power of the serpent Rerek to harm with its eyes is comparable to that of the basilisk, the hybrid of reptile and bird mentioned in the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder and then in the medieval Bestiaries, capable of killing with his gaze (cf. Mercatante, Universal Dictionary of Myths and Legends, cit., p. 117), a characteristic for which some have considered that the basilisk was a distorted exaggeration of the cobra, a snake widespread in Egypt and endowed with blinding venom.
[51] The first paragraph is quoted in Mercatante, Universal Dictionary of Myths and Legends cit., p. 259; the second is taken from www.liturgiamaranatha.it/Esorcismi/b3/1page.htm.
[52] The Book of the Dead (BdR), p. 94.
[53] Ibid, p. 109.
[54] Ibid, p. 131.
[55] The meaning of «before purchasing, resurrection" inApocalypse has been debated for centuries: it could be linked to a millenarian conception of the author - who was almost certainly not John the apostle-evangelist, but another John (see Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical history, III, 39 and VII, 25), or someone who signed himself as the apostle (pseudo-epigraphy) to give greater authority to theApocalypse – who believed (contrary to the major Church, then «Catholic») in a resurrection in two phases (Ap. 20, 1-5): first that of the martyrs, who will reign on earth with Christ for a thousand years; then, these concluded, the resurrection of the dead of every age and place.
[56] See eg. The Bible. First reading, edited by Pietro Vanetti SJ, Milan, Principality, 1984, p. 35. Significantly, «The Shaddai» was translated with «Pantocrator» by the 72 Jewish editors of the first Greek version of the Bible, called precisely «of the Septuagint», created in the XNUMXrd century BC. C. in Alexandria in Egypt, the city with the largest Jewish community in the ancient world outside Palestine.
[57] Alessandro Roccati, Egypt: space-time – The XNUMXnd millenniumin Egypt. Introduction to the world of the Pharaohs, cit., p. 26.
[58] The Book of the Dead (BdR), p. 98.
[59] See Edda Bresciani, Ancient Egypt – Literature and the Artsin Casale's story, vol.1, From prehistoric times to ancient Egypt, cit., p. 677.
[60] The Book of the Dead (BdR), p. 105.
[61] Donadoni Roveri, Egyptian museum, cit., p. 41.
[62] However, there is also a medical explanation: «Almost all ancient populations had food restrictions due to religious observance. In part these regulations had the characteristic of elementary hygiene and dietary rules. In certain geographical places (such as the countries of the Middle East) exceeding the consumption of pork (very fatty and difficult to keep) and drinking a lot of alcohol (which at high temperatures can cause heart failure) can cause serious damage to health" ( Maria Rosa Poggio, Renato Rosso, Research and Revelation, Turin, SEI, 1998, p. 39).
[63] Data taken from www.cartigli.it/ e https://www.it.qaz.wiki/Yakub-Har .
[64] Meri-wser-Ra Yakub-har cannot therefore be Jacob himself, as Enrico Baccarini and Andrea Di Lenardo hypothesize in From India to the Bible. Remote contacts between India and the ancient Near East, Florence, Enigma, 2018, pp. 143-147. Of a government role entrusted to Jacob, in fact, the Bible he says nothing, but remembers his son Giuseppe who became viceroy.
[65] See Alessandro Conti Puorger, History and myth of the Jews in Egypt, https://www.bibbiaweb.net/lett185e.htm.
[66] See Giuseppe Ricciotti, Life of Jesus Christ, Milan, Mondadori, 1941, § 79. It is an idea similar to that of thenow of the Greeks – with nowindeed, it was translated sheol from the first Greek version of the Bible, called «of the Septuagint» – represented e.g. in canto XI of theOdyssey, in which Ulysses descends into the underworld. An echo of this conception of the afterlife is still found in the «loca pallidula, rigid, bare» of the famous verses of the Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138 AD), written thinking of his own death.
[67] The Book of the Dead (BdR), pp. 101-102 passim.
[68] Ibid, p. 103.
[69] Ibid, p. 104 passim.
[70] Ibid, p. 151.
[71] We can only refer to Sabina Marineo, The symbolism of the djed pillar . The four sons of Horus, Pillars of Heaven, can be compared with the four Bacab Giants of the Mesoamerican mythology of the Mayas (cfr. Mercatante, Universal Dictionary of Myths and Legends, P. 108).
[72] Paul Matthiae, The Jews from Abraham to the Babylonian exilein Casale's story, vol.1, From prehistoric times to ancient Egypt, cit., p. 493.
[73] Ibidem, ibid, p. 496.
[74] The Book of the Dead (BdR), p. 104.
[75] Whistles, In the name of thought, Postal Code. VI (typescript cit., p. 105).
[76] Ibid, p. 139 (Formula to land, not to be overshadowed and to make the body thrive in drinking water).
