Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [22]
Instead of seeking simple analogies among the various pantheons, we should attempt to understand the symbolic nature of Egyptian religion. Sometimes a myth was created by the interaction between the ideographic hieroglyph and the Egyptian word. For instance, in the Middle Kingdom, humanity was created out of the tears of the creator sun god. The myth, like the rebus-like system of hieroglyphics itself, is based on wordplay, because humans (rmt) and tears (rmit) have the same consonantal structure.9 Consistency seems to be more important to us than it was for the Egyptians; or else they were unable to achieve it right away. For the ancient Egyptian, the sky could be supported by posts or held up by a god. It could rest on walls or be a cow or a goddess whose arms and feet touch the earth. The process of slowly unifying many local traditions encompassed a much larger degree of ambiguity than would appeal to us. Each of the major accounts of creation in ancient Eyptian documents, namely those found in the Pyramid Texts, The Book of the Dead, and The Memphis Theology, suggest several incongruent ways that the creation took place. These ambiguities reflect underlying different geographical origins for many creation stories.
Pyramids and Mummies
MUMMIFICATION was practiced in Egypt as early as the Old Kingdom. In burial sites dating millennia before the historical period, we have evidence that the Egyptians purposely took advantage of the natural preservation of bodies in the desert. Mummification, artificially aiding natural preservation of the body in dry sand, evolved into a science quite early. Because of the dry climate, the Egyptian interest in stability could be technologically applied to mortuary practice. Once the dessicating properties of natron (a naturally-occurring mixture of salts and carbonates) were discovered, the technology developed rapidly. The mummified body was also eviscerated, presumably because the internal organs are more apt to decay, and the organs were separately interred in what Egyptologists now call canopic jars. The body was dipped in various other unguents and preservatives, then carefully, ritually, and symmetrically wrapped in yards of linen ribbon, which also enclosed various charms, amulets, and talismans. Finally, it could be covered with a mask made of costly materials, as it was in early days, or, later in Hellenistic times, with a very realistic, encaustic (beeswax and honey-based) painted image of the deceased encased in cartonnage or papier-mâché.10 Then it was placed in a series of coffins.
Our word “mummy” derives from the Arabic word for bitumen because the desiccated mummies develop a characteristic dark pitchlike hue and bitumen was, in fact, sometimes used in the preservation process. Since the desiccating process virtually destroyed all tissue except the skin and bones, mortuary priests began to pad the skin with various substances so as to conserve a more natural look. Artificial eyes were often placed on top of the eyelids and the eye socket filled with marbles or onions.11 All this contributed to a more naturally appearing mummy. No one fully understands what mummification meant to the Egyptians but its meaning seems to adhere to the process of preserving the body for eternity. In early Egyptian society, the body itself could stand for the “self.” Transforming the body somehow symbolized or paralleled the transformation of the self into its afterlife form.
The mummies were originally placed in masteba tombs, an Arabic word which simply means “bench” and refers to their trapezoidal shape. Pyramids (Egyptian m’r) were constructed, in some sense, by placing mastebas on top of each other, in ever decreasing size like a wedding cake, as the famous step pyramid of Saqqara shows. As the form developed, the steps between them were then filled in. Many texts suggest pyramids represent the primal mountain emerging from the sea at creation. Over a hundred pyramids were built, of which more than