Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [37]
The center of the picture depicts a great suspension scale with two balance cups suspended. The hieroglyph for heart is engraved on one side and a feather, the symbol of ma’at, on the other. The weighing of the heart was obviously a depiction of its worth against the standard of justice, bringing the invention of interchangeable measurement into the science of the soul. This, in itself, helps us understand what democratization of the afterlife must have meant because people with different deeds and occupations were measured against a fixed standard. The point of the scene was that Ani’s heart had to be found lighter than the feather of ma’at. Since the heart was the seat of intelligence, it was the part of the person answerable for moral behavior. It was commonly associated with the ba. As a result of this trial, Ani became, in effect, an akh in the afterlife and achieved in death a kind of complete personal reintegration in his exalted and transcendent state. The obvious representation of this would be depictions of the deceased among the stars, and indeed such illustrations exist. Ani apparently preferred to think of himself as savoring the joys of life. One vision of beatific existence did not contradict or prevent him from enjoying the other as well.
Heka, or Power
TO BE SURE, many of the rituals were supposed to work merely by the power of the ritual itself, the heka. But the underlying tone of moral character assumed in this scene is found explicitly in chapter 125 of The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Here was a profession of moral innocence. In the first section, addressed to Osiris, the reciter protests innocence of a long list of impieties and immoralities. In the second section, addressed to forty-two tutelary divinities, is a second list of protestations of innocence. This is followed by a prayer:
Hail to you, O gods of this place! I know you, I know your names. I shall not fall under your blows. You will not report that I am evil to this god in whose retinue you are. My case shall not come through you. My case shall not come through you. You shall say that ma’at returns me, in the presence of the Universal Lord; for I have practiced ma’at in Egypt. I have not offended the god. My case shall not be reported as evil….61
Power over the tutelary divinities depended on knowing their correct names, apparently so that one could address a spell or report on them in the event that they did not behave as instructed. In the afterlife, as in this life, the bureacrats and administrators could not be expected to automatically represent one’s case impartially. Special spells were like divine bakshish (the contemporary Arabic word for small “tips” or “bribes”), necessary at every turn to insure performance.62 This procedure looks to us like magic, but it is a commonplace even in the modern Middle East. One wonders whether it should not be considered high religion in Egypt because the effect of the spells is to change one’s immortal status, not change one’s life on earth. And, as I said above, Egypt did not make any distinction between magic and religion, so probably we should not in our attempt to distinguish various facets of their religious life.
But besides what seems to us to be an obvious magical response to an anxious life, we recognize that moral values are present as well. The pharaoh may have achieved immortality because the gods loved him so much they gave him the correct spells or prayers, or he may have successfully passed all the ordeals he faced in his journey to the afterlife. But the “the middle classes” (i.e., the client retainers and workmen of the pharaoh) definitely had to lead moral lives, as the judgment scene shows, in order to receive their just reward. The history of Egyptian