This double had to be installed in a lodging suitable to its existence, had to be surrounded by objects which it had used in its former state, had to be supplied with the food which was necessary for the sustenance of its life. And all these things it obtained from the piety of its relations, who, on fixed days, brought them to the threshold of the good dwelling or the eternal dwelling, which were the phrases used by the Egyptians.[1] By these offerings alone could the hungry and thirsty phantom which had replaced the living man be kept alive. The first duty of the survivors was to take care that this dependent existence should not be extinguished by their neglect, to provide food and drink for the support, if we may use such a phrase, of the precarious life of the dead, who would otherwise be irritated against them and use the almost godlike power attributed to his mysterious condition for the punishment of his ungrateful posterity.[2]
This conception is not peculiar to Egypt. The double of the Egyptian sepulchral records corresponds exactly to the εἴδωλον[3] of the Greeks and the umbra of the Latins. Both Greeks and Latins believed that when the funeral rites had been duly accomplished, this image or shadow entered upon the possession of a subterranean dwelling and began a life which was no more than the continuation of that in the light.[4] The dead thus remained in close relation with the living, on the one hand by the nourishment which they received, on the other by the protection which they afforded; even in the funeral repast they took their parts, in the strictest sense of the word, in the eating and drinking.[5] They looked impatiently forward to these supplies
- ↑ This expression, which is very common in the Egyptian texts, seems to have made a great impression upon the Greek travellers. The following passage of Diodorus is well known: "This refers to the beliefs of the natives, who look upon the life upon earth as a thing of minor importance, but set a high value upon those virtues of which the memory is perpetuated after death. They call their houses hotels, in view of the short time they have to spend in them, while they call their tombs their eternal dwellings" (i. 51).
- ↑ The dead were put under the protection of, and, as it were, combined with, Osiris; they talked of the Osiris so and so in naming one who was dead.
- ↑ Εἴδωλα καμόντων (Il. xxiii. 72; Od. xi. 476; xxiv. 14).
- ↑ This belief is clearly stated in a passage from Cicero quoted by Fustel: "Sub terrâ censebant reliquam vitam agi mortuorum" (Tusc. i. 16). This belief was so strong that it subsisted even after the universal establishment of the custom of burning the bodies of the dead.
- ↑ Texts to this effect abound. Fustel brought the more remarkable of them together in his Cité antique (p. 14). We shall be content with quoting three: "Son of Peleus," said Neoptolemus, "take this drink which is grateful to the dead; come and drink this blood" (Hecuba, 536). Electra says when she pours a libation; "This drink has penetrated the earth; my father has received it" (Choephorœ, 162). And listen to the prayer of Orestes to his dead father: "Oh my father, if I live thou shalt have rich banquets; if I die thou wilt have no portion of those smoking feasts which nourish the dead" (Choephorœ, 482-484). Upon the strange persistence of this belief, traces of which are still found in Eastern Europe, in Albania, in Thessaly, and Epirus, the works of Heuzey (Mission archéologique de Macédoine, p. 156), and Albert Dumont (le Balkan et l'Adriatique, pp. 354-356), may be consulted. Some curious details relating to the funeral feasts of the Chinese are to be found in the Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions, 1877, p. 325. There are some striking points of resemblance between the religion of China and that of ancient Egypt; in both one and the other the same want of power to develop may be found. Taking them as a whole, both the Chinese and the Egyptians failed to emerge from the condition of fetichism.
