Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick.

  • James Bonwick
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian belief and modern thought / by James Bonwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    98/474 (page 84)
    4 the conception of its constant existence from all eternity. Souls, therefore, progressing or changing through the ages, could only have originated with the beginning of all things. They dated the pre-existence of souls with the pre-existence of matter. A priest, named Penteni, asks, upon his funeral stele, “to be recognized as justified in Amenti near Osiris, to respire sacred prayers, and to enjoy all the ordinary offer- ings of the deceased.” But then we have the piayer that he might “go forth as a living soul, to take all the forms which may please him.” Pierret may well say of the changes, “ they are only transformations.” Nothing is more common upon funeral monuments than the expression of a desire to go out and in as the person might please. The prayer is almost universal, that the man may pass through transformations most agreeable to him- self. “ We know,” says Chabas, “ that such was the principal beatitude of the elect of the Egyptian heaven ; it allowed the faculty of transformation into all the universe under the form wished for.” The god Khepra, with folding wings, symbolized the metamorphoses. But we may demur to the materialistic conclusion of M. Deveria. “ The funeral books, he observes, show us clearly that resurrection was, in reality, but a renovation leading to a new existence, a new infancy, and a new youth. That which was for the vulgar the resurrection of the body was, then, for the initiated only the eternal renova- tion of nature.” Pierret puts it thus: “ The deceased is god ; that is to say, he renews himself during millions of years.” This is, of course, pure pantheism. “ The bodies,” adds he, “ metamorphose themselves eternally by the ex- change of their molecules.” Elsewhere, he writes of the “ dissolution of the material body in giving the elements to metamorphoses.” In this, pure materialism is recognized.