Plaything of Sekhmet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ikhet_sekhmet) wrote2017-11-13 07:27 pm
ikhet_sekhmet) wrote2017-11-13 07:27 pm
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Death as an Enemy 7
What else is death like? Like being bound or imprisoned: "Man cannot move any more and go where he wants." Spells protect the deceased from being fettered, tied, shut up, or waylaid. Sleep: more spells guard against tiredness and sleep. (Man, I could use some of that.) To be "snatched away" or stolen.
The next section is entitled "The realm of the dead as a place of darkness". "It is a dark place," writes Zandee, "where the light of the sun does not penetrate." A lament describes it as "deep and dark", without doors, windows, or light. "The sun does not rise there, but the dead lie in the dark all days." Various words for "darkness" crop up in spells, including kkw, familiar from the name of the primal gods Kek and Kauket. Demons lurk in the darkness.
Fire and darkness seem to be linked: in the Book of Two Ways, there is "the place of a spirit, which has fallen into the fire, which enters darkness"; in the same text there's the "gate of darkness, which is shut by a fiery door, on which the word śḏ.t, flame, is written. The [gate] is black, the door is of a red colour." But "[t]he dead overcomes the darkness to be with Re in heaven", and gods may light his or her path. "In the tombs of the kings the darkness is the residence of the king. They revive temporarily, as long as Re shines there." But Osiris's enemies "never catch sight of the sun".
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Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.
The next section is entitled "The realm of the dead as a place of darkness". "It is a dark place," writes Zandee, "where the light of the sun does not penetrate." A lament describes it as "deep and dark", without doors, windows, or light. "The sun does not rise there, but the dead lie in the dark all days." Various words for "darkness" crop up in spells, including kkw, familiar from the name of the primal gods Kek and Kauket. Demons lurk in the darkness.
Fire and darkness seem to be linked: in the Book of Two Ways, there is "the place of a spirit, which has fallen into the fire, which enters darkness"; in the same text there's the "gate of darkness, which is shut by a fiery door, on which the word śḏ.t, flame, is written. The [gate] is black, the door is of a red colour." But "[t]he dead overcomes the darkness to be with Re in heaven", and gods may light his or her path. "In the tombs of the kings the darkness is the residence of the king. They revive temporarily, as long as Re shines there." But Osiris's enemies "never catch sight of the sun".
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Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.