DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4858#0038
ITS CREATIVE IDEAS
gods or to provide themselves with defenses against the spiritual
enemy ? And what was the extent to which the dead were dependent
for happiness on the piety of the living ? The practical answer lay in
doing as much as possible to secure for oneself and one's friends all the
guarantees or aids to future bliss, and to shrink from no redundancy
of means to this end. Burial equipment, daily offerings, amulets,
pictures and inscriptions, prayers and contracts with the priests were
all effectual acts of piety. Those most in favor at any one time
might vary with the ideas, the customs, the prosperity of the age.
But this much stands fast that, though the good-will of the gods is
indisputable, no prudent man will neglect, or suffer posterity to neglect,
all the help of rite and magic to secure their favor, or to achieve the
end despite their indifference. Even rites no longer understood or
commonly practised should be performed if possible. For that moral
nexus between conduct and happiness which to us means so much and
to the Buddhist everything, was feebly conceived by the ancient
Egyptian, and considered only on its favorable side. "I know that
at the last God returns evil to him who does it, justice to him who
brings it. May justice be done to me as I have done it, and good
be repaid to me in every way."1
As the funerary monuments of ancient Egypt are the fullest
sources of its history for us, we are apt to look on them as historic
documents and judge them accordingly. But if the biographical instinct
comes to expression at times, it is never in the least historical, never
attempts to set the individual life in its place in the greater story of
the nation, but is always based on inordinate, and generally bombastic,
self-esteem. For to the greed of earthly good are added ambitions
for the eternal life based upon the former. "0 every one that liveth
upon earth, I will tell you (my) way of life, I bear witness to you of
rewards." "0 every one who desires to reach old age, interment, and
proper obsequies (when) one is sated with life, hear for yourselves!
Enter my tomb and see how great is that which was done to me."
Attitude
towards es-
chatological
problems
A purely
biographical
impulse lack-
ing in the
tombs
Tomb 83.
Davies, El Amarna, VI, pp. 27, 34-
II
gods or to provide themselves with defenses against the spiritual
enemy ? And what was the extent to which the dead were dependent
for happiness on the piety of the living ? The practical answer lay in
doing as much as possible to secure for oneself and one's friends all the
guarantees or aids to future bliss, and to shrink from no redundancy
of means to this end. Burial equipment, daily offerings, amulets,
pictures and inscriptions, prayers and contracts with the priests were
all effectual acts of piety. Those most in favor at any one time
might vary with the ideas, the customs, the prosperity of the age.
But this much stands fast that, though the good-will of the gods is
indisputable, no prudent man will neglect, or suffer posterity to neglect,
all the help of rite and magic to secure their favor, or to achieve the
end despite their indifference. Even rites no longer understood or
commonly practised should be performed if possible. For that moral
nexus between conduct and happiness which to us means so much and
to the Buddhist everything, was feebly conceived by the ancient
Egyptian, and considered only on its favorable side. "I know that
at the last God returns evil to him who does it, justice to him who
brings it. May justice be done to me as I have done it, and good
be repaid to me in every way."1
As the funerary monuments of ancient Egypt are the fullest
sources of its history for us, we are apt to look on them as historic
documents and judge them accordingly. But if the biographical instinct
comes to expression at times, it is never in the least historical, never
attempts to set the individual life in its place in the greater story of
the nation, but is always based on inordinate, and generally bombastic,
self-esteem. For to the greed of earthly good are added ambitions
for the eternal life based upon the former. "0 every one that liveth
upon earth, I will tell you (my) way of life, I bear witness to you of
rewards." "0 every one who desires to reach old age, interment, and
proper obsequies (when) one is sated with life, hear for yourselves!
Enter my tomb and see how great is that which was done to me."
Attitude
towards es-
chatological
problems
A purely
biographical
impulse lack-
ing in the
tombs
Tomb 83.
Davies, El Amarna, VI, pp. 27, 34-
II