Mitchell, Lucy M.: A history of ancient sculpture (New York, 1883)

MYSTERIOUS SUBJECTS IN TOMBS. 45

antelopes, wild goats, ducks, and cranes, marching in procession before the

ewards. All has become, so to speak, fantastic and chimerical. Even the

o°cls themselves assume strange forms. Long serpents are pictured gliding

1 ner and thither around the rooms, or standing erect against the door-ways.

ometimes convicted malefactors are being decapitated, or precipitated into

e names. Well might a visitor feel a kind of dread creeping over him, did

n°t realize, that underneath these strange representations lies a most con-

lng dogma, vouchsafing eternal happiness to the soul after the many trials

llte- Covering the walls, from the entrance to the extreme end of the

amber, are represented the many labors of the soul, separated from the

y> triumphant by such virtues as it has practised on earth, and ending in

e final judgment. The serpents, darting venom, and standing erect over

cn portal, are the guardians to the gates of heaven, which the soul cannot

I ss unless possessed of piety and benevolence. The long texts on other

I rts of the wall are magnificent hymns, to which the soul gives utterance in

nor of the divinity whose glory and greatness it thus celebrates. When

ce the dead has been adjudged worthy of life eternal, these ordeals are at

er>d : he becomes part of the divine essence; and henceforward he wanders,

pure spirit, over the vast regions where the stars forever shine. Thus the

e icfs of the tombs arc the emblem of the voyage of the soul to its eternal

ode. From room to room we can follow its progress, as it appears before the

& s> ar>d becomes gradually purified, until at last, in the grand hall at the end

the tomb, we are present at its final admission into that life where a second

death shall never reach."

*nis supreme regard for the inviolability of the tomb, and the careful preser-

10r> of its reliefs forever to be sealed from mortal view, seem to show with

at tenacity the Egyptian held to the belief in the magical virtue of these

ured anc* sculptured emblems to assist the soul in its future trials. Did

th

e g°d thus appear distributing reward in the tomb, the soul would, in reality,
re sUrely receive it; and, did the deceased appear in his tomb as journeying

»e celestials, the securer would be his future bliss.

■Although reliefs, figuring the gods, thus abound in these rock-tombs of the
^gs, statues, properly so called, are not found ; the nearest approach to them
mg very high relief at the extreme end of the chamber where the deceased,
betimes, is seated between two gods : and sometimes the front part of the

-shaped goddess, Amenti, projects from the wall, as though approaching

e deceased. All these gods appertain to the myth of Osiris, the solar deities

ng excluded from this sombre region. "The life of man is compared by the

•vPtians to the course of the sun above our heads," says Mariette; "and

sun, disappearing in the west, is the image of the deceased. Scarcely has

ast moment arrived, when Osiris takes possession of the soul which he is

arged to conduct to eternal life. Osiris, it was said, once descended upon