ANCIENT EGYPT

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 155, 29 December 1936, Page 13

ANCIENT EGYPT

MESSAGE OF PYRAMIDS

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY

SHOWN IN THE TOMBS

"Coming events cast their shadows before," writes the poet. And science answers, "Yes!" writes George L. Robinson in the "Yorkshire Post."

A civilisation perishes, but leaves its earthenware to be buried in the sands.

Eons later explorers find the pottery and read the story of the lost race.

Now comes archaeology and tells us that 3000 years before the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the vast, mysterious pyramids of Egypt foreshadowed Easter!

I have stood in those inner chambers of the tombs of ancient kings. I have ga2ed at those hieroglyphics, unsolved for thousands of years, and felt their unknown message gripping me. I have heard the.ages speaking, but in vain.

Now I know! It was resurrection and immortality bidding for comprehension —the great themes of Eastertide. And the recent deciphering of the pyramid inscriptions reveals them to be phrased in strikingly similar terms to prophecies in the Old Testament and fulfilment in the New—so much so as to imply the resurrection of Christ Himself and to foreshadow His promise of eternal life!

About a thousand years before the coming of Christ, the patriarch Job exclaimed, "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth." The writer of "Ecclesiastes" breathed the hope of immortality.

Now, this foreshadowing of Easter by the prophecies of Scripture is set back more than another millennium— to at least 2625 8.C., long before the time of Moses and even that of Abraham—by the pyramid translations. It is not too much to say that the subject matter is the product of centuries, representing the thought and longings of a people dating perhaps 3500 or 4000 B.C.

CARVED OVER 4000 YEARS AGO.

The pyramids have not always stood as we now know them, stark against a desert sky. Century after century they lay buried under the sands of the Sahara, until excavations in 1880----81 revealed them. After the dust of millenniums had been removed . and the tombs entered again, it was found that ancient grave-robbers had taken away their treasures.

Even the mummies had gone. But clean cut and clear as in the period when they were chiselled, were the wall and ceiling inscriptions carved more than 4000 years ago.

The pyramids were the tombs of the Pharaohs, who forced the people to build these rich and imposing sepulchres. There are, .in all, seventy or seventy-five pyramids in Egypt, found usually in groups from Abu Roash, opposite Cairo, on the north, to Medum, on the south.

They are all located on the west side of the Nile River—a fact which in itself is significant. The largest group is that of Sakkara,. near ancient Memphis, a village six miles south of Cairo. They are a vast cemetery, and many of them belong to the Third Dynasty, about 3000 B.C.

But the Gizeh group Is by far the most famous. The largest of all is the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the second king of the Fourth Dynasty; it was called "The Glory of Cheops." Its present perpendicular height is 451 ft,! but it was probably 30ft higher before the aoex of small covering stones was removed. Originally, therefore, it was higher even than St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, while its base covers thirteen acres!

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. Two chambers lined with huge granite blocks brought 600 miles down the Nile from the First Cataract, were built in the interior of the Great Pyramidone for the king an the other for the queen. Here their mummified bodies were interred in immense sarcophagi.

Five of the pyramids bear inscriptions on the walls and ceilings of the tomb chambers. In recent months invaluable additions to the decipherings of, the hieroglyphics have been made and evaluated by Dr. George E. Duncan, of the American University at Washington, D.C.

They are strictly religious texts, consisting of prayers, hymns, incantations, magical formulas, and lists of offerings, as well as vivid descriptions of the future life.

Professor Duncan tells us that the text is substantially the same in each of the five pyramids,' and that the subject matter represents the growth of many centuries. Historical and mythological allusions show that portions go back to a period long before Menes, of the First Dynasty, 3400 B.C. The so-called "Coffin Texts" (2000 8.C.) and the "Book of the Dead" (1500 8.C.) are believed to have been based in part on these pyramid inscriptions. They are, archaeologists believe, the oldest religious literature known to us, and they epresent the most ancient hope of mankind—life beyond the grave! They were composed when the art of writing was unknown and were handed down from generation to generation by word of mouth.

BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. Let us see the picture of the future life as Professor Duncan draws it for us from the hieroglyphics of the pyramids. It will be seen that the inscriptions reveal a firm belief in immortality, although they express it in materialistic terms. Here is the pyramid teaching summarised:

1. That the future world is a. glorified Egypt, with trees, reeds, flowers, gardens, fields, lakes, rivers, and floods.

2. Its location is above, in the eastern part of the sky.

3. The resurrection oi the body is affirmed again and again.

4. The journey to the next world is over water, by means of rafts or ferry boats.

5. The world above is entered by doors and gates, with bolts and gatekeepers.

6. To enter heaven there is an ethical test, dependent upon the character of the life lived here on earth.

7. The dead king is welcomed into heaven with great ceremony, and is deified. . . '

8. The food in the next world consists chiefly of bread, milk, wine, fig cakes, sweetmeats, oil, geese, quail, and various kinds of fruits.

9. There is no shortage of food and the provisions are always fresh.

10. The ascended king resides in a palace and sits upon a throne. He is surrounded by servants and receives gifts.

It is a bodily resurrection the ancient Egyptians believed in, according to the repeated message of the deciphered inscriptions. Note this striking affirmation from the pyramids and compare the content —although the word picture is different—with Isaiah's rapturous exclamation:—

The pyramids: "Arise, dwellers in the tombs; loose your bandages; throw off the sand from your faces; lift up yourselves from your left side; support yourselves upon your right side." I "AWAKE AND SING." Isaiah (xxvi., 19): "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead." ! And the prophetic fulfilment (Matthew xxvi, 52): "The graves were: opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose." The late Professor James H. Breast-

Ed, distinguished head of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and a foremost Egyptologist and archaeologist, stated that the pyramid inscriptions contained "the earliest traces in the history of man of an ethical test at the close of life, making the life hereafter dependent upon the character of the life lived on earth."

The pyramid readings: "Hail, King Pepy; thou art pure; thy spiritual part is pure among the glorified. . . . This King Pepy is worthy for the aky and for the earth."

Words of Jesus (John v, 28-29): "Marvel not at this; for the hour is coming, in which all that.are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."

The inscriptions on pyramid walls are poetry, some of the highest orderi breathing the beauty of the Psalms and the prophecies of Scripture. The similarity between the ancient Egyptian belief in immortality, the yearning of Job for knowledge of it, and the words of St. Paul to the Church at Ephesus, is strikingly significant: The pyramids: "Though thou sleepest, thou wakest again; though thou diest, thou liyest again." Job speaking (xiv, 14): "If a man die, shall he live again?" St. Paul (Eph. v, 14): "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead. . ". ." And then, as in fulfilment of the yearning of man through the ages for the whole Easter message, St. Paul adds: "And Christ shall give thee light!" THE "MYTH OF OSIRIS." Another foreshadowing of Christ, His martyrdom and resurrection, is to be found in the "Myth of Osiris." Immortality, first the reward of the Pharaohs only, was granted to the peasant through Osiris, in the resurrection of whom the common' people saw the pledge of life everlasting for themselves, too, beyond the grave. | " Thus, according to native 'tradition, Osiris, who had been a good and beloved king of Egypt, and had suffered a violent death, rose from the dead and was ever afterwards worshipped as a! deity; and this eternal blessing of immortal life the peasants obtained through him. Osiris was thus a kind of mediator. The king—a violent death —body prepared for burial—resurrection from the dead—worshipped as a deity—providing immortality through his death and resurrection! How every step seems to foreshadow One greater than he who should walk the pathway of humiliation and death. Two cities above all others were associated with the memory of Osiris as preserved in the myth: Busiris, inLower Egypt, which claimed to possess the backbone of Osiris; and Abydos, in Upper Egypt, which gloried in the possession of his head. Abydos.became, we are told, the holiest spot in all Egypt. His tomb became to the Egyptians what the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is to Christians. It was the wish of all pious Egyptians that their own bodies should rest in hallowed earth near the grave of the glorified Osiris. If too poor to purchase a lot in the cemetery of pyramids at Abydos, they pledged their surviving relatives and friends to convey their mortal remains to Abydos, there to tarry for a short time. Then they would be brought, back by river and interred in their own native villages. VIVIDLY PORTRAYED. In a series of bas-reliefs at Denderah the dead god Osiris is most vividly portrayed: first, lying swathed as a mummy on his bier, then gradually raising himself up higher and higher, until at last he stands erect between the guardian wings of the faithful Isis and another deity, holding the Egyptian symbol of life. The resurrection of the god is thus depicted. Even, more instructive is another representation of the same event in a chamber dedicated to Osiris in the great temple of Isis on the Island of Philac. Here we see the dead body of Osiris, with stalks of grain springing from it, while a priest waters the grain from a pitcher held in his hand. That is to say, Osiris is thus evidently represented as a personification of the grain^ which springs from the fields after they have been fertilised by the inundation. In foreshadowing Easter, the pyramids have linked the dawn of recorded time with the modern day by the ties of immortal hope. To Christians today, as to the Egyptians 5000 years ago, immortality is an essential element of religious faith. __ Easter is the gladdest day in the Christian calendar.

The desire to live after death may be declared to be' merely the barren utterance of human egoism, shrinking from annihilation. Nonetheless,, human nature has craved it universally since history began, and if for every cause there is an effect and for every instinct a fulfilment, then.the desire shall not go unsatisfied.