Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Alan H. Gardiner on Universalism in Middle Egyptian

  

A very curious Middle Kingdom papyrus appears to recommend suicide as the only remedy, and in a passage of considerable beauty death is praised as a happy event. But there also existed a view of the tomb as a place of rest and tranquilty. A poem expressing this thought is inscribed on a tomb-wall exactly opposite the song of our hedonistic harper, and is so brave an answer to that early precursor of Epicurus that I will quote it in extenso:

 

I have heard those songs that are in the ancient tombs, and what they tell extolling life on earth and belittling the region of the dead. Wherefore do they thus concerning the land of eternity, the just and fair, which has no terrors? Wrangling is its abhorrence, and no man there girds himself against his fellow. It is a land against which none can rebel; all our kinsfolk rest within it since the earliest day of time. The offspring of millions of millions are come thither, every one. For none may tarry in the land of Egypt, none there is who has not passed yonder. The span of earthly things is a dream; but a fair welcome is given to him who has reached the West. (Alan H. Gardner, The Attitude of the Ancient Egyptians to Death and the Dead [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935], 31-32)