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| A Well-Stocked Tomb. |
We know the ancient Egyptians had a firm
conviction that you could take it all with you when you died, provided your
worldly goods were placed in your tomb with you. Food, wine, furniture, games,
weapons, treasures...
They believed that the afterlife would be a continuation
of life on the Nile, only better, but with the same sorts of challenges.
Now imagine if we died and woke up in the
next world to learn that they were right - only the ancient Egyptians owned any
stuff.
The rest of us arrive empty-handed.
Mind you, not many ancient
Egyptians retained their worldly goods for long with the systematic depredation
of tomb robbers and of archaeology.
Picture it.
It's the Field of Reeds and a man is
running plish, plash, plish in the shallows of the riverbank in
the dawn mist.
We are born alone, we die alone and we
arise again alone and he is alone now, peering through the mist for another
sign of life after death.
Reeds whip against his legs and body. Do
scaly crocodiles lurk in here? Surely not. These are the fields of Aaru,
not the menacing underworld that he has just passed through. That
guardian-haunted journey of gateways, passages and passwords of the night still
cling to him like a nightmare does to the newly awakened and he puts on a spurt
to distance himself further from it.
Yet he longs for a weapon to defend
himself.
Something. A rock. Even a stick in case he
has to fight off an unknown terror.
His instinct for protection tells him to be
afraid, yet he wonders what he should ever have to fear in this place. Then he
recalls that here in this realm of the Field of Reeds men walk among the gods
and demigods.
He hears a cracking voice that seems to
bend the reeds like a breeze with its force.
“Who enters the reeds? And what riches and
offerings do you bring with you?”
‘Riches?’ he thinks.
He is a poor man, a tomb guard, and he went
to his grave with only a basket of food, his spear and a jar of beer, which he
left behind when he ran out of the open tomb mouth to emerge into the dawn of
another world.
Almost too late, he sees a figure standing
in the mist like a statue. It is a giant, grim-faced being wearing a skull gap
and a tightly fitting gown.
A neter, or god. Or perhaps a demi-god.
The air thins and chills and he smells a
curious odour like burning gum. The perfume of divinity. The entity wears a
thin curled beard and holds the symbol of a god in his hand. An axe like a flag
on a long pole.
The running man drops to his belly and lies
still in shallow water, plunged into shock and cold, amid a crowd of bending
reeds, their acid-green pungency filling his nostrils.
“Bring wealth and you will be served,” the cracking voice
said. “Bring no wealth and you must serve. You can run as they all do to
escape eternal servitude, but you will be hunted down.”
What does this mean? That to those who have
will be given and to those who have not, what little they have shall be taken
from them?
Not paradise, but eternal servitude!
This does not seem like a fitting reward
for one who has been justified by Osiris in the Hall of Judgement.
Is having a soul free of guilt not enough
to earn rest and eternal bliss? Does he have to buy paradise?
“So you choose to hide and run?” the unseen god
thundered. “Then the demigods will come after you. Men and women with serpent
heads. Lioness women. Jackal men. And you have nothing to protect yourself with
because you are one who has brought nothing... ”
‘I still have my spear back there in the
tomb,’ he thinks. ‘Shall I return for it?’
No. He’s come too far now.
Better to crawl in a wide circle around the
being and keep going.
There must be other tombs, other new
arrivals that have brought things too. A spear. Bow and arrows. A sword.
And gold - that might be useful in this
place.
Other tombs.
He is shocked by his own thoughts. Is he
going steal grave goods from a tomb?
He remembers the words that he recited to
Osiris in the Negative Confession:
I have wronged none…
I have not stolen.
I have done no evil.
He has sworn these things before the Judge
of the Dead in order to enter the Field of Reeds and now he is planning to
commit the very sins he denied.
Is it his fate to become a tomb robber in
heaven...?”
