To Me Belongs Yesterday, I Know Tomorrow

Reading The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Ani-papyrus plates 7-14

In this newsletter, I am reading the approx. 850 authors and works of Harold Bloom's Western canon, from cover to cover, from the Epic of Gilgamesh of ca. 1200 B.C. to Tony Kushner's 1991 play Angels in America. For today I’ve continued reading the second on Bloom’s list, the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

I’d like to say a few words about hieroglyphics. The editors of the volume from which I’m reading, Goelet, Faulker, et al., stress that the orthographic symbols used in Ani’s papyrus and other ancient-Egyptian texts are not just pictures that directly signify the things that they look like. Much like the letters of our Roman alphabet, Egyptian hieroglyphics represented the sounds that made up the Egyptian language. But, unlike the writing system used in this newsletter, I gather that some hieroglyphics had a semantic rather than a phonetic function, that is, the reader would read that hieroglyphic and understand it to signify some thing or concept, but would not understand it to represent a sound. Our editors, at least in the parts of this volume I have read, don’t explain how the phonetic symbols worked with the semantic ones, but I know that Chinese characters function in a similar way: one component of the character will supply the pronunciation and another component will supply or at least hint at the meaning; so maybe Egyptian “words” were made up of one phonetic hieroglyphic and one or more semantic hieroglyphics; but this is just speculation.

I think it’s a slight exaggeration to say that hieroglyphics were never visually representational, for last week we looked at a couple of plates that use a hieroglyph that resembles a set of scales, and it turns out that this symbol is translated to “balance” each time it appears. But I understand that our editors were concerned to dispel fanciful, mystical beliefs about hieroglyphics that have been with us since antiquity: before the Rosetta Stone was deciphered in 1822, we couldn’t read Egyptian writing at all, and our ignorance had been compensated for by all manner of conjecture about the profound philosophical meanings and magical powers that hieroglyphics supposedly contained.

Hieroglyphics were usually written from right to left, and no symbols representing vowels are contained in the extant Egyptian texts, meaning we don’t really know how the Egyptian language was spoken. There are some rare instances where hieroglyphics were written in “retrograde,” from left to right, for reasons that are unclear. Our editors suggest one possibility, that retrograde writing was associated specifically with funerals and interment because bodies were laid to rest facing westward, and the Egyptians thought of the west as being on the right side. But the editors also observe that not all books of the dead used retrograde writing.

Another possible explanation presents itself in plate 7 of Ani’s papyrus, written in retrograde:

We see a number of different scenes more or less connected to the caption, a sort of catechism that lays out the mythological backstory of the Egyptian religion and exposits the situations and personalities the deceased will meet in the underworld. In the center of the scene there are two lions facing away from each other; the leftward facing lion is labeled “tomorrow” and the rightward facing one is labeled “yesterday.” The text accompanying the illustration doesn’t directly mention the lions, but we can surmise that the lions are related to this passage:

To me belongs yesterday, I know tomorrow.

What does it mean? As for yesterday, that is Osiris. As for tomorrow, that is Re on that day in which the foes of the Lord of All were destroyed and his son Horus was made to rule. Otherwise said: That is the day of the “We-remain” festival, when the burial of Osiris was ordered by his father Re.

“To me belongs yesterday, I know tomorrow” is one of the “praises and recitations” that it is beneficial for the deceased to perform if he wishes go “out into the day” or take “any shape in which he desires to be.” Following each praise or recitation in this crucial chapter of the book of the dead, we get an explanation of that utterance following a question like “What does it mean?” Apparently, some praises and recitations had alternate explanations, which are given after the formula “Otherwise said.” Unlike Christianity, the Egyptian religion was not a confessional one that insisted on correct belief. The Egyptians no doubt took the book of the dead, and the preparations for successfully going forth by day, very seriously, but they were still tolerant of disagreement and inconsistency in a way that might seem strange to us.

At any rate, we can see in the primary explanation of the quoted recitation that the two lions are Osiris, facing rightward, to whom belongs yesterday, and Re, facing left, who knows tomorrow. Our editors comment that the retrograde text in this plate is oriented westward, which for the Egyptians was associated with the right, and thus with the setting sun, yesterday, and Osiris. It could be that retrograde passages generally signal some sort of affinity for Osiris or the chthonic aspects of the afterlife, as might be the case in this plate, where on the far right we see Ani in his coffin, about to proceed into the netherworld.

On plate 8 we see an unusual color in Egyptian art:

The leftmost figure is identified as the “Chaos-god,” alternatively identified by our editors as “Million,” who was colored using crushed lapis lazuli. His chin beard and dropping breast with the conspicuous nipple mark this god as androgynous, and he and his fellow “Sea,” the androgynous figure to his right, are swum in by Re, according to the caption. The Chaos-god and Sea’s function in the afterlife is to cleanse the deceased of evil:

All the ill which was on me has been removed.

What does it mean? It means that I was cleansed on the day of my birth in the two grater and noble marshes which are in Heracleopolis on the day of the oblation y the common folk to the Great God who is in them. What are they? “Chaos-god” is the name of one; “Sea” is the name of the other. They are the Lake of Natron and the lake of Maet. Otherwise said: “The Chaos-god governs” is the name of one; “Sea” is the name of the other. Otherwise said: “Seed of the Chaos-god” is the name of one; “Sea” is the name of the other. As for that Great God who is in them, he is Re himself.

Other than knowing the mythological backstories for the canonical praises and recitations, along with all the alternative interpretations of these, the deceased also has to know the names of all the gods and spirits he will meet in the afterlife, and know how to properly address them to gain passage through the netherworld. In plate 11 of Ani’s papyrus, on the top half of the illustration, seven gates, each with a gatekeeper, guardian, and announcer, are presented:

For each gate, the gatekeeper, guardian, and announcer is identified, and the proper thing to say upon arrival is quoted. Thus we have the account of the first gate:

The first gate: the name of its gatekeeper is “Inverted of Face, Multitudinous of Forms”; the name of its guardian is “Eavesdropper”; the name of the announcer in it is “Hostile-Voiced.”

Words spoken by the Osiris Ani, the vindicated, when arriving at the gate: “I am the great one who makes his own light. It is so that I might adore you, Osiris, that I have come before you, the one purified by the efflux within you against which the name of Rosetjau was made. Hail to you, Osiris, in your might and power in Rosetjau. Raise yourself up, Osiris, by your might and your power. Raise yourself up, Osiris, in Abydos, so that you might circulate around the sky and that you might row before Re, so that you miht see the folk. O you with whom Re has circulated, behold I say, O Osiris, to me belongs the dignity of a god. What I have said happens. My arm shall not be repulsed from it by the wall of charcoal. Open the way in Rosetjau, so that I might cure the sickness of Osiris, so that I might embrace the one who cut out his own divine standard, who made his way in the
valley. O great one, make the path of light for Osiris.”

In addition to knowing the names of the gods standing at each gate, the deceased must also assert membership among the gods of the netherworld, as is done by Osiris Ani when he claims to be able to cure Osiris of a sickness. The lower tier of this plate involves the passage of ten portals, each manned by gatekeeper. It’s tempting to assume that the seven gates and the ten portals are two parallel versions of the same basic story or ritual, but I don’t see any correlation between the personalities standing at the gates and those standing at the portals, so maybe we are to imagine that the deceased will pass through seven gates and then separately pass through ten portals. Be that as it may, the process for passing the portals is certainly simpler, only requiring that the deceased correctly identify the gatekeeper, as seen at the first portal:

What is to be said when arriving at the first portal. Words spoken by the Osiris Ani, the vindicated: “O Mistress of trembling, lofty of enclosure wall, chieftaness and Mistress of Destruction, the one who proclaims words with repel storms, the one who rescues the plundered one who who has arrived.” The name of its gatekeeper is “Terror.”

After appeasing these minor gods who man the gates and portals, the deceased must placate the gods of the underworld who had major cults in Egypt, first Osiris himself:

Hail to you, O Foremost of the Westerners, Wennefer-dwelling-in-Abydos, I have come before you, my heart bearing truth, without wrongdoing in my body, without saying falsehood knowingly. I have not done a misdeed—(repeat) twice. May you give me bread which comes forth upon the alter of the Possessors of Truth. May I enter into and go forth from the God’s Domain, without my Ba¹ being hindered. May I see the sun and may I behold the moon every day.

Then Thoth:

O Thoth, who vindicated Osiris against his enemies, vindicate the Osiris Ani, the vindicated, against his enemies in the presence of the council which is with Re and Osiris, and which is in Heliopolis, on that night of the Evening Meal, on that night of battle, at the moment of guarding the rebels, and on that day of destroying the enemies of the Lord of All.

The reference to Ani’s heart in his address to Osiris makes me think these praises were supposed to be recited before the deceased’s heart was weighed in the scene depicted in plate 3, which suggests passing this trial wasn't just a matter of being honesty and pious on earth, but also of paying proper respects to the rulers of the netherworld. Indeed, there’s very little by way of moral instruction in what we’ve read so far: what it meant to be a good person would have been more or less obvious to Ani while he lived, and after he died it wouldn’t have helped him to have known how he should have behaved during life. If there was anything that was going to change his destiny and allow him to go out into the day after his passage through the netherworld, it would be the cheat sheet on myth, ritual, and etiquette that this papyrus would provide him in the afterlife. Next week we’ll look more at the prayers and incantations taught by Ani’s papyrus that promise good fortune in the beyond.

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