Twelfth Division of the Tuat. II. Eastern Vestibule of the Tuat According to the Book of Gates

TWELFTH DIVISION OF THE TUAT.

II. EASTERN VESTIBULE OF THE TUAT ACCORDING TO THE BOOK OF GATES.

The last section of the BOOK OF GATES contains representations of the Gate TESERT-BAIU, with its two doors (vol. ii., pp. 302, 303), which lead into that portion of the sky wherein the sun rises, and of the stablishing of the Sun-god in his Boat in the sky. This Gate has no company of gods in mummied forms to guard it, and in

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front of it are two standards, or sceptres, each of which is surrounded by a human head; above that on the left is the Beetle of KHEPERA, and over the other is the Disk of TEMU. In other words, the Gate is guarded by symbols of the rising and the setting sun. The corridor between the walls is swept by flames as before, and a warder in mummied form guards each end of it; the one, PAI or BAI, represents the dawn, and the other, AKHEKHI, the evening. Within the Gate are two doors, one guarded by the monster serpent SEBI, and the other by the monster serpent RERI. At the threshold is the uraeus of NEPHTHYS, and by the lintel is the uraeus of Isis, for these goddesses guard this "Secret Gate."

The god AFU-RA. having, as we have seen, transformed himself into KHEPERA, and, by the help of the god whose operations have been described, provided himself with a new face, or disk, and new light and fire, passes through the Gate TESERT-BAIU, which marks the end of the TUAT, into the Vestibule of the world of light. We no longer see him in the form of a ram-headed man, standing under the folds of the serpent MEHEN, but he appears as KHEPERA, i.e., as his Beetle, with the disk in front of him. From the scene which ends the BOOK OF GATES we learn that so soon as the god passes through the Gate of TESERT-BAIU he enters the waters of Nu, the god of the primeval watery abyss of the sky. The ministers of KHEPERA now appear with the MATET-SEKTET BOAT

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which they have in readiness, and the god takes his place in it, with the gods who are to guide and propel it. Nu then lifts the Boat up above his head, and the goddess NUT receives the Disk of the sun in her hands. It will be noted that she stands on the head of a god whose body is bent in such a way that it forms a circle: the explanatory text shows that the god is Osiris, and that his body is the Tuat. Thus we see that the "womb of Nut," from which the Sun-god is said to be born, lies quite close to the eastern end of the Tuat, and that it forms by itself the Vestibule which leads into the world of light.

Close to the high prow of the Boat we see (vol. ii., p. 303) the sun's disk passing through a gap in the mountain which divides the Eastern Vestibule of the Tuat from the sky of this world; this disk is the same which we have seen NUT receive from the Beetle of KHEPERA and whilst it is traversing the gap dawn is taking place on the earth. When the disk is on the horizon all men know that the monsters of the Tuat have failed to destroy AFU-RA or to obstruct his passage, that the god has, with the aid of KHEPERA, made all his transformations, that he has appeared in the sky again, full of light, and fire, and life, and that for another day at least all will be well with the world. Meanwhile the souls of the blessed who have travelled through the Tuat in the Boat with AFU-RA have escaped with him from all its dangers, and have made their transformations

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as he has done, and now they rise with him above this earth, and are able to look once again upon their own homes and haunts, and friends. Their companions are the gods who minister to Ra, and as they live upon the food of Ra, and are arrayed in his apparel, they become in all respects like him.

For the beings who were left in the Tuat, i.e., for those who were not provided for by Osiris in SEKHET-AARU and SEKHET-HETEPET, existence must have been a sad one, for they were obliged to sit in darkness and misery, except for the brief space each night when AFU-RA passed through their DIVISIONS, when the gods who were in his train lightened the darkness with the fire which proceeded from their bodies, and the god himself, taking pity on those to whom the making of offerings on earth had ceased, spoke the words which procured sustenance for them. Such acts of grace, however, cannot have been sufficient to secure the happiness of those upon whom they were bestowed, for, with every mention in the texts of the closing of the door of a DIVISION after the god has passed through it, we read that the souls who were outside the door uttered cries of lamentation and wailed bitterly.

It must be remembered that views such as are here described were held only by the priests Of AMEN-RA, who, as we have seen, tried to show that their god was lord of all the Tuats of Egypt, and that all the gods of the dead, including even Osiris, and all the blessed, depended upon him for light and food, which they received from

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him in return for the services which they rendered to him as their overlord. Those who held not these views, and were not followers of Osiris, believed, as did all the primitive Egyptians, that the Tuat was a place of darkness, hunger, thirst, and misery, and finally of annihilation. They had no belief either in purgatory or in everlasting punishment; the beings in the Tuat lived just so long as their friends and relatives on earth made the prescribed funeral offerings on their behalf, and no longer. The shadows, souls, and bodies of those who were without food in the Tuat were, together with the fiends and monsters which opposed the progress of the Sun-god, destroyed by fire each day, utterly and finally; but each day brought its own supply of the enemies of Ra, and of the dead, and the beings which were consumed in the pits of fire one day were not the same, though they belonged to the same classes, as those which had been burnt up the day before.