By Cathie Spieser

 

Birth

Birth has always been one the most dangerous periods of human life. In ancient Egypt saving the lives of mother and child during that trial entailed special measures. One was medicine, which was really mostly magic, and the other were religious practices, including prayers to divinities like the Seven Hathors or Isis. But in Egypt, birth was closely paired with death, which was the gateway to rebirth.

Medical papyri, in particular Papyrus Kahun and Papyrus Ebers, or magical ones like Papyrus Berlin 3027, gave a large place to spells and recipes for the protection of mother and child during pregnancy and childbirth. The spells also noted the importance of ensuring human fecundity, one of the pharaoh’s duties towards his people.

But the Egyptian understanding about human generation and growth can only be found in religious sources. Texts from Late Period to the Ptolemaic period (ca. 712-30 BCE) written on the walls of temples at Esna, Philae, and Khargah give us the most information regarding Egyptian thought on human embryonic development. Another valuable text, the Papyrus Jumilhac, from Ptolemaic period, tells that the embryo is formed from masculine semen emanating from the father bones, while the mother contributes flesh and vital fluids (re)created from her milk. During the child creation process, the blood of the pregnant woman played the role of a “binder,” which allowed the transformation of milk into flesh and semen into bones and vice versa.

In inscriptions from the Esna Temple, the Ram headed god Khnum plays the role of birth-giving creator. Related to the Nile flood, Khnum creates all kinds of beings, including plants, animals, and humans, on his potter’s wheel. Khnum shapes an egg with semen from which humanity springs. The god also places the egg in the woman’s womb allowing growth of the embryo.

The Egyptian considered the animal and human world as oviparous. All beings came from eggs, even if it was an “internal egg.”

Khnum and Heqet moulding a figure. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/DendaraMamisiKhnum-10.jpg)

 

At Karnak, it is a moon god, Khonsu, who presides over embryonic development, “putting in shape the semen-bones into the egg.” The role of blood as binder was not enough: divine intervention had to be requested for growth.

The idea of an egg comes from Pyramid Texts, written on the inner walls of pyramids from the 5th and 6th Old Kingdom dynasties. To reach a new life in Heaven, the dead pharaoh had to be rejuvenated into the womb of various goddesses, in particular, the great mother and sky goddess Nut. The embryo was conceived as an egg and the pharaoh had to “break his egg” to be reborn in the afterlife to take his place among gods. The embryo itself was considered as a little child.

 

And rebirth

Death was unacceptable to the Egyptian mind. It was the opposite of life and world creation and was related to the primeval chaos, where life and cosmic order, expressed through the notion of Maât or balance, have no place. Thus, by definition, everything had to start again.

Reacting against death, Egyptians found different ways to construct it not as the end, but the beginning of another kind of life in the world of the dead, the afterlife in a world related to gods.

Thoughts about survival after death consumed a large portion of Egyptian daily life and a great deal of energy was directed at rehabilitation of the dead, who were crossing a critical stage in their “existence”.

In Egyptian religious concepts, death could not be separated from the myth of Osiris, who was a prototype of the divinized dead pharaoh.

Bronze 26th Dynasty statue of Osiris from the Bible+Orient Museum. Äfig. 1996.1, © Fondation BIBLE+ORIENT, Fribourg Suisse.

 

The myth relates the murder of the god by his own brother Seth, a violent and unfair death which disturbed the proper course of the universe and the Maât principle. Indeed, in Egypt generally natural death related to old age was quite rare: life expectancy did not exceed the 30-40 years. People mostly died young, from illness or various infections, even if there were some lucky exceptions like Ramses II. The death of Osiris was stopped thanks to mummification, whose aim was to fight the decay of the body and to allow the resurrection of the god. The Osirian myth justifies the funerary practices and provides a first ‘example’ of triumph over dead.

According to these beliefs, the deceased experience a dissociation of the elements of his being: his nourishing spirits Ka and Ba are gone; his body needs to be preserved against decay; his name, an important feature of his personality needs to survive; the shadow, a proof of life, is gone and has to come again. His Akh, the luminous spirit of the dead, also needs to be found and reunited wtih him.

The Ba soul existing the tomb on the day of the shadow. Thebes Tomb TT 290. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_de_l%27%C3%AAtre_dans_l%27%C3%89gypte_antique#/media/File:Ba_ombre_sortie_tombe.jpg)

 

With time, other elements of the personality of the dead were added, like fate, the life-time, birth, and the ib or the heart as a concept of memory of the dead. To ensure a new life for the deceased, all these elements had to be magically reunited thanks to the “Opening the Mouth ceremony” performed on the mummy at the entry of the tomb, which was conceived as a new house for the dead. There the deceased found all the possible comforts, including furniture and offerings.

Simple graves, however, did not contain anything else besides the mummy, if mummification was even possible. The poorest people were buried simply with very little treatment: dried with salt, sometimes with the abdomen fulfilled with sand, and the body was wrapped in linen. Often there was no treatment at all. It remains difficult to understand the funerary beliefs behind these simplest burials.

Among the middle classes and elites, death was followed by a mourning period corresponding to the time of mummification, around 70 days. Mourning was expressed with gestures, wailing (often by professional female and male mourners), the neglect of clothes and hair, food restrictions (no meat, no luxurious meals), and offering of flowers regarded as symbols of rebirth, like lotuses, and other blue and yellow flowers, which were seen as heavenly colors.

Mourning was a way to participate in the death of the deceased individual and to help him to leave earth more easily, with the feeling having been loved by the close family. In Egyptian representations, mummification itself is rarely depicted because it belongs to the violent stages endured by the deceased to be admitted into the Netherworld. The aim of mummification was to preserve the body and viscera, except the brain whose function was not known. At the end of the stay in the embalming house, located generally near the cemeteries, on the west side of the Nile, the family and the priests picked up the mummy, and the funeral procession could begin.

Funeral Procession, Tomb of Pairy ,ca. 1390–1352 B.C.E. (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/557766)

 

The priests, the family, the mourners and the offering bearers escorted the mummy in his coffin to his tomb to perform the opening the mouth ceremony. The seven holes of the face were then magically opened (eyes, nose, ears, mouth) and the soul and all vital functions re-established. Once everything was accomplished, the mummy could be placed in the burial chamber and dead could have a new eternal life.

The last stage of rebirth occurs in another dimension. The etheric form of the dead had to be judged before Osiris and forty-two assessors (gods), to make his entry into the Netherworld. The dead made a Declaration called “the Negative Confession” or “Declaration of Innocence”, enumerating a range of specified sins considered by the Egyptians as “wrong-doing”. Just before, his heart was weighted in the balance against the feather of Maât representing truth and righteousness.

‘Book of the Dead’, Papyrus of Ani (frame 3). (https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=113335&partId=1)

 

fter all these ordeals, the deceased became a blissful spirit and could live in the realm of the dead, possessing all privileges, food, resources, and perpetual rejuvenation. However, the dead person could also, according to his wishes, go back to his tomb ,which served as living and resting place. Or with the help of spells from the Book of Dead he could return on earth among living people. The cycle of birth and rebirth would thus be complete.

 

Cathie Spieser is on the faculty of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

 

For further reading:

Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, Cornell University Press, 2014.

R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, (rev. ed. C. Andrews), British Museum Press, 1985.

Thierry Bardinet, Les papyrus médicaux de l’Egypte pharaonique, Paris, Fayard éd., 1995.

Cathie Spieser, Aspects of the Womb and Embracing the Dead in Ancient Egypt.