Egyptian funerary texts

[dtango]

He didn't stick around to supervise all of the other peasants? Everyone was assigned their own supervisor? Speaking of which, find those execution chambers, or anything else which supports the idea? What exactly were they supervising?

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A Ba was someone who was “at the head of his brothers.”
“His brothers” could be gods, semi-gods, men, or savage primitive men. For this reason the term “Ba” occurs determined by the symbol for god as well as by the symbol for the primitive savages who are the enemies of the gods.
But there is more to it: the famous immortal soul (Ba) occurs determined by the symbol for death!! If you point this fact out to an Egyptologist, you will be informed that such things are to be expected because the texts are nothing more than magic incantations!!

Any how, “supervisor” is the word I use for lack of a better one. The word which is closer in meaning to the original term Ba is the Hebrew word “Addir” for which there are a variety of translations: mighty, nobles, lordly, excellent, mightier, gallant, principal, famous, worthies, captains, rulers etc. But most important is that in the Septuagint "Addir" is rendered in Greek as “rams of the sheep” and it happens that the word Ba can also be written by the ideogram of a ram.

Did the Catholic Church or any other Church ever complained about Campbell’s theory? I do not know but I deem it very improbable. How would, however, had the Church liked it if Campbell insisted that Yahweh went indeed down to the area of Sodom and Gomorra to pass judgment of living people but he was lazy and eventually burned down the entire area without knowing who was a sinner and who was not.

There you have your execution chambers: we may some day come across the ashes of Sodom and Gomorra.
The Egyptian texts, being older, provide accurate, detailed information as to why the gods were burning people alive.

What a story to imagine!! What a story to be created out of thin air in so many different peoples’ minds!!

You don't need the funerary texts to know they believed in life after death. Just saying.

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Actually you need them only if you want to prove that they didn’t (the texts are evidence that they were preoccupied with life after judgment and that they had no idea about life after death which was invented later by the priesthood).

[Minimalist]

Hmmm, I might suggest hieroglyphics is less susceptible to change than English.

I'm not sure what that has to do with the language, Chuck. The modern English alphabet was finalized in the mid 16th century but no one would say that the language has not changed since then.

[Shell B]

Actually you need them only if you want to prove that they didn’t (the texts are evidence that they were preoccupied with life after judgment and that they had no idea about life after death which was invented later by the priesthood).

How so? A preoccupation with one does not exclude awareness of another. Their very manner of burial is evidence that they believed in life after death. If you can name one culture that did not believe in life after death, but had such burial customs, I will change my tune.

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I'm not sure what that has to do with the language, Chuck. The modern English alphabet was finalized in the mid 16th century but no one would say that the language has not changed since then.

I believe, and I could be wrong, that he is alluding to the differences between the two. Hieroglyphs are not strictly alphabetic.

[The Grand Nudger]

Your supporting physical evidence comes in the form of two towns from a myth? That were destroyed by a mythical being, by magical means, and which have not been found? Not entirely impressive. Since you enjoy interpretations so much, perhaps you'd enjoy going down the rabbit hole with those two towns. Perhaps they, like cain or abel, are actually metaphors for something else entirely. Older means more accurate? Surely you're joking? What gods? Who was burned? You have nothing to support any of this beyond a favorable interpretation of your favorite stories. You've gone down the road of faith with all of this amigo. Hell, I don't have to wait to find London and yet Dracula remains fiction. This is a fairly elaborate internal mythology you're constructing for yourself, it seems.

[Shell B]

You really need to quote if you are not replying to the person above you. I was just convinced you were through a bottle of Jack and forgot where you were.

[The Grand Nudger]

My bad, thought it would be fairly obvious, I am pretty far into the liquor though, and onto a big bottle of wine. It's my B-day tomorrow.

[Shell B]

Oh, it was. My confusion only lasted a second. It's just that my mind instantly went to booze. Happy early birthday!

[dtango]

How so? A preoccupation with one does not exclude awareness of another. Their very manner of burial is evidence that they believed in life after death.

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You declare you are an atheist.
You do not believe in gods, immortal souls and afterlife.
You are a reasonable person and you, as well all reasonable persons, would have never produced these ideas. Am I right?

I suppose you say that I am right and then I ask you: Why then you believe that there were so many stupid persons all over the globe who not only produced these ideas but made others believe in them too?

Did they teach you at school how it happened and these ideas were produced? No, they did not, because they either do not know or they don’t like preaching such things. All these ideas were produced by the cooperation of a number of factors at a certain time and so could have only been produced once (it is not only the atheists who are reasonable persons but, as you know, the human mind can be programmed early in life).

So, we go back to the Egyptians. The manner of their burials, which were conducted according to the rules of the priesthood, only proves that the Egyptians as kids were taught that there was an afterlife. The texts are evidence that the people did not believe in a life after death but in a life after judgment.

How about the other cultures whose burials indicate belief in an afterlife?
There is no such culture, other than the Egyptian!
If there is belief in an afterlife there must be preservation of the body because the dead person is going to work, to drink and eat and make love in afterlife!!

Your supporting physical evidence comes in the form of two towns from a myth? That were destroyed by a mythical being, by magical means, and which have not been found?

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Fire is not a magical mean.
The mythical being was a whole tribe of murderers and what information you get from this legend of “two towns of a myth” is that gods were killing men. A message so many stations all over the earth transmit.

Stop being a conformist.. amigo querido.

[Shell B]

So, we go back to the Egyptians. The manner of their burials, which were conducted according to the rules of the priesthood, only proves that the Egyptians as kids were taught that there was an afterlife.

Which, in turn, indicates that a number of them, at the very least, believed in the afterlife. If they are taught there is an afterlife, adults believed there was an afterlife and by default, at least some of their children did as well.

The texts are evidence that the people did not believe in a life after death but in a life after judgment.

. . . and if this judgment comes after death?

How about the other cultures whose burials indicate belief in an afterlife?
There is no such culture, other than the Egyptian!

You're not serious, are you?

If there is belief in an afterlife there must be preservation of the body because the dead person is going to work, to drink and eat and make love in afterlife!!

You're still kidding, right?

[dtango]

. . . and if this judgment comes after death?

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This is not the case. Read the words of Plato. The philosopher whom the Christians adore:

“And in the time of Cronos, and even quite lately in the reign of Zeus, the judgment was given on the very day on which the men were to die; the judges were alive, and the men were alive; and the consequence was that the judgments were not well given. Then Pluto and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that the souls found their way to the wrong places. Zeus said: "I shall put a stop to this; the judgments are not well given, because the persons who are judged have their clothes on, for they are alive; and there are many who, having evil souls, are apparelled in fair bodies, or encased in wealth or rank, and, when the day of judgment arrives, numerous witnesses come forward and testify on their behalf that they have lived righteously.”

In the Greek tradition no judgment of the living is mentioned (except for the legend of Procrustes) and therefore this information Plato got from the Egyptian priests, which means that the priests were aware of the fact that a judgment of the living was described in the texts.

The judgment takes place just before death, but only for the unlucky ones who failed to pass the test and were executed. The rest go to live happily in the “Gods’ place.”

You're not serious, are you?
You're still kidding, right?

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You like bizarre things, situations and beliefs. No?
Here is one for you:

In spell 464 of the Coffin Texts occurs a passage which is famous and well known because it is present in all kinds of the funerary texts.
The man who was found pure at his judgment was ferried over to where the gods live and he was given a field of his own. So he says:

I acquire this field of yours, O Hetep, which you love, the Mistress of the Winds, I eat and carouse in it, I drink in it, I plough in it, I reap in it, I am not destroyed in it , I copulate in it.*

“I copulate” in the hieroglyphic script is written nk (copulate) =j (I)
“I do not copulate” is written n (not) nk (copulate) =j (I)

The spells of the coffin texts come in many copies and the translators are commenting the differences between them. In this case the gloss of the translator R. O. Faulkner reads:

So B9C (the id number of the spell in which the above passage occurs); the negation before “nk” is certainly in error, having been derived from an arrangement such as that in B6C, where again the negation surely cannot apply to “nk”, while B5C has it both ays, wjhich makes no sense: B1C, B3C and B1L are correctly in the affirmative.

Please note that the negation applies only to “nk” copulate not to eating and drinking and ploughing the field. The ancient scribes who added the negation knew that love making was prohibited by the gods and, most probably, thought that the texts they were copying from were in error and they simply were correcting the error.
What they did not know was that love making was prohibited only before judgment –something that the translator obviously knows- and that those found pure were allowed to procreate after their judgment.

What is of value in mythology is not what we believe of the myths but what the ancients believed. We have to find why they believed whatever it was they believed into and not just speculate basing our assumptions on our modern mentality.

The belief that the gods were prohibiting sex is no mythology any longer, is a fact of life that can be investigated.
Remember that in the Egyptian tradition it was not the soul that was judged (the concept of the soul did not exist in the ancient Egyptian tradition) it was the body. When the priesthood transformed the judgment of the living into a judgment of the dead they could not say that now the soul is to be judged because it was impossible to eradicate or falsify the ancient texts. They had to go on judging the body and they resorted to the madness of the mummification.

People today believe in the judgment of the soul because Egyptologists managed to label the texts “magical incantation,” to translate them in a way to confirm their assertion and thus render them useless even to the scientists who were willing to study them.