The Liturgy of Funeral Offerings: Purification Ceremonies: The First Ceremony
in which salt or soda had been dissolved, and poured it into a bowl which was held in the hands of an assistant. He next walked round the statue four times, sprinkling the salted water on it on all sides, or perhaps washing portions of it, and meanwhile the Kher heb said four times:--
From the way in which Osiris is mentioned in this passage it is clear that the cult of this god was general in Egypt when this Liturgy was drawn up, and that be was already recognized as the god of the dead. The effect of the sprinkling of water over the statue, or the washing of it with water, was to remove the sins of the deceased from him, and to cleanse his body and Ka. There can be no doubt that the Egyptians in all periods attached very great importance to the use of water ceremonially, and there is good reason for believing that they regarded it as one of the principal sources of life since the gods were created from water, and Nu, the great god of the celestial deeps, was the father of the gods. They believed that water possessed a mysterious power which made itself manifest under the form of life, and it may be noted in passing that, in the scenes in which Thoth and Horus are pouring out water over the heads of kings, the water is indicated by series of ankh signs
The exact meaning which is to be attached to the word tu or "evil" is not quite clear; 1 it was certainly connected with the words of Unas, but whatever it was this "evil" was carried to Osiris by Thoth. Here we see Thoth acting as a sort of advocate for Unas with Osiris, and playing his part as the "lord of divine words," and author of holy books, with which we are familiar from the texts of the Theban Recension of the
The words which were said by the Kher heb here, as in many other places in the Liturgy, were to be repeated four times. The Egyptians divided the earth into four quarters, over each of which a god presided, and in order to secure for the dead permission to move about freely through these quarters of the world, formulae, whether of blessing or of banning, were repeated four times, once for each god, and certain offerings were made in quadruplicate. The gods of the four quarters of the world at the time when this Liturgy was drawn up were Horus, Set, Thoth, and Sep, and they were probably the gods of the four cardinal points also. Later, however, their places seem to have been taken by the four sons of Horus, Mestha, Hapi, Tuamutef and Qebhsennuf, each of whom presided over one of the four pillars that held up the sky. The priest by walking round the mummy or the statue four times, and sprinkling water as he went, bestowed upon the Ka the power to journey into all parts of heaven and earth, and made him a pure being in respect of the four gods of the four quarters of the earth.
44:1 Maspero renders it by Mauvais. 46:1 Line 562, Suzerain de la vertu divine. Maspero. 46:2 Le Rituel du Culte divin journalier, Paris, 1902, p. 99. 46:3 Contes Populaires, p. 165.
, i.e., "life, life, life." Dümichen has already in this connection pointed out the fact that in the "Tale of the Two Brothers," Anpu put the heart of
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