Thoughts on Death as an Enemy, Death as Initiation,

Free Will and Maat

Edmund S. Meltzer

(A revised form of comments originally posted in the Egyptian Religion

Forums on Glyphdoctors, Summer 2008.)

What a fascinating though rather grim subject. All of the available references (that are
humanly collectible) to that kind of thing have been collected and discussed by
Zandee, Death as an Enemy. Chapter 9 of Morenz, Egyptian Religion, is also a very good
survey and orientation. There are many references characterizing death negatively, and
many which deny that something negative or feared is happening or will happen, or
which entreat that something feared won't happen. Some of the types of references,
such as darkness, confinement, immobility, dissolution or decay, could be connected
with the radical change of state and disorientation before the successful reconstitution
and empowerment of the dead person. Some seem to be more general fears. In any
case, these obstacles are very formidable and (trying to allow for the different or
distorted time sense in the Hereafter) can be seen as a protracted and difficult phase
rather than something which is quickly surmounted in a "pro forma" orchestrated
process.

Some of the beings which threaten or harm the dead are the agents of divine
punishment. As such they seem to act in support of Maat and to do the bidding of
Osiris and Re. But the dead (and with some likelihood the living in anticipation of or
preparation for death) pray to the deities for protection against these "demons." One is
referred to as "the slaughterer" or "executioner," others are "destroyers," there's more
than one term for "enemies," one prominent "demon" is called Xrty. They give the
impression of having to be restrained or controlled to prevent them from victimizing all
who come within range. Deities including Osiris can have a threatening or ominous role;
the bipolarity of Osiris is especially pronounced in the Pyramid Texts but also suggested
in the Coffin Texts. The dead appeal to Atum to prevent attacks by hostile beings.

Thus I think that some participants on this thread are right in distinguishing between
some that "might present hardship and challenges but they were not on the side of
chaos and evil but simply aiding the "initiation" process into this new world," and some
that "were envisioned as beings that exist and act in support of chaos who take
advantage of the vulnerability during the transition." (But I think that they're part of the
initiation process too -- read on.) It seems to me that the latter include those referred
to by general terms such as "the dead," "people" and "Akhu," as well as terms such as
"rebels" which would seem to indicate opposition to Maat. Some of these seem to be
the same as those who cause hostile possession of the living. (The most detailed
discussion I know of is Jorge R. Ogdon’s monograph Sharing New Ideas on the
Phenomenon of Possession in Ancient Egypt, Buenos Aires 1997.) Some such
as isftyw "evil-doers, those belonging to isft" sound as if they should be antithetical to
Maat, but are gatekeepers, thus at least co-opted as part of the maintenance of order. I
suspect that the onslaught of and obstruction by the adherents of chaos itself has to be
surmounted as a part of the "initiation" process, and that they have a cosmic role to play
in making things difficult for the deceased.

One major concern is going upside down, reversing the functions of bodily orifices, and
eating and drinking the products of excretion. Those who go upside down are seen as
especially perverse or threatening to the proper order, and there's a great fear of or
aversion to going upside down. The deceased is protected or rescued from those who
go with their head down by Sah, Sothis and the Morning Star (CT 44). This upside-
down-ness isn't really just a consequence of walking upside down on the under-surface
of the earth, nor is it just a disorientation scrambling the normal position and function
of body parts. As Gerald E. Kadish discussed in a paper entitled "The Scatophagous
Egyptian," JSSEA 9 (1979): 203-217, drawing on the work of Mary Douglas in Purity and
Danger, all of these reversals signify rejection of Maat, and refusal to reverse signifies
affirmation of Maat and a commitment to the ordered universe. (Cf. also my brief note
"Eating and drinking (one's) refuse: An Egyptological footnote," NABU 1994/4
[December]: 74.) The deceased has to persist in refusing to eat excrement, drink urine,
go upside down, in the face of persistent enticement, cajoling and trickery, everything
short of coercion, urging him/her to give in and do it. This is indeed part of the
initiation process to the other world. In this as in other cases, I would characterize the
initiation as something like "hazing." The stakes are very high. The ultimate success of
the deceased comes down, I think, to the interrelated combination of the "moral
compass" orienting one in the right direction, and ritual proficiency or virtuosity of the
empowered and effective being, explored by DuQuesne in his comments on Maat.
I think Nun is exempt from death, but at the same time the life of Nun is of a
problematic type other than earthly life, although Nun is a source of life and renewal. If
Amun is a truly transcendent creator, as James Allen argues, he's at least a good
candidate for being exempt from death. In the Hibis hymns we read that he created and
ordered both Dt-eternity and nHH-eternity, and thus presumably is beyond or outside
them and not subject to their limitations. Similarly, the great New Kingdom and later
hymns describe Nun as encompassed by or part of the solar creator, not outside or
beyond him. At the same time, Hornung thinks that in principle every god is subject to
death, and he finds a statement to substantiate this (Conceptions of God pp. 152,
157). On the other hand, paradoxically, "the gods die, but they are not dead" (p. 160)
but renewed. But then again, in the eschatological vision of the end of time as we know
it, only Atum and Osiris will remain (p. 163).

There certainly is free will in the Duat, which includes perhaps most importantly the
ability to make moral choices and to exercise the powers and abilities of the "effective"
dead -- since we seem to come up with a lot of TV allusions, I thought of the old
Superman TV series, "with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men." The
dead has to make the choice to ally him or herself with the ordered universe and Maat,
not to go upside down, eat feces etc., and has to have the persistence and strength to
follow through with that choice. According to the "transformation" texts, the deceased
has the free will to engage in transformation whenever he/she wishes, into any form that
he/she wishes, to visit this world again etc. When someone writes a letter to a dead
relative, the letter can be a plea for assistance, and can sound very insistent, but it isn't
phrased as a case of coercion or compulsion or a ritual power ultimatum, so presumably
the dead person can decide not to help the letter-writer for whatever reason.

The mortuary literature is there for the contents to be learned and used. I think that this
learning is divided between study of the material in this life and in the next life. There
are references that seem to indicate knowledge of a composition in this life (like the
Litany of Re -- the one who knows it on earth will also know it after death), and we have
talked about preparations for the afterlife, but I think that many people didn't have a
chance to study these books in this life, or to study them comprehensively or
sufficiently, and any needed learning could be done posthumously.

Obviously, things that fit the dynamics and structure of ancient Egyptian society in a way
compatible with Maat don't necessarily fit present-day societies (in which the
redistribution economy is no longer used etc.). Those in today's world for whom the
right and just order of things is expressed by Maat do have to decide how Maat can be
applied or performed in the context of the present structures of society and
interpersonal relationships.

There are three possible understandings of "a state where all actions are Maat" as far as
I can see: (1) A realm so perfect that nothing other than Maat exists or can exist; (2) a
being who only does Maat because he/she/it is incapable of doing otherwise; (3) a
being who only does Maat because by definition everything that he/she/it does is Maat:

(1) One of the Harper's Songs, the pietistic one, seems to describe the realm of the dead
as option one: ". . . the land of eternity, the just and the fair, which has no
terrors? Wrangling is its abhorrence; no man there girds himself against his fellow. It is
a land against which none can rebel." (Gardiner's translation, quoted by Barbara
Mertz, Temples, Tombs & Hieroglyphs, 2nd ed., p. 98.)

(2) If "none can rebel" according to the song just quoted, that implies that all beings
there are bound or constrained to do Maat. Apparently such a vision existed. But at the
same time, it negates free will. A being who has no option other than to do Maat has
no moral choices. As Mark Twain said, "George Washington could not tell a lie. I'm
better than he was. I can, but I don't." The more normative view of the mortuary
literature, if one can use such a word as "normative," seems to be that the dead, as the
living, have the option of making moral choices. One interesting question is whether a
deity such as Re or Atum or Amun can act otherwise than in accord with
Maat. Referring back to Unit 3, I would suggest that in mythological or narrative mode
just about any deity can manifest petty, childish or negative behavior, or behavior that
strikes us (from our outsider perspective) as not admirable -- think of the Contendings
of Horus and Seth, the story of Re and Isis, the narrative of Isis and the scorpions. In
Hymn or Prayer mode, such a characterization is much more difficult to find. Then
again, there is ultimately a reason for the behavior of the deities that we might look
askance at. Also, Maat is a balance of differentiated things, and the presence of
opposites and tensions is part of the balance. Seth serves a purpose as part of the
reconciled (sometimes anyway) pair of Horus-Seth, the snake biting Re serves a purpose,
the underworld "demons" harassing the dead who arrive in that realm serve a
purpose. Can we insist that those things aren't part of Maat?

(3) I've anticipated part three in my discussion of point two. But there's another aspect
of the question. Is there someone who does what he wants to and it's automatically
Maat? Who in effect can bully everyone else into accepting what he does as Maat? In
an earlier generation, at least some Egyptologists would have said the king. This view
hasn't stood the test of time. Even if a given king, say Akhenaten, could impose his view
of Maat without open rebellion or opposition (as far as we know), or do unjust things
that couldn't be redressed at the time, whatever the king did wasn't automatically Maat;
he was responsible for upholding Maat. Thus, posterity or other societal institutions
could make the judgment that the king was deviating from Maat. Yes, they were vested
interests too, but I would say there was such a thing as a cultural integrity or consensus
that held together over time. The Osiris priesthood, and posterity, didn't forgive the
Heracleopolitan kings for desecrating the cemetery at Abydos. Posterity didn't forgive
Khufu for being (possibly, judging by his prevailing reputation) an arrogant and possibly
tyrannical ruler. In Westcar, Khufu says that a death-row prisoner should be beheaded
so that Djedi can demonstrate his head-reattaching technique, and Djedi refuses --
Sovereign my lord, it hasn't been commanded to us to do thus with the noble cattle, i.e.
humankind. In other words, it isn't a Maat thing to do. Posterity certainly didn't forgive
Akhenaten. So maybe the people have to suffer through what one king or another does
(as more recent populations have had to suffer through what rulers do), but that doesn't
make it Maat.

The instructional literature consistently tells people to do right actions with right
intention and not to do wrong actions, and it instructs people to cultivate right
attitudes. (That all comes under the heading of speaking and doing Maat.) It urges
planning ahead but recognizes that "man proposes but God disposes," or a close
parallel. Right actions include things like being deferential to one's boss and superiors,
cultivating etiquette in social situations etc. There are cases in Egyptian literature in
which the outcome of an action doesn't match the intent, as in the Contendings of
Horus and Seth when Isis harpoons Horus instead of Seth while the two of them are
fighting in the form of hippos. And wrong intent backfires on the perpetrator, as when
the greedy Nemtynakhte says, "Would that I had a potent image, so that I might take
away the property of this peasant!" (In other words, he wishes that he could use ritual
power for greedy and criminal motives, which of course was a strong temptation to
which various people at various times succumbed.) If one internalizes Maat, then one
will say and do the right thing with the right intention.

I said I might post something else, and here it is. Pinch refers to and very briefly
summarizes the Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor (pp. 17, 86, 89). On p. 89 she makes the
statement which I want to follow up:

". . . the serpent deities are suddenly destroyed by fire. Only the great serpent (the
creator) and his little daughter (the Eye goddess/Maat) survive the holocaust."

This closely reflects the formulation of John Baines, "Interpreting the Story of the
Shipwrecked Sailor" (JEA 76 [1990]: 55-72), on p. 62, but with one important
qualification:

"The text has been shown, principally by M.-T. Derchain-Urtel, to present in the snake a
being who is the creator god, who has survived, perhaps [my emphasis] with his
daughter Maat, the catastrophe of the end of creation and the loss of the other gods, as
symbolized by the seventy-four forms of the sun god."

The actual passage reads (deBuck, Egyptian Readingbook p. 103): "We comprised 75
snakes, being my children and my siblings. I won't mention/think about a little daughter
who was brought to me (or, whom I acquired?) by means of prayer."

A few quick points. There seems to be some ambiguity about the number of snakes
(does the 75 include the speaker or not?). In the Litany of Re there are 74 forms but 75
invocations. But the "kicker" is that, as Baines suggests with the word "perhaps," it isn't
at all clear that the daughter survived; the snake sounds rather like someone bereaved
and grieving when he mentions her. If he's referring to the end of time as we know it,
and the sailor is talking to him outside of ordinary time and space, then that hasn't
"happened yet" from the standpoint of the present world. But it's worth noting that the
story probably dates to the late 11th or early 12th Dynasty (Simpson says somewhat
after 2000 BC), when Egypt had come through what Egyptians felt as an existential crisis
(whatever its exact dimensions might have been) in the collapse of the Old Kingdom
and its aftermath. The theme of the breakdown of order preoccupied Egyptian authors
for a long time. Do we have in this text a radical "Maat is dead" theology?? How are we
to understand this? Parkinson (The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems
1940-1640 BC, Oxford: OUP 1997, p. 95) has proposed a translation indicating that the
serpent brought the daughter to safety: “I shall not evoke the little daughter, / whom I
had wisely brought away.” But in a parenthesis he acknowledges that the passage is
ambiguous and that the translation we noted earlier is still possible: “(The verse is
allusive and ambiguous; it might also be translated: ‘who was brought to me by
prayer’).” (p. 99 n. 18)

Maat is a form of sustenance, and that is one of the aspects of the offering of Maat; anx
m maAt "living/subsisting on Maat" is said of Re and other divine beings, including the
blessed dead, and also of Akhenaten. Hornung (Idea into Image pp. 131-132) quotes
texts in which the king, or the priest deputized to stand in for him, addresses Re:

"I bring you Maat. You live in her. [I would say "live on" for anx m -- Dr. Ed.] You rejoice
over her. You feed on her."

"Maat is your bread, Maat is your beer."

Terence DuQuesne ("I Know Ma'et," DE 22 [1992]: 86) quotes a passage from the Great
Speos Inscription of Hatshepsut:

"I have given to [Amun] Ma'et which he loves

Since I know that he lives by her
[Likewise] she is my bread and I swallow her dew"

Again, I would translate "he lives on her." For the hieroglyphic text, see J. Allen in BES 16
(2002), p. 18. (NB: My student Wei Fenglian at IHAC wrote her MA thesis on this text.)

DuQuesne goes into more detail on sustenance and ingestion related to Maat ("Semen
of the Bull," DE 32 [1995]: 113):

"Ma'et is, for the Egyptians, alimentary. It is identified not only with the heart but also,
as Meeks shows in a fascinating new paper, with the liver. In the Story of Anubis and
Bata, Bata's wife asks to eat the liver of the bull who is the reincarnation of her dead
husband. Meeks sees this, quite properly, as being a stratagem for the permanent
neutralization of Bata's capacity for rebirth. It could also be suggested that the woman
is thereby seeking to absorb into herself the bull's vital energy."

Meeks' paper cited is the one in the Stricker Festschrift.

mAa is a verb "present, offer," and mAaw is a noun for "products, offering, tribute, gifts"
(Faulkner's Dictionary p. 102).

The theme of sustenance or nourishment for the people is emphasized in the Loyalist
Instruction (Sehetepibre stela), Lichtheim vol. 1 p. 125-129, hieroglyphic text in
Sethe, Aegyptische Lesestuecke, pp. 68-70. He doesn't explicitly talk about Maat, but he
talks about right (mAaw) conduct of life, and of course the sustenance and plenty which
come from the king are a part of the Maat that the king upholds.