Chapter CXXV

. of the Book of the Dead. The deceased says to Osiris:--

"Homage to thee, O thou great God, thou Lord of the two Ma[=a]t goddesses! I have come to thee, O my Lord, and I have made myself to come hither that I may behold thy beauties. I know thee, and I know thy name, and I know the names of the two and forty gods who live with thee in this Hall of Ma[=a]ti, who live as watchers of sinners and who feed upon their blood on that day when the characters (_or_ lives) of men are reckoned up (_or_ taken into account) in the presence of the god Un-nefer. Verily, God of the Rekhti-Merti (_i.e._, the twin sisters of the two eyes), the Lord of the city of Ma[=a]ti is thy name. Verily I have come to thee, and I have brought Ma[=a]t unto thee, and I have destroyed wickedness."

The deceased then goes on to enumerate the sins or offences which he has not committed; and he concludes by saying: "I am pure; I am pure; I am pure; I am pure. My purity is the purity of the great Bennu which is in the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis), for, behold., I am the nostrils of the God of breath, who maketh all mankind to live on the day when the Eye of R[=a] is full in Annu (Heliopolis) at the end of the second month of the season PERT. [Footnote: _i.e._, the last day of the sixth month of the Egyptian year, called by the Copta Mekhir.] I have seen the Eye of R[=a] when it was full in Annu; [Footnote: The allusion here seems to be to the Summer or Winter Solstice.] therefore let not evil befall me either in this land or in this Hall of Ma[=a]ti, because I, even I, know the names of the gods who are therein."

Now as the gods who live in the Hall of Ma[=a]t with Osiris are two and forty in number, we should expect that two and forty sins or offences would be mentioned in the addresses which the deceased makes to them; but this is not the case, for the sins enumerated in the Introduction never reach this number. In the great illustrated papyri of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties we find, however, that notwithstanding the fact that a large number of sins, which the deceased declares he has not committed, are mentioned in the Introduction, the scribes and artists added a series of negative statements, forty-two in number, which they set out in a tabular form. This, clearly, is an attempt to make the sins mentioned equal in number to the gods of the Hall of Ma[=a]t, and it would seem as if they preferred to compose an entirely new form of this section of the one hundred and twenty-fifth chapter to making any attempt to add to or alter the older section. The artists, then, depicted a Hall of Ma[=a]t, the doors of which are wide open, and the cornice of which is formed of uraei and feathers, symbolic of Ma[=a]t. Over the middle of the cornice is a seated deity with hands extended, the right over the Eye of Horus, and the left over a pool. At the end of the Hall are seated the goddesses of Ma[=a]t, _i.e._, Isis and Nephthys, the deceased adoring Osiris who is seated on a throne, a balance with the heart of the deceased in one scale, and the feather, symbolic of Ma[=a]t, in the other, and Thoth painting a large feather. In this Hall sit the forty-two gods, and as the deceased passes by each, the deceased addresses him by his name and at the same time declares that he has not committed a certain sin. An examination of the different papyri shows that the scribes often made mistakes in writing this list of gods and list of sins, and, as the result, the deceased is made to recite before one god the confession which strictly belongs to another. Inasmuch, as the deceased always says after pronouncing the name of each god, "I have not done" such and such a sin, the whole group of addresses has been called the "Negative Confession." The fundamental ideas of religion and morality which underlie this Confession are exceedingly old, and we may gather from it with tolerable clearness what the ancient Egyptian believed to constitute his duty towards God and towards his neighbour.

It is impossible to explain, the fact that forty-two gods only are addressed, and equally so to say why this number was adopted. Some have believed that the forty-two gods represented each a name of Egypt, and much support is given to this view by the fact that most of the lists of names make the number to be forty-two; but then, again, the lists do not agree. The classical authors differ also, for by some of these writers the names are said to be thirty-six in number, and by others forty-six are enumerated. These differences may, however, be easily explained, for the central administration may at any time have added to or taken from the number of names for fiscal or other considerations, and we shall probably be correct in assuming that at the time the Negative Confession was drawn up in the tabular form in which we meet it in the XVIIIth dynasty the names were forty-two in number. Support is also lent to this view by the fact that the earliest form of the Confession, which forms the Introduction to