Читать книгу Egyptian Art: Studies онлайн

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The Egyptians formed a somewhat coarse idea of the human soul. They regarded it as an exact reproduction of the body of each individual, formed of a substance less dense than flesh and bones, but susceptible to the sight, feeling, and touch. The double, or to call it by the name they gave it, the ka, was subject, though in a lesser degree than its terrestrial type, to all the infirmities of our life: it drank, ate, clothed itself, anointed itself with perfumes, came and went in its tomb, required furniture, a house, servants, an income. A man must be assured beyond the tomb of the possession of all the wealth he had enjoyed in the world, under penalty of being condemned to an eternity of unspeakable misery. His family’s first obligation towards him was to provide him with a durable body; they therefore mummified his mortal remains to the best of their ability, and buried the mummy at the bottom of a pit where it could only be reached with the greatest difficulty. The body, however, in spite of the care taken in preparing it, only very remotely recalled the form of the living person. It was, besides, unique and easily destroyed: it could be broken, methodically dismembered, and the pieces scattered or burnt. If it disappeared, what would become of the double? For its support statues were provided, representing the exact form of the individual. Effigies in wood, limestone, hard stone, bronze, were more solid than the mummy, and there was nothing to prevent the manufacture of any number of them desired. One body was a single chance of durability for the double: twenty gave it twenty chances. And that is the explanation of the astonishing number of statues sometimes found in one tomb. The piety of the relatives multiplied the images, and consequently the supports, the imperishable bodies, of the double would, by themselves alone, almost assure him immortality.16