Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1906 Excerpt:... CHAPTER IV. THE BOOK AM-TUAT AND THE BOOK OF GATES. "am-tuat," or Shat Am-tuat, i.e., the "Book of what is in the Tuat," is the name given by the Egyptians to the large funeral book in which the priests of Amen describe the Other World according to the views of their order, and the passage of their god Amen-Ea through the mysterious country which he traversed during the hours of the night. Its object, in the first place, was to impress the followers of Amen and others with the idea of the absolute supremacy of that god in the realms of the dead, and to show that all the gods of the dead in every place of departed spirits throughout Egypt rendered to him homage in one form or another, and in return received benefits from him. And in the second place, the book, being an actual "guide" to the Underworld, with pictures of its various divisions and of the gods and demons of every kind that were to be.met with in them, was invaluable for the faithful, who were able to learn from it, whilst they were living upon earth, how to find their way from this world to the next, and how to identify the beings who would attempt to bar tbeir way, and what to say to them. The Book Am-tuat was a very lengthy work, and a complete copy of it occupied much space whether on walls or on papyrus, and, as poor folk could not afford tombs with chambers and corridors sufficiently large to hold all its texts and pictures, they were obliged to be content with sections, and smaller extracts from it. The need of a shortened form of the work was felt at a comparatively early period after it came into general use, and it is therefore not suprising to find that the priests collected all the facts, which were absolutely essential for the soul that had to travel by itself through the Other World...