Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt by JAN ASSMANN Translated from the German by DAVID LORTON Abridged and updated by the author CORNELL UNIVERSIT YPRESS Ithaca and London Permit me, permit me, my good engineer, to tell you something, to lay it upon your heart. The only healthy and noble and indeed, let me expressly point out, the only religious way in which to regard death is to perceive and feel it as a constituent part of life, as life’s holy prerequisite, and not to separate it intellectually, to set it up in opposition to life, or, worse, to play it off against life in some disgusting fashion—for that is indeed the antithesis of a healthy, noble, reasonable, and religious view. . . . Death is to be honored as the cradle of life, the womb of renewal. Once separated from life, it becomes grotesque, a wraith—or even worse. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain , translated by John E. Woods (New York, 1997), p. 197. Contents Translator’s Note I NTRODUCTION : D EATH AND C ULTURE 1. Death as Culture Generator 2. Principal Distinctions in the Relationship between Death and Culture a) This Life and the Next Life as Lifetime-Encompassing Horizons of Accomplishment b) Death Pieced-on to Life and Life Permeated by Death c) World of the Living, World of the Dead: Border Traffic and Exclusion d) Images and Counterimages, Death and Counterworld P ART O NE . I MAGES OF D EATH C HAPTER 1. D EATH AS D ISMEMBERMENT 1. The Opening Scene of the Osiris Myth 2.
Voir