In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

195 Closure: The Five Stages of Renewal We have tarried long over these often mysterious and always fascinating images of the netherworld. We have stood astounded before the cultural testimony of the Theban royal tombs, which speak to us, even after millennia . In many who visit these tombs, there grows a true and abiding love for the divine world of the Egyptians. Though the foreignness of this world might daunt us at first, it is pervaded by a deeply human quality, and we soon can perceive the cares, the needs, the hopes, and the fears of our ancestors. The images bear witness to an intense longing for life and an overwhelming joy in the world of the gods and goddesses. Even in the burial chamber, with the reality of darkness and death all around us, these images are harbingers of life, a life that will be miraculously renewed at the very brink of the abyss, of despair, and of chaos. Every deceased person wished to take part in Re’s journey, and I believe that everyone, modern visitors to the tombs included, desires to join him. For even in life, there is a“death”that sometimes oppresses us, when we no longer feel the creative power of God at work in our soul. The Egyptians, too, knew such conditions of the soul, and to them it was always clear that the comforting message of the Books of the Netherworld was not just for the dead but also for the living. We have tarried long, indeed, over the images of the Amduat, not unlike the Sungod himself: excepting only the first and the fifth hour, all the rest begin with the statement that he, the Great God, is pausing. The Egyptian verb is h ˙ tp, which means “to rest,” “to pause,” “to settle down,” but also, “to be content,” in the sense of being grateful for a merciful destiny granted by the gods. To be able to rest or pause is a divine gift, granted only to those toward whom the deities are favorable. Only those blessed with such a destiny can pause, reconciled with themselves and with the gods.As we have seen, in his transformation process, the Sungod himself is dependent on the help of those who surround him. Whenever Closure 196 he pauses, they revive to serve and support him. Though they are entirely dependent on the Sungod, it is also true that the god himself, weary from his day’s work, cannot regenerate without their assistance. Although the pausing is a state of grace, paradoxically enough, it requires a sort of activity. This paradox is an important trait of the mystic. Meister Eckhart, for instance, comes close to the basic ideas of the Books of the Netherworld when he states the matter thus: “I am not blessed because God is in me and is near to me and because I possess him, but because I am aware of how close He is to me, and that I know God....We should know God and be aware that God’s kingdom is near to hand” (Luke 21:31).1 That the individual must strive for knowledge about the things of the afterlife is a central idea of Egyptian thought, and it was this knowledge that inspired their magnificent images of the hereafter. The same striving for consciousness, though in our case on a psychological level, has motivated us to study and understand the images anew. However much we are able to understand, we shall never attain to what is, in the end, ineffable, unapproachable, and mute. The Egyptians themselves were fully aware of this point. When we observe the decoration of the royal tombs of the Ramesside Period, we encounter a remarkable phenomenon. The first eleven hours of the Amduat are depicted, but the most important hour of all, that dealing with the birth of the sun, is missing! Why so? I suppose that it is because of humankind’s age-old awe of what is most sacred. It was awe of the unfathomable wonder of the divine birth as portrayed in the twelfth nocturnal hour that must have caused this hesitation to depict it. Where the sacred is so intensely present, it is best to keep silent and not to depict or name it. The same is true of numinous power in its darkest form—thus the reluctance of the Egyptian artists in the face of the unfathomable in the case of Apopis. Only with great caution...

Share