Egypt
A world judged one heart at a time, and a sun that has to be defended nightly.
Egypt located judgment in the individual rather than in a last day. In spell 125 of the Book of the Dead, the deceased enters the hall of the two truths, recites the Negative Confession before forty-two assessors, and has the heart weighed against the feather of Ma'at while the composite beast Ammit waits to devour whoever fails. This is an assessment of conduct, not of belief, and it is repeated for every person who dies. The precision of the apparatus, itemised sins and named judges, has no parallel among the traditions that judge whole worlds at once.
The cosmos itself was held to be under nightly threat. Apophis, the serpent of disorder, attacks the sun-barque as it passes through the underworld, and is repelled each night so that Ra can rise; the ritual texts against him amount to a maintenance manual for the survival of daylight. Order here is not a settled condition but a victory renewed every dawn, a this-worldly eschatology of upkeep rather than conclusion.
Egypt did also imagine dissolution, but sparingly. The Book of the Heavenly Cow explains the gods' withdrawal from a humanity that rebelled, and in Coffin Texts spell 1130 the creator Atum foresees a time when the ordered world returns to the primeval water, leaving only himself and Osiris. These are the closest Egyptian analogues to a true end, and they are muted beside the daily drama of the weighing and the serpent. The judgment is treated in Weighing of the Heart, the nightly combat in Apophis: the Serpent at the Edge of Night, the withdrawal of the gods in The Book of the Heavenly Cow, and the system as a whole in Egyptian Eschatology. What Egypt contributes is the conviction that a world can be under constant judgment without ever being scheduled to end.
See also
- Weighing of the HeartThe ancient Egyptian judgment of the dead, where the heart is balanced against t
- Apophis: the Serpent at the Edge of NightThe Egyptian end of the world is a nightly event: the chaos-serpent attacks the
- The Book of the Heavenly CowAn Egyptian myth of why the gods withdrew from the earth, as Ra sends destructio
- Egyptian EschatologyIn ancient Egypt the end came not to the world but to each person, who faced a w
Further reading
- Book of the Dead, spell 125 (the weighing and the Negative Confession) · tr. Raymond O. Faulkner, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, British Museum, 1985 The judgment scene; the Papyrus of Ani is the best-known witness.
- The Book of the Heavenly Cow · tr. Erik Hornung, Der ägyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh, 1982 The near-destruction of humanity and the gods' withdrawal from the world.
- Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt · Cornell University Press, 2005
- Coffin Texts spell 1130, in R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts · Aris & Phillips, 1973-78 Atum foresees a return of the world to the primeval waters.