Light Hearts and the Valley of the Kings
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
311
354
Trip End
Ongoing
Luxor,
Nile River Valley,
Egypt
Saturday, April 26, 2008
At that time, Greece and Rome were just forming what would become their classic civilizations, with the Etruscans and the Mycenaeans and the Minoans. The Israelites were likely in Caanan, just beginning to settle their land. Babylonia and the Persian Assyrians were in decline or developing. Egypt was the most advanced civilization and therefore had the most advanced burials for their dead rulers.
I descended into King Tutankhamun's tomb to look at the murals, showing a funeral procession, an opening of the mouth ceremony, the king offering to the Gods, and a solar boat with sun-worshipping baboons, who symbolically call as the sun rises. King Tut's mummy was on display in an antechamber and one of the gold coffins was in the sarcophagus.
But these were a few of 1700 items found, when Howard Carter and his crew opened the tomb. These items were for the king in the afterlife, and were on display at the Archaeology Museum in Cairo. So when in Cairo, I used my imagination to try to understand the tomb, as it was key to life in Egypt.
Young King Tut did have one major kingly action: overturning the monotheistic worship of Aten, the sun. In the process, he changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankh-amun, with Amun as the focal god, as it was before Aten was elevated. Amun, was an unseen, unformed god, similar in definition to the present God. Yet from that god, came other gods: from one come two, then three, and so on, making numbers and opposites and relationships important among the gods, who all represented a unity.
The debate then was whether or not god was divisible or indivisible in accordance to forms and functions. Were the sun and the planets gods or just personified zodiac forces found on Byzantine churches or synagogues? This debate continued for millenia, and still continues today in other ways. In more worldly matters, this debate revolved around the power of the priests; if you stopped worshipping their gods, they were unemployed.
King Tut was mummified, with his liver, stomach, lungs, and intestines placed in four golden coffins which were then placed into four canopic jars guarded by four god heads. The jars were then placed into canopic boxes. The brain wasn't considered essentail and was removed with a long hook inserted into the nose. The heart, however, was the seat of life and intelligence, and was the vital key to life and death.
To succeed in the afterlife, King Tut needed not only 1700 personal items-boats, tools, saws, servants, papyrus boxes and pens, protective jewelry, beds, thrones, gilded shrines, clothing, food, mirrors, swords, shields, arrows, guards, and magical symbols and essences--but also a light heart. His heart would be weighed and judged by the gods. If his heart was heavier than the feather of Maat, the goddess of truth and justice, he was not ready for the afterlife, and would be reincarnated until his heart became as light as a feather. If his heart was as light as a feather--not just any feather, but Maat's feather--then he would be ressurected, and his soul and body would be reunited with Osiris, the god of the afterlife, and would have everlasting life united with the gods.
That was the key to the Valley of the Kings: a light heart.
The pathway towards a light heart and the afterlife was written on the walls and ceiling of the tomb of King Ramses VI, which I saw in the hot afternoon, when most people had already left. Five-pointed golden stars shone on the royal blue tomb ceiling as gods and goddesses with animal heads lined the walls between hieroglyphic texts and royal cartouches letting everyone know who was mummified in the tomb and whose name was protected within the magical lasso of the diagram. Birds with a human head portrayed the pharoah's ba, or soul, which reunited with the body in the afterlife, hence the mummification, the worldly possessions, and the realistic mummy masks.
Eventually, all dead people--not just dead pharoahs--were judged this way in Ancient Egypt...or at least the hieroglyphics tell Egyptologists that the process became more pluralistic, as the gods opened the afterlife to the mainstream. I biked back to Luxor in the late afternoon heat, as the royal barque carrying the sun disk was descending for another day, with the pharoahs and others with light hearts on board..
Canopic Jars for Internal Organs
