ePub Early Judaism: The Exile to the Time of Jesus by Frederick J. Murphy in History

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The ancient Egyptian sources come alive; speaking to us without seeming alien to our modern ways of thinking. Andreas Schweizer invites us to join the nocturnal voyage of the solar barque and to immerse ourselves; with the 'Great Soul' of the sun; into the darkness surrounding us. Here in the illustrations and texts of the Amduat; threats hidden in the depths of our soul become visible as concrete images; an analysis of which remains ever worthwhile: even in the guise of the evil; ominous; or dark side of godhead with which Schweizer concerns himself. The netherworld into which we descend underlies our own world. Creative energies of dreadful intensity are active there; and only death; to which all must surrender; makes us truly alive by offering us regeneration from the depths.―Erik Hornung; from the ForewordThe Amduat (literally "that which is in the netherworld") tells the story of the nocturnal journey of Re; the Egyptian Sungod; through the netherworld from the time when the sun dies; after setting in the west; to its rebirth at sunrise in the east. In the middle of the night; in the profoundest depths of the netherworld; this resurrection is made possible by a mystical union of the sun with the mummified body of Osiris; god of the dead. This great mystery of the union between the freely moving soul of the Sungod; longing for the bright and boundless sky; with Osiris's corpse; which is irrevocably bound to the subterranean realm of the dead; evokes the renewal of all life and the restoration of totality.In the Egyptian belief system; the pharaohs and in later times all blessed dead embarked on this same "night-sea journey" after death; ultimately becoming one with Re and living forever. The vision of the afterlife elaborated in the Amduat; dating from around 1500 B.C.E.; has been influential for millennia; providing the model for an entire genre of Egyptian literature; the Books of the Afterlife; which in turn endured into the Greco-Roman era. Its themes and images persisted into gnostic and alchemical texts and made their way into early Christian portrayals of the beyond.In The Sungod's Journey through the Netherworld; Andreas Schweizer guides the reader through the Amduat; offering a psychological interpretation of its principal textual and iconographic elements. He is concerned with themes that run deep and wide in human experience; drawing on Jungian archetypes to find similar expression in many cultures worldwide: sleep as death; resurrection as reawakening or rebirth; and salvation or redemption; whether from original sin (as for Christians) or from the total annihilation of death (as for the ancient Egyptians).