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As we approach this article it is important to recap what we have learned so far. We have seen that the Ancient Egyptians saw "God" in the Heavens and over times such observations "spoke" to them about the Creator and His "message in the stars" as they understood it. Over time these "observations" in the Heavens and in Nature (which was influenced by the Heavens and the Sun) were correlated and later personified by the Ancients into stories of gods and godmen and every Gentile nation saw these same things and made similar observations. The Egyptians saw in the Heavens the only God they knew: A Creator which creates, sustains, and destroys. With such "death" of stars and the receding of constellations below the horizon (seen as death) came similar ideas of a "return" to one's Creator where judgment was to be awaited. Of course this was later applied to mankind as well and in such judgment man needed favor with the judge...in this case Osiris. This explains why almost every Gentile nation of the world has such similarities to the "Osiris Myth" or the "Osiris Pattern" in their religions histories and why most of the "Jesus story" as found in the New Testament is little more than a retelling of Egyptian religious myths as found recorded in Egyptian and other Gentile ancient religious writings since the beginning of mankind's earliest written records. Understand as well with this "judgment" would come alternate ways to procure a favorable verdict from Osiris; the judge of the dead. This is where we trip up as Christians as concepts understood as "symbolical" and "allegorical" are applied in a literal way to the new Osiris named Jesus. Understand as well that to them this was understood as an "allegory" of what they perceived as they looked on the Creator's handiwork in the Heavens. They even made connections in Nature since the Heavens influenced the growing seasons and the food chain. But again it has to be said these understandings of these Egytpians were "allegories" of higher spiritual truths as they perceived them in their lives. We as Christians and followers of Jesus fall into idolatry and blasphemy of the Creator when we attach similar religious beliefs to a Jewish Rabbi named Yeshua/Jesus and believe them in a "LITERAL" way as we have been taught under the influence of Western Christianity.
Failing to understand the difference between "allegory" and "literalism" has resulted in a false atonement which unfortunately has been applied to the Jesus of history as it was of the original "Jesus figure".....Osiris. It is my hope that after seeing what the ancient Egyptians saw in the heavens then you will be able to see how such "allegories" later became "literal" religious beliefs which were attached to false gods and dying godmen in almost every nation under the sun and finally to Jesus/Yeshua by the Essenes and later Rome. Understand that we desire the truth about Jesus and not just the re-telling of the "Osiris" myth over and over again through countless generations where finally it was again applied to a Jewish Rabbi named Yeshua in the Fertile Crescent in the first century B.C. One's relationship with God should be built upon truth and not Astro-theology and concepts personified from nature. It is to this task of recovering such Divine truth that we now turn.
That solemn trial of every man for his conduct in this life, which was to fix his reward or punishment in the next, is one of the most interesting of the pictures on the Egyptian funereal papyri, and was enacted by the priests as part of the funeral ceremony. They put on masks distinctive of the several gods, and thus received the body in due form. Osiris sat on a raised throne, holding his two scepters, and wearing the crown of Upper Egypt. Before him were placed the offerings, and near him were seated the four lesser gods of the dead. The deceased holds up his hands in prayer, and is introduced by two goddesses, each wearing on her head the emblem of truth. The wicked Typhon, as an hippopotamus, the Cerberus of the Greeks, accuses him to the judge, and demands that he shall be punished; while the four lesser gods of the dead intercede as advocates or mediators on his behalf. One only needs to see these four gods as positioned on the altar before Osiris, the judge of the underworld and the dead, as these four gods give their lives for an atonement for the soon to be judged “sinner.”
A scene from the the Book of the Dead depicts the Judgement
of the Dead. Anubis watches the scales; on the right, Thoth records the
results; Amemet, next to Anubis, waits to eat sinful hearts. In the scales
are shown the deceased's heart on left, and the feather of Maat on the
right. But a large pair of scales is set up, which is quietly adjusted by
the dog-headed Anubis and the hawk-headed Horus. In one scale is placed
the heart or conduct of the deceased, and in the other a figure of the
goddess of truth. A small weight is moved along the beam by Horus, to make
the two scales balance, and to determine 
how
much the conduct falls short of the standard weight. In some stories it is
taught that Anubis is the son of Set and Isis. In others He is seen as the
son of Ra and Isis. He is the God who weighs the heart at death. He stands
before the scales of judgement, a feather in one hand and the heart of the
deceased person in the other. Gently He places the heart upon the scales.
Then placing the feather upon the opposite scales He weighs to see how
just the deceased has been in life. From this He could tell where your
soul would go. The rank and importance of Anubis was seen as great as that
of Osiris. In the embalmment of Osiris Anubis was called Khent Sehet, "Governor
of the Hall of the God". One of His names as the god of the funeral
mountain was Tep-Tu-f, "He who is upon his hill". Forty-two
assessors are at hand to assist Osiris in forming his judgment, and each
declares the deceased mans innocence of that particular crime of which
that assessor takes notice. The judgment, when pronounced, is written down
by the ibis-headed Thoth, as recording angel, or god of writing. Thus are
measured the goodness and the failings of the life lately ended.
Those who were too
uncultivated to listen to a sermon might thus learn wisdom from what they
saw with their eyes, and this ceremony was a forcible method of teaching
the ignorant multitude that a day of judgment awaits us all after death,
and that we should so regulate our lives that, when weighed in the great
balance, they may not be found wanting.
But notwithstanding this show of a trial, and this ceremony of the
great scales, the Egyptians, like other Pagan nations, had very little
trust in the justice of the Judge; and to bribe him, and to appease his
wrath, they prudently brought their sin-offerings,
which in our figure lie upon the altar in the form of a Lotus flower.
The same offerings are laid before the assessors in the hope that they
also may thereby be persuaded to return favorable answers to the questions
that the judge may put to them. Again the four lesser gods, who come
forward as the friends and advocates of the trembling sinner, may be seen
at the head of a tablet in the British Museum, strengthening their
mediation on his behalf by laying their own gifts upon the altar before
Osiris. On other tables we see other gods joining him in his prayers as
his advocates, and
making their offerings jointly with him. Nor was this always thought
enough to obtain from the judge a verdict in favor of the deceased. The
greater the sacrifice, the greater would be the chance of a favorable
verdict. Accordingly, the
four lesser gods are themselves supposed to offer themselves as an atoning
sacrifice on behalf of the sinner; and on a funeral tablet in the British
Museum, dated in 62nd year of Rameses II., we see the deceased has placed
them (the four lesser god who give their lives for the sinner) on the
altar before Osiris, as his sin offering.
The resurrection of the dead to a second life had been a deep-rooted religious opinion among the Egyptians from the earliest times. They told Herodotus that when the soul left its own body, it took up its abode in the bodies of other animals, and was there imprisoned during a number of other short lives; and thus, after passing for three thousand years through the bodies of birds, beasts, and fishes, it was again allowed to return into its old dwelling. Among the sculptures on the sarcophagus of Oimenepthah II., we see the human race mounting the steps of a lofty throne, on which is seated the Judge Osiris, with the great scales before him, and the soul of one unhappy man, who has been found guilty, has been lodged in the body of a pig, as the representative of impurity, and in that form is carried away in a boat by the god Anubis from the presence of the judge. On the other hand, on a papyrus in the British Museum we see a painting of the mummy of a good man placed inside the body of a ram, the animal sacred to the god Kneph, and thus the proper dwelling place for goodness.
The figures on the ornamental mummy cases abundantly prove to us that the reason for saving the body from decay, by embalming it as a mummy was, that it might be ready for the soul to re-enter when the years of wandering were at an end. The painting represents the mummy lying on its lion-shaped couch, with the soul returning to it, in the form a bird with human head, and putting back life and breath into its mouth, while the god Anubis is preparing to unwrap the bandages. The character for life is a key, in the form of a cross with a ring at the top; that for breath is the mast and sail of a ship, which naturally remind us of wind. It was only at a late time, perhaps not till after their intercourse with the Greeks, that some few of the Egyptians entertained the opinion of a spiritual resurrection, without the help of the dead body. They show this opinion in the painting by giving to a man at the moment of his death two bodies, the one earthly and mortal, and the other angelic and immortal. The vault of heaven is represented by the outstretched figure of the goddess Neith, painted blue. On each side sits a figure of the ram-headed Kneph, holding the feather, the character for Truth, to show that the dead man is righteous, or has been acquitted by the judge Osiris; In the middle is the earthly body, painted red, falling to the ground in death, while the heavenly body, painted blue, stands upright and holds up his hands in the attitude of prayer. This picture describes the opinion of the Apostle Paul, who says, in First Corinthians 15:44, “There is an animal body and there is a spiritual body.” But this more spiritual view of the resurrection to a future life was never generally received by the Egyptians. They clung to the old opinion of the resurrection of the body, and continued to make it into a mummy to save it for the return of the soul. The two opinions are both spoken of in Acts 23:8, where we read that the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge both.
Many of these opinions about the resurrection and a future state of rewards and punishments were borrowed by the Greeks directly from Egypt, as we see by the Egyptian names which they took with the opinions. Thus Rrot-amenti, or King of Hell, the title of Osiris, gave a name to Rhadamanthus, the Greek judge of the dead. Menes, the fabulous founder of the Egyptian monarchy, became Minos, a second judge of the dead. From the word Charo, silent, the boatman of Greek mythology, who ferried the dead into the next world, was called Charon, and the river which he crossed was called Acheron. Hecate, the sorceress, one of the titles of Isis, was given by the Greeks and Romans as a name to their queen of Hell. The hippopotamus who stands before Osiris, when he is judging the dead, is one of the Cabeiri gods, and became among the Greeks, with but little change in figure and name, the dog Cerberus. The goddess Thmei, or truth, with the ostrich head in the same figure, became the Greek Themis, or goddess of justice. Herodotus tells us that though he did not believe much that was told him on these matters, yet that he thought them too serious to relate in his book. And thus the Greeks, as soon as Egypt was open to them by the rise of a race of kings at Sais, who favored Greek intercourse, readily copied the more solemn of the Egyptian superstitions.
Among the Jews, on the other hand, these views of a life after death were very little accepted; we find very few traces in the Hebrew writings of a belief in a future state as we have come to understand in Christianity. What is of interest for the Christian is that from Egypt on we find traces in almost all Gentile nations involved in sun worship where sun-gods or sun-godmen gave themselves for their followers as a "propitiation" for sin and redemption into the future life. Coupled with this fact, if you have been keeping up with the studies of Bet Emet Ministries, is the fact that when one comes to the understanding that the early Jerusalem church and even Paul continued to observe the sacrificial system which consisted of sin offerings and atonement offerings (see Nazarite vow in Acts 21 couples with Numbers 6) then one is faced with harsh reality that in the days following Jesus' death and even up to 70 C.E. no Jew, let alone the Jerusalem church, believed Jesus' death was a final sacrifice for anything. When one comes to the understanding that crucial chapters and passages in the New Testament were "added" well after 150 C.E. and later that taught the death of Jesus as an atonement (now recognized as a godman who died for others), and penned in the name of long dead disciples and apostles, little wonder where these Gentile redactors and editors got these notions. Nothing new under the sun; pardon my pun and these Gentile sunworshippers only applied to Jesus what they already had believed about their multitude of sun-godmen. The harsh facts of Acts 21 and Num. 6 reveal that "AT THAT TIME" none of the followers of Jesus following Pentecost believed in the final sacrifice or atonement connected in any way with Jesus' death. It would be much later at the hands of the non-Jews where their pagan concepts would be written into the traditions of Jesus and we have such an terrible state today where the only effective atonement that God gave mankind (repentance and obedience to the Torah and the Law of your specific covenant with God) have been replaced with a false atonement that finds it's origin in the sun worship of Egypt. It is time for serious study if you are a Christian.