Normandi Ellis is not generally considered the d

The idea of not losing one's self after death is perhaps the most important funerary theme in this work. Despite the fact that numerous chapters describe the process of "Becoming" some other being, from snake to crocodile to the very eye of Ra, these are balanced by just as many chapters focusing on not losing one's self. "Not Letting His Heart be Carried Off" is accompanied by chapters such as "Remembering His Name," "Not Losing His Mind," "Bringing Home His Soul," and "Returning to See His Home." The right to these victories is consistently earned -- as in other world religions -- through purity in life. Scattered through-out these chapters, and finally coming to a complete form in "The Confession," one finds the pure soul's claims to goodness and integrity. "I extinguished no man's light... I've not been less than what I was... I've not wasted love...." (197-198) The word integrity is really very essential here because a great deal of the issue at stake is not so much survival (for other chapters assure that the speaker will, of course, survive. All things, they suggest, are eternal) but rather the maintaining of the soul's integrity as it goes through its many transformations after death. Thus in these chapters one sees a focus on not losing what one has and defending this retention with claims that one truly knows and understands one's self and has used and explored it thoroughly. The heart must not be carried off, the text suggests, because "In my heart are the deeds my body has done and... I spoke no lies..." (119) which is to say that there was integrity between the heart and the action of the body, that there was no hypocrisy but rather that "I am lord of my heart... I am it--the things I have made. I have lived in truth with my heart." (119) These vital themes of bodily and spiritual integrity are a central part of the theme, which focuses simultaneously on the uniqueness of the individual striving to maintain itself against the universality of existence, and on the very deep importance of that universality -- it is as if only by recognizing that the soul is one with nature and still itself can the soul survive being forcibly returned to nature in death.

It is somewhat difficult to simply pinpoint a precise "argument" of the book without taking --and subsequently needing to defend-- a very particular position on Egyptology and mythology which is outside the scope of this review. Suffice to say that the theme of the work, at least, is relatively clear. It is a theme of honor for the gods and nature, and of conscious and healthy/moral living which prepares one for a death in which the true work of existence (that of ascending to join the gods) has just begun as one maintains one's integrity among the universal experience. This theme was apparently very well developed in the original, as is evidenced by its power over the imaginations and lives of a civilization that lasted more than a thousand years! In Normandi Ellis' translation, at least, it is likewise well developed and supported. The importance of pure living and self-awareness is supported strongly by first person mystical experiential knowledge and by appeal to the power and purity of the natural world. The ultimate authority, in this work, is the gods --which is to say, nature itself. When confronted with an idea which may seem contrary to mere reason, the author appeals to the obvious and overwhelming truth of external nature as the final arbiter of existence. For example, when arguing that life is far more than can be seen and that existence far transcends the mere physical, and the way in which the many come together to make one the author argues from the evidence of a lotus flower: "If you stood on a summer's morning on the bank under a brilliant sky, you would see the thousand petals and say that together they make the lotus. But if you lived in its heart, invisible from without, you might see how the ecstasy at its fragrant core give

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Approximate Word count = 3570
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)