"hath neither defect nor, like R[=a], shall suffer diminution for ever."
Into the S[=A]HU passed the soul which had lived in the body of a man
upon earth, and it seems as if the new, incorruptible body formed the
dwelling-place of the soul in heaven just as the physical body had been
its earthly abode. The reasons why the Egyptians continued to mummify
their dead is thus apparent; they did not do so believing that their
physical bodies would rise again, but because they wished the spiritual
body to "sprout" or "germinate" from them, and if possible--at least it
seems so--to be in the form of the physical body. In this way did the
dead rise according to the Egyptians, and in this body did they come.

From what has been said above, it will be seen that there is no reason
for doubting the antiquity of the Egyptian belief in the resurrection of
the dead and in immortality, and the general evidence derived both from
archaeological and religious considerations supports this view. As old,
however, as this belief in general is the specific belief in a spiritual
body (S[=A]H or S[=A]HU); for we find it in texts of the Vth dynasty
incorporated with ideas which belong to the prehistoric Egyptian in his
savage or semi-savage state. One remarkable extract will prove this
point. In the funeral chapters which are inscribed on the walls of the
chambers and passages inside the pyramid of King Unas, who flourished at
the end of the Vth dynasty, about B.C. 3300, is a passage in which the
deceased king terrifies all the powers of heaven and earth because he
"riseth as a soul (BA) in the form of the god who liveth upon his
fathers and who maketh food of his mothers. Unas is the lord of wisdom
and his mother knoweth not his name. He hath become mighty like unto the
god Temu, the father who gave him birth, and after Temu gave him birth
he became stronger than his father." The king is likened unto a Bull,
and he feedeth upon every god, whatever may be the form in which he
appeareth; "he hath weighed words with the god whose name is hidden,"