Anubis Speaks!: A Guide to the Afterlife by the Egyptian God of the Dead (31 page)

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As for any man who will make a disturbance, I shall be judged with him.

Ha, tricked ya. It’s not scary at all, is it? He’s just saying that when the thief meets me, Anubis, at death, he will have to face my judgment. And you know what I’ll do with that evil little heart!

Now consider this one.

A crocodile be against him in the water; a snake be against him on land; he who would do anything against this tomb; never did I do a thing against him. It is the god who will judge.

True, crocodiles and snakes are scary, but that’s not much of a curse, now is it? But again, I like it because it reminds everyone that
I
will be the judge of the thief’s behavior. Yup, it always comes back to me.

During Ramses’s era, noblemen’s curses became even more colorful.

If you would do anything against this tomb,

may you be attacked by a donkey.

Other curses claim that if you disturb the tomb, your wife or child would
marry
a donkey that kills you.

Yeah, death by donkey . . . the real ancient Egyptian mummy’s curse. You heard it here first, folks.

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The Drowned Rise

Hour TEN

Look! The entire river is teeming and roiling with snakes. The water is so clogged with snakes and serpents you could walk across them to the other side of the river.

Go on, I dare you. Seriously. You first.

If you took me up on that dare, you might find that most of the snakes you were stepping on would help you. They’re the good guys. If you haven’t noticed by now, snakes can be good or evil, depending on what they do, which is why we’ve seen as many serpents protecting Ra as attacking him.

My people understood that good and evil were two sides of one reality. A snake in the granary that eats mice is a good thing. A venomous snake that attacks people in the marshes is a bad thing. Not knowing which one was good or bad could seem like chaos, which was scary to the Egyptians. The only way to control the chaos, they believed, was to live a good life—to live according to Ma’at’s rules for justice and order.

See the two intertwined serpents standing up over there, looking like a staff in this hour? A sun disk rests on both their heads. Those snakes are clearly on our side. If not, we would be watching them trying to
eat
the sun disk—like Apophis wants to do—instead of supporting it.

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Snakes as symbols of royalty showed up on many of our pharaohs’ crowns. The decoration of a cobra-about-to strike, called a
ureaus
, represented the king’s power. The ureaus sent the message that the king could strike his enemies down as quickly as a snake.

Also, during some historical eras, and in some parts of Egypt, my people believed that dying by snakebite automatically gave them eternal life.

And, of course, since snakes shed their skins and are “reborn” with shiny new scales, they became powerful symbols of rebirth and eternal life.

The only “all-the-time bad guy” snake was

Apophis.

Watch out now! He’s on the attack!

Luckily, fourteen gods step up with a magic net and throw it over the monster. Ha! He can do nothing but thrash about and hiss. This is fine by us, except for the smell coming from the monster’s mouth.

Think rotting fish, combined with a clogged toilet and warmed-up trash. Yah. Dude needs a giant breath mint.

Oh, look. Here comes Horus again. He represents youth and strength and kingship. While Apophis is thrashing around, tangled in a net, Horus stretches a staff over a lake. At the bottom of that lake lie the drowned. Horus is blessing all of those who died from drowning in the Nile. They rise out of the water to live again.

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His blessing was especially reassuring to the living, because the unrecovered drowned had no bodies to preserve. However, thanks to Horus in this hour, they are revived and welcomed into the afterworld for eternity.

These are the only dead, by the way, who escaped my weighing of the heart test.

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