In a series of chapters the soul is now protected against the poisonous serpents, including "the great python who devours the ass," which it will meet with in its passage through the limbo of the other world. As Professor Maspero remarks, the large place occupied by these serpents among the dangers which await the soul on its first exit from the body, make it plain that in the days when the Book of the Dead was first being compiled, venomous snakes were far more plentiful than they ever have been in the Egypt of historical times. Indeed, the python, whose huge folds are still painted on the walls of the royal tombs of Thebes, had retired southward long before the age of the Fourth Dynasty. To an equally early period we may refer the forty-second chapter, in which the soul is taught how to escape the slaughter of the enemies of Horus, which took place at Herakleopolis during the Osirian wars,--a chapter, however, in which, it may be observed, the elder Horus is already confounded with the son of Osiris.(156)
Chapters xliv. to liii. are occupied in describing how the dead man is thus preserved from "the second death." Illustrations are drawn both from the punishments undergone by the enemies of the sun-god in the story of his passage through the world of night, and from the old beliefs connected with the lot of the Ka. He was neither to be beheaded, nor cast head downwards into the abyss, nor was he to feed on filth like the Ka for which no offerings of food had been provided. The dangers from which he is thus preserved are next contrasted with the joys that await him in the paradise of the Blest (chs. liv.-lxiii.).
The 64th chapter, which sums up the preceding part of the book, and constitutes a break between it and what follows, has already been considered. The ten chapters which succeed it are all similarly concerned with "coming forth from the day." They thus traverse the same ground as the first fifteen chapters of the book, but they deal with the subject in a different way and from a different point of view. They are a fresh proof of the composite character of the work, and of the desire of its authors to incorporate in it all that had been written on the future life of the soul up to the time of its composition. Professor Maspero believes that they embody the various formulæ relating to the severance of soul and body which were current in the priestly schools.(157)