In this way the doctrine of the resurrection of the body became an integral part of the Osirian faith. The future happiness to which its disciples looked forward was not in absorption into the divinity, or contemplation of the divine attributes, or a monotonous existence of passive idleness. They were to live as they had done in this life, only without sorrow and suffering, without sin, and eternally. But all their bodily powers and interests were to remain and be gratified as they could not be in this lower world. The realm over which Osiris ruled was the idealised reproduction of that Egypt which the Egyptian loved so well, with its sunshine and light, its broad and life-bearing river, its fertile fields, and its busy towns. Those who dwelt in it could indeed feast and play, could lounge in canoes and fish or hunt, could read tales and poems or write treatises on morality, could transform themselves into birds that alighted among the thick foliage of the trees; but they must also work as they had done here, must cultivate the soil before it would produce its ears of wheat two cubits high, must submit to the corvée and embank the canals. The Osirian heaven had no place for the idle and inactive.
No sooner, indeed, had the dead man been pronounced worthy of admittance to it, than he was called upon to work. At the very outset of his new existence, before any of its pleasures might be tasted, he was required to till the ground and guide the plough. This was no hardship to the poor fellah who had spent his life in agricultural labour. But it was otherwise with the rich man whose lands had been cultivated by others, while he himself had merely enjoyed their produce. In the early days of Egyptian history, accordingly, it was the fashion for the feudal landowner to surround his tomb with the graves of his servants and retainers, whose bodies were mummified and buried at his expense. What they had performed for him in this world, it was believed they would perform for him in the world to come. There, too, the Osiris of the fellah would work for the Osiris of the wealthy, whose necessary task would thus be performed vicariously.
But as time went on a feeling grew up that in the sight of Osiris all those who were assimilated to him were equal one to the other. Between one Osiris and another the distinctions of rank and station which prevail here were no longer possible. The old conception of the ka came to the help of the believer. The place of the human servant was taken by the _ushebti_, that little figure of clay or wood which represented a peasant, and whose double, accordingly, was sent to assist the dead in his tasks above. The human Osiris, whatever his lot in this life had been, was henceforth free from the toils which had once awaited him in the fields of Alu; he could look on while the _ka_ of the _ushebti_ performed his work. The _ushebti_-figures become especially numerous after the expulsion of the Hyksos. The domination of the foreigner and the long war of independence which put an end to it, had destroyed the feudal nobility, and therewith the feudal ideas which regarded mankind as divided, now and hereafter, into two classes. From thenceforth the Egyptians became the democratic people that they still are. As the Pharaoh on earth ruled a people who before him were all equal, so between the subjects of Osiris, the Pharaoh in heaven, no distinctions of rank were known except such as were conferred by himself.