The time of the emergence of the Mesopotamian idea of ​​the world The Mesopotamian’s idea of ​​the universe in which he lived, apparently, acquired its characteristic form around the time when the Mesopotamian civilization took shape as a whole, i.e. in the early era

The afterlife according to the ideas of ancient peoples

As has already been said, at first people did not consider the soul to be an incorporeal, divine being, but endowed it with material qualities and all human needs, believing that, having moved to another world, the soul would continue to lead the lifestyle of a living person. Therefore, in burial places, relatives provided the deceased with everything he used during life, burying with the deceased food, water and things that were needed or especially dear to him.

American Indians sang at funerals:

So let's start the funeral

Choir among the graves;

We will bring a farewell gift

Everything he loved:

Place the onion at the head of the room,

And the ax is on the chest,

At the feet - fur with bear blood

To a friend on a long journey...

Karelian burial grounds from the era of the decay of the primitive communal system, discovered at the end of the last century near the Vuoksa River, indicate that household utensils and things that the deceased most often used during his lifetime were placed in the grave of a Karelian. In the men's graves, axes, horse bits, spears and arrowheads were found, in the women's graves - a spindle whorl (from a spinning wheel), sickles, and sheep shearing shears. Consequently, according to the ideas of the Karelians, in the afterlife, men will cut down trees, hunt, fight enemies, and women will spin, reap bread, shear sheep, i.e. carry out work familiar to them in earthly life.

Initially, the afterlife seemed so material to people that they quite clearly imagined how a dead person eats, how he starves and dies, i.e. may simply disappear completely if not taken care of. All ancient peoples were firmly convinced that the deceased had the same needs as the living. They considered it necessary to feed the deceased so that his hungry spirit would not bother his relatives with his visits and cause them trouble. Thus, the Mexicans placed pieces of meat on sticks in the fields, doing this out of fear that the dead would not come to them to demand the cattle that belonged to him during his life. Belarusian peasants, along with the deceased, put some food and some of the deceased’s belongings into the coffin. In remote Russian villages it was the custom to place crumbs of pie on the shelf behind the icon. It was believed that the souls of ancestors were hiding there, and therefore they were “fed.” Christian funerals are also a relic of such ideas.

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th century BC) described the funeral customs of the Scythians. The Greeks used this name to call numerous tribes that lived from the 8th century. BC. in the steppes from the Northern Black Sea region to Altai. They lived in tribal communities, but in the 5th century. BC. there was no longer equality between them. The clan nobility was distinguished, the power of tribal leaders was inherited, and slavery had already arisen, although the labor of slaves was not widespread and the state did not yet exist.

According to Herodotus, when the Scythian leader died, his corpse was embalmed. The funeral took place with special pomp and cruel sacrifices. On the day of burial, one of the wives, several slaves and servants: a cook, a cupbearer, a groom, and a messenger were killed at the leader’s grave and placed next to him. Weapons, jewelry, and precious things made of gold and silver were placed in the grave, and with a joint effort they built a huge mound over it, trying to make it higher.

A year later, a funeral service was held at the grave. They killed 50 of the deceased's most faithful servants and 50 of his best horses. The entrails were taken out of horse carcasses, the stuffed animals were stuffed with straw and, mounted on poles, they were attached to the ground in a large semicircle; Killed servants were placed on dead horses. Having built this terrible cavalry around the grave, the Scythians left.

Excavations of the Chertomlytsky mound (20 km from Nikopol) and especially the latest interesting discoveries in the Pazyryk mounds of the Altai Mountains confirmed what Herodotus wrote 2500 years ago. Thus, recently an expedition of archaeologists from the USSR Academy of Sciences and the State Hermitage excavated a number of large mounds made of rock fragments and dating back to the 5th century in the Pazyryk tract of the Ulagan Highlands. BC. These were the burial vaults of the ancient Saks (Scythians) with representatives of the tribal nobility buried in them. Despite the fact that the burial grounds were looted, they preserved many objects of art and everyday life that were interesting to scientists, the value of which was increased by their excellent preservation in permafrost conditions, although at least 2,500 years had passed since the burial. Some wooden items, leather, carpets and fabrics have not lost their original appearance, and even tattoos have survived on the embalmed bodies of buried men. The corpse of a Scythian warrior was discovered in one of the tombs. His wife and everything he needed during his life were buried with him: horses in full trim, clothes, furs, food - pieces of lamb in leather bags, cheese similar to feta cheese.

Not only among the Scythians, savage murders of people were committed on the graves of tribal elders and leaders. Many other nations also had a custom according to which, along with the deceased rich man, his wives and slaves were buried alive or killed. Here are some examples. In 1870 (!) after the death of Prince Marava (Brazil), his 47 wives were burned alive along with his corpse.

African tribal leaders long before own death they killed their slaves in order to prepare servants for themselves for the future afterlife. Even a hundred years ago, in front of the leader’s hut one could see sticking out poles with the whitened skulls of his “afterlife servants.” If it occurred to the leader to convey something to his ancestors in the afterlife, he called a slave, gave him the order, and then cut off his head. At the funeral of the mother of Chaka, the South African king of the Zulu tribe, 7 thousand people were killed, and 12 young girls were buried alive to serve the queen in the afterlife. After the death of King Guenzo in the monarchy of Dahomey (tropical Africa), his son Grere ordered the sacrifice of 1000 people. The killings of the unfortunates continued from July 13 to August 5, 1860. During the funeral of the Mongol prince, all people who came across on the road were killed with the words: “Go serve your master in another world.”

In the tombs ancient China Hundreds of murdered slaves are found.

In ancient India, there was a custom of “sati”, according to which, after the death of her husband, the widow was burned at the grave of the deceased. This ferocious custom lasted until mid-19th century V. Religion taught a woman that her husband needed her in the afterlife just as much as during life. And if she does not immediately follow him, then in the end she will still die and appear in the “other world” for eternal and cruel reprisal to her embittered husband. That is why superstitious Hindu women preferred to experience the agony of death at the stake once rather than be tortured by an angry husband for an eternity in the future.

These same superstitious ideas destroyed many blacks when in the 16th century. colonialists began to export them from Africa to America. To get rid of the unbearable torment of slavery, they resorted to suicide, being confident that after death they would return to their homeland and be resurrected there as free people.

The custom of funeral honors and sacrifices, associated with the belief in the afterlife, was also among our ancestors - the Slavs.

Peoples at a low stage of development not only killed people, they also “killed” things. Thus, many African blacks have a custom after the death of a king to make all his things worthless: tearing clothes, breaking swords, making holes in boats. These “killed” things are placed in the grave to be used by the dead.

Remnants of primitive ideas about the afterlife and associated customs appeared among the peoples Western Europe in relatively recent times. So, 200 years ago in Austria, during the funeral of one count, his horse was buried with him. Later, horses were no longer killed, but it was generally accepted to lead the deceased’s horse behind the coffin. There were cases when a needle and thread were placed in graves so that the deceased could, when necessary, repair his dress.

Thus, belief in the afterlife arose in pre-class society and by the beginning of the collapse of the primitive communal system it was widely developed. With the advent of wealth inequality, ideas about the afterlife have changed dramatically. Private property has left its mark on the “other world.” Previously, when there was no difference between rich and poor, the afterlife of all the dead seemed the same. Since all people were equal, their souls had to live in the “other world” in the same conditions, i.e. ideas about the life of the dead beyond the grave corresponded social order, which was among the peoples on earth. The ancient Jews and Greeks imagined the afterlife as a distant underground kingdom of shadows, where everyone is equal and everyone shares the same bleak fate, but without much torment.

With the division of society into classes, tales about the afterlife began to mention two compartments for the dead: the upper (heaven) for some, and the lower (hell) for others; and usually heaven is for masters, for the rich, hell is for slaves and the poor.

As was shown above, a noble person, a tribal leader, a prince or a king, when preparing for a “long journey,” took with him to the grave or funeral pyre everything that he owned during his lifetime. Contrary to the proverb: “If you die, you won’t take anything with you,” the rich man believed: “If I die, I’ll take everything with me.” Bulls and horses were slaughtered at his grave so that the dead prince would have something to eat and something to ride in the “other world.” His wives, slaves, and warriors were killed along with him. These are companions and servants who go with the deceased to protect him and please him in the afterlife. Finally, the dead man himself was placed in a coffin or on a pyre, fully armed and with the best jewelry. Rich relatives did not skimp on funeral feasts, feasting on the burial mound, performing abundant sacrifices and many other magical acts that provided the deceased with the opportunity to reach that happy area of ​​​​the afterlife, which is called paradise.

And whoever is not rich enough to order the killing of women and servants at his grave, who does not have things to travel to the afterlife and be protected from all disasters there, who cannot finally pay the priests for prayers and spells, will not reach the blissful edge.

Thus, representatives of the ruling classes turned the colorless kingdom of shadows into a cheerful and rich place, resounding with laughter and the clinking of glasses, where earthly pleasures continue, where you can eat and drink without fail, caress as much as you like beautiful women etc. etc. This is how an imaginary paradise arose, access to which became the property of the rich.

Hell remained for the poor man, not yet a place of torture and torment, but simply a place of sadness and sorrow. If this was retribution, it was retribution for poverty, for the fact that the whole life of a poor man is filled with worries about his existence, and too little attention and resources were given to the gods and priests.

Of course, this general picture of the development of views on the afterlife from their origin to the emergence of the first class societies, inclusive, cannot be unconditionally applied to the history of any people, cannot reflect all the originality of ideas about the afterlife, which are rooted in the material conditions of life of a particular society. There may be deviations and exceptions here, as exemplified by the peoples ancient culture humanity - Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, whose ideas about the afterlife differ sharply both from each other and from the above diagram. The views of these peoples are all the more interesting to us because their literary monuments already contain the first glimpses of free-thinking, manifested in doubt and even denial of any belief in an afterlife.

The ancient Babylonians pictured the “future” life as an abode of suffering and sadness. They had an idea of ​​the “world of the dead,” filled with disgusting spirits that tormented the souls of the dead. These spirits also come out to earth, flying from the terrible desert in the west to send illness and death to their victims. The gods sometimes descended into the underworld and came out with great difficulty. But man does not have the salvation that exists for God. Death does not let him go free, cuts him down like a blade of grass, pierces him with a knife.

“The Poem of Gilgamesh,” the most remarkable work of Babylonian literature of the 2nd millennium BC, poses in a highly artistic form the eternal question about the meaning of life and the inevitability of death, about what awaits a person beyond the grave. Gilgamesh, the semi-legendary king of Uruk, “two-thirds god, one-third man,” having buried his beloved friend, tormented by sadness and fear of inevitable death, seeks the secret of immortality in difficult wanderings. His ancestor Ut-Napishtim, who received from the gods great gift immortality, with the help of various magical techniques, tries to get for the hero eternal life. He advises Gilyamesh to at least overcome sleep - maybe then he will overcome death. But human nature takes its toll, and the hero, tired from the campaign, falls asleep while sitting and falls into a heavy sleep. Everything turns out to be in vain. Gilgamesh again feels the threat of imminent death. He is asking:

What should I do, Ut-Napishtim, where should I go?

Death lurks in my bedroom.

Finally, Ut-Napishtim reveals to him that, by diving to the bottom of the ocean, Gilgamesh will be able to find a plant that gives, however, not eternal life, but constant youth. Having obtained the grass of youth with great difficulty, Gilgamesh sets off for his homeland, deciding to share the grass with his people. But chance ruins everything. When Gilgamesh was bathing in a pond, a snake stole a wonderful plant. Since then, snakes have shed their skin and become younger, while people are destined to grow old without renewal.

The saddened hero asks the gods for one last favor: to call back from the other world at least the shadow of a deceased friend. The poem ends with a dialogue between friends, in which the shadow of the deceased in the darkest colors describes the world of the dead, who “do not see the light, live in darkness, their food is dust and clay.”

Look! The friend whom you hugged in the joy of your heart -

The worms devour him like a decayed shroud.

My body, which you touched in the joy of your heart,

Turned into dust and ashes

It turned into dust and decay, into dust.

Man is powerless against nature, which for the Babylonians was personified in the form of the will of the gods.

The words of the ancient author are permeated with deep pessimism, for even the famous Gilgamesh, “mighty, great, wise,” despite his divine origin, cannot achieve immortality. It is given only to those who, like Ut-Napishtim, fulfill the commandments of religion and the demands of the priests. This thought reflected the later ideology of priesthood, although the roots of the poem undoubtedly go back to folk art. Babylonian literature developed under the influence of a religious worldview, but it was also filled with doubts about the truth of religious dogmas, which promised the righteous immortality as a reward. In the poem, for the first time, with utmost clarity and at the same time with great artistic power, the idea of ​​the inevitability of death is expressed, to which all people are subject, even famous heroes who are ready for any feat in order to overcome inevitable death. In the end, Gilgamesh is consoled by the thought of the immortality of the glorious deeds of man, which will forever be preserved in the memory of posterity.

And the question of death and immortality, which so worried man in ancient times, is resolved courageously and essentially correctly: man is mortal, but his deeds are immortal.

The idea of ​​the inevitability of death is also imbued with another work, which is usually called “Conversation between a Master and a Slave,” in which Babylonian religious and philosophical poetry reached its peak.

These are the final strong words of the dialogue, which express the author’s main idea. Disappointed in everything, the gentleman finally exclaims: “What’s good now?” The slave’s answer sounds insolent and mocking: “Breaking my neck and your neck and throwing them into the river - that’s good. Who is so high as to ascend to heaven, and who is so great as to fill the earth!” The angry master threateningly says to the slave: “O slave, I want to kill you and force you to walk in front of me.” But in response the slave’s warning is heard: “Truly, my master will live only three days after me.”

If in Babylonia they believed little in posthumous existence, knowing that, having died, a person turns into dust, into decay, into nothingness, then ancient Egypt belief in the afterlife was very strong and had special meaning. No people ever cared so much about the dead and thought so much about the afterlife as the Egyptians. They did not seek immortality, like the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, because they believed that they possessed it, being confident that death is not the destruction of a person, but only his transition to another world. Such ideas were born under the influence of natural factors, primarily the geographical environment. On the western bank of the Nile, near the sands of the Libyan Desert, where Egyptian cemeteries were located, in a hot, dry climate, the body did not so much decompose as dry out, and the Egyptians managed to protect corpses from rotting.

The magnificent funeral cult of the dead in Egypt was associated with the veneration of the god Osiris, the idea of ​​which, as a dying and resurrecting god, reflected the annual flowering and withering of nature.

From generation to generation, the Egyptians told an endlessly ancient tale about the struggle between life and death - the myth of Osiris. Its content is as follows. Egypt was once ruled by the god of the sun, moisture and vegetation, Osiris. But he was killed by his evil brother Set, who tore the body of Osiris into 14 pieces and scattered it throughout Egypt. Osiris's wife, the goddess Isis, after a long search, collected the remains of her husband, put them together and resurrected the god. But Osiris did not remain on earth, but became king and judge in the afterlife.

The myth of Osiris reflected the Egyptian ideas about the change of seasons and the eternity of constantly regenerating nature: when everything dried up and died from the sultry winds of the deserts, this meant that Osiris was killed; the revival of nature was associated with the resurrection of the deity. The Egyptians believed that just as nature comes to life, so can dead people come to life in the afterlife. Osiris defeated death and came to life. This means, the Egyptians thought, that people who believed in him could rise again and gain immortality. This idea is clearly expressed in the following religious text:

As Osiris truly lives, so do you live.

Just as he truly does not die, so you do not die.

Just as he is not truly destroyed, so you are not destroyed either.

Feeling their dependence on nature, they thought that their earthly and especially future afterlife depended entirely on Osiris, the god of dying and resurrecting nature, the god of “eternal” life and the ruler of the land of the dead. Kingdom of the Dead- “Amenti”, where Osiris rules, according to some legends, was in the distant blissful country of the West, where the souls of the dead fly away with the sun, according to others - in the underworld.

The 125th chapter of the “Book of the Dead” - religious and magical collections of texts from ancient Egypt - describes the terrible posthumous judgment of the soul of the deceased, which reflected in a distorted form the earthly and formidable judgment of the pharaoh. Osiris sits on a royal throne under a canopy in the great hall of justice, decorated with tongues of fire and large feathers (a feather is a symbol of truth). Behind him sit 42 monster judges (one from each Egyptian region). In the middle are the scales of justice, on which the heart of the deceased is weighed in order to find out whether he led a righteous life. If a person did not violate the will of Pharaoh and generally committed few sins, his heart should have been light, no heavier than the feather (truth) placed on the other side of the scale. The heart, according to the Egyptians, was a symbol of the soul of the deceased, the focus of his moral life, the receptacle of virtues and vices. Having appeared before the court, the soul makes a negative confession, in which the deceased declares himself innocent of committing 42 cardinal sins.

“I did not speak ill of Pharaoh, did not rebel, did not reduce the sacrifices dedicated to the gods, did not reduce the bread in the temples, did not reduce the food of the gods... did not fish in the ponds dedicated to the gods... did not harm the livestock that belonged to the temple. .."

The class essence of ideas about the afterlife court is clearly reflected in the nature of this confession. If a person did not stain himself with sins and crimes against the pharaoh and the priests, he was acquitted and his soul was allowed to live in the kingdom of Osiris. There was a lot of water there, which was not enough on earth, and in the paradise fields of Iaru wheat grew taller than a man. The Egyptians believed that the deceased would live there forever with the gods, ride in a solar boat along the underground Nile and eat the food of the gods. But if the heart of the deceased weighed a lot, if he was burdened with vices, the scales went down, and the heart and soul of the sinner were immediately devoured by the terrible monster Amamat (half-lion, half-hippopotamus with the head of a crocodile), and the deceased was forever deprived of the right to the afterlife. It is characteristic that the concept of hell did not exist among the ancient Egyptians: losing immortality was generally considered the most terrible thing.

In the class society of ancient Egypt, the funeral cult was a means of ideological influence of the ruling class on the consciousness of the working masses in order to subjugate them. Belief in the afterlife, in the Last Judgment of Osiris, helped the ruling classes intimidate the masses, dull the consciousness of the poor, convincing them to meekly endure earthly hardships and torments, promising them an imaginary heavenly bliss beyond the grave as a reward.

Belief in the afterlife was widespread and developed in Egypt. The living had to prepare for their afterlife, and the dead demanded a complex funeral cult from their descendants on earth.

The desire to ensure eternal life for the deceased was expressed in concern for the preservation of the corpse and the method of its burial. According to the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, posthumous existence depends on the degree of preservation of the body. The Egyptians believed that the soul of the deceased flies out of the body, but then constantly returns to it, bringing food and maintaining contact with the outside world.

Therefore, in order for the soul to find the body, it must be preserved from destruction. This explains the custom of mummifying corpses and constructing strong tombs. Since at first the embalming methods were imperfect and the body might not be preserved, a statue of the deceased was placed in the tomb, which was supposed to serve as a replacement for the body. Considering that real life begins behind the tomb, every wealthy Egyptian, long before old age, due to his means and capabilities, began to build a tomb for himself.

The Egyptians imagined the afterlife as a fantastic reflection and a kind of continuation of the earthly world, where in the land of the dead the soul would lead the same existence as on earth. Relatives tried to provide the deceased with everything necessary, including furniture and musical instruments, in order to ensure his well-being in the afterlife.

At first, since the time of the clan system, genuine things and food were placed in the tomb - “bread, geese, bull meat and beer” - everything that, according to the concepts of the Egyptians, had to be fed to the soul so that it would not starve in the afterlife. The nobility bequeathed their cattle and lands to the priests and temples “for the sake of their souls.” Subsequently, the Egyptians replaced real food with images, all kinds of drawings of food and drinks on funeral tables and tomb walls, firmly believing that all this would turn into real food and drink and provide for the “afterlife needs” of the deceased.

When a slave state emerged in Egypt, the funeral cult strengthened the idea of ​​the immutability and eternity of the existing class system. Pharaohs began to be buried in giant tombs - pyramids, the size of which reflected the social distance between the king and the population under his control, instilled in his subjects fear of the greatness and power of the ancient Eastern despots and faith in their divinity, which was preached by the priests: during life, the pharaohs were considered earthly gods, and after death were equated with heaven. Wealthy officials and priests were buried in massive tombs that looked like huge benches (the so-called mastabas), where the body of the deceased (mummy), embalmed and swaddled in linen bandages, was lowered into several painted sarcophagi. A half-length portrait of the deceased, drawn on a board, was also placed there. The entrance to the tomb was walled up, but, according to the Egyptians, the deceased himself could go out invisibly or look out with large eyes painted on the wall of the coffin. On the walls of the interior of the tomb they painted the family of the deceased and in the foreground he himself, usually inspecting the possessions and wealth that belonged to him during his life - craft workshops, herds, fields where slaves worked. All this was supplied with inscriptions exalting the owner and was supposed to magically transfer the property of the deceased to the afterlife.

Taking into account the moods and desires of candidates for the afterlife, the priests composed special prayers and spells for them to the gods, which were supposed to protect the deceased from the dangers that threatened him in the next world and ensure “union with his family in the afterlife”, “eating bread in the afterlife ”, the opportunity “not to enter the courthouse of God.”

All these funeral texts made up the later already mentioned “Book of the Dead,” which was placed along with the deceased and where one could read, for example, “Chapter so as not to die a second time,” “A saying so as not to decay,” “A saying so as not to get caught.” on God’s block”, etc.

According to the Egyptians, everyone did the same work behind the grave as they did during life. And if the poor peasant dreamed of plowing, sowing and reaping in the fields of Osiris in the kingdom of the dead, then wealthy people were not going to do this. For this purpose, special funeral figurines were purchased and placed in the tombs of noble people, which were small figures of servants made of stone, wood or faience with bags of grain on their backs and hoes in their hands, called “ushebti”, which means “respondents”. It was they who had to do the work for their owners beyond the grave. Sometimes up to 365 of these twin dolls were found in tombs, corresponding to the number of days in a year. The Egyptians naively believed that these figurines would come to life one after another in the afterlife and turn into slaves and peasants who would work for the deceased, and the paintings would turn into estates that he would own.

But the rich slave owners, even in the “other world,” were afraid of the possible disobedience of the servants. For this purpose, warning inscriptions were often carved on the figures: “Oh, you, ushabti! If I am called and assigned to perform various works, you answer: “I am here.” Listen only to the one who made you, do not listen to his enemy.” Wooden and earthenware dolls often have their legs broken off; This was done so that the servants could not run away from the master.

It can be assumed that ushabti dolls replaced the more ancient, already mentioned ritual, when his slaves were killed at the grave of a slave owner.

The middle class of the urban population buried their dead in small tombs with modest decoration. The mummies were prepared using a cheap method, and the ushabti placed in the graves was poorly prepared. Sometimes only one “respondent” was placed with the number 365 written on it, and magic spells cast over it ensured that it would work for the deceased throughout the entire year.

The Egyptian poor simply buried their dead in the sand without any embalming. But at the same time, measures were still taken so that the poor could “resurrect.” Their bodies were wrapped in mats and tied to boards with funeral prayers. The board replaced both the coffin and the tomb for the deceased. The names of dishes and drinks were written on it, which, thanks to magical spells, were supposed to ensure the afterlife well-being of the poor. For example, a funeral prayer asking Osiris to give the deceased in the next world 1000 bulls, 1000 loaves of bread, 1000 glasses of beer, etc. The relatives of the deceased could not do more for him. Sometimes a figurine representing the deceased was buried near the grave of a nobleman, so that part of the gifts brought to him would go to the poor man, who, thus, had to depend on the rich man in the afterlife.

The dead slaves did not even have their own graves: they were buried in a common pit.

We have seen that the Egyptians transferred ideas about the relations of production that existed on earth to the afterlife, where people were located in accordance with their social position on earth. The afterlife cult imperceptibly introduced into the minds of believers the idea of ​​justifying and affirming earthly inequality by the presence of heavenly inequality: for the ruler of the dead, Osiris, it was necessary to cultivate the field in the same way as for earthly masters. Although all the dead were declared equal before one master - Osiris, who could call anyone to “labor service”, the rich could get rid of work here too, replacing themselves with “defendants”.

Reduced to extreme poverty, suppressed by the severity of life, the broad masses of the population dreamed of posthumous bliss. Belief in an afterlife was at the same time an effective instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling class: fearing the judgment of Osiris, believers patiently endured their hard life, hoping after death to receive a reward for humility.

Belief in the “other world” was strong in ancient Egypt, but even then religion could not suppress the glimmers of free-thinking and critical consciousness of people, whose life experience inevitably sowed doubts about what the priests taught. Some poetic works contain notes of disbelief in the afterlife and calls for enjoying all the benefits of earthly life, which sharply contrast with the traditional religious worldview. In one feast song it is sung:

Spend your day joyfully, priest,

Inhale the smell of incense and anointings...

Leave all evil behind you.

Think only about joy until then

Until the day comes when you land in the country,

loving silence.

Another papyrus describes the indignation of a pious Egyptian at hearing such songs during funeral feasts: “I heard songs in which the earthly is exalted and the afterlife is humiliated.”

In the famous “Harper's Song,” inscribed on the wall of the pyramid, the freethinking author most boldly denies the existence of an afterlife and doubts the benefits of funeral rites and magnificent tombs:

Crying will not bring anyone back from the grave...

And none of those who went there

Not back yet!

And therefore:

Multiply your pleasures even more,

Don't let your heart get sad

Follow his desire and your good,

Do your deeds on earth according to the dictates of your heart

And do not grieve until the day of mourning comes for you...

Everything will perish, the tombs will disappear, “as if it never happened,” the author concludes; only the deeds of people, the works and thoughts of the people are immortal.

In the poetic dialogue, which is usually called “The Disappointed Man’s Conversation with His Soul,” the author’s words convey the deep pessimism of a man disappointed in life and challenging the heavens. The doubt about the existence of eternal life is clearly felt in the following words: “If you remember burial, then this is grief... You will never go out to see the sun. Those who built from granite and erected chambers... they suffered the same fate as the tired ones who died on the rafts, leaving no offspring behind. The heat of the sun and the fish on the shore talk to them.”

Having lost faith in the afterlife, the author also treats funeral rites with contempt, not believing that they can provide a person with afterlife bliss, although they require great expenses. The author’s words sound confident that death will level everyone, both poor and rich, preparing for them the same fate - destruction under the rays of the scorching sun or the all-conquering power of water.

In the literary monuments of other peoples of the Ancient East there are also works that are skeptical about the belief in an afterlife. Such, for example, are the Hebrew parables attributed to King Solomon. The Talmud, a Jewish religious collection of Bible interpretations written more than two thousand years ago, mentions sages who argued that there is no afterlife. Even in the Bible itself, the “sacred” book of the ancient Jews, which was then accepted by Christians as the Old Testament, one repeatedly comes across certain naive materialistic views that deny the afterlife and express thoughts that with the death of a person everything is over for him, he will not be resurrected. and even God himself will not create such a miracle. Thus, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes concludes that man does not live beyond the grave, “everything came from dust, and everything will return to dust” (chapter 3, v. 20). In the “Book of the Wisdom of Solomon” it is written: “We were born by chance, and afterward we will be like those who never were: the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and the word is a spark in the movement of our heart. When it fades away, the body will turn to dust, and the spirit will dissipate like liquid air” (chapter 2, vv. 2-3). But these "dangerous places" scriptures“have been and are being hushed up so diligently by theologians and are so drowned in the sea of ​​biblical teachings about the afterlife that believers usually do not even suspect their existence.

In the religion of the ancient Greeks, based on the deification of various forces of nature and admiration for the memory and exploits of ancestors - “god-like” heroes, there was no clearly expressed idea of ​​the afterlife, of heaven and hell. IN Ancient Greece The priesthood did not develop into a special class, did not represent a strong, centralized organization and did not have much influence on the emerging views of people and folk art. It was, as Marx put it, “the childhood of human society where it developed most beautifully...” The freely developing Greek mythology left humanity with an amazing and beautiful world of wonderful tales that embodied the persistent struggle of man with nature, glorifying the exploits of the mighty and just heroes of the people.

According to ancient Greek myths, two brothers of the supreme deity of the thunderer Zeus (among the Romans Jupiter), lord of heaven and earth, shared the world with him: Poseidon (Neptune) received power over the seas, and Hades (Roman Pluto) became the ruler of the underworld, or the underworld (Orcus). , or Hades, from whose name our word “hell” comes.

The ancient Hellenes imagined the afterlife as a misfortune, and they saw the whole tragedy of people in the fact that they are mortal. There is nothing better than earthly life for a happy person, but it is short. Beyond the grave, only the horrors of the underworld and the sad journey of a homeless soul await a person. The Greeks imagined Hades as inhabited by aimlessly wandering shadow-like, ghostly creatures, devoid of feeling, thought, or consciousness. They run around, moan, constantly tremble and cannot warm up. It is the souls of the dead who spend their sad and monotonous lives in the kingdom of shadows. The kingdom of Hades is terrible, and people hate it.

The heroic epic of the ancient Greeks tells how Odysseus once wanted to summon the souls of the dead in order to learn the future from them: he dug a hole, poured the blood of a sacrificial animal into it and began to utter mysterious words. With pitiful groans, the shadows of the dead, pitiful semblances of living people, flew down; they began to crowd towards the blood, since hot blood is life and warmth; only the soul that drinks blood can speak with the living. Among them was the shadow of the god-born hero Achilles. Odysseus asked: “What is it like for you in the underworld?” Achilles replied: “It is better to be the last farm laborer on earth than to reign here over the dead.” So hopeless, hopeless and gloomy was the existence of souls in the kingdom of shadows.

The god of death Tanat flew on huge black wings to the bed of the dying man, cut off a lock of hair from his head with a sword, tore out his soul and sent it to the king of the dead - Hades. Through bottomless abysses, abysses with a guide, the winged messenger of the gods Hermes, the soul descended - the “psyche” deep into the earth, where black, deadening rivers flow, among them the chilling Styx, separating the underworld from the real world. The terrible kingdom of the inexorable Hades is full of eternal darkness, where neither the light nor the joys of earthly life ever reach.

The deceased, according to the ideas of the ancient Greeks, had to cross the river of sadness and tears - Acheron, and the gloomy old ferryman Charon took him to the other side for a fee. To pay for the move, the Greeks placed a small copper coin in the dead person's mouth. This boatman did not transport a single soul of the deceased back to where the sun of life shines brightly. The three-headed hellish dog Cerberus, on which snakes wriggled, and the tail ended with the head of a dragon, and many other monsters guarded the exit, guarding the eternal joyless existence of the dead.

There is no return from the other world. Only once did the famous singer Orpheus, with his sweet-sounding music, manage to persuade the harsh Hades to mercy: to give him his tragically deceased young wife Eurydice. The condition was this: until they reached the surface of the earth, it was impossible to turn back. Orpheus could not stand it, looked at Eurydice, and immediately the god Hermes took her back to the underworld.

One of the rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology- Lethe, the river of oblivion, the waters of which made the souls of the dead forget all the earthly suffering they had endured. (This is where the expression “sink into oblivion” comes from, that is, to be forgotten forever, to disappear without a trace.) The gods of dreams, joyful and nightmare, also live here, over which the young god of sleep Hypnos reigns; silently he rises on his wings above the ground with poppy heads in his hands, pours a sleeping pill from the horn and puts people to sleep.

Using the example of ancient Greek religion, we see that at an early stage social development The idea of ​​individual immortality, not among all peoples, contained something comforting: to the Greeks it seemed like an “inevitable fate” and even a misfortune. It can be assumed that the stormy economic development Greek states, the class stratification of society and the struggle of classes did not have time to be reflected in religion in a relatively short historical period, and the views on the “future life” of the ancient Greeks had not yet fully developed. But the priests, who expressed the interests of the ruling classes, used and developed existing ideas, extracting income from them and frightening the masses. At the so-called Eleusinian sacraments, for example, an image of a sepulchral kingdom of shadows was shown, from where the sounds of sobs were heard and the ringing of chains was heard - these were the tormented souls of the dead, tormented by eternal suffering and remorse.

Other mysteries, called Orphic, consisted in the fact that the priests communicated to the “initiates” mysterious rituals and the doctrine of the afterlife, allegedly brought from the underworld by Orpheus himself. The priests taught that the performance of Orphic rites would ensure those initiated into these mysteries a blissful life beyond the grave.

Thus, in Greece, ideas about the afterlife as reward for earthly deeds were just beginning to take shape.

The inquisitive mind of the ancient Greeks persistently penetrated into the secrets of nature, which became increasingly difficult to explain by the “otherworldly” world. The development of trade, crafts, and navigation moved science forward, gave birth to brave scientists, great thinkers and atheists who, with their freethinking and materialistic teaching destroyed faith in the supernatural. Greek historian and geographer Hecataeus of Miletus, who lived at the end of the 6th and beginning of the 5th century. BC, tried to critically reconsider ancient beliefs. So, he decided to explore the cave, which in myths was told that it leads to the underworld to his terrible lord Hades and that it was from here that Hercules pulled from the underworld to earth hellhound Cerberus, with a dragon or snake for a tail. “I,” Hecataeus later wrote, “was in this place myself and descended underground. The cave is shallow. Most likely, it happened like this: a snake lived in this cave, and it bit people, like all poisonous snakes. In the darkness, people mistook the snake for the tail of a dog. And since the snake’s venom was fatal, it was called the hellish dog Cerberus. Hercules really descended, only not into hell, but into a cave. He saw a snake, caught it and brought this “dog” into the light. Then a legend arose that Hercules descended into hell and brought out Cerberus, who had a snake instead of a tail.”

The greatest materialist of antiquity, Democritus (460-370 BC), in his essay “On the Afterlife,” ridiculed belief in the afterlife as “false fables about what will happen after death,” arguing that “the soul is mortal, it is destroyed along with the body." “Many people do not know that the human body disintegrates into atoms,” Democritus taught, “but these people remember bad deeds behind them, and therefore spend their whole lives in anxiety, fear and torment, believing false fairy tales about the afterlife.”

There is a legend that when Democritus was in the cemetery, where he loved to spend time, some jokers decided to scare him by wrapping themselves in dark cloaks and posing as the dead emerging from their graves. “Stop fooling around,” said Democritus. “You will not frighten someone who knows for sure that if someone is dead, then he is dead and, therefore, cannot get up.”

With the division of society into antagonistic classes, other reasons appear religious faith to the afterlife. In an exploitative society, in addition to the spontaneous forces of nature, people are also dominated by the forces of a given social system, they experience economic and social oppression. The vast majority of society is in an oppressed position. The feeling of helplessness and powerlessness before nature, although it remains, is now receding into the background; fear arises of the incomprehensible laws of spontaneously formed public relations, about which incorrect, fantastic ideas are created. The oppressed working masses feel defenseless before the blind, inevitable and as if established from above force of social development, which, acting inexorably and mercilessly, makes some slaves, others - slave owners, some - poor workers, others - rich parasites. The main root of religion in a class society and the main reason for belief in an afterlife, and better than earthly life in the “other world”, is social oppression, the unbearable, hopeless situation of the working classes, their seeming helplessness in the fight against the exploiters, hunger, poverty, lack of rights, uncertainty about the future.

Downtrodden and forced laborers, unable to throw off the oppression of the exploiters and rebuild social orders, despairing of finding a real path to salvation, sought illusory oblivion and consolation in anticipation of a future afterlife, hoping at least in the “other world” to receive a reward for their suffering.

“The powerlessness of the exploited classes in the fight against the exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to faith in a better afterlife, just as the powerlessness of the savage in the fight against nature gives rise to faith in gods, devils, miracles, etc.”

These Leninist lines from the wonderful article “Socialism and Religion” reveal the social roots of the working people’s dream of posthumous bliss and heavenly reward.

The developing slave system, supporting religious views on the “otherworldly” world, began to use them as a consolation for enslaved and suffering people, which is especially clearly seen in the example of Egypt. In an exploitative society, a belief in afterlife reward and retribution for earthly deeds begins to develop; concepts of afterlife reward and punishment are developed that are completely alien to people of pre-class society. The oppressors sought not only to suppress the slave, but also to “comfort” him with faith in happiness after death, distracting him from difficult thoughts about his fate on earth and attempts at class struggle. The deceived and robbed working masses were imposed with a cheap hope of “eternal life” and “heavenly bliss” in paradise, for the sake of which they had to put up with their share of being exploited, endure and expect rewards for submission and obedience. The reactionary belief in an afterlife was zealously propagated and developed by the church, which helped the ruling classes to oppress the people and stupefy their consciousness.