47 Days to Opening Day

Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 47 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.

Today’s book is Western Civilizations: Their History and Their Culture Sixth Edition (1963) by Edward McNall Burns. This passage is about Egyptian religion.

Egyptian ideas of the hereafter attained their full development in the later history of the Middle Kingdom. Soon after the beginning of this period the religion had come to include the conception on a ba, or “soul,” in addition to the idea of a ka, or “double.” Both were regarded as surviving the death of the individual. The ba took flight in the form of a bird. The ka wandered off in much the same way that the “other self” might travel to distant places in a dream while the body was locked in sleep. Both the ba and the ka would eventually return and revivify the body if it were still in existence. For this reason elaborate preparations had to be made to prevent the extinction of one’s earthly remains. Not only were bodies mummified but wealthy men left munificent endowments to provide their mummies with food and other essentials. As the religion advanced toward maturity, however, a less naïve conception of the after-life was adopted. The dead were now believed to appear before Osiris to be judged according to their deeds on earth. The process of judgment occupied three stages. In the first, the deceased was required to declare his innocence of forty-two sins, including murder, theft, untruthfulness, greed, adultery, blasphemy, loss of temper, pride, and dishonesty in business transactions. Having thus acquitted himself of this catalogue of vices, the deceased was then obliged to assert his virtues. He must avow that he had satisfied the needs of the gods, that he had given “bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, and a ferry to him who was without a boat.” In the third and final stage the heart of the defendant was weighed in balance against a feather, the symbol of truth, in order to determine the accuracy of his testimony. According to the Egyptian notion, the heart represented the conscience, which would betray the person who had testified falsely.

Put today’s excerpt in a baseball context.