When The Book of the Dead was rediscovered

Ancient Egyptians had a deep belief around writing: negative events should be hinted at with subtlety in written text and not expressed fully. The written word is so impactful, hence it should be treated with care. When you put something in writing, you make it infinite in time, anything infinite in time can come back and bite.

This is not an attempt at bypassing the darkness in the world. Ancient Egyptians understood darkness and considered it an essential part of the light. Unlike some of the more recent religions that considered a god to be only light and considered a god to be in a sort of dualistic fight with the devil (the darkness), ancient Egyptian religions recognized darkness as part of the essential balance of the world. Darkness works so intricately with light in a sort of delicate balance to create the cycles of life.

How does this manifest in their mythology? Ra, the king of gods, the sun god, took a trip around the earth every day. In daylight, he circled the world of the living, he travelled through it inch by inch and made sure everything is in its most definite place. At night, he would embark on his daily journey through the underworld. The world of the dead. With a simple objective: Go through it on a massive ship with his crew of gods so they can get to the higher world by the beginning of the next day. Down in the underworld, exists many dangerous affairs and creatures. One extremely dangerous diety was a poisonous snake that represents nothingness. If that snake lands a bite on Ra, Ra would die and the entire world would collapse. This is where Seth enters into the picture. Seth is a diety with considerably negative traits like jealousy, destruction, hate, and murder and he is a jealous brother that sent his brother's diety into the underworld. So you can think of Seth as the devil almost in ancient Egyptian mythology. Here is what’s interesting; Seth was on Ra’s daily crew through their daily underworld trip. Seth was the deity responsible for protecting Ra from the snake of nothingness. So you get the picture now, darkness is nasty but it is also the cornerstone on which the world was built, without it, the universe might collapse if the sun gets bit by nothingness and ceases to exist. We can see the sun because we see the night. We live on a contrast of balance. Heaven and earth are inter-infinitely married.

Some think hatred must be killed. Some seek to purify their soul and transcend above all cycles into heaven. I commend them for the ambition of their affair and pity them for the oblivion of their sight. God created the devil you fools! God created the devils! And it is god’s plan for this world to keep bouncing off both demons and angels. And pretty much every saint I met in this world is in a constant act of washing their hands off some awful sin they keep committing. They look stuck in action. And who are ones taking action? The ones who dare. The ones who are willing to make the mistake just so we can go in a full cycle on Ra’s ship, pass through the good deeds at day and run through immaculate dark dangers at night. We make a stand and we refuse to over-hypothesize. We are the maniacs who run the world and cannot be explained in words. We are the energy that rules. Our blood boils with heat and passion for movement. We never sit to judge, we let the losers who can’t join the race be the judges.

Ustaz Ussama looked at me with exclamation in his eyes “Where did you learn such concepts?” The library has been shut down two decades ago. Probably before I was even born. The Internet networks were shut down two decades ago, after the great economic collapse of 2032. The only source of knowledge students like me had access to was what teachers like Ustaz Ussama taught us in class. They taught us principles handed down to them by the government established in the city. No mention of where our civilization came from. No mention of our civilization period. It was all secular all empty. It talked about a couple of math equations and was fueled by patriotism. We need to be in love with the government because the government is our nation and our nation is in service of god, a one god, that betrayed everyone else and works really hard to please us. Of course, my mind alone wouldn't have been able to go that far. I am only 16. I would have believed the government manifestos and would have believed them to be utterly true. It might have taken me decades to get out of this mind trap laid down for me by the rulers who seek to control us be making us believe in good and bad too much. Such paralysis. Is this the right thing to do? Is it not? I was a difficult kid, I always made noises in classes and I always got in fights. I threw a stone at the prophet when everyone spoke about his madness. I was mad and wanted to end madness altogether. So I went to his house and threw a stone at him. I wasn't alone. All the kids did it that day. We shattered the glass of his windows and exposed the inside of his house. He came back from work and looked helpless. We all looked at what we had done to him. And I saw him cry. A voice whispered in my ear, go talk to him, and I so did. He feared me. A child at 7 terrified a man in his late thirties. I felt the weight of the crime we just committed. I looked around, I saw all the kids leave us behind, they were done with their actions. They went out to look for the next trouble. I sat there for a minute before I uttered “How can I help?” He said it was all fine, he asked me if my parents would be concerned I was out too late. I said they wouldn't. That was my first time throwing stones at a stranger’s house, but with regards to lying it wasn’t. He gave me a sweep and I swept the shattered glass from the outside of his house. He asked me why, unlike the other kids, I stayed around, I told him “A voice told me to do so!” He smiled. his eyes lit up and a tear from it dropped. He looked to the sky, it was sunset hour. I saw the golden sunrays reflect in his eyes. He spoke in whispers: “So long as you keep me close to you, I will do it.”

The next day, after class, I stopped by. I cannot explain why. But what that moment taught me is to not bother much with why and just do. I came to his house. He was outside smoking a cigarette. He waved at me first. When I arrived, he asked, “so, no punishment for getting home late last night?” I said, “They were fighting they didn’t even know I was late last night.” He asked, “What about tonight?” I looked at him and then looked at the skies beyond us and he laughed and giggled. The prophet is easier to hang out with than you would think. I asked him if I would count as a prophet, and he nodded at first. He went inside and came back with a book, old and damaged, it had paintings similar to the ones you see on the walls in the middle of the desert. He said he has been looking for someone to hand him that book and he thinks it should be handed to me based on everything that happened. I kept it for two years not knowing what it says. He recommended I don’t show it to anyone else and keep in mind it might get me in trouble. Later when I learned enough English to understand the title, it said “The Book of the Dead.” Over the years, I have been reading this book from ending to beginning, over and over like the cycles of Ra around the planet. Our teacher, Ustaz Ussman asked us to write an essay about the rules of law in our town. I went home and wrote my essay. When he looked at me after he read it, I knew I might be in trouble. But I asked myself if I was only now getting in trouble or if our entire lives was lived in trouble. I woke up to the fact, I woke up to the reality, I think we are in a prison, they keep telling us there is a government that works for us but they only come to get us in trouble. How could this be if we weren’t in prison? And why am I afraid I will go to jail if we all live in jail? What difference does it make to commit a thought crime if you are already born in prison? If I had freedom it was only freedom to throw stones at the weak and the new strangers that settled in our town. But when it comes to what I want and think, Ustaz Ussama seemed convinced I should follow the rules. Everyone in this education system seems corrupt with the same idea.

Freedom of opinion, for me comes first. I know if I write, my words will sit there forever. I can’t just write what they ask me to write. If I do so, I give their intellectual prison a stronger hold on my reality. But even worse on the reality of those who come after me. I am on a mission to write. Tomorrow I will not come back to school, I will go back to the prophet and I will tell him what happened and tell him all I want to do is to write.