The following is an excerpt from The Message of the Joseph Smith an Egyptian Endowment by Hugh Nibley.
Commentary: The Garden of Abundance
It would seem that the standard procedure in the mysteries is to enter a new life or a new world through a garden, where one rests for a while and takes nourishment (Pyr. 317:505ff; J. Spiegel, Auferst, pp. 127-29) after the exertions and perils of the passage. One is received at the Gates of the Underworld “beside a lake surrounded by trees” (Thausing, Sein u. Werden, p. 128). Washed and cleansed, “he comes forth… crossing these two heavens…. I eat where you eat, I drink where you drink” (C. T. 173, III, 54f). “My garden is in the Field of Rest; my increase (or nakedness, hawt) is in the Field of Rushes” (C.T. III, 111; cf. 78). The recipient, wearing a garment of leaves, drinks water in the shade as his heart expands from the consumption of food offerings (C.T. 184, III, 82-83; 167, III, 21). He puts forth his hands and eats and gorges—on the wind of life! (C.T. 162, II, 394f). In the Papyrus of Ani that hero asks Nut to give him the fruit of the sycamore that he may live forever; and having partaken of the fruit, Ani and his wife in the next scene are seen drinking the water of life that flows beneath the tree while holding symbols of breath or wind in their hands (Pl. 16, Col. 58); the text explains it: “Hail thou Sycamore-tree of the Goddess Nut,” says the candidate, “give me of the water and of the air which is in thee!” (so Budge, B.D. Ani, II, p. 458; this is called the Chapter of Breathing Air); for along with the heat which the Sun provides, air and water are the prime requisites of life. As the ultimate boon to the initiate in the Underworld comes the command of Osiris Khentamentit, “Let him be given by the hand of Nut the water which flows from the sycamore!” (M. Weynants-Ronday, Chron. d’Eg. 3:74). B. Chapira has called attention to an old Jewish tradition that “the Tree of Life is planted near the source of the water of life” (REJ, 69:105, n. 4; cf. Ps. 1). At the Cenotaph of Setif, Frankfort suggests, “the trees, which symbolized natural life eternally renewed” were watered by a canal “which both as a Primeval water and as inundation waters … represented waters from which all natural life had sprung” (Cenotaph of Seti I, I, 30).
Whatever the other appointments and aspects of the great prehistoric cult center, it was “most especially the “Temple of Re in the Great Garden’ ” (H. Kees, ZA, 78:42). In the Amduat the visiting Sungod inaugurates gardening projects whenever he arrives at a new station on his progress, assigning plots of ground to the local inhabitants to cultivate for their sustenance (e.g., Hornung, Amduat, I, 32f, II, 51). In the Ninth Hour of the Amduat we see nine gods with wavy life-conveying djam-staves and life (‘ankh) symbols in their hands causing all the trees and plants to grow in the place; all the nine have garden names—Bud, Stem, Field, etc., while “Horus who is over the garden (pond) of the gods” stands guard (ibid., I, 165f). The agricultural names are mixed with seasonal names: “He who divides the Seasons,” “Who Belongs to the Seasons,” “He of the Year,” “He of the Sheaf,” “He of the Light,” “Great Light-bringer,” “Radiating One,” “He Whose Arm Shineth,” Neper the Corngod (I, 34-36). “May your seasons endure, your years be regular (dd), may the proper forms (khprw) suit your hours. May spelt for bread and barley be your due! You circumambulate (?) the images in order to revive the fields. You are the farmers (skhty.w) of Wernes, whose Bas live through me.” (Amduat, I, 41f:II. 56)
The role of agriculture in the mysteries is still baffling (K. Kerenyi in C. J. Bleeker, Initiation, p. 61). But as far as the world of the Coffin Texts is concerned, E. Otto draws the conclusion that it goes back to a premythical concept of vegetative immortality in which the fertility of the earth was designated by the word Osiris, the earth itself by Geb, and the grain by Nepre, those words later coming to designate gods for whom appropriate myths were invented (E. Otto, ZDMG, 102:195-96). Certainly the Coffin Texts make much of a ritual “Garden of Eden” in the prehistoric complex of Heliopolis: “The staff of bread is in Heliopolis, the Seven Things in the Field of Reeds (skht-aarw, the garden)” (C.T. 174, III, 183, 78). Indeed it is the garden that supplies the necessary abundance: “I live from bread! In the Field of Rest. My abundance is in the Field of Reeds; my basket is in my hand of these plants” (C.T. 184, III, 81). “The Horizon people say to me: Eat beneath the tree of ‘anti (balsam)…” (C.T. 188, 93).
Rescuing and feeding of the swimmer (Osiris) is a reminder that the eating mostly follows a crossing of the waters: “Osiris made him sleep with the phrw (restorative food) in the hnhnw” (bark, pun on “family”); NN rides the hnhnw-ship of Khpr (continuing states of being), eating as one who lives on what he eats, even on wind (C.T. 143, II, 176). It is the flood itself, the Inundation, that provides the food (Schoneveld, Orientalia Neerlandica, pp. 13, 17). The food offering makes a man flourish (wad, lit. “be green”) in the Beyond; “I am the great food-offering of the Invocation-offering which came forth as a great food-offering in Heliopolis…. O ye within the Field of Reeds, I have brought this thing as a ship’s cargo, that it might flourish there” (C.T. 179, III, 65-68). It is the bringing of the year-offerings to Heliopolis, for the familiar scene of the year-king presiding over the feast of abundance beneath his green bower. The Inundation is Hapy, the Father of the Gods who creates himself (De Buck in Or. Neerland., p. 18), and “the water of the sacred lake is identical with the primeval water (Nu[n]), and the water of the inundation” (ibid., p. 19). Hence the feast of abundance as a gift of the Inundation is the supreme earnest of the divine power to create. In lines 46-47 below it is specifically Hapy, the Nile in Flood, who heaps up the tables with all good things (below, pp. 192-94).
Throughout the world the archtype of the ritual meal, shared by the living and the dead together, is an earnest of abundance to follow, especially of water (Folk Lore 48 [Sept. 1937], pp. 226ff; F. Chabas, Bibl. Eg. 13:175-85; H. Nibley, Classical Jnl., 45:515-43). The New Year’s offering assures food throughout the year: “Behold, as for a temple-day, it is 1/360 of a year. When therefore ye divide everything that comes into the temple consisting of bread, of beer, and of meat for each day, that which makes 1/360 of the bread, of beer and of everything which comes into the temple, is the unit of these temple days …” (Breasted, AR, I, 263, No. 552).
The wisest Egyptian priests, according to Plutarch (de Iside, 33), identify Osiris with the Nile as the principle of life-giving moisture, hence with the seed and the grain, as with a benevolent parent (c. 34), creator and king (37-38). In the Breathing text Pap. Louvre 3279, the subject makes three requests of Hapy, the Inundation, namely (1) refreshment of the heart or regeneration, (2) power like the Lady Sekhmet, and (3) a happy old age after the resurrection—”a curious wish,” as J. C. Goyon observes Goyon, L. 3279, p. 69); specifically he receives the bread of Geb, lustrations of the Nile, wine and sdh-beer, and especially the incense of the breath of life, all of which is a way of denoting that the miracle of resurrection occurs every year at the moment of the Inundation (ibid., p. 72). What Hapy brings is “the water of rejuvenation,” “the new water,” and in the Pyramid Texts Hapy and Osiris are confused by being both identified with that water ibid., p. 50, line lxvii). In the end it is moisture, heat, and oxygen that revive the dead: the Louvre 3279 Book of Breathings ends with the words: “… the Rays of Re, the breezes of Amon, the water of Hapy: all belong to me forever!” (ibid., pp. 59ff). Heat, oxygen, and water—the basic prerequisites of life; with them provided, the new arrival is in business on this earth… (pages 279-283 of Egyptian Endowment)
The Lady and the Tree
The Lady is often identified with a tree, and in the vignettes to the Book of the Dead she appears in different degrees of incorporation with the tree, the concept varying to suit the fancy of the individual tomb-owner (L. Keimer, An. Serv., 29:84-86). As Keimer explains it, “the dead in his voyage is received by a good goddess who gives him founded drink. She usually bears the names of Nut, Hathor and Isis, but is often simply called ‘Lady of the Sycamore,’ ” the Sycamore being a type of fig-tree; and though she is first depicted as being actually incorporated in the tree in the 18th Dynasty (ibid., p. 83), her identification with it goes back to prehistoric times. The life-giving sycamore recalled the biblical Tree of Life to Lefebure, who identified it with the mafek (turquoise) tree, the tree of the Lady of the Land of Mafek, that grew in the Field of Reeds (Bibl. Eg., 36:327-28). The tree that receives the travel-weary Osiris into its arms (Sethe, ZA, 47:71f) performs the function of the Lady who is so often identified with that tree. Petrie noted that in Palestine holy trees are still called “Our Lady” (Anc. Eg., 1928, pp. 41-42). It has often been suggested that the sycamore was the original form of Hathor herself, whose proper function as Lady of the Tree, whatever name she may go by, is to receive the newcomer to a strange land with refreshment after an arduous and dangerous journey (L. Keimer, An. Serv., 29:83). Let us recall that Odysseus hailed the princess who received and revived him after his most dangerous water-journey as a sacred palm-tree (Odyss., 6:161-169), and that Abraham when he made the most dangerous journey of his life, that into Egypt, was rescued by Sarah in the form of a palm-tree (Gen. Apocr., XIX, 13-16). It should also be recalled that the ladies Uto Wadjyt, the Green One) and Nekhbet received our Breathings candidate as he emerged from the waters of purification. This same Madame Uto is “the Lady of Ammu, the pleasant trees … Lady of the Turquoise and of the Ammu-trees” (Bremner-Rhind, 19:30; 20:6, 9, 12, etc.). When Horus was blinded or slain by Seth under the Sen-usha-tree, it was Hathor the sycamore-lady who healed him (Ch. Beatty, No. I, Pl.x). The tree-goddess gives birth or rebirth (Plut., de Iside, 15-16, 21; Metternich Stele, 58-61), the archaie Hathor of the Southern Sycamore being herself the “Birth-house of the King” Bergmann, Isis, 257f, 261). Let us recall that our Breathing texts were found in “14 coffins, on each of which was placed a bunch of sycamore branches” (B. H. Stricker, O.M.R.O., 23:31). So it is with considerable interest that we consider the next line of our text.
LINE 38 “Thou makest the (these) rustlings (whisperings, breezes scatterings, splittings) of the (this) ished-tree, the noble one, in Heliopolis”
Here we meet with a variety of interpretatious. The most obvious is suggested by the word shr-shr, which, with the wind-or breach-determinative with which it is written here, suggests the whispering sound of the breeze the leaves (cf. Lat. susurrare, Gk. psithyrisma). Divination by the sound of wind in the branches of sacred trees among the oldest and most widespread of customs in the Near East (W. C. Wood, JBL, 35:24, 45, 67, P. Haupt, JBL, 36:89-92), so it is not surprising that the translation of this particular passage suggested in the Berlin Dictionary (IV, 529) is sich am Rauschen des isched-Baumes erquicken? —”to be revived or refreshed by the rustling leaves of the sacred ished-tree (?)”. Remembering that the wise Lady Maat is in charge of the tree, we are reminded that “it has been maintained by some scholars” that the name of the Sibyl “is not a proper name but implies a sound issuing from a subterranean oracle, conveyed either by the rustling of the wind, as in the case of the oaks of Dodona, or by the splash of water” (H. C. O. Lanchester, in R. H. Charles, Apocr. & Pseudepigr. of the O.T., p. 368). Osiris, the arch-initiate, was restored to life “by the effusion of water,” to be sure, but it was water that came from the spring that flowed from the foot of the divine fig-tree at Heliopolis (Chabas, Bibl. Eg., XIII, 172f). The close association of the water and the tree is vividly shown in the vignettes to Ch. 58 of the B.D.
Klaus Baer renders this passage: “You have scattered the noble Ished-tree in Heliopolis,” and quotes Budge, B.D. I, 6-61 (1898 ed.), who notes that “when the deceased scatters (the pieces?) of the Ished-tree, he is accompanying Re at dawn.” That is a typical naturalistic interpretation characteristic of Budge’s day, but there is quite compelling evidence to see here reference to the ritual splitting of the tree. (pages 287-289 Egyptian Endowment, emphasis added)