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122 And thus was born the belief that the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, if "put together" (mummified) like Osiris after death, could journey to join the gods in their abode, enter the secret Gates of Heaven, encounter there the great god Ra, and, if allowed to enter, enjoy an eternal Afterlife. The journey to this ultimate Divine Encounter was a simu- lated one; but to simulate one has to emulate a real, actual precedent—a journey that the gods themselves, and_specifi- cally so the resurrected Osiris, had actually taken from the shores of the Nile to Neter-Khert, "The Gods' Moun- tainland," where an Ascender would take them aloft in the Duat, a magical "Abode for rising to the stars." Much of what we know of those simulated journeys comes from the Pyramid Texts, texts whose origin is lost in the mists of time that are known from their repeated quoting inside Pharaonic pyramids (especially those of Unas, Teti, Pepi I, Merenra, and Pepi II who had reigned between 2350 and 2180 B.C.). Exiting his burial tomb (which was never inside a pyramid) through a false door, the king expected to be met by a divine herald who would "take hold of the king by the arm and take him to heaven." As the Pharaoh thus began his Journey to the Afterlife, the priests broke out in a chant: "The king is on his way to Heaven! The king is on his way to Heaven!" The journey—so realistic and geographically precise that one forgets it was supposed to be simulated—began, as stated, by passing through the false door that faced east; the destination of the Pharaoh was thus eastward, away from Egypt and toward the Sinai peninsula. The first obstacle was a Lake of Reeds; the term is almost identical to that of the biblical Sea of Reeds that the Israelites managed to cross when its waters miraculously parted, and undoubtedly refers in both instances to the chain of lakes that still run almost the whole length of the border between Egypt and the Sinai, from north to south. In the case of the Pharaoh, it was a Divine Ferryman who, after some tough questioning regarding the Pharaoh's quali- fications, decided to let the king cross. The Divine Ferryman brought the magical boat over from the lake's far side, but it was the Pharaoh who had to recite magical formulas to DIVINE ENCOUNTERS