Opening of the Mouth

Summary

The Opening of the Mouth is an Egyptian rite performed on the embalmed body of the dead or on his statue, to open his mouth so that he may eat, speak and breathe, and his eyes so that he may see, and so become a spirit with all its powers in the other world. It was also performed on the statues of gods in their temples. The expression is first known from the tomb of the official Metjen, at the end of the Third Dynasty or the beginning of the Fourth, and the Metropolitan Museum has a small tray of the Fifth or Sixth Dynasty holding models of the rite's implements, and a vessel for it from the tomb of Perneb at Saqqara.

The rite is told most fully in the tomb of King Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty and in later copies. The statue is set on a mound of sand facing south, sprinkled with water and censed, anointed with seven oils, its eyes painted, and dressed in two garments. Then the sem priest touches its mouth and eyes with instruments, among them one called "the Thigh", of iron, saying: "I have opened for thee thy mouth with the instrument of Anubis, I have opened for thee thy mouth with the divine instrument, with the Thigh of iron wherewith the mouth of the gods was opened.. Horus shall open the mouth of the Osiris even as he opened the mouth of his father, and the Osiris shall walk and shall talk, and his body shall be with the Great Company of the Gods". A bull is slaughtered, its heart torn out and its left foreleg cut off, both presented to the statue, while two women stand for Isis and Nephthys. Then the meal is set before it; when it is over the mouth is opened, and the dead has become a spirit with all the powers of spirits.

The dead asks for this himself in chapter 23 of the Book of the Dead: "Let my mouth be opened by Ptah, and let the muzzles which are upon my mouth be loosed by the god of my domain. Then let Thoth come, full and equipped with Words of Power, and let him loose the muzzles of Sutu which are upon my mouth.. Let my mouth be given to me. Let my mouth be opened by Ptah with that instrument of steel wherewith he openeth the mouths of the gods".

The same rite is known in Mesopotamia for the statues of gods. Esarhaddon says the statues of Marduk, his consort and the gods of Babylon "were created in the city Aššur by their own command and were truly born in Eḫursaggalkurkura", then travelled to Babylon and entered the gardens of Ekarzagina, "a pure place", where "the washing of the mouth", "the opening of the mouth", "bathing" and "purification" were performed for them before the stars of heaven and before Ea, Šamaš, Asalluḫi and the gods of craft. The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary quotes the ritual instruction "you perform the rituals of mouth-washing and mouth-opening on this god", and shows that mouth-washing was also performed on a man, on a bull, on a torch and on a bronze drum.

The idea the rite turns on is that a made thing does not live until its mouth is opened. The statue is stone cut by a craftsman, the mummy a wrapped body, and both are closed; the mouth is where food and breath go in and speech comes out. Once it is opened the dead eat the offerings and speak, and once the mouth of a god's statue is opened the god dwells in it. That is why in the Book of the Dead the one who opens the mouths of the gods is Ptah, the craftsman god, and why the statues of Babylon say they were "born" in the temple workshop and not merely made.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The rite's Akkadian name, pīt pî, is Arabic fatḥ al-fī letter by letter: pītu comes from the verb petû, which is Arabic fataḥa, "to open", its ḥ lost as Akkadian loses ḥ; and pî is the genitive of pû, "mouth", which is Arabic fū, genitive fī, as Arabs say fū Zaydin, fī Zaydin, "the mouth of Zayd". Akkadian p answers Arabic f regularly. Its companion is mīs pî, "washing of the mouth". The Egyptian name is wpt-r: wpj, "open, part", and r, "mouth". We read wpj, as a reading proposed on the method, with Arabic fāha: Lane says fāha bi-l-kalām means he uttered it, fāha l-rajulu bi-kadhā "the man opened his mouth with such a thing", and mā tafawwahtu "I opened not my mouth with a word".

Linguistic Root

The Akkadian name is firm in its letters: Brown–Driver–Briggs sets Hebrew pātaḥ beside Assyrian pitû, patû and Arabic fataḥa, and Hebrew peh, "mouth", beside Assyrian pû and Arabic, calling the word probably biliteral. The ḥ of fataḥa is lost in Akkadian, which turns the vowel before it to e, giving petû. So the reading covers both words, and more than one branch of the tongue bears it out.

Egyptian wpj, on the other hand, has w before p, while Arabic fāha has f before w, so the reading needs the order changed, and r, "mouth", is left without an Arabic match to offer. So the Egyptian reading remains a proposal. What strengthens the rite's tie to Arabic fatḥ is that the Egyptian Semitic essay reads the name of Ptah as fataḥa, that Ptah is the one who opens the mouths of the gods in the Book of the Dead, and that late Egyptian has a verb ptḥ, "open". See Ptah.

Key Mythic Narratives

The implements

The old offering liturgy names an instrument called pesesh-kef with which the statue's mouth was touched, and two adzes of iron, iron of the South and iron of the North. The offering lists in tombs of the Fourth and early Fifth Dynasties do not name these implements, so Budge concludes the rite was shorter then, and that its implements and offerings multiplied at the end of the Fifth Dynasty. The Metropolitan Museum holds a Ramesside amulet in the shape of the peseshkef and a wooden model of a meskhetyu implement from the foundation deposit of Hatshepsut's tomb. Budge says the iron "Thigh" instrument is ascribed to Set, iron being Set's metal, and that another instrument ascribed to Horus is then used.

Symbolic Reading

The Egyptian rereading essay reads Ptah's creation by heart and tongue, thinking things and then speaking their names so that they came to be, as the discovery of the power of language: that naming is knowing. The Opening of the Mouth works the same way: the craftsman makes the statue, but speech is what makes it live, which is why words are said over the mouth as it is touched, and why the dead asks to be given his mouth so that he may speak.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Egyptian and Mesopotamian rites both open a made mouth, but each has its own place. In Egypt the mouth of the dead is opened so that he may eat and speak in the other world, and then that of a god's statue. In Mesopotamia the mouth of a god's statue is washed and opened so that the god may be present in it, and a man's mouth is washed too. In Egypt the opener is Ptah the craftsman; in Mesopotamia the gods of craft attend the rite beside Ea. In both, the thing is purified with water and incense before it is opened, as Nabu's chapel is purified in the Akitu before he enters it.

In the Book of the Dead Thoth loosens Set's muzzles from the mouth of the dead, which ties the Opening of the Mouth to the judgment of the dead: the dead needs his mouth to say before the judges that he has not sinned.