BOOK OF THE DEAD.

BY P. LE PAGE RENOUF.

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER 109.

The later copies of the Book of the Dead add a few lines to the chapter, of which they certainly formed no part when first written. The most interesting portion of them is as follows:

"There are writings in thy possession for the grant of fields of corn-land in which there sprouteth corn from the effluxes of the god Ut'eb. The height of the corn is seven cubits, the ears of two cubits; and thou shall reap it with the Glorified ones, in presence of the Powers of the East. Thou shalt enter boldly at the mysterious portals and be purified by those who are there."

The name of the god hieroglyphically written

was shown

by me (Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., Vol. VI, p. 187) to be Uteb or Ut'eb. Brugsch, apparently without having seen my note, came to the same result, though he identified the god with Seb. The god is really Osiris, and the text just quoted is illustrated by a picture of which various copies are found. That here given is taken from the temple of Philae.

These pictures were known from the Ramesside period, but the conception of Osiris which they convey

000

(Todt., 142, 7) is of primitive antiquity. There is a chapter among the texts preserved by the Coffin of Amamu (pl. xxvii, 6) about "assuming the form of corn,"

, and

which speaks of "the vegetation of life proceeding from Osiris,

growing out of the ribs of Osiris, and giving life to this generation of

to Osiris in the Book of the Dead, in the sacred texts of the Royal

Tombs, and in the Hymn to the Nile. But the god is also twice

00

in Amamu, pl. xxvii, 8. This latter form

we have a compound term.

The deity (in very late times) appears in the feminine gender

J (Denkm., iv, 57).

[The Chapter which in the printed copy of the Turin Todtenbuch is numbered 110 interrupts the series of chapters on the Powers of certain localities. The translation of it is reserved till that of these chapters is completed.]

CHAPTER CXI

is only a repetition of Chapter 108.

CHAPTER CXII.

Chapter whereby one knoweth the Powers of Pu. (1)

Oh thou of corpselike form who art in Chait and Ânpit; (2) thou goddess of the Net, (3) who art in Pu; ye who preside over the untilled lands, ye stars and constellations (4) ... Know ye wherefore Pu hath been given to Horus?

I know it if ye know it not.

It was Râ who gave it to him in amends of the blindness in his eye, in consequence of what Râ said to Horus: "Let me look at what is happening in thine eye to-day," and he looked at it.

Râ said to Horus, "Look, pray, at that black swine."
He looked, and a grievous mishap afflicted his eye.

Horus said to Râ, "Lo, my eye is as though the eye of Sutu had made a wound in my own eye." And he grieved in his heart. And Râ said to the gods, "Let him be laid upon his bed, that may recover."

he

It was Sutu who had taken the form of a black swine, and he wrought the wound which was in the eye of Horus.

And Râ said to the gods, "The swine is an abomination to Horus; may he get well." And the swine became an abomination to Horus.

And the circle of gods said, who were with him when Horus came to light in his own children: (6) "Let the sacrificial victims (7) for him be of his oxen, of his goats, and of his swine."

As for Emsta, Hapi, Tuamautef, Kebhsenuf, Horus is their father and Isis their mother.

And Horus said to Râ, "Give me then two (8) brothers in Pu and two brothers in Nechen, of this my own body; and that they may be with me as an everlasting renewal, through which the earth flourisheth and storms are quenched."

And his name became that of Horus upon his Column.

I know the Powers of Pu: they are Horus, Emsta and Hapi.

NOTES.

1. On the situation of Pu, see chapter 18, note 6. The Pyramid.

Texts (Pepi I, 684) speak of the D

the Red Crown who are in Pu."

"those of

2. Thou of corpselike form in Chait and Ânpit. The sign of the plural, here as elsewhere, is quite consistent with its application to a single person. Chait is the name* of the 16th, or Mendesian, Nome of Northern Egypt, and Ânpit was its metropolis. The nome is mentioned in the inscription of Amten in the third dynasty. The god is Osiris. He is invoked in the "Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys," and asked to come to Tattu, Ânpit and Chait, which are but different names of one Sanctuary, Cf. Brugsch, Zeitschr., 1871, p. 81, and his translation of the Mendesian Tablet, Zeitschr., 1875. This name corres

3. Thou goddess of the Net 4-J¦·

ponds to the Greek Diktynna. The reason why a goddess representing Heaven should be so called may be understood by the Homeric epithet оλvwóv applied to a net.

If, however, the deity was male, according to the other reading, the reference is to τὸν τῆς Ἴσιος τρόφιμον Δίκτυν, who was drowned in the river. Plut., de Iside and Os., 8.

4. Ye who preside, etc. Brugsch (Zeitschr., 1876, p. 3) identifies

the Egyptian,

with the yoTÓTоs of the Demotic

*Not Hämeḥit, which is the name both of the Uu of the nome and of the goddess worshipped in it, whose emblem is the fish

and Greek contracts.

The remainder of this invocation is so corrupt

that the sense cannot be safely guessed at.

5. See Herodotus, II, 47, without attaching too much importance to details. The pig was certainly not considered impure (após) in the days of the third or fourth dynasty, when Amten, who had risen to the highest dignities, enumerates swine among the domestic animals it is natural to possess. And impure animals were not offered in sacrifice. But long before the days of Herodotus a change had taken place in the Egyptian religion as to the nature of Sutu.

Plutarch and Aelian are to be read with the like caution. Some of their information is correct, but it is mixed up with much error. 6. The variants

worthy.

7. Sacrifical victims

www

and

are note

The substitution in Egypt

of animal for human sacrifice is (I believe) entirely without foundation. And the supposed evidence of human sacrifices drawn from certain pictures has (I believe) been misinterpreted.

8. The four children of Horus were also his brothers. He asks for two of them to be with him in each of his two cities, Pu and Nechen. The true sense of the passage is entirely lost in the later recensions and in translations made from them.

CHAPTER CXIII.

Chapter whereby one knoweth the Powers of Nechen. (1)

I know the Mystery of Nechen: Horus, and that which his mother did (2) for him, when she herself uttered the cry: "Let Sebak, the Lord of the Marshes, be brought to us."

He cast the net for them and he found them, and his mother made them fast in their places.

Sebak, the Lord of the Marshes, said: "I sought and I found the traces of them under my fingers on the strand. I netted them in a powerful net, as the net proved to be."

And Râ said: "Verily, those are fishes in the hands of Sebak, and he hath found the two arms of Horus for him, which had become fishes." (3)

And Râ said: "A mystery, a mystery, in the Net."

And the hands of Horus were brought to him, and displayed before his face, on the feast of the fifteenth day of the month; when the fishes were produced.

Then Râ said: "I grant Nechen to Horus, in the place of his two arms; that his two hands be displayed before his facc in Nechen ; and I grant to him whatsoever is therein comprised on the feast of the fifteenth day of the month.”

And Horus said: "Be it granted to me that Tuamautef and Kebhsenuf be taken with me, and that they be guards of my body in dutiful service. (4) Let them be this under the god of Nechen."

And Ra said: Be that granted to thee, there and in Sati, and let that be done for them which is done for those who are in Nechen ; yea, they are asking to be with thee.

And Horus said: Be they with thee, so that they be with me to listen to Sutu invoking the Powers of Nechen: "Be it granted to me that I may make my entry among the Powers of Nechen."

I know the Powers of Nechen: they are Horus, Tuamautef, and Kebhsenuf.

NOTES.

1. Nechen, the chief hieroglyphic variants of which are

(X_Ten) of

Upper Egypt, and was called by the Greeks Hieracōnpolis, 'city of the Hawks,' from the hawk-headed divinities mentioned in this chapter as Powers of Nechen, and of which numberless pictures are found on the monuments.

2. Between these words and those which the three old papyri* Aa, Ae, and Ib, which unfortunately do not agree together on all points, have a few passages here which do not appear in the later papyri. They read, "Horus and what his mother did, tossing in

distressful agitation (45AK, KILL, σa cúcsoα1) over

the

water." The mother then addresses persons who are not named, in words of which the sense is not clear; and Rã speaks words of

There is a copy of the chapter in the tomb of Cha-em-hait, which is our oldest authority. But it is unfortunately mutilated, and all that can be said is, that if the additional words were once there, they have been destroyed.