Part III.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Renouf, P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) and Naville, Edouard
43.Let him come. is a tolerably certain reading, but it is not possible to say what should be the word preceding this. The scribes have written ‘there he cometh,’ ‘we grant that he come,’ ‘I grant,’ ‘let him be brought in,’ and the like.
44.He who groweth under the Grass, .
45.A thigh, , also written .
46.See the greetings: φωνῇ γαρ ὁρῶ, τὸ φατιζόμενον, Oedip. Col. 138.
47.The Leaf, .
48.Pointer [or Plummet] of Truth, .
49.The Scale Pan, , .
50.The Dragon Brood, .
51.The Truncheon of Hathor, does not appear to be a very familiar word to the scribes, who write it in the most diverse ways possible; one of them even understanding it as the ‘opening of heaven’ . All that we can say is that the word is shown by its determinative to be of wood, and by its etymology (cf. , ) to serve for striking, blinding, or slaying. Some of the texts name Hathor, and others Nephthys. The sign occurs in both names, and the scribes have read the rest of the name as best they could.
52.He who knoweth the heart and exploreth the person, . This is so exactly the equivalent of “Searching the heart and trying the reins” of Jeremiah (xvii, 10), that we might have expected to find something like it in the Coptic version of the Bible. But there we have nothing but a close adherence to the sense of the Septuagint, and even to such a word as δοκιμάζειν.
53.Who provideth for. is the equivalent of the Greek φρονεῖν in the inscription of Tanis, and of μέριμνα in the Demotic text of the verses of Moschion. The Coptic form is ⲙⲉⲩⲓ, ⲙⲉⲉⲩⲉ, which stands for φρονεῖν in Phil. iv, 10, “Your care of me, wherein ye also were careful.”
Thoth is thus represented as the divine Providence, which takes care of the universe. The same view is found in a text at Edfu.
54.The Eye of Horus; see latter part of Note 2, of this chapter.
Source notes
111. Apparently suggested by the scene in the tomb of Hor-em-heb (see Denkm., III, 78), in the time of Amenophis III. (Plate XXXII, fig. 15.)
112. The picture of the Babe lifted up into the upper world by two divinities speaks for itself. Of the birth of the Sun as the Winged Scarab at the beginning of the first hour of the day, M. Maspero, in his description of the text, says: “Il est salué à ton apparition par les huit ... ‘les esprits d’Orient, dieux du ciel, des terres, des pays étrangers, de la montagne d’horizon orientale qui est On.’”
113. This is the principle by which to judge the cases of the Facing-backward god serpentine, or crocodile , and of Uammeta , against both of whom a passage of the ‘Book of Hades’ (Bonomi, Sarc., pl. II A) has been quoted. The book, of course, is of inferior authority to the ‘Book of the Dead,’ but in any case it must be remembered that these names, as appellatives, are common nouns (Uammeta is in the plural number in the passage in question), and may simply mean Serpents. Sutu is called by the first of these names at Edfu (Zeitschr., 1871, p. 108). But even at Dendera (Lanzone, Diz., pl. 173, 1) this ‘god of serpent face’ is ‘disastrous to the Sebau,’ the enemies of Osiris and Rā, and is therefore not one of them. His soul is invoked like those of all the great gods in the royal tombs.
114. The is not to be read fi or fy. The sign is merely the ideogram of the number 2, like the letter ⲃ in Coptic. The belief in an Egyptian dual with as a final syllable is an illusion, though a very pardonable one, of our grammarians.
115. Or Vultures. See M. Gayet’s Temple de Luxor, Pl. xliii, fig. 127, where the Bird at each end of the picture holds in its claw. And note the tabernacles (a very frequent picture) where a winged goddess bearing the kneels on either side of the solar scarab.
116. Or as it is said in other words (Teta, 172; Pepi I, 130; Pepi II, 107, and Merenra, 152), “Seb hath brought to thy side thy two sisters, Isis and Nephthys.”Nephthys.”
117. A very conceivable, because a very frequent, one.
118.
“His sons were kept in prison, till they grew
Of years to fill a bowstring or a throne.”
119. To quote only well known cases, we have ‘the massacre of the princes,’ involving the two uncles and seven cousins of the Emperor Constantius, and those of our own King John and Richard III.
120. The legislation of Solon is said by Diogenes Laertius (who is however contradicted by notoriousnotorious evidence) to have excluded from the position of guardian anyone who had the right of succession to the ward’s estate. And this was also the law of England with reference to guardians in socage. In France the next in succession had the charge of the estate, but was excluded from the custody of the person of the ward.
121. The true sense of the name has been missed by Birch, who reads it Teti, and by Brugsch, who reads it “Chonti, der Anfängliche.” At Beb-el-moluk it is written .
122. D. Aegyptische Elle, Taf. 1 and 2.
123. Cf. the forms `, and (Naville, Litanies, pp. 55, 83, and the corresponding texts) of one of the Solar names.
124. On the other hand in the standard of Dendera, the Crocodile is Sut, and the Feather upon his head is Osiris.
125. Her son Horus inherited these gifts. He is invoked (Metternich Stele, line 106), .
126. Rechmarā filled this office shortly before this, in the time of Thothmes III, and the inscriptions of his tomb give interesting information of the duties discharged. His clerks are praised for the virtue of discretion (18th Precept). Each heard the reports read by others, but without troubling himself with what did not concern him. See next note.
127. This office is often referred to by Greek writers as existing in the Persian hierarchy. Pseudartabas, the ‘King’s Eye,’ is one of the Dramatis Personæ in the Acharnians of Aristophanes. Herodotus (1, 114) tells how Cyrus being chosen king by his playfellows, selected his principal officers, and one among the boys to be the ‘King’s Eye.’ Aeschylus does not forget in his Persae (line 976) to make the Chorus bewail the loss of the King’s faithful Eye.
The most ancient personage who is known to me as the ‘King’s Eye’ in Egypt is Antuf, whose tablet (of the 12th dynasty) is in the Louvre (C. 26). His duties are detailed on this magnificent tablet, and they are very similar to those of Rechmarā. He is described not only as the King’s Eyes which see, but the “Tongue which speaks, of the lord of the Palace.”
128. in cursive writing might be mistaken for or for , and the scribe, to show his learning, might interpolate the , but even this might be an error for .
129. The determinatives in , , express the sense of division, διαμελισμός, and the insect (a scolopendron) in exhibits the very notion which has given rise to the Latin insecta and the Greek ἔντομον
130. For more particular details, see P.S.B.A., viii, p. 245, and following.
131. Ἀκούειν τι τοῦ λόγου, παρακούειν δε: Ethic. Nich., viii. 7.
132. There is no such god as Min or Minu, except as an abbreviated (or perhaps primitive) orthographic form of Amon. and bear to exactly the same relationship that , , , have to , and .
Neither Amen nor the shorter form can be the phonetic equivalent of . The image of Horus with the Flail at Edfu is described (J. de Rougé, pl. C. III) as , Horus as Amsu-Amen, and I have elsewhere quoted from Tempel insch., I, 32, the Amsu- Men [or Amen] as well as Amsu Horus.
133. The Luynes papyrus reads , which affords good reason for thinking that in Chapter 115, as elsewhere, was originally written without its phonetic value.