The Egyptian Book of the dead

Hail to thee setting in the Land of Life, O Father of the gods, thou art united to thy mother in Manu. Her two hands receive thee daily. Thy Majesty hath part in the house of Sokaru. Exult thou because the doors are opened of the Horizon, at thy setting in the Mountain of the West.

The fifteenth chapter as it stands in the later recension (represented by the Turin Todtenbuch) is of very recent origin. It is in fact a collection of texts originally independent of each other; (1) a hymn to Râ at his rising, (2) a litany, (3) a hymn to Râ at his setting, (4) a hymn to Tmu at his setting, followed by a statement respecting the spiritual importance of the document.

Of the last hymn there are no copies of ancient date, but the other three compositions are found more or less perfect as far back as the XIXth dynasty. The discrepancies, however, between the ancient texts furnish so much evidence of free composition on the part of the scribes, that it is impossible to suppose that they had before them documents recognised as sacred and canonical. M. Naville has found it necessary to publish four different forms of the hymn to the rising, and three of the hymn to the setting sun. The ideas and expressions throughout these hymns are current in the religious texts of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties.

3. The stars which set were called the ȧḫmiu ureṭu. The stars which never set, but are always above the horizon were called ȧḫmiu seku. The word ȧḫmiu has often been taken for a mere negative, but it occurs by itself with the sign of stars as a determinative , . And the whole term is written (Denkm. III. 271d twice).

As one of the meanings of ḫem is minuere, and as the ordinary meaning of the Demotic is “small,” like the Coptic ϣⲟⲙ = λεπτὸς, it is not improbable that the stars received this appellation on account of their tiny size as compared with the Sun and Moon. They were what Horace called the “ignes minores.”

4. Both the Eastern and the Western horizon are mentioned in this chapter, but “Horus of the Two Horizons,” has no reference to this distinction. Whatever the Sun passes through or over is always conceived as double. The Two Earths imply simply the Earth as divided by the passage of the Sun above it. It is to M. Grébaut that we are indebted for the discovery of this important key to many Egyptian expressions.

5.ḫeper, like the German Werden, has primarily the sense of turning, hence of becoming. It never has the sense of creating. ḫeper t’esef is the equivalent of the Greek αὐτογενής, like that word is sometimes used for spontaneous productions of the mineral kingdom, as salt or natron as contrasted with artificial products of the same nature. It cannot be used for plants, as they have an origin in something external to themselves.

6.The Land of the Gods and Punit are the countries lying east of Egypt. When it is said that gods ‘come from Punit,’ it is not meant by this that they are of Arabian origin, but simply that Sun, Moon, and Stars, and Daylight rise in the East. “Ex oriente Lux.”

7. In many places the divine name Nut has for determinative the sign . Is this an oversight on the part of the scribe, or is it one more proof that the Egyptians certainly believed in a sky below the horizon? If so, I have never seen it misplaced.

8. The Ant and the Abṭu are sometimes represented by the side of the solar bark. From the egg of the Abṭu there rises the great Cat, the Sun. It is, as M. Loret has proved, the Tortoise of the Nile. As ȧbṭu, ‘the month,’ is phonetically homonymous with ȧbṭu, the Tortoise, and that the latter is characterised by , , ‘its rotation, revolving or turning,’ the word ȧbṭu, whether applied to ‘month’ or ‘tortoise’ clearly signifies ‘the revolving one.’ Our modern words Tortoise, Tortue, Tortuga, rather express the turning or twisting of the creature’s feet. In some texts, e.g., the inscriptions of Amenhotep, the son of Hapu, Mariette, Karnak, pl. 36, line 22, and at the beginning of the Ani Papyrus, the word is written abtu. In the later part of the Ani Papyrus it is written with the initial .

9. The Look-out of the ship, in Egyptian , or more fully nefrit, is written in the Papyrus of Ani. This interesting variant is of extreme value. It not only explains a word, the very existence of which has been called in question, but tells us the Egyptian name for that seat of Horus at the prow of the Solar Bark about which I wrote a note in Proc. Soc. Bib. Arch. of Nov. 3, 1891. See the plates attached to the note, and the corresponding vignettes in Todtenbuch, Pl. VI and IX.

Another Litany, preceding Hymn I, is found in the Papyrus of Ani. It is addressed to “Osiris, the everlasting Lord, Unneferu, Horus of the Two Horizons, of many forms and mighty of attributes. Ptah Sakru, Tmu in Heliopolis, Lord of the Unseen World, who hath built up Memphis and its gods.”