CHAPTER CXXXII.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Renouf, P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) and Naville, Edouard
Chapter whereby a person is enabled to go round, to visit his dwelling in the Netherworld.
I am the Lion-god who issueth from the Bow,(1) and therefore have I shot forth.(2)
I am the Eye of Horus; and the Eye of Horus is opened at the instant that I reach the strand, coming with happy issue.
I advance and, lo! there is no defect found in me, and the Balance is relieved of my case.(3)
Notes.
1.The Bow, , often written with the determinative , of stretching, which is the conception implied in this name of the instrument. This mythological Bow, as I explained, Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., VI, 131, is the moon’s crescent, which during its course through the sky is always turned towards the sun; so that a line at right angles to the chord of the arc passes through the sun’s centre. From this “very delicate observation,” as Arago calls it, the Alexandrian astronomer Geminus infers that the moon derives its light from the sun. The observation evidently had been made in Egypt some thousands of years before Geminus, and explains why in several chapters the sun is spoken of as shining in or from the moon.
See also Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., XVII, 37, on another form of the myth.
2. I follow the Turin text in omitting a word about which the earlier texts are not agreed, but which seems to have originated in an alternate reading for .
3. See end of Chapter 1 and note. These words are omitted in Turin text.