Part III.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Renouf, P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) and Naville, Edouard
The transgression here disavowed is understood by some of the scribes as a violation of ritual precepts, such as those regarding sacred seasons.
21.Who raisest thy voice ... words of Righteousness, is an attribute assigned to Isis in the Hymn to Osiris (line 14) on the Stele of Amenemhait in the Bibliothèque Nationale; and it is there further defined through the addition of the words , ‘with clearness of utterance’ (cf. Ch. 1, note 2). One of the chief names of Isis is ‘Mighty in Words of Power.’ She is also described in the Hymn as ‘Most potent of tongue () and unfailing of speech.’[125]
Her name Urit ḥekait may have suggested the name Urit as the place of her manifestation. But we do not know if Urit is to be taken as the name of a town or if some papyri are correct in reading , which may mean tribunal.
There were in ancient Egypt six great courts of justice, .
A High Priest of Ptah of Memphis, named Ptahmes, in the early part of the eighteenth dynasty, who was President of these six Courts,[126] has left a very remarkable attestation relative to the 24th Precept, on a beautiful scribe’s palette in basalt (Louvre, Inv., 3026). The inscription, after saying that the whole country was subject to the jurisdiction of Ptahmes, proceeds . “He turned not a deaf ear to the truth, through the terrors of his Eye;” that is, “the terrors of his Eye” were not used for the perversion of Justice. But what is meant by his “Eye”? M. Pierret (in his Inscr. inédites du Louvre, pt. 1, p. 96) suggested the ‘Eye of Horus.’ I think it has reference to the position of Ptahmes as . He was ‘the King’s Eye,’ ὁ βασιλέως ὀφθαλμός,[127] and had in consequence, an unlimited power of defeating justice had he been so inclined.
It is only by a blunder[128] that the papyrus of Ani makes (the nineteenth Nome of Upper Egypt) the scene of the divine Babe’s manifestation, which is unquestionably Heliopolis. The name of the Nome has numerous variants, but they always consist of two signs, a crooked staff (, , , ) either double or with a twisted cord (, , , ), and the final sound of the name (when expressed) is in , . The key to the phonetic reading of the name of the Heliopolitan Nome is to be found in the inscription at Edfu (J. de Rougé, Edfou, pl. 46); . Here the crook of the name is identified with the crook and flail ams, ȧms, or emsit of Osiris, who is called in the Book of the Dead (Todt., 142, 9) , the August Dismembered[129] one of the Powers of Annu. And this is how, in the important papyrus Pc, we find in Ch. 17 as the equivalent of , a few words after, in the same papyrus. Both groups are to be read ȧmsu; which means furnished with the crook (or sceptre) and flail, or .[130]
22.Hot of foot.
The Coptic ⲟⲩⲉⲙϩⲏⲧ, poenitentiam agere, would be the natural representative of , but the meanings of the terms cannot be the same. The latter is expressive of a passion, the indulgence in which may be laudable in the gods and yet blameworthy in men. For the divine wrath is necessarily just; whereas human anger, even when it seems to listen to reason, listens, as the philosopher says, but imperfectly.[131]
The 29th god, Kenemta, , has also for determinative the sign of a cynocephalus. This is explained by his identity with the constellation which occupies the whole month of Thoth in the list of the Decans. But though the name means ‘in Ape form,’ the word in the Pyramid Texts (Pepi i, 408, and Merira 579) is used in the sense of ‘vested,’ ‘clad,’ perhaps simply ‘covered.’
Brugsch has identified the locality Kenemit with the Great Oasis at Khargeh. It may be asked if the Oasis bore this name at the time when this chapter was composed. The determinative proves nothing beyond the actual sense of the word, but it suggests that the Dark may be a sufficient translation. From the etymology I should like to assimilate it to the ποικιλείμων νὺξ of the Prometheus Vinctus, or to the ‘furvo circumdata peplo’ of the Latin poet.
23.Of inconstant mind, .
24. Another intelligible reading of the precept is, “I rob not the dead of their wrappings”; but the text is so corrupt that none of the readings are of any value.
The god is called or , both of which words I understand in the sense of busy-minded, planning, devising, crafty, wise.
The appellative Horned one, , of the next precept, is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew בַּעַל קַרְנַיִס, and is the attribute of Osiris (Todt., 144, 4), especially in the character of ; under which name he was worshipped at Sutenhunen.
25.Noisy in speech.
26.Striker. A name of Horus, on which see ch. 103, note.
27. There is no locality about which there is any agreement between the older papyri, and many of them omit the mention of a locality; later authorities, like the Turin text, read Annu.
28.No unjust preferences, . There is no virtue more frequently extolled on the funereal monuments than the absence of favouritism. Great personages in their epitaphs are strong in their declarations that they made no distinction between great and small, rich or poor, wise or simple. The declaration of Ameni (Denkm., ii, 122), , is a type of many others.
29. Of raised head, , , or (B.M. 9971) . This, like the last two, is a name of the Nile god, who is one of the manifestations of Osiris.
30.Who liftest an arm, , not ‘amener son bras.’ , like the Greek φέρειν, means bear in the sense of holding up, supporting. When it signifies bring the collateral notion of motion is imported from the context. The god Shu, who is called , holds up, supports, the sky, but does not bring it. The god who holds up his arm, is of course the ithyphallic Amon[132] , who in Ch. 17 is identified not only with Horus but with Osiris.
31. This introduction to Part III of this chapter occurs only in the Papyrus of Nebkat (Pe). Another ancient manuscript (Pb) has the words “Said upon approaching triumphantly to the Hall of Righteousness.” But the texts generally begin with the invocation, “Hail ye gods, I know you and I know your names.”
32.Reverse of mine, , a turn of the wheel, which the context implies to be unfortunate. A very absurd reading is , as if the defendant were master of the fates of his divine judges.
33.The King who resideth within His own Day. A very doubtful passage at present. The words do not occur in the oldest text of the chapter (that of Nebseni), and they are omitted here in the later recensions. Ad is, as far as I know, the only authority for ; other papyri having merely , which might possibly correspond to the immediately preceding. The Royal tombs have , and one of the papyri has instead of . All this reminds one of an obscure passage in Chapter 115, where Rā is speaking with according to the Text of the Turin Todtenbuch. Goodwin conjectured that King Amhauf belonged ‘to the race of mythical kings who preceded Menes,’ and that his history is ‘a legend somewhat analogous to that of Deucalion and Pyrrha.’ There is a much more probable solution of the matter.
is meant for Sut, and it was with this god or [133] ‘in his course’ that Rā was speaking when the disaster happened to the latter divinity, who for his talk had chosen a wrong moment, which really belonged to his adversary. Cf. supra note 3 on Chapter 110.
And here too I would instead of read , and the sense of the passage would be “let not reverse of mine come to pass through Sutu, when his time cometh.”
34.Cares, in the later texts. The older texts differ greatly from each other: is the most frequent reading.
35.The Ass and the Cat in the house of Hept-ro. The two personages who take part in this dialogue are known from other portions of the Book of the Dead. The Cat is Rā in the 17th chapter. And the Ass appears in the 40th chapter, as the victim of the devouring Serpent. The Sun-god overcome by darkness is Osiris; and he is so called by name in the Demotic version of this chapter.
Hepṭ-ro, , ‘god of the gaping mouth.’ The word is not found elsewhere, but the meaning of it seems to be indicated by the determinative. It is very probably akin to the more common , , which does not mean ‘squat’ or ‘sit,’ but ‘stretch out,’ distendi. Cf. Note 6, Chapter 63B.
The ‘house of the god of the gaping mouth,’ seems to be the Earth, considered as the universal tomb (ἀλλ’ αὐτοῦ γαῖα μέλαινα πᾶσι χάνοι, Il. 14, 417). And here Osiris and Rā (the Ass and the Cat) meet daily, ‘Yesterday’ speaketh to ‘To-day.’
יוס ליוס יביע אמר
36.Verdict, , , , .
A note of M. Guyesse in the Recueil, X, p. 64, contains references to the chief passages in which this word occurs. I will add a very important one, the picture of a god (Lefébure, Tombeau de Seti, p. III, pl. 33) with sword in hand, whose name is this word. The ideographic signs which express it imply (1) ‘a cutting in two, parting, division,’ (2) that the act is one of speech or intellect, such as ‘judgment, decision, verdict.’ The phonetic equivalence of the signs and or show that the value is that of Seb.
37.Covereth. The right Egyptian word here, as in a similar passage in Chapter 17, is uncertain, but the meaning is plain enough. There are many pictures showing a divinity (the sun or moon-god) hidden within or behind a tree.
38.That the Balance may be set upon its stand within the bower of amaranth.
Cf. the passage (Rochemonteix, Edfou, p. 191) where mention is made of the divine powers which animate the Princes who are in the train of Osiris and who lift the Balance upon the stand before them .
Amaranth (see Note 3 of Chapter 26) is only one of the readings of this doubtful text.
39.Disasters, bad luck, misfortune. See my note on this word, T.S.B.A., II, p. 313.
40.Grasshoppers, . The similar word סלעם, which only occurs in Lev. xi, 22, does not appear to be Semitic. It is a sufficiently familiar word in Egyptian to serve as a term in comparison, ‘as plentiful as grasshoppers.’
41. The text here is quite uncertain. The Turin Todtenbuch has “the fourth hour of the Night and the eighth hour of the Day,” which does not agree with any early reading. Cd. has “the fourth hour of the Night and of the Day.” Several papyri have the “second hour of the Night and the third of the Day.” It was in this passage, as written in B.M. 9904, that, in the year 1860, I found the phonetic value of the Egyptian number 3: a discovery first ascribed by Brugsch[134] to Goodwin, and afterwards by others to Brugsch himself.
42.The hearts of the gods are appeased, . Cf.ⲛⲁⲓ, ἱλάσκεσθαι, and ⲛⲁⲏⲧ, ἐλεήμων, οἰκτίρμων. This explains Pap. Prisse XVII, 6 .