CHAPTER XIII.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Renouf, P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) and Naville, Edouard
Chapter for entering after coming out from Amenta.
I enter as a Hawk and come forth as a Bennu(1) at Dawn.
Let the way be made for me that I may adore Râ at the fair Amenta, and the locks(2) of Osiris. I urge on the hounds of Horus.
Let the way be made for me that I may adore Osiris, the Lord of Life.
Notes.
This chapter, in the MSS. of which the Turin copy is the type, is repeated as Chapter 121, with the following rubric:—
“Said over an ear-ring of the flower Ânch-amu, put upon the right ear of the deceased person, with another ear-ring, put in fine linen, upon which is written the name of N, on the day of burial.”
1. The Bennu is a bird of the Heron kind. He is very commonly but, I think, erroneously identified with the Phoenix. The bird described by Herodotus, II, 73, was in outline and size “very like an eagle,” which no one could say of the Bennu. He appeared only once in five hundred years, whereas the Bennu appeared every day. The fable as told by the Greeks is utterly unsupported by any Egyptian authority known to us.
2. This passage is, unfortunately, both in the ancient and the recent forms, corrupt.