CHAPTER LXIIIB.
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Renouf, P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) and Naville, Edouard
Chapter whereby one is not boiled in water.
I am that ready Rudder wherewith Râ conveyeth the Ancient ones, and I raise the effluxes(4) of Osiris to the Tank from flames impassable; a wrecked one,(5) but not to be consumed.
I lie helpless as a dead person,(6) and I arrive at the lair of the Lion who defieth slaughter, ...(7) following the road by which I set out.
Notes.
The Chapters 63A and 63B are united into one in the later MSS. without any other division than , indicative of a different reading. None of the early papyri contains both chapters. The text of 63B is extremely corrupt, and without rational interpretation.
1.I am that Rudder of Râ, wherewith he conveyeth the Ancient ones. This passage is twice found in Horhotep (311 and 329), the word for Rudder being written .
2.Who striketh the eye, . The peaceful determinative may perhaps be intended to diminish the force of the very expressive in the verb of striking. But I believe that this passage may fairly be illustrated by the words of Lucretius IV, 324 and following:—
Splendida porro oculi fugitant vitantque tueri,
Sol etiam caecat, contra si tendere pergas.
Praeterea splendor quicumque est acer adurit
Saepe oculos ideo quod semina possidet ignis
Multa, dolorem oculis quae gignunt insinuando.
3.The primary power of motion and of rest. These words have a modern sound, but they express the sense of the original, .
4.Effluxes, , the ἰχώρ, the vital sap, as it were, of the body of Osiris, which is the source of life both to men and to gods,[71] and in default of which his own heart (Unas 12) would cease to beat. It is celebrated in all the mythological texts extant from the time of the Pyramids down to the latest inscriptions of Denderah and Edfu, and even in Demotic documents.[72] All moisture was supposed to proceed from it, and the Nile was naturally identified with it.
In the Pyramid texts (Pepi 66) is put in parallelism with .
5.A wrecked one. So I understand from Chapter 125, 38, but the whole context here is so doubtful that no translator who respects himself would warrant the sense.
6.I lie helpless like a dead person., ḥefṭ is the condition of an infant on the knees of its nurse. And I understand in its well known euphemistic application to the dead.
7. is the most probable reading here, but it is a hapax legomenon with nothing in the context to explain it.
Source notes
71. In one of the ancient chapters preserved in the tomb of Horhotep, the deceased, speaking in the person of Horus, talks (319) of quenching his thirst with the of his father Osiris.
72. See a very interesting passage in Pap. Rhind 4, 4, with Brugsch’s translation.