CHAPTER CVI.
Chapter whereby a largess is presented at Hat-ka-Ptah.([1])
Oh thou god of nutriment, oh great one who presidest over the mansions on high; [to whom bread cometh from Annu] ye who give bread to Ptah [from Annu], give me bread and beer: let me be made pure by the sacrificial joint, together with the white bread.([2])
Oh thou ship of the Garden of Aarru, let me be conveyed to that bread of thy canal; as my father, the Great one, who advanceth in the Divine ship [because I know thee].
Notes.
This is one of the chapters found on the sarcophagus of Horhotep. It is also inscribed on a statue, now in the Berlin Museum, belonging to the early part of the XVIIIth dynasty (Denkm., III, 25 h and k). These authorities do not give the title found in the papyri. The allusions to Annu are confined to the earliest text, which somewhat differs from the later authorities, and finishes sooner than they do. Cf. also Teta, l. 331.
[1.] Hat-ka-Ptah is the name of Memphis, but as in so many other places it is not the earthly city which is meant. M. Naville has pointed out that the words “in the Netherworld” are added in the papyrus of Nebseni.
[2.] Bread and beer are not mentioned in the earliest text, which has other important variants. The latest texts have the verb
, wash, make clean, purify, of which
on the Berlin statue and the Theban papyri may fairly be considered an older form. But Horhotep has
, a different word and occurring in a grammatical construction differing from that of the other texts.
The words
occur as a familiar formula in the Pyramid texts (Unas, 185, 205; Teta, 91); but Horhotep interpolates
after
. The determinatives of the group
(sometimes
or
), show that the copyist understood the word as meant for the sacrificial joint.
It is not uninteresting to note, with reference to the correctness of the title of this chapter, that the Pyramid ritual (Unas, 205) expressly says of the deceased that “the sacrificial joint with the white bread” are the “largess” (
) which he receives.