CHAPTER CXXXVIB.
Chapter whereby one is conveyed in the Great Bark of Rā to pass through the orbit of flame.
O bright flame which art behind Rā, and dividest his Crown!
The Bark of Rā feareth the storm.
Ye[[145]] are bright and ye are exalted.
I come daily with Sek-hra([8]) from his exalted station, so that I may witness the process of the Maāt([9]) and the lion-forms([10]) which belong to them ... so that I may see them there.
We are rejoicing: their great ones are in jubilation, and their smaller ones in bliss.
I make my way at the prow of the Bark of Rā, which lifteth me up like his disk.
I shine like the Glorious ones, whom he hath enriched with his wealth, holding fast like a Lord of Maāt.
Here is the Cycle of the gods, and the Kite of Osiris.
Grant ye that his father, the Lord of them, may judge in his behalf.
And so I poise for him the Balance, which is Maāt, and I raise it to Tefnut that he may live.
Come, come, for the father is uttering the judgment of Maāt.
Oh thou who callest out at thine evening hours, grant that I may come and bring to him the two jaws of Restau, and that I may bring to him the books which are in the Annu and add up for him his hosts.
And so I have repulsed Apepi and healed the wounds he made.
Let me make my way through the midst of you.
I am the Great one among the gods, coming in the two Barks of the Lord of Sau, the Figure of the great saluter, who hath made the Flame.
Let the fathers and their Apes make way for me, that I may enter the Mount of Glory, and pass through where the Great ones are.
I see who is there in his Bark, and I pass through the orbit of Flame which is behind the Lord of the Side-lock, over the serpents.
Let me pass: I am the powerful one, the Lord of the powerful.
I am the Sāhu, the Lord of Maāt, the creator of every Dawn,([11])
Place me among the followers of Rā: place me as one who goeth round in the Garden of Peace of Rā.
I am a god greater than thou art.
Let me be numbered in presence of the Divine Cycle when the offerings are presented to me.
Notes.
The two chapters which are numbered by M. Naville as 136A and 136B are represented in the later recensions by a single chapter, which has been made out of them. There is very much obscurity in the ancient texts, though the MSS. containing them are numerous, and the more recent versions are quite as difficult to understand. We must be satisfied for the present by a strict literal and grammatical translation, wherever this amount of success is attainable. The royal sarcophagus 32 of the British Museum gives the latest form of 136A.
[1.] Light
. A common noun signifying lamp, but the determinative here shows that a heavenly body is meant. The sun is here spoken of exactly in the same poetical way as when Antigone (879) speaks of τόδε λαμπάδος ἱερὸν ὄμμα, or Virgil of the Phœboea lampas.
[2.] The later recension speaks of “the Lamp in Annu and the Hammemit in Cherāba.”[Cherāba.”] This reading is already found in a few of the Theban texts. The royal sarcophagus 32 of the British Museum gives the important variant
=
, whence it follows that
is phonetically =
. The latter sign has only two known values
āḥā, and
āba. That the latter is the true equivalent of
is certain, in consequence of the complementary vowels
, which commonly accompany that sign, whether in the word signifying battle, or in the name of a place. It is impossible that
a should be the right reading, and no one has a right to convert
into a simple
.
The well known word
, “strike,” takes the prothetic
, and is found under the form
, in the name of one of the hours of the night.[[146]] No fresh information is derived from the discovery by M. Daressy of the same word under the form
, that is
, as it should be corrected if cited. To strike and to fight are different words, though they may often be used synonymously[synonymously], and admit of being substituted one for the other.[[147]]
[3.] He of the strong cord,
. This is grammatically the subject of the verb is born, and I consider it as a compound expression in which the adjective precedes the substantive, as in longimanus. I understand
as =
(see Zeitsch., 1868, p. 70, and 1870, p. 154, 155). In the later recessions (e.g., Todt. 136, and B.M. 32) it is omitted in this place, but not in the passage which follows.
[4.] His cable,
. See Bonomi, Sarc. 8 D. and cf. a passage in the Pyramid Texts (Pepi I, 413, Merenrā 590) which refers to this or a similar voyage. M. Maspero thus translates it:—“Fais amener à Pepi ta barque sur laquelle naviguent tes purs et quand tu auras reçu ta libation d’eau fraîche sur cette Cuisse des Indestructibles (the Uārit
of the Circumpolar Stars), fais naviguer Pepi dans cette barque avec ce cable d’étoffe verte et blanche par lequel l’Œil d’Hor est remorqué,” &c. The Uārit, or Leg (on which see Ch. 74, [Note 1]) of Nut is mentioned at the end of this chapter.
[5.] Rudder
or
.
[6.] Machinery
. The word has disappeared from the later texts and been replaced by various conjectural emendations of the scribes.
[7.] The Kaf,
, one of the divinities in form of apes. Etymologically the word signifies “the hot one.”
[8.] Seḳ-ḥra,
is the more common reading, but
also occurs and so does
. I cannot remember where I found
(P.S.B.A. VI, 191) which would identify this divinity with Thoth.
[9.] The Maāt, the series of phenomena occurring in strict conformity with Law, that is with the laws of Nature.
[10.] Lion forms,
phonetically
, in most of the papyri. Some of the words which follow are evidently in very corrupt condition.
[11.] Every Dawn,
.
[145]. Sic.
[146]. To press the identity of
and
in the name of this hour is to forget that its variants would equally prove that
=
=
.
[147]. See P.S.B.A. IX, p. 313, and two previous articles of mine there referred to. The corrections I have to make are the following:—I wrongly assumed that the fish which in hieratic papyri crosses the foot of the sign
in the variants of
was the same fish as we find in the group
=
=
. The fishes are different. On referring to M. Naville’s Festival Hall of Osorkon II, pl. 18, pictures will be found of the
and the
. The first of these is clearly the fish in
, ḥem-reu, and the corresponding sign in the variant is to be read
, ḥem, in harmony with the other evidence produced by W. Max Müller (Recueil, vol. IX). The picture of it does not enable one to determine its species. The pictures at Bubastis of the
seem to indicate the Synodontis, but a picture found by Petrie (Medum, pl. 12) shows an immense fish which has been identified with the Latus or Perca Nilotica. This being of the Acanthopterygian family is of course a very formidable warrior, like our own small perch, which, as Mr. Ward says, “does not yield its life without endangering the person of its captor, for the formidable rows of spinous rays belonging to the first dorsal fin have wounded the hands of many an incautious angler.”