CHAPTER XCIII.
Chapter whereby one avoideth being conveyed to the East in the Netherworld.
Oh thou Phallus of Rā, who fliest from the storm, disablement ariseth from Baba who useth against me might beyond the mighty and power beyond the powerful.
If I am conveyed away, if I am carried off to the East; if all evil and injurious things of a feast day of fiends are perpetrated upon me through the waving of the Two Horns, then shall be devoured the Phallus of Rā and the Head of Osiris.
And should I be led to the fields wherein the gods destroy him who answereth them, then shall the horns of Chepera be twisted back, then shall blindness([1]) arise in the eyes of Tmu and destruction,([2]) through the seizure of me, and through my being carried off to the East, through there being made over me a feast day of the fiends, through all the murderous work perpetrated upon me.([3])
Notes.
This chapter contains one of those threats (of which there are other instances) made to the gods. The speaker is in fact so identified with divinity that any evil which happens to him must be conceived as involving the same calamity to the gods and to the universe.
There is a very considerable difference between the earlier and the later texts. There is very great confusion in the text of the Turin Todtenbuch as compared with that of the Cadet papyrus.
[1.] Blindness,
in the earlier and
in the later texts. The latter form, which has for determinative pearls or globules of some kind, reminds one of the disease formerly called gutta serena.
[2.] Destruction,
. But this word is written in different ways in the papyri. With
as a suffix it would mean ‘my destroyer.’ Ca gives
as a determinative, and thus creates a god Hetmu, or at least a name punning upon that of Tmu, to which it is united.
[3.] The more recent texts, like those of the Turin Todtenbuch, insert a negative particle before the mention of each disaster. They pray that the Phallus of Rā may not be devoured, that the blindness may not come upon Tmu, and so on.