CHAPTER XXVIII.
Chapter whereby the Heart of a person is not taken from him in the Netherworld.
O Lion-god!
I am Unbu([1]), and what I abominate is the block of execution.
Let not this Whole Heart of mine be torn from me by the divine Champions([2]) in Heliopolis!
O thou who clothest([3]) Osiris and hast seen Sutu:
O thou who turnest back after having smitten him, and hast accomplished the overthrow:
This Whole Heart of mine remaineth weeping over itself in presence of Osiris.
Its strength proceedeth from him, it hath obtained it by prayer from him.
I have had granted to it and awarded to it the glow of heart at the hour of the god of the Broad Face, and have offered the sacrificial cakes in Hermopolis.
Let not this Whole Heart of mine be torn from me.([4]) It is I who entrust to you its place, and vehemently stir your Whole Hearts towards it in Sechit-hotepit and the years of triumph over all that it abhors and taking all provisions at thine appointed time from thine hand after thee.
And this Whole Heart of mine is laid upon the tablets([5]) of Tmu, who guideth me to the caverns of Sutu and who giveth me back my Whole Heart which hath accomplished its desire in presence of the divine Circle which is in the Netherworld.
The sacrificial joint and the funereal raiment, let those who find them bury them.([6])
Notes.
[1.] Unbu,
is one of the names of the solar god, the offspring (Todt., 42, 19) of Nu and Nut. As a common noun the word unbu means the Hawthorn or some other kind of flowering bush. This god is called
‘the golden Unbu’ in the Pyramid Texts (Teta 39). We have no means of determining the exact sense of this word, which as an appellative expresses an attribute possessed both by the Sun and by the fruit, foliage, or other parts of the tree.
[2.] Divine Champions.
in the earlier papyri,
in the later; and sometimes both readings occur in the same MS. Such determinatives as
certainly do not denote very pugnacious qualities in the divine Champions.
[3.] Clothest.
is a word of many meanings, and the context generally determines which is the right one. In the present instance we have no such help. Some of the more recent MSS. give
, the determinative of clothing.
[4.] M. Pierret here breaks off his translation of the chapter, with the note: “La fin de ce chapitre est absolument inintelligible; les variantes des manuscrits hiératiques ne l’éclaircissent pas.”
Like many other portions of the book this chapter is hopelessly corrupt, and the scribes did not understand it better than we do. They have probably mixed up different recensions without regard to grammatical sense. The deceased addresses gods in the plural
, but immediately afterwards we have the singular suffix
.
[5.] Tablets or records.
See Zeitschr., 1867, 50. The word already occurs in the Pyramid Texts, Pepi I, 364, in the sense of memory,
, ‘his memory for man and his love for the gods.’
But there is another word,
(Denkm., III, 65 a), which signifies a stand upon which objects are placed.
[6.] The last words of the chapter were extremely puzzling to the scribes of the later periods, who altered them in ever so many ways. The older MSS. read
. And this is borrowed from an ancient text, which may be found on the sarcophagus of Horhotep, line 338. The variants
,
, of the papyri, and
of the sarcophagus show that it is the sacrificial joint which is meant, and not a verb as the scribes of a later period thought. For this verb they had to discover an object and accordingly we find
‘I trod their caverns.’
was in like manner converted into a verb. See the introductory note to chapter 29.