CHAPTER XXXIV.
Chapter whereby a person is not devoured by the dweller in the shrine.([1])
O Uræus! I am the Flame which shineth, and which openeth out eternity,([2]) the column of Tenpua([3]) [otherwise said—the column on which are blossoming plants.]
Away from me! I am the Lynx goddess.([4])
Notes.
[1.] It is not possible to say what is here actually meant by
ḥat. Every word almost in this tiny chapter was a puzzle to the Egyptian scribes, who altered the text in a hundred ways. The Turin text provides against the persons being bitten by the Eater of the head,
, instead of
as even Bekenrenef has it.
[2.] Open out Eternity
. This is the oldest and most approved reading even in later times. But in Pe the flame ‘shineth on the brow of the Glorified ones.’
[3.] A quite unknown deity and most probably a mere blunder. The MS. which contains it, Ca, suggests another reading Tenpua with
, the determinative of plants. This not proving satisfactory,
renpit was substituted. But all this was mere conjectural emendation.
[4.] The Lynx goddess,
Maftit. The name of this deity is generally translated Lynx, and it is certainly applied to an animal of the feline species closely resembling the cat. But the notion expressed by the name is that of swift speed
. (See Dümichen, Rec. IV, 100, where this verb is in parallel with others of the same sense.)
This deity is again mentioned in the 39th chapter as taking part in the conflict with the dragon of darkness, and it is named in the strange magic formulæ already found in the Pyramid texts. She is called
(Teta 310), and she apparently defends the deceased (ib., l. 303) against two serpent divinities, one of whom at least,
T’eser-ṭepu (praeclaro capite), is known to us as one of the forty-two assessors of Osiris (Todtenbuch, 125-33).