[158] See Egypt’s Place, V., 127.
[159] Ibid., V., 174 f.
[160] This is the rendering of Birch. Ebers has looked for an explanation of this gloss, in the rite of circumcision (Ægypten u. d. Bücher Mose’s, p. 284 f.); but the primary reference to the “arm” of the god, and to the union secured through the interflowing blood, point to the blood-covenant as the employed figure of speech; although circumcision, as will be seen presently, was likewise a symbol of the blood-covenant—for one’s self and for one’s seed. Brugsch also sees a similar meaning, to that suggested by Ebers, in this reference to the blood. His rendering of the original text is: “Reach me your hands. I have become that which ye are” (Religion u. Mythol. d. alt. Ægypt., I., 219). Le Page Renouf, looking for the symbolisms of material nature in all these statements, would find here “the crimson of a sunset” in the “blood which flows from the Sun-god Rā, as he hastens to his suicide” (Trans. of Soc. of Bib. Arch., Vol. VIII., Part 2, p. 211). This, however, does not conflict with the spiritual symbolism of oneness of nature through oneness of blood. And no one of these last three suggested meanings accounts for the oneness with the gods through blood, which the deceased claims, unless the symbolism of blood-covenanting be recognized in the terminology. That symbolism being recognized, the precise source of the flowing blood becomes a minor matter.
[161] See Wilkinson’s Anc. Egypt., III., 473; Renouf’s Relig. of Anc. Egypt, pp. 191-193; Lenormant’s Chaldean Magic, p. 88.
[162] See Todtenbuch, chap. LXVIII.; Egypt’s Place, V., 211.
[163] See Pierret’s Vocabulaire Hiéroglyphique, p. 721 f.; also, Birch’s “Dict. of Hierog.” in Egypt’s Place, V., 519.
[164] See page [65] f., supra.
[165] See Todtenbuch, chap. CLVI.; Egypt’s Place, V., 315; Trans. of Soc. of Bib. Arch., VIII., 2, 211.
This amulet is also called tet; a word of the same phonetic force as tet, the “arm,” or the “bracelet,” but of different letters. This word (
