This chapter was discovered on a plinth of the god of the Hennu Bark ([24]) by a master builder of the wall in the time of King Septa, the Victorious.([25])
This composition is a secret; not to be seen or looked at.
Recite the chapter when sanctified and pure; not approaching women, not eating goat’s flesh or fish.
Notes.
This is one of the most important as it is one of the most ancient chapters. The text of it was already doubtful at the time of the XIth dynasty. It had been handed down in two recensions, both of which were inscribed on the coffin of Queen Mentuhotep, the discovery of one of these being attributed to the time of King Septa of the 1st dynasty, and that of the second to the time of Menkaurâ, the king of the third pyramid. These two recensions are also found in the papyrus of Nebseni. The MSS. present innumerable various readings, few of which are of the slightest value. These have been collected, as far as they could be discovered, in the French and some other Museums in 1876, in a very admirable work upon the chapter, by M. Paul Guieysse,[[76]] who has translated and commented upon it and and all the variations of it known to him at the time. Since then the papyrus of Nebseni has been published, and M. Naville has given all the variants found in the few existing papyri of the best period. I have notes of the readings of the papyri in the British Museum, and also those of a cast (now in the British Museum) taken from a block in serpentine, belonging to the Museum of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
With such light as could be derived from these extremely divergent authorities I have done my best (taking as the basis of my translation the texts in the papyrus of Nebseni and the rubric in which the discovery is ascribed to the time of king Septa) towards exhibiting the chapter in as intelligible a form as seems to me possible. Some passages as yet defy translation in consequence of the corruption of the text.
Some years before his untimely death M. de Rougé read his translation of this chapter before the Académie des Sciences. It is much to be lamented that this has never been published. I have, in addition to the versions of other scholars, a copy of one by Mr. Goodwin, with whom I read this and other chapters nearly thirty years ago. But this kind of literature is not one of those in which his marvellous sagacity showed to advantage.
In reading this and almost every other chapter of the Book of the Dead, it is absolutely necessary to bear in mind that different divine names do not necessarily imply different personalities. A name expresses but one attribute of a person or thing, and one person having several attributes may have several names. It is not implied in this chapter that the Sun is the Nile or the Inundation, but that the same invisible force which is manifested in the solar phenomena is that which produces the inundation; He is the Inundator. But he has many other names and titles. In this chapter, as in others before it, the speaker at one time talks in terms identifying him with some divinity, and at another as a simple mortal petitioning some favour.
