The Egyptian Book of the dead

by Unknown

In this place of the Book of the Dead the sign

is a mere determinative of the sound aān with the notion of salutation, just as the sign

is a determinative of the sound ȧb with the notion of thirst.

The ‘saluters’ of the rising sun are neither real apes nor men but the “Spirits of the East” who, as we are told in an inscription of the tomb of Rameses VI, “effect the rising of Râ by opening the door at each of the four portals of the eastern horizon of heaven. They it is who light him on both sides, and go forth in advance of him.... And when he arises they turn into six cynocephali.”[^[10]]

The Egyptian words in the later texts are