Thy bread is from the Eye, thy beer is from the Eye, and the funeral meals offered upon earth will come forth to thee from the Eye([54]). So is it decreed for me.
This chapter is said by the person, when purified and clad in raiment; shod with white sandals; anointed from vases of ānta; and presenting oblations of beeves, birds, incense, bread, beer and vegetables.
And thou shalt make a picture, drawn upon a clean brick of clay, extracted from a field in which no swine hath trod.
And if this chapter be written upon it—the man will prosper and his children will prosper: he will rise in the affection of the king and his court: there will be given to him the shesit cake, the measure of drink, the persen cake and the meat offering upon the altar table of the great god; and he shall not be cut off at any gate of Amenta, but he shall be conveyed along with the Kings of North and South, and make his appearance as a follower of Osiris: undeviatingly and for times infinite.
CHAPTER CXXV.
Notes.
For the significance of this most important chapter with reference to the religion and ethics of ancient Egypt I must refer to the Introduction. The notes in this place must be confined to the text and its elucidation.
No copy of the chapter is known of more ancient date than the eighteenth dynasty, but the oldest papyri contain the three parts of which the chapter consists. That the chapter is of much earlier date than the eighteenth dynasty is quite certain from the nature of the corruptions which had already made their appearance in the earliest copies which have come down to us. But the three parts are not necessarily of the same antiquity. The second part seems to have grown out of the first and to have been suggested by the mention of the “Forty-two” gods and the “negative confession,” as it is called, of certain sins. It is a tabulated form in which the gods are named and a sin is mentioned in connection with each god. The number of sins in this form is therefore forty-two; a higher number than in Part I.