The valley of the acacia would appear from the indications to have been by the sea, and probably in Syria; perhaps one of the half-desert wadis toward Gaza was in the writer's
76 ANPU AND BATA
mind. The idea of Bata taking out his heart, and placing it on the flower of a tree, has seemed hopelessly unintelligible. But it depends on what we are to understand by the heart in Egyptian. Two words are well known for it, hati and ah; and as it is unlikely that these should be mere synonyms, we have a presumption that one of them does not mean the physical heart, but rather the mental heart. We are accustomed to the same mixture of thought; and far the more common usage in English is not to employ the name to express the physical heart, but for the will, as when we say "good-hearted";—for the spring of action, "broken-hearted ";—for the feelings, "hard-hearted";—for the passions, "an affair of the heart";—or for the vigour, as when a man in nature or in act is "hearty" The Egyptian, with his metaphysical mind, took two different words where we only use one; and when we read of placing the heart (hati) out of a man, we are led at once by the analogy of beliefs in
REMARKS 77
other races to understand this as the vitality or soul. In the "Golden Bough" Mr. Frazer has explained this part of natural metaphysics; and in this, and the following points, I freely quote from that work as a convenient text-book. The soul or vitality of a man is thought of as separable from the body at will, and therefore communicable to other objects or positions. In those positions it cannot be harmed by what happens to the body, which is therefore deathless for the time. But if the external seat of the soul be attacked or destroyed, the man immediately dies. This is illustrated from the Norse, Saxons, Celts, Italians, Greeks, Kabyles, Arabs, Hindus, Malays, Mongolians, Tartars, Magyars, and Slavonians. It may well, then, be considered as a piece of inherent psychology: and following this interpretation, I have rendered "heart" in this sense "soul" in the translation.
The Nine Gods who meet Bata are one of the great cycles of divinities, which were dif-
78 ANPU AND BATA