120 SETNA AND THE MAGIC BOOK
which is not necessarily involved or stated in the existing text. The limit of this restoration is marked by ]; the papyrus beginning with the words, "It is you who are not dealing rightly with me."
The construction is complicated by the mixture of times and persons; and we must remember that it was written in the Ptolemaic period concerning an age long past. It stood to the author much as Tennyson's "Harold" stands to us, referring to an historical age, without too strict a tie to facts and details. Five different acts, as we may call them, succeed one another. In the first act—which is entirely lost, and here only outlined—the circumstances which led Setna of the XlXth Dynasty to search for the magic book must have been related. In the second act Ahura recites the long history of herself and family, to deter Setna from his purpose. This act is a complete tale by itself, and belongs to a time some generations before Setna; it is here supposed to belong to the time of Amenhotep
REMARKS 121
III., in the details of costume adopted for illustration. The third act is Setna's struggle as a rival magician to Na-nefer-ka-ptah, from which he finally comes off victorious by his brother's use of a talisman, and so secures possession of the coveted magic book. The fourth act—which I have here only summarised—shows how Na-nefer-ka-ptah resorts to a bewitchment of Setna by a sprite, by subjection to whom he loses his magic power. The fifth act shows Setna as subjected to Na-nefer-ka-ptah, and ordered by him to bring the bodies of his wife and child to Memphis into his tomb.
While, therefore, the sentimental climax of the tale—the restoration of the unity of the family in one tomb—belongs to persons of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the action of the tale is entirely of the XlXth Dynasty, for what happened in the XVIIIth Dynasty (second act) is all related in the XlXth. And the actual composition of it belongs to Ptolemaic times, not only on the evidence of the manuscript,
122 SETNA AND THE MAGIC BOOK
but also of the language; this being certified by the importance of Isis and Horus at Koptos, which is essentially a late worship there.