Chapter 2

. No copy of it is found in the papyri of the older period. In place of it M. Naville has published a chapter bearing the same title, and which is found in five ancient papyri. These texts however are extremely discordant and corrupt, and in the more difficult, and to us more interesting, passages must have been quite unintelligible to the copyists. The second word, for instance, of line 8 is _ri_ in _Ca_, the corresponding word is .. _ḥtu_ in _Ta_, _ṭāi_ in _Pb_, _rāu_ in _Ia_ and _ḥti_ in _Aa_. A discrepancy not less violent is encountered after the next three words. The oldest extant form of the chapter is that of _Aa_, the papyrus of Nebseni; it is also the shortest, and the other forms appear to me to exhibit signs of interpolation. But M. Naville was quite right in taking the text of _Ca_ as his basis for the collation of the texts.

1. This whole passage, as it stands, in the MSS. is extremely obscure, and I can only make sense of it by conjecturing that a preposition has been omitted by the copyists.

The knees of a goddess are frequently mentioned in connection with the birth of a divinity. Here the Babe is mentioned (_cf._ opening of

## Chapter 42 ), and the closing of the knees. The word _ānḫ_, ‘live,’ has

for its primitive meaning ‘rise up,’ and it is in this sense that I translate it here.

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