CHAPTER LVII

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_Chapter for breathing air and command of water in the Nether world._

Let the Great One(1.) be opened to Osiris; let the two folding doors of Kabhu(2.) be thrown wide to Râ.

O thou great Coverer(3.) of Heaven, in thy name of Stretcher(4.) [of Heaven], grant that I may have the command of water, even as Sut hath command of force(5.) on the night of the Great Disaster: grant that I may prevail over those who preside at the Inundation, even as that venerable god prevaileth over them, whose name they know not. May I prevail over them.

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My nostril is opened in Tattu, and I go to rest in Heliopolis, my dwelling, which the goddess Seshait(6.) built, and which Chnum raised on its foundation.

If the Sky is at the North I sit at the South; if the Sky is at the South I sit at the North; if the Sky is at the West I sit at the East; and if the Sky is at the East I sit at the West.

And drawing up my eyebrows(7.) I pierce through into every place that I desire.

NOTES.

This chapter and the following are recensions and combinations of extremely ancient texts.

The first portion of the present chapter follows the ancient text of Horhotep. Even at that early period two recensions were in existence, and are copied one after the other. The translation here given is the nearest possible approach to the original text.

The second portion (beginning with _My nostril_) dates from the papyri of the Theban period, though we must depend upon later authorities for the entire Section.

1. _The Great One_ ⁂⁂ _urit_—Heaven.

2. _Kabhu_ ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂, literally the _Cool_ (water) is another name for the Sky,[66] and is here in parallelism with the Great One.

3. _Coverer_ ⁂⁂⁂, a name applied both to the Nile, as covering the land during the inundation, and to the Sky as the covering above us. _Cf._ my paper on _Nile Mythology_, P.S.B.A., November, 1890.

4. _Stretcher_ ⁂⁂⁂, which I consider as a nasalised (perhaps the original) form of ⁂⁂ _stretch_. The papyri read ⁂⁂⁂ _āt pet_ ‘Cleaver of the Sky,’ but the word _āt_, without the determinative ⁂, may also mean _stretch_, as in the expression ⁂⁂⁂.

5. _Force_ ⁂⁂⁂, ⁂⁂⁂, like the Latin _vis_, may, but need not, be of a criminal nature. The name of the goddess ⁂⁂⁂ in this place is a manifest blunder of the more recent scribes.

6. The goddess _Seshait_ ⁂⁂ commonly but erroneously called _Safch_, through an error against which Lepsius (_Aelt. Texte_, p. 3) and Brugsch (_Zeitschr._, 1872, p. 9) have both spoken. The real name of the goddess, as I have elsewhere[67] shown by actual variants, is ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ _Seshait_ (Teta, l. 268) or ⁂⁂⁂ (Louvre, A. 97). She is so called from the root ⁂, ⁂⁂, _writing_, that being one of her occupations.

7. _Drawing up my eyebrows_ ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂, in scornful pride, superciliously, like the Greek τὰς ὀφρῦς ἀνασπᾶν.

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Footnote 66:

The name occurs repeatedly in the Pyramid Texts, and even the very expression ⁂⁂⁂ _e.g._ Unas, 375, and the Litany at Pepi I, 631.

Footnote 67:

_On some Religious Texts of the Early Egyptian Period_ in _Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, Vol. IX, p. 303.

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