Egyptian Book of the Dead

CHAPTER XC.

159 CHAPTER XC. Chapter whereby Memory is restored( 1 ) to a person. Oh thou who choppest off heads and cuttest throats, but restorest memory in the mouth of the dead through the Words of Power which they possess: thou seest me not with thine eyes, thou perceivest not with thy feet;( 2 ) thou turnest back thy face, thou seest not the executioners of Shu, who are coming behind thee to chop off thine own head and to cut thy throat. Let not my mouth be closed, through the Words of Power which I possess; even as thou hast done to the dead, through the Words of Power which they possess. Away with the two sentences uttered by Isis when thou camest to fling remembrance at the mouth of Osiris( 3 ) and the heart of Sutu, his enemy, saying:— Notes. Of this chapter we have unfortunately but one copy in Fa , of the Musée Borély. This is defective both at the beginning and at the end, and the text is inaccurate. The later copies are so inaccurate that it is impossible to reconstitute the text. It is precisely on those points where grammatical accuracy is required for fixing a definite sense that the manuscripts are hopelessly defective. The preceding translation is verbally correct, I trust, but I do not pretend that it is intelligible. It stops where the papyrus Fa stops. 1. Restored. The reduplication in [Source image: ⁂] here gives the verb this sense. 2. It is not only in Egyptian that verbs of sight are applied to other perceptions. Aeschylus says κτύπον δέδορκα in Sept. c. Th. 104, and the Hebrew writers furnish similar examples. 3. At the mouth of Osiris and the heart of Sutu. To justify this translation the same preposition ought to govern mouth and heart . But I do not know any copy in which this occurs. The Turin reading is simply absurd.