Coffin Texts

Coffin Texts — Breasted 1912 selected English quotations and context — sourcepage 298

276 RELIGION AND THOUGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT intruded and has indeed taken possession of them. Al ready in the Feudal Age this ancient Solar text had been supplied with an explanatory commentary, which adds to -'the line, "I was yesterday, I know to-morrow," the words, " that is Osiris." The result of this Osirianization was the intrusion of the Osirian subterranean hereafter, even in Solar and celestial texts. Thus this seventeenth chapter was supplied with a title reading, " Chapter of Ascending by Day from the Nether World." 1 This title is not original, and is part of the Osirian editing, which involun tarily places the sojourn of the dead in the Nether World though it cannot eliminate all the old Solar texts. The titles now commonly appended to these texts frequently conclude with the words, "in the Nether World." We find a chapter for "The Advancement of a Man in the Nether World," 2 although it is devoted throughout to Solar and celestial conceptions. In the Pyramid Texts, as we have seen, the intrusion of Osiris did not result in altering the essentially celestial character of the hereafter to which they are devoted. In the Coffin Texts we have not only the commingling of Solar and Osirian beliefs which now more completely coalesce than before, but the 1 The word which I have rendered "Ascending" is commonly ren dered "going forth." A study of the use of the word (pr't) in mor tuary texts shows clearly that it means to ascend. The following are some decisive examples of its use in the Pyramid Texts: of the rising of the sun (§§ 743 b, 800 a, 812 c, 919 a, 923 c, 971 e); of the rising of a star (§§ 871 b, 877 c) (compare the "Rising of Sothis"); of the ascent of a bird to the sky (§ 913 a); with the words "to the sky" added, not' infrequently (e. g., § 922 a); on a ladder (§§ 974-5); in opposed parallelism with "descend" (§§821 b-c, 867 a, 922 a, 927 b). There is indeed in the Coffin Texts a "Chapter of Ascend ing (pr't) to the Sky to the Place where Re is" (Rec. 26, 225). These examples might be increased ad infinitum, and there can be no question regarding the rendering "Ascending." 2 LACAU, XIII, Rec. 26, 232 #.