Coffin Texts

Coffin Texts — Breasted 1912 selected English quotations and context — sourcepage 304

282 RELIGION AND THOUGHT IN ANCIENT EGYPT "Becoming a Magician," addressed to the august ones who are in the presence of Atum the Sun-god. It is, of course, itself a charm and concludes with the words, "I am a magician." 1 Lest the dead man should lose his magic power, there was a ceremony involving the "at tachment of a charm so that the magical power of man may not be taken away from him in the Nether World." 2 The simplest of the dangers against which these charms were supplied doubtless arose in the childish imagination of the common folk. They are frequently grotesque in the extreme. We find a chapter "preventing that the head of a man be taken from him." 3 There is the old charm found also in the Pyramid Texts to prevent a man from being obliged to eat his own foulness.4 He is not safe from the decay of death; hence there are two chap ters that "a man may not decay in the Nether World." 5 But the imagination of the priests, who could only gain by the issuance of ever new chapters, undoubtedly contrib uted much to heighten the popular dread of the dangers of the hereafter and spread the belief in the usefulness of such means for meeting them. We should doubt less recognize the work of the priests in the figure of a mysterious scribe named Gebga, who is hostile to the dead, so that a charm was specially devised to enable the dead man to break the pens, smash the writing outfit, and tear up the rolls of the malicious Gebga.6 That men- 1 LACAU, LXXVIII, Rec. 31, 164 ff. 2 LACAU, VII, Rec. 26, 226. 3 LACAU, VIII, Rec. 26, 226-7; also Annales, V, 241. « LACAU, XXII, Rec. 29, 150; XXIV, Rec. 29, 156 /. Similar pas sages will be found in the Book of the Dead, LI, LIII, LXXXII, CII, CXVI, CXXIV, CLXXXIX. Cf. Pyr. §§127-8, and BD, CLXXVIII. References from LACAU. 6 LACAU, XXV, XXVI, Rec. 29, 157-9. 6 LACAU, IX, X, Rec. 26, 227 ff. He occurs also in the tomb of Har- hotep, Mem. de la Miss, franc., au Caire, I, 166.