CHAPTER XXXV.

_Chapter whereby the person is not devoured by a Serpent in the
Netherworld._


Oh Shu, here is Tattu, _and conversely_, under the wig(1.) of Hathor.
They scent(2.) Osiris.

Here is the one who is to devour me. They wait apart.(3.) The serpent
Seksek passeth over me.

Here are wormwood bruised(4.) and reeds.

Osiris is he who prayeth that he may be buried.

The eyes of the Great One are bent down, and he doth for thee the work
of cleansing;(5.) marking out what is conformable to law and balancing
the issues.(6.)

NOTES.

The translator of this chapter cannot pretend to do more than give an
accurate meaning to each word. The true sense of the chapter must have
been lost when the earliest copies known to us were written.

1. _Wig_, ⁂⁂. The head-dress of the gods is one of the mythical
forms of representing the light cloud at sunrise or sunset, in which the
deity is _pileatus_.

2. _Scent_, ⁂⁂⁂⁂. The Egyptian word is also used for
_nursing_, _putting to sleep_, probably through influencing the
breathing. The _nose_ as a determinative is used in the different senses
of the word.

3. _They wait apart._ The early MSS. do not agree here in a single word,
and they defy translation. The later MSS. are scarcely less discordant.
⁂⁂ is _to alight_, _rest_, and this must also be the meaning of
⁂⁂. ⁂⁂⁂ is connected with ⁂. ⲛⲉϩ in the sense of
_dispersing_, _separating_.

4. _Bruised_, or _trodden_. There being no rational context it is
impossible to fix the sense of a word like ⁂⁂⁂, which may mean
either _guard_ or _bruise_ by _beating_ or _treading down_.

5. _Cleansing_ ⁂⁂ or ⁂⁂. The result of the process is
certainly _cleansing_, but the operation itself is generally supposed to
be _washing_. This agrees with the Coptic ⲣⲁϩⲧ _a fuller_, of which the
old Egyptian form is ⁂⁂. But ⲣⲁϩⲧ has also the sense of
_beating_, and the operation is in many countries thought to be one of
the most important duties of washerwomen. With this sense of the word I
would connect the names _Rechit_ given to Isis and Nephthys, as
signifying ‘mourners.’ Compare the Greek τύπτεσθαί τινα, κόπτεσθαί τινα,
_to mourn a person_, and the Latin _plangere_.

6. _Balancing the issues_ ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂. The first of these
words is unambiguous. ⁂⁂⁂ signifies literally ‘standing,’ like
_status_, or στάσις, and like those words also signifies position,
situation, condition, circumstances, and also the point at issue, the
question to be decided.

A well known passage in Cicero’s _Topics_ (93, c. 35) may be quoted
here: “Refutatio accusationis, in quae est depositio criminis, Graece
στάσις dicitur, Latine _status_ appelletur: in quo insistit, quasi ad
repugnandum congressa defensio.”

Perhaps the passage in chapter 30 B, in which “the divine ministrants
are said to deal with a man” according to his ⁂⁂ may have
reference to the circumstances of his life.

Chapters like this, however worthless in themselves, contain small
fragments highly illustrative of the ideas of the Egyptians at an
extremely remote period.

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PLATE XII.

BOOK OF THE DEAD.

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