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 ⁂ 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.