CHAPTER CXII.

_Chapter whereby one knoweth the Powers of Pu._[(1.)]


Oh thou of corpselike form who art in Chait and Ânpit;(2.) thou goddess
of the Net,(3.) who art in Pu; ye who preside over the untilled lands,
ye stars and constellations(4.).... Know ye wherefore Pu hath been given
to Horus?

I know it if ye know it not.

It was Râ who gave it to him in amends of the blindness in his eye, in
consequence of what Râ said to Horus: “Let me look at what is happening
in thine eye to-day,” and he looked at it.

Râ said to Horus, “Look, pray, at that black swine.”

He looked, and a grievous mishap afflicted his eye.

Horus said to Râ, “Lo, my eye is as though the eye of Sutu had made a
wound in my own eye.” And wrath devoured his heart.

And Râ said to the gods, “Let him be laid upon his bed, that he may
recover.”

It was Sutu who had taken the form of a black swine, and he wrought the
wound which was in the eye of Horus.

And Râ said to the gods, “The swine is an abomination to Horus; may he
get well.” And the swine became an abomination to Horus.(5.)

And the circle of gods said, who were with him when Horus came to light
in his own children:(6.) “Let the sacrificial victims(7.) for him be of
his oxen, of his goats, and of his swine.”

As for Emsta, Hapi, Tuamautef, Kebhsenuf, Horus is their father and Isis
their mother.

And Horus said to Râ, “Give me then two(8.) brothers in Pu and two
brothers in Nechen, of this my own body; and that they may be with me as
an everlasting renewal, through which the earth flourisheth and storms
are quenched.”

And his name became that of Horus upon his Column.

I know the Powers of Pu: they are Horus, Emsta and Hapi.

NOTES.

1. On the situation of _Pu_, see chapter 18, note 6. The Pyramid Texts
(Pepi I, 684) speak of the ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ “those of the
Red Crown who are in Pu.”

2. _Thou of corpselike form in Chait and Ânpit._ The sign of the plural,
here as elsewhere, is quite consistent with its application to a single
person. ⁂⁂ _Chait_ is the name[95] of the 16th, or Mendesian,
Nome of Northern Egypt, and Ânpit was its metropolis. The nome is
mentioned in the inscription of Amten in the third dynasty. The god is
Osiris. He is invoked in the “Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,” and
asked to come to Tattu, Ânpit and Chait, which are but different names
of one Sanctuary, _Cf._ Brugsch, _Zeitschr._, 1871, p. 81, and his
translation of the Mendesian Tablet, _Zeitschr._, 1875.

3. _Thou goddess of the Net_ ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂. This name
corresponds to the Greek Diktynna. The reason why a goddess representing
Heaven should be so called may be understood by the Homeric epithet
πολυωπόν applied to a net.

If, however, the deity was _male_, according to the other reading, the
reference is τὸν τῆς Ἴσιδος τρόφιμον Δίκτυν, who was drowned in the
river. Plut., _de Iside and Os._, 8.

4. _Ye who preside_, etc. Brugsch (_Zeitschr._, 1876, p. 3) identifies
the Egyptian ⁂⁂, ⁂⁂⁂⁂ with the ψιλοτόπος of the
Demotic and Greek contracts. The remainder of this invocation is so
corrupt that the sense cannot be safely guessed at.

5. See Herodotus, II, 47, without attaching too much importance to
details. The pig was certainly not considered impure (μιαρός) in the
days of the third or fourth dynasty, when Amten, who had risen to the
highest dignities, enumerates swine among the domestic animals it is
natural to possess. And impure animals were not offered in sacrifice.
But long before the days of Herodotus a change had taken place in the
Egyptian religion as to the nature of Sutu.

Plutarch and Aelian are to be read with the like caution. Some of their
information is correct, but it is mixed up with much error.

6. The variants ⁂⁂⁂⁂ and ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ are
noteworthy.

7. _Sacrificial victims_ ⁂⁂⁂⁂. The substitution in Egypt
of animal for human sacrifice is (I believe) _entirely_ without
foundation. And the supposed evidence of human sacrifices drawn from
certain pictures has (I believe) been misinterpreted..

8. The four _children_ of Horus were also his _brothers_. He asks for
_two_ of them to be with him in each of his two cities, Pu and Nechen.
The true sense of the passage is entirely lost in the later recensions
and in translations made from them.

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Footnote 95:

Not _Ḥāmeḥit_, which is the name both of the _Uu_ of the nome and of
the goddess worshipped in it, whose emblem is the fish ⁂.

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