CHAPTER CXXXIX.

Identical with CHAPTER CXXIII.


_This completes Sir P. Le Page Renouf’s translation of the Book of the
Dead, so far as he had prepared it for publication at the time of his
death._

BOOK OF THE DEAD.

BY EDOUARD NAVILLE, _D.C.L._, _&c., &c._

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

During the last days of his life, the lamented Sir Peter Le Page Renouf,
foreseeing that he would not be able to reach the goal he had been
striving to attain, the completion of his translation of the Book of the
Dead, expressed the wish that the writer of these lines should continue
and complete his work. I did not feel at liberty to go against the
desire of the eminent master, who had done me the honour to choose me as
his successor, and to leave unfinished a work which he had kept in view
all his life long, and which he considered to be the choicest fruit of
his Egyptological researches.

But I had hardly set myself to the task, when I realised the
difficulties which were in my way. It is never easy, even for a
translator, to put himself into the place of another, to enter fully
into his views, to reconstitute the conception he had formed of the book
he had to interpret. To these difficulties must be added, that I had
hardly any help with regard to that part of the book which Renouf has
not published himself. Renouf, like many eminent scholars, had his
learning chiefly in his head; his notes are very scanty, mere scraps
without any methodical order. There is not a line of written translation
left, beyond what he printed himself. Thus, for the translation of the
following chapters, I was entirely dependent on the part already
published, and I had constantly to refer to those chapters, in order to
know the sense which Renouf would have given to words and sentences I
came across in the course of my work.

I endeavoured as much as I could, to translate as Renouf would have
done. Whenever it was possible, I used his words or his readings, though
I did not always agree with them. I followed his choice of texts. He
generally took the oldest one he had, which he frequently found in my
edition. On the whole I tried to continue the work on the lines which
Renouf himself adopted. Thus it cannot be said absolutely that this
translation is my work; Egyptological scholars will soon recognize what
is mine, and the interpretations for which I am not responsible. I beg
the reader to look at my work in this light, and to remember that at
present any translation of the Book of the Dead is tentative and
provisional, and liable, with the progress in our knowledge of Egyptian,
to undergo considerable changes. Nevertheless, I hope that this joint
work will not compare too unfavourably with the part done by my
illustrious predecessor.

EDOUARD NAVILLE.

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