difficulty is not in literally translating the text, but in understanding the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar words. Dr. Birch's translation,' though made about thirty years ago, before some of the most important discoveries of the full meanings of words, may still be considered extremely exact as a rendering of the corrupt Turin text, and to an Englishman gives nearly as correct an impression of the original as the text itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been carefully taught the mysteries of his religion. Many parts of this translation, however, when most faithful to the original, must, in consequence of that very fidelity, be utterly unintelligible to an English reader.

The Book of the Dead, I repeat, is essentially mythological, and, like all other Egyptian books of the kind, it assumes the reader's thorough knowledge of the myths and legends. It is perhaps hopeless to expect that the legends will be recovered; the allusions to them will no doubt always remain obscure. But the mythical personages who are constantly mentioned are the very gods about whom I spoke in the last Lecture: Ra and his family and the dragon Apap, Seb and his family, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set and Nephthys. Thoth is one of the most important names which occur. If the explanation which I gave of these personages is

1 Published in the fifth volume of Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in Universal History."

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2

The sub

borne in mind, one great difficulty in the interpretation of the Book of the Dead will be overcome. ject always is the contest between Darkness and Light. Ptah, "the Opener," or "the Artist," and Chnemu, "the Builder," are only names of the Sun. Tmu,3 "the Closer," whose name occurs more frequently, is also one of the principal designations of the Sun. The fifteenth chapter gives an instance of the very different mythological treatment which the same physical phenomenon may receive, according as it is looked at from different points of view. Osiris, Horus and even Ra, suffer death or dismemberment; but Tmu is daily received into the arms of his mother Nut as he sinks into the west, and the arms of his father Tanen close

1 The Egyptian Ptah, like the Hebrew [(aperuit, and in the Pihel terram aperuit aratro, aruvit et (quod huic simile est) sculpsit, insculpsit tum ligno, tunc gemmis, etiam de ornandis lapidibus ad aedificandum. Gesenius] combines the sense of opening, or rather laying open, with that of artistic work. The primitive meaning is opening, and there are well-known instances of it in old Egyptian, but it no longer exists in Coptic, which has only retained the sense of sculpere. It was because the Sun was the Opener that he was considered the Artist, especially in Memphis, the seat of the arts, of which he was the chief divinity.

66

2 The word is used as a common noun, and as the name of a profession. See Brugsch, Bau u. Maasse des Tempels von Edfu,” in the Zeitschr. 1872, p. 5.

3 Otherwise written Atmu, the prosthetic vowel being prefixed as a support to the two consonants at the beginning of a word. For the meaning "shut," "close," of the word tmu, see Brugsch's Lexicon. It is preserved in Coptic.

over him. Neith, the great goddess of Sais, is rarely mentioned. She was the mother of the sun-god Rā, and is commonly supposed to represent Heaven; but some expressions1 which are hardly applicable to Heaven render it more probable that she is one of the many names of the Dawn. The goddess Sechet is the raging heat of the Sun.2

The gods of Thebes are conspicuous by their absence from the Book of the Dead, or at least from almost every chapter. Amon, the great god of Thebes, is named once only, and that in a chapter where the text is extremely doubtful. Chonsu, the moon-god, is only once named. But even the frequent occurrence of these gods would not introduce a different series of conceptions.

Beatification of the Dead.

The Beatification of the Dead is, however, the main subject of every chapter. The everlasting life promised to the faithful may be considered in three of its aspects.

1 For instance, the verb uben, expressive of an act of Neith (Todt. 114, 1, 2), is inapplicable to Heaven, and is never used except for the sunrise.

2 This is universally allowed, but the etymology of Sechet is doubtful. Sex in old Egyptian signifies "wound." The Coptic has the word sesh-ef, in the Thebaic version of the Bible, corresponding to the Greek ȧvažnpaivɛiv. Her lion form is symbolic of

solar heat.

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The renewed Existence

66 as upon Earth."

1. The blessed is represented as enjoying an existence similar to that which he had led upon earth. He has the use of all his limbs, he eats and drinks, and satisfies every one of his physical wants, exactly as in his former life. His bread is made of the corn of Pe, a famous town of Egypt, and the beer he drinks is made from the red corn of the Nile. The flesh of cattle and fowl is given to him, and refreshing waters are poured out to him under the boughs of sycamores which shade him from the heat. The cool breezes of the north wind breathe upon him. The gods themselves provide him with food: he eats from the table of Osiris at Ristat, and from the tables of the sun-god Rā. He is given to drink out of vessels of milk or wine; cakes and flesh are provided for him from the divine abode of Anubis. The gods of Heliopolis themselves bring the divine offerings. He eats the bread which the goddess Taït herself has cooked, and he breathes the sweet odour of flowers. He washes his feet in silver basins which the god Ptah of Memphis, the inventor of all arts, has himself sculptured. Fields also are allotted to him in the lands of Aarru and Hotep, It is characteristic of an and he cultivates them. industrious and agricultural population that part of the bliss of a future state should consist in such operations

as ploughing and hoeing, sowing and reaping, rowing on the canals and collecting the harvests daily. Warriors and kings who in the course of ages had risen to the head of a mighty empire, still looked forward towards these delights with the same religious faith which inspired them when, on the great panegyrical festival of the ithyphallic Amon, they received the iron sickle from the hands of a priestly ministrant, cut the ears of corn, and presented them as an offering to the god presiding over vegetation and increase.1 told that the height of the corn in the fields of Aarru We are is seven cubits, and that that of the ears is two (in some readings, four) cubits. This blissful place is surrounded by a wall of steel, and it is from its gate that the sun comes forth in the eastern sky.

Transformation.

2. But the happy dead is not confined to this locality, or to the human form, or to an earthly mode of existence. He has the range of the entire universe in every shape and form that he desires. This is repeatedly stated in the Book of the Dead, and twelve of the chapters consist of formulas through which certain transformations are operated. The forms assumed, according to these chapters, are the turtle-dove, the

1 There are two representations of this, one at the Memnonium (Denkm. iii. pl. 163, 164), and another at Medinet Abu (Denkm. iii. pl. 212, 213).