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After a break is mentioned "Åten in heaven, stablished of face, the gracious one in Anu (Heliopolis)." The breaks in the text make it impossible to grasp the exact meaning of the inscription as a whole, but it is possible that it represents an attempt to identify some local thunder-god with Aten. The mention of Tathunen is interesting, for he was one of the old non-solar gods of Egypt.

AMULETS

THE Egyptians, in common with almost every other nation of antiquity, attached to their mummified dead, and wore on their persons when living, a number of objects which they believed would secure for them protection from fiends and devils, and enable them to escape from the sicknesses and diseases that they produced in their bodies, and from accidents and calamities of all kinds. To such objects they gave the name of m'ket,

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"to protect." These objects were believed to have the power to protect a man, either because the substances of which they were made contained special properties that were beneficial to those who wore them on their bodies, or because they were thought to be the abodes of benevolent spirits. In the earliest times these " protectors were probably portions of the bodies of ancestors—a toe or finger joint, a piece of skin, or even a dried eye-ball-objects that are used to this day as fetishes in many parts of the Sûdân. Later, objects connected with the various cults and regarded as holy were chosen as "protectors," but in process of time men forgot what their special attributes were, and the greater number of them became mere amulets, which were worn on the body as ornaments or decorations of dress. The word "amulet " is derived from the Arabic himalah,, the name of the cord or chain on which the case of an amulet hangs, and also of the amulet itself. Egyptian amulets are of two classes, the inscribed and the uninscribed, the former being the more powerful. The inscriptions on the most important amulets are ḥekau,, i.e., magical utterances which conferred extraordinary powers on the spirits of the dead,

1 Another favourite word is

MAD, i.e., "strengtheners.”

and were composed by Thoth, the lord of the words of the god,

119. The principal Egyptian amulets were :—

I.—The Țeț, †. This object was formerly said to represent a mason's table, and a Nilometer, and the primitive roof tree, the horizontal bars representing its branches on the north, south, east and west. But it has nothing whatever to do with any of these things. The text of Chapter CLV of the Book of the Dead associates it with Р the backbone, pest, and vertebrae, thesu,

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is a conventional representation of The oldest form of this part was

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of Osiris, and it is clear that a part of his spinal column. which represents the sacrum, and, when the Egyptians forgot what it represented, they lengthened the hieroglyph and straightened the projections and made the sign 1 The meaning of the word Teț is "firmness," "stability," and the "setting upright of the Tet " was a very important ceremony in the cult of Osiris. The Rubric of Chapter CLV directs that the Tet shall be made of gold, but as a matter of fact very few examples of the amulet in gold are known; when made of wood, or wax, or bitumen they were often gilded. Several examples are known in hard stones, e.g., lapis-lazuli (B.M. 20623), carnelian (B.M. 8272), and lapis-lazuli, carnelian, and mother-of-emerald inlaid (B.M. 20636). Many varieties of the Tet are found in glazed porcelain, and in some of them the top is surmounted by the Atef crown of Osiris (B.M. 739). The Chapter of the Tet reads:

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seed under thee. Verily I have brought to thee

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1 See Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, Vol. II, p. 280.
2 He whose heart is at rest.

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Recite

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on the day of

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the beginning of the year, like those who are followers of Osiris regularly,

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millions of times.

II.-The Tet,

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. This amulet has been commonly called the Tie" or Buckle,' but the earliest writers about it were wholly uncertain as to what object it represented.1 The text that is often found engraved upon it is Chapter CLVI of the Book of the Dead, and this indicates that it was supposed to bring to the wearer the virtue of the blood of Isis, and her words of power, and her magical spells and works. The object represented by is no ornament of the goddess but is a part of her body,2 and there is little room for doubt that the hieroglyph is intended to be a picture of her genital organs.3 On coffins and statues we often see one hand of the figure holding and the other, thus indicating that the deceased regarded amulets made in the form of the sacrum of Osiris and the uterus of Isis as mighty protectors in the Other

1 See Birch, Aeg. Zeit., 1871, p. 13, and Maspero, Mémoire sur Quelques Papyrus du Louvre, p. 8.

2 See my Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, Vol. I, p. 276, Vol. II, p. 280.

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which exists in Coptic under the forms WTE, of and &TE; compare

also TOTE.

World. The Tet was most commonly made of red jasper, carnelian, porphyry, red glass, red faïence and sycamore wood; sometimes it was made entirely of gold, and sometimes when made of stone or faïence it was set in a gold frame or was gilded. Typical examples in red stone are B.M. 20619 and 20641; the former (in a gold wire frame) was made for Rāmes, , and the latter for the lady Maȧ, . Instances of the use of stones that were not red are IN B.M. 20646 and 20621. The former is of mottled stone and was

made for a Sem priest of Ptaḥ, called Åriri (?) |

, who was also high priest of Memphis,; and the latter, made of black schist, was made for Meri, a controller of sepulchral offerings,

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44. The text inscribed on the Tet reads:—

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In the Saïte Recension of the Book of the Dead the Rubric adds: "If this writing be known [by the deceased] he shall be among the followers of Osiris Un-Nefer, whose word is truth. The gates of Khert-neter shall be opened to him. A plot of ground, with wheat and barley, shall be given to him in Sekhet-Aanru (i.e., the Field of Reeds). His name shall be like the names of the gods who are there, that is to say, the Followers of Horus who reap [the grain] there."

III.—The Head-rest or Pillow,, Urs.1 As an amulet the head-rest is usually made of haematite, and is uninscribed; it is a model of the large head-rests made of wood, alabaster and stone, which were placed under the necks of mummified bodies to "lift up" "their heads. The heka, or text, inscribed on the head-rest amulet is a version, more or less complete, of Chapter CLXVI of the Book of the Dead, which is found in all the great Codices of the XVIIIth dynasty. The text on B.M. 20647 reads :—

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