The Egyptian Book of the Dead

1. Thes-thu Teta pu un-thu aaa peh-tha hems-k

Rise up thou Teti, this. Stand up thou mighty one being strong. Sit thou

xent neteru ari-k ennu ari en Ausar em Het-aa amt Annu

with the gods, do thou that which did Osiris in the great house in Annu.

sesep-nek sah-k an t'er ret-k em pet an

Thou hast received thy sah, not shall be fettered thy foot in heaven, not

xesef-k em ta

shalt thou be turned back upon earth.[3]

2. anet' hra-k Teta em hru-k pen aha tha xeft Ra

Hail to thee, Teta, on this thy day [when] thou art standing before Ra [as]

[1. Brugsch, Liber Metempsychosis, p. 22.

2. Compare Coptic ###, "magister."

3. Recueil de Travaux, t. v., p. 36 (1. 271). From line 143 of the same text it would seem that a man had more than one sahu, for the words "all thy sahu," occur. This may, however, be only a plural of majesty.]

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per-f em aabt t'eba-tha em sah-k pen am baiu

he cometh from the cast, [when] thou art endued with this thy sah among the souls.[1]

3. ahau pa neheh t'er-f pa t'etta em sah-f

[His] duration of life is eternity, his limit of life is everlastingness in his sah.[2]

4. nuk sah em ba-f

I am a sah with his soul.[3]

In the late edition of the Book of the Dead published by Lepsius the deceased is said to " look upon his body and to rest upon his sahu,"[4] and souls are said "to enter into their sahu";[5] and a passage extant both in this and the older Theban edition makes the deceased to receive the sahu of the god Osiris.[6] But that Egyptian writers at times confused the khat with the sahu is clear from a passage in the Book of Respirations, where it is said, "Hail Osiris, thy name endureth, thy body is stablished, thy sahu germinateth";[7] in other texts the word "germinate" is applied only to the natural body.

The ab or heart.

In close connection with the natural and spiritual bodies stood the heart, or rather that part of it which was the seat of the power of life and the fountain of good and evil thoughts. And in addition to the natural and spiritual bodies, man also bad an abstract individuality or personality endowed with all his characteristic attributes. This abstract personality had an absolutely independent existence. It could move freely from place to place, separating itself from, or uniting itself to,

[1. Recueil de Travaux, t. v., p. 59 (l. 384).

2. Ibid., t. iv., p. 61 (1. 521).

3. Book of the Dead, Chapter I.XXVIII., 1. 14.

4. ###. Chapter LXXXIX., 1. 6.

5. Ibid., 1. 5.

6. ###. Chapter CXXX., 1. 38 (ed. Naville).

7. ###. See Brugsch, Liber Metempsychosis, p. 15.]

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The ka or double.

the body at will, and also enjoying life with the gods in heaven.This was the ka,[1] a word which at times conveys the meanings of its Coptic equivalent {Coptic kw}, and of {Greek ei?'dwlon}, image, genius, double, character, disposition, and mental attributes. The funeral offerings of meat, cakes, ale, wine, unguents, etc., were intended for the ka; the scent of the burnt incense was grateful to it. The ka dwelt in the man's statue just as the ka of a god inhabited the statue of the god. In this respect the ka seems to be identical with the sekhem or image. In the remotest times the tombs had special chambers wherein the ka was worshipped and received offerings. The priesthood numbered among its body an order of men who bore the name of "priests of the ka and who performed services in honour of the ka in the "ka chapel".

In the text of Unas the deceased is said to be "happy with his ka"[2] in the next world, and his ka is joined unto his body in "the great dwelling"; [3] his body

[1. The first scholar who seriously examined the meaning of the word was Dr. Birch, who collected several examples of the use and discussed them in his Mèmoire sur une Patère Égyptienne du Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1858, p. 59 ff. (Extrait du t. xxiv. des Mémoires de la Société impériale des Antiquaires de France). Dr. Birch translated the word by être, personne, emblème, divin, génie, principe, esprit. In September, 1878, V. Maspero explained to the Members of the Congress of Lyons the views which he held concerning this word, and which he had for the past five years been teaching in the Collège de France, and said, "le ka est une sorte de double de la personne humaine d'une matière moins grossière que la matière dont est formé le corps, mais qu'il fallait nourrir et entretenir comme le corps lui-même; ce double vivait dans le tombeau des offrandes qu'on faisait aux fêtes canoniques, et aujourd'hui encore un grand nombre des génies de la tradition populaire égyptienne ne sent que des doubles, devenus démons au moment de la conversion des fellahs an christianisme, puis à l'islamisme." These views were repeated by him at the Sorbonne in February, 1879. See Comptes Rendus du Congrès provincial des Orientalistes, Lyons, 1878, t. i., pp. 235-263; Revue Scientifique de la France et de l'Étranger, 2e série, 8e année, No. 35, March, 1879, pp. 816-820; Bulletin de l'Association Scientifique de France, No. 594, 1879, t. xxiii., p. 373-384; Maspero, Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie, t. i., pp. 1, 35, 126. In March, 1879, Mr. Renouf read a paper entitled "On the true sense of an important Egyptian word" (Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. vi., London, 1979, pp. 494-508), in which he arrived at conclusions similar to those of M. Maspero; and in September of the same year M. Maspero again treated the subject in Recueil de Travaux, t. i., p. 152 f. The various shades of meaning in the word have been discussed subsequently by Brugsch, Wörterbuch (Suppl.), pp. 997, 1230; Dümichen, Der Grabpalast des Patuamenap, Abt. i., p. 10; Bergmann, Der Sarkophag des Panehemisis (in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses, Vienna, 1883, p. 5); Wiedemann, Die Religion der alten Aegypter, p. 126.

2. ###, l. 472.

3. ###, l. 482.]

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