CHAPTER XC.

_Chapter whereby Memory is restored(1.) to a person._

Oh thou who choppest off heads and cuttest throats, but restorest memory

in the mouth of the dead through the Words of Power which they possess:

thou seest me not with thine eyes, thou perceivest not with thy

feet;(2.) thou turnest back thy face, thou seest not the executioners of

Shu, who are coming behind thee to chop off thine own head and to cut

thy throat. Let not my mouth be closed, through the Words of Power which

I possess; even as thou hast done to the dead, through the Words of

Power which they possess.

Away with the two sentences uttered by Isis when thou camest to fling

remembrance at the mouth of Osiris(3.) and the heart of Sutu, his enemy,

saying:—

NOTES.

Of this chapter we have unfortunately but one copy in _Fa_, of the Musée

Borély. This is defective both at the beginning and at the end, and the

text is inaccurate. The later copies are so inaccurate that it is

impossible to reconstitute the text. It is precisely on those points

where grammatical accuracy is required for fixing a definite sense that

the manuscripts are hopelessly defective. The preceding translation is

_verbally_ correct, I trust, but I do not pretend that it is

intelligible. It stops where the papyrus _Fa_ stops.

1. _Restored._ The reduplication in ⁂ here gives the verb this

sense.

2. It is not only in Egyptian that verbs of sight are applied to other

perceptions. Aeschylus says κτύπον δέδορκα in _Sept. c. Th._ 104, and

the Hebrew writers furnish similar examples.

3. _At the mouth of Osiris and the heart of Sutu._ To justify this

translation the same preposition ought to govern _mouth_ and _heart_.

But I do not know any copy in which this occurs. The Turin reading is

simply absurd.