CHAPTER CXXVIII.
_Invocation of Osiris._
Hail to thee, Osiris Unneferu, son of Nut and eldest son of Seb: the
Great One who proceedeth from Nut; the king in Taa-urit;(1.) the Prince
in Amenta; the Lord of Abydos; the Lord of Forces; the most Mighty; the
Lord of the Atef crown in Suten-hunen, the Lord of Power in
Taa-urit,(2.) the Lord of the Mansion: most Powerful in Tattu: Lord of
Administration,(3.) and of many festivals in Tattu.
Horus exalteth his father Osiris in every place; associating Isis the
Great with her sister Nephthys.
Thoth speaketh to [Horus] with the potent utterances(4.) which have in
himself their origin and proceed from his mouth, and which strengthen
the heart of Horus beyond all gods.
=Rise up Horus, son of Isis, and restore thy father Osiris!=
Ha, Osiris! I am come to thee; I am Horus and I restore thee unto life
upon this day, with the funereal offerings and all good things for
Osiris.
Rise up, then, Osiris: I have stricken down for thee thine enemies, I
have delivered thee from them.
I am Horus on this fair day, at the beautiful coming forth(5.) of thy
Powers: who lifteth thee up with himself on this fair day as thine
associate god.(6.)
Ha, Osiris! thou hast come and with thee thy _Ka_, which uniteth with
thee in thy name of Ka-hotep.(7.)
He glorifieth thee in thy name of the Glorified: he invoketh thee in thy
name of Hekau: he openeth for thee the paths in thy name of Ap-uat.(8.)
Ha, Osiris! I am come to thee that I may set thine adversaries beneath
thee in every place, and that thou mayest be triumphant in presence of
all the gods who are around thee.
Ha, Osiris! thou hast received thy sceptre, thy pedestal and the flight
of stairs beneath thee.(9.)
Regulate thou the festivals of the gods, and do thou regulate the
oblations to those who reside in their mansions.
Grant thou thy greatness to the gods whom thou hast made, great god, and
make thine appearance with them as their Ensign.(10.)
Take thou precedence(11.) over all the gods and listen to the Voice of
Maāt on this day.
_Said over the oblations made to the Strong One on the Festival of
Uaka._(12.)
NOTES.
The ancient papyri do not contain this chapter. The translation follows
the text of the Turin _Todtenbuch_, occasionally corrected by other
papyri of the later period. There is nothing specially interesting in
the chapter: the first portion of it is an invocation to Osiris under
certain names, as in many other hymns[140] to the god from the time of
the XIIth dynasty down to the latest times: the latter portion consists
of evocations addressed by Horus to his father. Their prototype is to be
found in formulas frequent in the Pyramid Texts. These were much admired
and imitated in the Saïtic and the later periods.
1. _King in Tau-urit_ ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂. Osiris is also
called ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ at Philæ. And in the second line
of this chapter he is called ⁂⁂⁂ _in Tau-urit_ which, if not
identical with Abydos, must have been a part of that town or in its
immediate neighbourhood.
2. ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ is equivalent to ⁂⁂⁂,
the title of Osiris in _Pepi I_, line 8. And the Power is defined as
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ “thy Power which is upon the
Glorified.”
3. _Administration_ ⁂; literally _things_. See note 3 on Chapter 18.
4. _Utterances_ ⁂⁂. See note 2 on Chapter 1, and compare
_Merenrā_, 103, and _Pepi II_, 13.
5. _Coming forth_ ⁂. _Cf._ ϣⲁⲓ, ἀνατέλλειν, ἀνατολὴ, and the
meanings ἐξοδεία and ἑορτή, which, on the tablet of Canopus, correspond
to the Egyptian ⁂. The first hour after sunrise was called
⁂⁂⁂⁂; so that “the beautiful Coming forth of thy Powers”
may be a mere technical periphrasis for daybreak.
Besides the ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ of Rā in Chapter 17, it is well to
remember such proper names as ⁂⁂⁂⁂, ⁂⁂⁂,
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂, ⁂⁂⁂⁂, ⁂⁂⁂⁂,
⁂⁂⁂⁂ and ⁂⁂⁂, with several others.
6. _Thine associate god_, or _one of those about thee_,
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂.
See Note 2 on Chapter 18. M. Chabas in his commentary upon the fine hymn
translated by him in the _Rev. Arch._, 1857, considers it “une
circonstance bizarre” that Osiris is several times included among his
‘_Djadjou_.’ The _bizarrerie_ is easily explained by parallel
expressions known to every Greek scholar, οἱ ἀμφὶ Πεισίστρατον in
Herodotus means _Pisistratus with his troops_, and in Thucydides, οἱ
περι Θρασυβουλον means _Thrasybulus with his soldiers_. In the Iliad (3,
146) οἱ ἀμφὶ Πρίαμον is explained by the Scholiast as meaning _Priam
himself_: τοῦτ ἐστιν, ὁ Πρίαμος.
7. This passage as it stands is the alteration of one of the Pyramid
Texts (Teta, 284; Pepi I, 54): “Horus hath brought to pass that _his Ka_
[? image] which is in thee should unite with thee in thy name of
Ka-hotep.”
8. This whole passage is also taken from the Pyramid Texts. Its chief
value in this place is in evidence of a truth not yet generally
acknowledged by Egyptologists, that _Ap-uat_ (or as written in the
Pyramid Texts, _Up-uat_) is really Osiris. The proofs are numerous and
overwhelming.
I produced evidence of this identity in the P.S.B.A. of June 1, 1886,
from an obelisk of the XIIth dynasty now at Alnwick Castle, and in 1891
Brugsch published in his _Thesaurus_ (p. 1420) a tablet, now in the
Louvre, of the same period as the obelisk, which also treats Ap-uat as
one of the names of Osiris. But the earliest as well as the most
instructive evidence is that of the Pyramid Texts. The later form of it
is thus given on the coffin of _Nes-Shu-Tefnut_ at Vienna (see Bergman,
_Recueil_, VI, p. 165): “Horus openeth for thee thy Two Eyes that thou
mayest see with them in thy name of Ap-uat.”
But the Pyramids of Teta (l. 281) and Pepi (l. 131) say, “Horus openeth
for thee thine Eye that thou mayest see with _it_ in _its_ name
_Ap-uat_.” Each of the Eyes of Osiris is Ap-uat, one of them is the
Southern and the other is the Northern Jackal. These two facing each
other form part of the symbolism explained in Note 2 upon Chapter 125.
The figure of the Jackal is wholly insufficient as an argument that
Ap-uat is identical with Anubis. Much better evidence is found in the
fact that the name of Anubis is sometimes written over the figure.[141]
But the true explanation of this is, what might have seemed incredible
to some of our older scholars, that Anubis is itself only one of the
names of Osiris.
The Pyramids of Pepi I (line 474 and following) and Pepi II (l. 1262 and
following) give imaginary etymologies of certain names of Osiris which
are repeated in the inscriptions of the tomb of Horhotep, published by
M. Maspero (_Miss. Arch._, I, 260). One of these names is ⁂⁂,
which is said to be derived from ⁂, “pass thou over to me.” The next
is ⁂⁂⁂⁂ _Anpu_, which is derived from ⁂⁂! The true
meaning of ⁂⁂⁂ is not _jackal_, but _whelp_; the fierce young
of an animal; not only of jackals or lions but of men, kings or gods,
⁂⁂⁂. Thus Orestes speaks (Eur., _Orest._, 1) of σκύμνον
ἀνοσίου πατρός, and the Chorus of another play talks of the reception of
τὸν Ἀχίλλειον σκύμνον (_Andr._, 1170). And Shakespeare speaks of “the
young whelp of Talbot’s raging brood.”
9. _Pedestal_, ⁂⁂⁂; the _stand_ upon which the images or
emblems of the god were carried in procession. The ⁂ is very
frequently supported by it; ⁂.
_Flight of stairs_, ⁂⁂. See Note 2 on Chapter 22.
10. _Ensign_, _i.e._, _insignis_, one who bears the distinguishing mark
or sign of investiture ⁂⁂⁂⁂.[142] See Note 4 on Chapter 78.
Osiris is here presented as the Sāhu of the gods whom he has called into
existence. The Hymn of the Bibliothèque Nationale (line 7) calls him
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂.
Chnumhotep at Benihassan says of the king,
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂, “he distinguished me
above all his _nobles_,” that is the order of men bearing the sign of
investiture.
11. _Take precedence_, ⁂⁂⁂. I take the word in the same sense
as where it occurs (without the determinative of sound) in _Denkm._,
III, 29a; in parallelism with ⁂⁂.
12. _Uaḳa_, ⁂⁂⁂⁂; in the older texts ⁂⁂⁂ (as in
Pepi I, 98); one of the oldest festivals of the Egyptian calendar, kept
on the 17th and 18th of the month Thoth.
The Pyramid Text says “Behold, he cometh to thee as Orion
(⁂⁂⁂[143]); behold Osiris cometh as Orion the _Lord of Wine_
(⁂⁂⁂, _vinosus_, full of wine), who cometh on the fair
festival of _Uaḳa_.”
_Uaḳa_, ⁂⁂⁂⁂ or ⁂⁂⁂⁂ is also one of the names
given to the Nile.
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Footnote 140:
_Cf._ the Hymn to Osiris in the Bibl. Nationale, the Hymn of Tunrei
(Mariette, _Mon. div._, pl. 57), and an inscription copied by Mariette
from the temple of Ptah at Memphis (_Mon. div._, pl. 28 _e_). There
are plenty others of the same kind.
Footnote 141:
See Mariette, _Mon. div._, pl. 61, where each of the jackals is
surmounted with the Eye and bears the name _Ȧnpu_.
Footnote 142:
The importance of this sign is manifest in the Pyramid Text
(_Merenrā_, 634), “_N_ maketh his appearance as King, he hath
possession of his ⁂⁂⁂ and of his throne.” [Since the
above was in print M. Naville has published an inscription of Queen
Hatshepsit, in which the remarkable expression ⁂⁂⁂⁂
occurs three times.
The word written ⁂⁂⁂, ⁂⁂⁂⁂, but also
⁂⁂⁂⁂ or ⁂⁂⁂⁂ (and also without any
vowel, though ⁂ is understood), has determinatives in _Pepi_ I,
635, and _Merenrā_, 509, which imply the sense of _girdle_, _zone_.
Hence the sense of _neighbourhood_, “the men or places round about
one.”
Footnote 143:
Does ⁂ represent what we call the _Belt_ of Orion with its three
bright stars?
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