CHAPTER LXIIIB.
_Chapter whereby one is not boiled in water._
I am that ready Rudder wherewith Râ conveyeth the Ancient ones, and I
raise the effluxes(4.) of Osiris to the Tank from flames impassable; a
wrecked one,(5.) but not to be consumed.
I lie helpless as a dead person,(6.) and I arrive at the lair of the
Lion who defieth slaughter, ...(7.) following the road by which I set
out.
NOTES.
The Chapters 63A and 63B are united into one in the later MSS. without
any other division than ⁂, indicative of a different reading. None
of the early papyri contains both chapters. The text of 63B is extremely
corrupt, and without rational interpretation.
1. _I am that Rudder of Râ, wherewith he conveyeth the Ancient ones._
This passage is twice found in Horhotep (311 and 329), the word for
Rudder being written ⁂⁂⁂⁂.
2. _Who striketh the eye_, ⁂⁂⁂. The peaceful determinative may
perhaps be intended to diminish the force of the very expressive ⁂ in
the verb of striking. But I believe that this passage may fairly be
illustrated by the words of Lucretius IV, 324 and following:—
Splendida porro oculi fugitant vitantque tueri,
Sol etiam caecat, contra si tendere pergas.
Praeterea splendor quicumque est acer adurit
Saepe oculos ideo quod semina possidet ignis
Multa, dolorem oculis quae gignunt insinuando.
3. _The primary power of motion and of rest._ These words have a
modern sound, but they express the sense of the original,
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂.
4. _Effluxes_, ⁂⁂⁂, the ἰχώρ, the vital _sap_, as it were, of
the body of Osiris, which is the source of life both to men and to
gods,[71] and in default of which his own heart (Unas 12) would cease to
beat. It is celebrated in all the mythological texts extant from the
time of the Pyramids down to the latest inscriptions of Denderah and
Edfu, and even in Demotic documents.[72] All moisture was supposed to
proceed from it, and the Nile was naturally identified with it.
In the Pyramid texts (Pepi 66) ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ is put
in parallelism with ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂.
5. _A wrecked one._ So I understand ⁂ from Chapter 125, 38, but the
whole context here is so doubtful that no translator who respects
himself would warrant the sense.
6. _I lie helpless like a dead person._ ⁂⁂⁂, _ḥefṭ_ is the
condition of an infant on the knees of its nurse. And I understand
⁂⁂⁂ in its well known euphemistic application to the dead.
7. ⁂⁂⁂ is the most probable reading here, but it is a
_hapax legomenon_ with nothing in the context to explain it.
-----
Footnote 71:
In one of the ancient chapters preserved in the tomb of Horhotep, the
deceased, speaking in the person of Horus, talks (319) of quenching
his thirst with the ⁂⁂⁂ of his father Osiris.
Footnote 72:
See a very interesting passage in _Pap. Rhind_ 4, 4, with Brugsch’s
translation.
------------------------------------