Chapter XXIV
P. Le Page (Peter Le Page) Renouf translation
Chapter whereby the Words of Power are brought to a Person in the Netherworld.
I am Chepera, the self-produced, on his Mother’s thigh.(1)
The speed of bloodhounds is given to those who are in Heaven,[37] and the mettle of hyaenas(2) to those who belong to the Divine Circle.
Lo, I bring this my Word of Power, and I collect this Word of Power from every quarter in which it is, more persistently(3) than hounds of chase and more swiftly than the Light.
O thou who guidest the Bark of Rā, sound is thy rigging and free from disaster as thou passest on to the Tank of Flame.
Lo, I collect[38] this my Word of Power from every quarter in which it is, in behalf of every person whom it concerneth, more 64persistently than hounds of chase and more swiftly than Light; the same(4) who create the gods out of Silence, or reduce them to inactivity; the same who impart warmth to the gods.
Lo, I collect this my Word of Power from every quarter in which it is, in behalf of every person whom it concerneth, more persistently than hounds of chase and more swiftly than the Light.
Notes.
This is another of those chapters of which the antiquity is proved by the coffins of Horhotep and Queen Mentuhotep. And even in the early times to which these coffins belong it must have been extremely difficult to understand. In the translation here given I have adhered as closely as possible to the oldest texts, but these, as the variants show, are not entirely trustworthy.
The names of the second animal in the earlier texts, whether they stand for hyænas , or for other animals of the chase (), imply either speed or ferocity. And what must 65we understand under the latter term? We must look to the context. It is of a god speaking of himself and of his attributes. He is proud of them, and certainly does not wish them to be taken in a bad sense. Nor is it necessary that we should do so. We have only to remember what we learnt at school.
Cicero (de Sen., 10, 33) contrasts the ‘ferocitas juvenum,’ the high pluck of the young, with the ‘infirmitas puerorum,’ and the ‘gravitas’ and ‘maturitas’ of later periods of life.
Livy uses the term ferox, in the same sense as Cicero.
What we have to understand of the Egyptian expression is, ‘mettlesome, of high, unbridled spirit.’
In the later texts the Bennu bird has been substituted for the beasts of the chase.
The word is used as a name for the divine Cynocephali who appear at sunrise over the Tank of Flame.
In addition to this interesting utterance of Egyptian theology, we have to note the idea of Silence as the origin of the gods, or powers of nature. The notion was also current in the Greek world. The writer of the Philosophumena (VI, 22) speaks of ἡ ὑμνουμένη ἐκείνη παρὰ τοῖς Ἕλλησι Ζιγή. It was from this source that the early Gnostic Valentinus borrowed this item of his system. St. Irenaeus (Haeres, II, 14) charges him with having taken it from the theogony of the comic poet Antiphanes.
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