the Book of the Dead ( PDF )

The Legend Of RA And Isis.
become almost national gods; and the gods who are the companions of Osiris are endowed by the pious
with all the attributes of the great cosmic gods--Ra, Ptah, Khnemu, Khepera, and the like. Thus the
attributes of Ra are bestowed upon Khnemu and Khepera; the god Horus exists in the aspects of
Heru-maati, Heru-khent-an-maa, Heru-Khuti, Heru-nub, Heru-behutet, etc., and the attributes of each are
confounded either in periods or localities: Tmu-Ra, and Menthu-Ra, and Amen-Ra are composed of Tmu
and Ra, and Menthu and Ra, and Amen and Ra respectively, and we have seen from the hymn quoted
above (p. lii.) that already in the XVIIIth dynasty the god Osiris had absorbed the attributes which
belonged in the earlier dynasties to Ra alone.
History of the god Amen.
Still more remarkable, however, is the progress of the god Amen in Egyptian theology. In the early
empire, i.e., during the first eleven dynasties, this god ranked only as a local god, although his name is as
old as the time of Unas;[3] and
[1. E.g., the litany from the tomb of Seti I., published by Naville, La Litanie du Soleil, Leipzig, 1875, p. 13 ff.
2. E.g., Hymn to Amen-Ra, translated by Goodwin from papyrus No. 17, now preserved in the Gizeh Museum (see Les
Papyrus Égyptiens du Musée de Boulaq, ed. Mariette, Paris, 1872, pll. 1-13; Records of the Past, vol. i., p. 127 f., and
Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. ii., p. 250), and by Grébaut, Hymne à Ammon-Ra, Paris, 1874); Hymns to Amen, translated by
Goodwin (see Records of the Past, vol. vi., p. 97 f.; Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. ii., p. 353), and Chabas (Mélanges
Égyptologiques, 1870, p. 117); Hymn to Osiris, translated by Chabas (Revue Archéologique, t. xiv., Paris, 1857, p. 65 ff.),
and Goodwin (Records of the Past, vol. iv., p. 97 ff.). The various versions of the XVth Chapter of the Book of the Dead,
which consists of a series of hymns, are given in the Theban edition by Naville (Todtenbuch, Bd. I., Bll. 14-23), and the
text of the later Saïte version is discussed and translated by Lefébure, Traduction comparée des hymnes au Soleil, Paris,
1868, 4to.
3. "Amen and Ament," are mentioned in 1. 558 of the inscription of this king; see Maspero, Recueil, t. iv., p. 66.]
{p. xcv}
it is not until the so-called Hyksos have been expelled from Egypt by the Theban kings of the XVIIth
dynasty that Amen, whom the latter had chosen as their great god, and whose worship they had declined
to renounce at the bidding of the Hyksos king Apepi,[l] was acknowledged as the national god of
southern Egypt at least. Having by virtue of being the god of the conquerors obtained the position of
head of the company of Egyptian gods, he received the attributes of the most ancient gods, and little by
little he absorbed the epithets of them all. Thus Amen became Amen-Ra, and the glory of the old gods of
Annu, or Heliopolis, was centred in him who was originally an obscure local god. The worship of Amen
in Egypt was furthered by the priests of the great college of Amen, which seems to have been established
early in the XVIIIth dynasty by the kings who were his devout worshippers. The extract from a papyrus
written for the princess Nesi-Khonsu,[2] a member of the priesthood of Amen, is an example of the
exalted language in which his votaries addressed him.
"This is the sacred god, the lord of all the gods, Amen-Ra, the lord of the throne of the world, the prince
of Apt,[3] the sacred soul who came into being in the beginning, the great god who liveth by right and
truth, the first ennead which gave birth unto the other two enneads,[4] the being in whom every god
existeth, the One of One,[5] the creator of the things which came into being when the earth took form in
the beginning, whose births are hidden, whose forms are manifold, and whose growth cannot be known.
The sacred Form, beloved, terrible and mighty in his two risings (?), the lord of space, the mighty one of
the form of Khepera, who came into existence through Khepera, the lord of the form of Khepera; when
he came into being nothing existed except himself. He shone upon the earth from primeval time [in the
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