Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts
9781465502131
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The text of the remarkable Legend of the Creation which forms the first section of this volume is preserved in a well-written papyrus in the British Museum, where it bears the number 10,188. This papyrus was acquired by the late Mr. A. H. Rhind inor 1862, when he was excavating some tombs on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes. He did not himself find it in a tomb, but he received it from the British Consul at Luxor, Mustafa Agha, during an interchange of gifts when Mr. Rhind was leaving the country. Mustafa Agha obtained the papyrus from the famous hiding-place of the Royal Mummies at Der-al-Bahari, with the situation of which he was well acquainted for many years before it became known to the Egyptian Service of Antiquities. When Mr. Rhind came to England, the results of his excavations were examined by Dr. Birch, who, recognising the great value of the papyrus, arranged to publish it in a companion volume to Facsimiles of Two Papyri, but the death of Mr. Rhind incaused the project to fall through. Mr. Rhind's collection passed into the hands of Mr. David Bremner, and the papyrus, together with many other antiquities, was purchased by the Trustees of the British Museum. InDr. Birch suggested the publication of the papyrus to Dr. Pleyte, the Director of the Egyptian Museum at Leyden. This savant transcribed and translated some passages from the Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys, which is the first text in it, and these he published in Recueil de Travaux, Paris, tom. iii., p-64. Inby Dr. Birch's kindness I was allowed to work at the papyrus, and I published transcripts of some important passages and the account of the Creation in theProceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1886-7, p-26. The Legend of the Creation was considered by Dr. H. Brugsch to be of considerable value for the study of the Egyptian Religion, and encouraged by him1 I made a full transcript of the papyrus, which was published in Archaeologia, (vol. lii., London, 1891), with transliterations and translations. InI edited for the Trustees of the British Museum the complete hieratic text with a revised translation. The papyrus is aboutft.in. in length, and is 9ƈ; in. in width. It containscolumns of hieratic text which are written in short lines and are poetical in character, andcolumns or pages of text written in long lines; the total number of lines is betweenand 940. The text is written in a small, very black, but neat hand, and may be assigned to a time between the XXVIth Dynasty and the Ptolemaic Period. The titles, catch-words, rubrics, names of Apep and his fiends, and a few other words, are written in red ink. There are two colophons; in the one we have a date, namely, the "first day of the fourth month of the twelfth year of Pharaoh Alexander, the son of Alexander," i.e., B.C. 311, and in the other the name of the priest who either had the papyrus written, or appropriated it, namely, Nes-Menu, or Nes-Amsu.
