Chapter 8 (part 6)

, 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.