Chapter 43 (part 41)

Later in the XVIIIth, or early in the XIXth dynasty, we find Osiris called "the king of eternity, the lord of everlastingness, who traverseth millions of years in the duration of his life, the firstborn son of the womb of Nut, begotten of Seb, the prince of gods and men, the god of gods, the king of kings, the lord of lords, the prince of princes, the governor of the world, from the womb of Nut, whose existence is for everlasting,[1] Unnefer of many forms and of many attributes, Tmu in Annu, the lord of Akert,[2] the only one, the lord of the land on each side of the celestial Nile."[3] In the XXVIth dynasty and later there grew up a class of literature [1. For the text see the papyrus of Ani, pl. ii., and pl. xxxvi., 1. 2. 2. I.e. , the underworld. 3. neb atebui ; see Ani, pl. xix., 1. 9.] {p. liv} Osiris the god of the resurrection. represented by such works as "The Book of Respirations,"[1] "The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys,"[2] "The Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys,"[3] "The Litanies of Seker,"[4] and the like, the hymns and prayers of which are addressed to Osiris rather as the god of the dead and type of the resurrection[5] than as the successor of the great cosmic god Tmu-Ra. He is called "the soul that liveth again,"[6] "the being who becometh a child again," "the firstborn son of unformed matter, the lord of multitudes of aspects and forms, the lord of time and bestower of years, the lord of life for all eternity."[7] He is the "giver of life from the beginning;"[8] "life springs up to us from his destruction,"[9] and the germ which proceeds from him engenders life in both the dead and the living.[10] [1. ###. The text of this work, transcribed into hieroglyphics, was published, with a Latin translation, by Brugsch, under the title, Sai an Sinsin sive Aber Metempsychosis veterum Aegyptiorum , Berlin, 1851; and an English translation of the same work, but made from a Paris MS., was given by p. J. de Horrack in Records of the Past , 1st series, vol., iv., p. 121 ff. See also Birch, Facsimiles of Two Papyri , London, 1863, p. 3; Devéria, Catalogue des MSS. Égyptiens , Paris, 1874, pp. 130 ff., where several copies of this work are described. 2. The hieratic text of this work is published with a French translation by p. J. de Horrack, Les Lamentations d'Isis et de Nephthys, Paris, 1886. 3. A hieroglyphic transcript of these works, with an English translation, was given in Archælogia , vol. iii., London, 1891. 4. What Devéria says with reference to the Book of Respirations applies to the whole class: "Toutefois, on remarque dans cet écrit une tendance à la doctrine de la résurrection du corps plus marquée que dans les compositions antérieures" ( Catalogue , p. 13). 5. ###. Festival Songs, iv., 33. 6. ###. Ibid. , viii., 21, ix., 8.