Chapter 43 (part 72)

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 form of] the Disk, the prince of light and radiance. He giveth light and radiance. He giveth light unto all peoples. He saileth over heaven and never resteth, and on the morrow his vigour is stablished as before; having become old [to-day], he becometh young again to-morrow. He mastereth the bounds of eternity, he goeth roundabout heaven, and entereth into the Tuat to illumine the two lands which he hath created. When the divine ( or mighty) God,[6] moulded himself, the heavens and the earth were made by his [1. The literature relating to the fragment of the Sallier papyrus recording this fact is given by Wiedemann, Aegyptische Geschichte , p. 299. 2 The hieratic text is published, with a hieroglyphic transcript, by Maspero, Mémoires publiés par les Membres de la Mission Archéologique Française au Caire , t. i., p. 594 ff., and pll. 25-27. 3 A district of Thebes on the east bank of the Nile, the modern Karnak. 4 See within, p: xcvii. 5. ###. 6.