The Egyptian Book of the dead by P. Le Page Renouf and Edouard Naville

⁂⁂⁂⁂, but the present seems to be the suitable place for a more extended notice of this feminine word, which is a collective noun, and never found in any other sense. The ancient form ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ renders it more than probable that ⁂ is not phonetic in the later form, but that as in ⁂⁂ _kai_, originally ⁂⁂ (whence the Coptic ⲕⲟⲧ, ⲕⲱⲧⲉ, a circle, a round vessel, to go round), it is ideographic of _roundness_. This concept is certainly to be found in the word ⁂⁂⁂, the Coptic ϫⲱϫ, a head (or rather top of the head), as in the Latin _vertex_, akin to _vortex_, from the same root as _vertere_. The sign ⁂, which in later texts often appears as the determinative, has its origin in the cursive form of ⁂ carelessly written. Instead of ⁂ we also find ⁂, which is certainly not phonetic but ideographic of _enclosure_, as in the word ⁂⁂⁂⁂ a wall, _paries_, ἕρκος. This word occurs already in the Pyramid Texts under the form ⁂⁂⁂. See Pepi I, 571, which M. Maspero renders ‘la Grande _Enceinte_ d’On.’ The evident etymological relationship to the Coptic ϫⲱϫ has led some scholars to translate the Egyptian word as signifying _chiefs_, _princes_. But though the lexicons give _dux_ and _princeps_ as meanings of the Coptic word, these are but secondary applications of _head_. We have to enquire why ϫⲱϫ means _head_, or _top of the head_. And the reason is its roundness, as indicated by the ideographic signs ⁂ or ⁂. The old Egyptian word ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ invariably implies an association of persons, and this is why in consequence of its etymology I translate it as ‘Circle of gods.’ It is synonymous (_cf._ chapter 41, note 8) with ⁂⁂⁂.