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

or in a circle; ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ ‘going round on high with the Sun.’ Hence the use of it as synonymous with ⁂, in the expressions ⁂⁂ =⁂ ‘never’ and ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ = ⁂⁂ ‘the first time, the beginning of time, _prima vice_.’ A sacrificial cake is called ⁂⁂⁂ (_Denkm._, II, 28) on account of its shape, like the Latin _rotundula_, also written ⁂⁂⁂. And, like the Greek κύκλος, the word comes to signify a circle of persons. This circle is not necessarily of gods. The Bremner Papyrus in the British Museum (14, line 8), says an _apage_ not only to Âpepi, who was no god, and to his soul and body, and ghost and shadow and children, and to his kith and kin, but, also to his ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂, that is all associated with him, “ceux de son _entourage_.” That ⁂⁂ should express the ‘feast of the New Moon’ is only natural, though Lepsius has pointed out serious difficulties on the subject. But ⁂ also expresses the number nine. Whence in this relation arises the Egyptian conception of the number nine? Is it the _round_ (we should say the ‘square’) number, three times three? It certainly is merely a round number in many instances, but what is still more certain is that the same expression meaning ‘circle of gods’ and ‘nine gods,’ the circle was supposed to consist of nine gods, and was enlarged to companies of eighteen or twenty-seven. It is, I am sure, perfectly idle work to look for more profound reasons for the theory of the ‘Ennead.’[18] _Every_ god of importance had his ⁂⁂⁂,[19] and the best theory that has ever been given is that given at the beginning of Chapter 17.