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

opening of the chapter is an addition. Yet it is unknown to the primitive recension on the walls of Horhotep’s tomb, though found everywhere else. The texts however which contain it do not agree. “I am He who closeth, and He who openeth, and I am but One.” ‘He who closeth’ is ⁂⁂ _Tmu_, ‘He who openeth’ ⁂ _Unen_. As the god who closes and who opens is one and the same, ‘I am but One,’ is a very natural ending of the sentence, and for its sense the whole may appeal to classical, and higher than classical, authority. “Modo namque Patulcius idem Et modo sacrifico Clusius ore vocor.”[25] “I am Alpha and O, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.”[26] The meaning of the Egyptian is quite plain, but the readings most probably through the absence of determinatives in the oldest style are somewhat different. Horhotep and other texts have ⁂⁂⁂⁂, apparently as one word (compounded of _tmu_ and _unen_), which may signify the ‘closer and opener,’ but Sebek-āa and later texts have ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂. The papyrus of Nebseni has ⁂⁂, in the third person, which does not alter the meaning, but this is quite an isolated reading. The later recension, as represented by the Turin _Todtenbuch_ and the Cadet papyrus, has ⁂⁂, which only prominently brings forward, what is implied in all the other texts, that the Opener is a god.[27] The absence of the determinative ⁂ after ⁂ is no objection to the sense ‘opener,’ especially after ⁂⁂. It is absolutely necessary when dealing with mythology to look to physical rather than to metaphysical meanings. I have sufficiently discussed the meanings of the word ⁂ in my essay on the Myth of Osiris Unnefer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PLATE III. BOOK OF THE DEAD.