Chapter XXXI

_Chapter whereby the Crocodiles are repulsed who come to carry off the
Words of Power from a person in the Netherworld._

Back, in retreat! Back, Crocodile Sui! Come not against me, who live by the Words of Power.(1.)

I utter(2.) that Name of the great god, who granteth that two of his Messengers[49] should come; the name of one is Batta(3.), and the name of the other is _Thine Aspect is Fixed Law_.(4.)

Heaven determineth(5.) its hour; my Word of Power determineth all that which concerneth it; and my mouth determineth my Word of Power. I eat, and my teeth are like flint, and my grinders are like the Cliff of Tuf.(6.)

O thou who art sitting(7.) with a watchful eye against this my Word of Power; do not thou carry it off, O Crocodile who livest by thine own Word of Power.

NOTES.

This chapter is but rarely found in the more ancient collections. It was on the coffin of Queen Mentuhotep, but M. Naville gives the readings of only two early papyri. The later recensions add a text which we shall find later on in chapter 69, and which has no connection whatever with the present chapter.

1. The Words of Power are supplied to the deceased by Thoth in chapter 23.

2. The Turin text and those which agree with it read “Do not thou utter,” as if the Crocodile were about to use the Word of Power. I read ⁂⁂⁂⁂. The ⁂ was first corrupted into ⁂, and ⁂⁂ was farther improved into ⁂⁂⁂, which in its turn necessitated the addition of a suffix of the second person.

3. This name was changed in the later texts to the more familiar one of the divine Ape ⁂⁂ _Benit_.

4. _Fixed Law_, ⁂ or ⁂⁂. The central idea of theology in the Book of the Dead is that of _Regularity_, whether in permanence or change. Those things alone are divine which abide unceasingly or which recur in accordance with undeviating _rule_.

5. _Determineth._ The word ⁂⁂ here, as in other places, has the sense of circumscribing, as in a circuit ⁂⁂, prescribing the limits, fixing and determining.

6. _The Cliff of Tuf_ ⁂⁂, literally ‘his cliff,’ namely of Anubis, in allusion to his frequent title ⁂⁂.

7. _Sitting._ Here I follow _Pc_ and the papyri generally in reading ⁂⁂. The scribe of _Ca_ seems to have been thinking of ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ of a well-known magic text (Unas, 320).

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Footnote 49:

See chapter 21, 1.

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