Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/553

Rh in the ''Jahrb. d. Ver. v. Alterthumsfr. i. Rheinlande'' 86, p. 46 a. f.

Re usually refers to the mouth, but also at times to other orifices, for instance the mouth of the stomach and here, according to the context, of the phallus. Cher, carries the explanatory mark of the flowing wound, and hence must be rendered by "flowing," not "speaking."

We have here a thoroughly Egyptian inconsistency. Just now Ra was the god who created everything, but immediately afterwards his father is mentioned, i. e., the personified primordial waters, chaos conceived as a liquid, from which other legends make the world and the gods came forth. Our legend generally conceives Nu only as pre-existent matter, beside which the one deity pre-exists.

The meaning of this somewhat obscure sentence is: When I had created Shu and Tefnut, they trembled—not with reverence, probably, but to show their vitality as Batan in "Pap. d'Orbiney" 14, 1, trembled when life returned to him. My eye, the sun, was behind them for centuries and gave them light. Then they became independent so that there were three individual gods. When this had happened I went into this land, on the newly created earth, and when Shu and Tefnut who had remained in the primordial waters saw this, they were glad and came to me and brought with them, in their following, my eye, the sun, which I had left with them at first.

The idea that men came from the eyes of the sun-god appears repeatedly in the texts. In the representation of the four races of men in the grave of Seti I., the god, who is here