Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/169

 bitterly of the persistent annoyance caused to him by his deceased wife.

Possession.

The most terrific form, however, of annoyance is that caused by what we commonly call possession. We are accustomed to hear of possession by evil spirits only, but this is because from a Christian point of view possession by spirits is necessarily incompatible with the goodness of the spirits; but the Greek was not necessarily an evil spirit, nor was the Egyptian chut. There is an interesting inscription now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, the translation of which was first given by Dr. Birch. It records the possession by a spirit of the princess of Bechten, an Asiatic country which has not yet been satisfactorily identified. She was connected by marriage with the court of Egypt. Her sister had been married to one of the kings of the twentieth dynasty. She had fallen ill, and an Egyptian practitioner who, at her father's request, had been summoned to see her, declared that she was possessed by a spirit (chut) with