Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/190

 And yet the difficulties which a translator has to overcome are very great.

In the first place, the text is extremely corrupt. This unsatisfactory condition of the text is owing to different causes. The reasons which writers on Hebrew, Greek or Latin palaeography have enumerated for the purpose of accounting for mistakes in manuscripts, apply with much greater force to the funereal manuscripts of the Egyptians; for as these were not intended to be seen by any mortal eye, but to remain for ever undisturbed in the tomb, the unconscientious scribe had no such check upon his carelessness as if his work were liable to be subjected to the constant inspection of the living. But the most conscientious scribe might easily admit numerous errors. Many of our finest manuscripts in hieroglyphic characters are evidently copied from texts written in the cursive or, as it is called, the hieratic character. Many of the errors of the manuscripts are to be traced to a confusion between signs which resemble each other in hieratic but not in hieroglyphic writing.

Besides the errors of copyists, there are different readings, the origin of which is to be traced to the period during which the chapters were handed down by word of mouth only. There are copies which bear evidence that a critical choice has been made between the different readings of a passage; but the common practice was to admit the inconsistent readings into