Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/192

 difficulty is not in literally translating the text, but in understanding the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar words. Dr. Birch's translation, though made about thirty years ago, before some of the most important discoveries of the full meanings of words, may still be considered extremely exact as a rendering of the corrupt Turin text, and to an Englishman gives nearly as correct an impression of the original as the text itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been carefully taught the mysteries of his religion. Many parts of this translation, however, when most faithful to the original, must, in consequence of that very fidelity, be utterly unintelligible to an English reader.

The Book of the Dead, I repeat, is essentially mythological, and, like all other Egyptian books of the kind, it assumes the reader's thorough knowledge of the myths and legends. It is perhaps hopeless to expect that the legends will be recovered; the allusions to them will no doubt always remain obscure. But the mythical personages who are constantly mentioned are the very gods about whom I spoke in the last Lecture: Rā and his family and the dragon Apap, Seb and his family, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set and Nephthys. Thoth is one of the most important names which occur. If the explanation which I gave of these personages is