Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/214

 Chemun is the Egyptian name of Hennopolis, but it also signifies the number Eight. The "children of inertness" are the elementary forces of nature, which according to Egyptian ideas were eight in number. These elements, born out of chaos or inertness, henceforth became active, and were made to rule the world under Rā as the demiurgus.

The text proceeds—"I am the great God, self-existent;" but a longer recension adds, "that is to say the Water, that is to say Nu, the father of the gods." According to a gloss, the self-existent god is Rā Nu, the father of the gods, and other glosses speak of Rā as "creating his name as lord of all the gods, or as producing his limbs, which become the gods who are in his company." Besides this cosmology, the chapter contains a number of interesting details on the mythology and on the symbolism which is connected with it; as, for instance, that the ithyphallic god Amesi is Horus, the avenger of his father, and that the two feathers upon his head are the twin sisters Isis and Nephthys.

The sixty-fourth chapter is scarcely less interesting; but in spite of the excellent labours of M. Guyesse, who has carefully edited and translated several recensions of it, much remains to be done before it can be