opening of the chapter is an addition. Yet it is unknown to the
primitive recension on the walls of Horhotep’s tomb, though found
everywhere else. The texts however which contain it do not agree. “I am
He who closeth, and He who openeth, and I am but One.” ‘He who closeth’
is ⁂⁂ _Tmu_, ‘He who openeth’ ⁂ _Unen_. As the god who closes
and who opens is one and the same, ‘I am but One,’ is a very natural
ending of the sentence, and for its sense the whole may appeal to
classical, and higher than classical, authority.
“Modo namque Patulcius idem
Et modo sacrifico Clusius ore vocor.”[25]
“I am Alpha and O, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.”[26]
The meaning of the Egyptian is quite plain, but the readings most
probably through the absence of determinatives in the oldest style are
somewhat different. Horhotep and other texts have ⁂⁂⁂⁂,
apparently as one word (compounded of _tmu_ and _unen_), which may
signify the ‘closer and opener,’ but Sebek-āa and later texts have
⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂. The papyrus of Nebseni has ⁂⁂, in the
third person, which does not alter the meaning, but this is quite an
isolated reading. The later recension, as represented by the Turin
_Todtenbuch_ and the Cadet papyrus, has ⁂⁂, which only prominently
brings forward, what is implied in all the other texts, that the Opener
is a god.[27] The absence of the determinative ⁂ after ⁂ is no
objection to the sense ‘opener,’ especially after ⁂⁂. It is
absolutely necessary when dealing with mythology to look to physical
rather than to metaphysical meanings. I have sufficiently discussed the
meanings of the word ⁂ in my essay on the Myth of Osiris Unnefer.
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PLATE III.
BOOK OF THE DEAD.