departed] who is faithful to the great God. May he advance upon the blissful paths upon which those advance who are faithful to the great God. May the funereal oblations be paid to him at the beginning of the year, on the feast of Tehuti, on the first day of the year, on the feast of Uaka, on the feasts of the Great and of the Small Heat, on the apparition of Sechem, at the feast of Uāh-āch, at the feasts of each month and the half-month and every day."
Such is the ordinary formula, which however admits of variations and additions, especially in the later inscriptions. I will mention one or two not more recent than the sixth dynasty. One of them consists in the repetition of the words em hotep, "in peace," like the בֹשלם of the Hebrew and the In pace of the Christian funereal inscriptions. It is extremely frequent in Egyptian texts, and may really be the origin of the Jewish and Christian form of petition for the departed, though the primitive signification has been altered.
There is also a petition that the departed may "traverse the firmament" "in company with the perfect spirits of the nether world." The word ba, which I translate firmament, properly signifies "steel."[1] The notions of blue and of steel seem to have been associated in the Egyptian mind, and the colour of the sky sug-
- ↑ Cf. the Homeric σιδήρεον οὐρανὸν, Od. xv. 329, xvii. 565. We have already met with another conception of heaven, namely, as an ocean upon which the sun travels in his bark.
