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178
LECTURE V.
borne in mind, one great difficulty in the interpretation of the Book of the Dead will be overcome. The subject always is the contest between Darkness and light. Ptah, "the Opener," or "the Artist,"[1] and Chnemu, "the Builder,"[2] are only names of the Sun. Tmu,[3] "the Closer," whose name occurs more frequently, is also one of the principal designations of the Sun. The fifteenth chapter gives an instance of the very different mythological treatment which the same physical phenomenon may receive, according as it is looked at from different points of view. Osiris, Horus and even Rā, suffer death or dismemberment; but Tmu is daily received into the arms of his mother Nut as he sinks into the west, and the arms of his father Tanen close
- ↑ The Egyptian Ptah, like the Hebrew כָּתַח [(aperuit, and in the Pihel terram aperuit aratro, aravit et (quod huic simile est) sculpsit, insculpsit tum ligno, tunc gemmis, etiam de ornandis lapidibus ad aedificandum. Gresenius] combines the sense of opening, or rather laying open, with that of artistic work. The primitive meaning is opening, and there are well-known instances of it in old Egyptian, but it no longer exists in Coptic, which has only retained the sense of sculpere. It was because the Sun was the Opener that he was considered the Artist, especially in Memphis, the seat of the arts, of which he was the chief divinity.
- ↑ The word is used as a common noun, and as the name of a profession. See Brugsch, "Bau u. Maasse des Tempels von Edfu," in the Zeitschr. 1872, p. 5.
- ↑ Otherwise written Atmu, the prosthetic vowel being prefixed as a support to the two consonants at the beginning of a word. For the meaning "shut," "close," of the word tmu, see Brugsch's Lexicon. It is preserved in Coptic.
