Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 32--Legends of the Gods.pdf/64

III.

 

The Legend of Rā and Isis.

 

The original text of this very interesting legend is written in the hieratic character on a papyrus preserved at Turin, and was published by Pleyte and Rossi in their Corpus of Turin Papyri.^[1] French and German translations of it were published by Lefébure,^[2] and Wiedemann^[3] respectively, and summaries of its con­tents were given by Erman^[4] and Maspero.^[5] A transcript of the hieratic text into hieroglyphics, with transliteration and translation, was published by me in 1895.^[6]

It has already been seen that the god Rā, when retiring from the government of this world, took steps through Thoth to supply mankind with words of power and spells with which to protect themselves against the bites of serpents and other noxious reptiles. The legend of the Destruction of Mankind affords no explanation of this remarkable fact, but when we read the following legend of Rā and Isis we understand why Rā, though king of the gods, was afraid of the reptiles which lived in the kingdom of Ḳeb. The legend, or “Chapter of the Divine God,” begins by enumerating the mighty attributes of Rā as the creator of the

1. Papyrus de Turin, pll. 31, 77, 131-138.
2. Ä. Z., 1883, p. 27 ff.
3. Die Religion, p. 29.
4. Aegypten, p. 359 ff.
5. Les Origines, p. 162-4.
6. First Steps in Egyptian, p. 241 ff.

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