Lecture VIII. The Sacred Books. 173
whether that be the fields of Alu or the bark of the Sun.
The chapters which follow are intended to restore voice,
memory, and name to the dead man. With the restoration of his
name comes the restoration of his individuality, for that which
has no name has no individuality. Then follows (in chapters
xxvi.-xxx.) the restoration of his heart, which is regarded first
as a mere organ of the body, and then in the Osirian sense as
the equivalent of the conscience. As an organ, the figure of a [188]
heart placed in the tomb was sufficient to ensure its return; as
the living conscience and principle of life, something of a more
mysterious and symbolic nature was needed. This was found in
the scarab or beetle, whose namekheperhappened to coincide in
sound with the word that signified“to become.”^155
In a series of chapters the soul is now protected against the
poisonous serpents, including“the great python who devours the
ass,”which it will meet with in its passage through the limbo of
the other world. As Professor Maspero remarks, the large place
occupied by these serpents among the dangers which await the
soul on its first exit from the body, make it plain that in the days
when the Book of the Dead was first being compiled, venomous
snakes were far more plentiful than they ever have been in the
Egypt of historical times. Indeed, the python, whose huge folds
are still painted on the walls of the royal tombs of Thebes, had
(^155) The inscribed scarab does not seem to be older than the age of the Eleventh
Dynasty, when it began to take the place of the cylinder as a seal. At all
events there is no authentic record of the discovery of one in any tomb of an
earlier date, and the scarabs with the names of Neb-ka-ra, Khufu, and other
early kings, were for the most part made in the time of the Twenty-sixth
Dynasty. It is possible, however, that some at least of the scarabs which bear
the name of Ra-n-ka of the Eighth Dynasty are contemporaneous with the
Pharaoh whose name is written upon them. If so, they are the oldest inscribed
scarabs with which we are acquainted. Uninscribed scarabs, however, go back
to the prehistoric age. The use of the scarab as an amulet is already referred to
in the Pyramid texts. And Dr. Reisner has discovered green porcelain beetles in
the prehistoric graves of Negadiyâ, along with other green porcelain amulets,
such as turtles, etc.