The mystery of the Great pyramid : traditions concerning it and its connection with the Egyptian Book of the dead : with numerous illustrations

MYSTERY OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

chapters had become so numerous that it was all important to compose or edit one of the chapters which then existed in such a way that it should contain all the knowledge necessary to the dead for their salvation. If this view is correct, we have here-an extraordinary proof of the antiquity of certain parts of the Book of the Dead. ‘The contents of the sixty-fourth chapter are of a remarkable nature, and there is no doubt that in all periods of Egyptian history it was believed to contain the essence of the Book of the Dead, and to be equal in value to all its other chapters, and to possess a protective power over the dead which was no less than that of all the other chapters taken together.”

It is to the Saite Recension that belongs the version entitled, according to the Rubric to the 162nd chapter, Book of the Master of the Hidden Places (see p. 57 above), and in which is pictured the soul of the holy departed as following the passages and chambers of the Great Pyramid, which itself is represented as an allegory in stone of the trials of the future life.

This fact probably accounts for the name of Heru-tat-ef, the son of Khufu, the Great Pyramid builder, appearing in one of the Rubrics to chapter lxiv, which was—as noted above—the most important chapter of any, forming an epitome of the whole Book, and again in the Rubrics to chapters xxxb and cxxxviia, as having “ found ” them, an expression Sir Wallis Budge explains as probably meaning not merely a ‘“‘ discovery ”’ only, but as having “ revised ” or “ edited ”’ them, such inclusion being an attempt on the part of the compilers of this particular recension to refer back the origin of the Book of the Dead to the Great Pyramid kings of the Fourth Dynasty (see Note 5). And in this connection Professor Breasted tells us (History of Egypt) that it was during the Twenty-sixth—or Saite Dynasty—‘“ the worship of the kings who had ruled at