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Six Gods, Six Denials

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Six Gods, Six Denials

Declarations six through eleven of the forty two negative confessions in Spell one hundred twenty five of the Book of the Dead have the dead person address a different god or divine form with each line, denying a specific wrong before that particular judge. Hail, god in the form of two lions, who comest forth from heaven, I have not diminished the offerings brought to a god, the speaker states, moving next to a god whose eyes are of fire, before whom the claim is that no theft from a god has occurred, then to a flame deity, before whom the claim is that no lie has been spoken. Later declarations in this run deny crushing bones, meaning theft of food from the dead, causing pain to another, and committing sexual wrongdoing. E. A. Wallis Budge's translation, drawn from the Papyrus of Ani, prints a text with one small slip corrected here, hall for hail, and each declaration keeps the same structure throughout the spell, a greeting naming the god by an image tied to that god's own nature, followed by a single denial answering to that specific god's concern. Several of the divine images invoked in this run, a form of two lions, a flame that comes and goes, a crusher of bones, describe not the gods of the wider Egyptian pantheon by their familiar names but guardian forms specific to the spell itself, figures whose entire attested role in Egyptian religion is to preside over one line of this one confession.

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The Egyptian Book of the Dead
E.A. Wallis Budge (trans.), Sold at the British Museum, and by Longmans and Co., B. Quaritch, Asher and Co., Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., and Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, per the book's own 1895 title page, whi, 1895Declarations six to eleven of the negative confession in Spell 125View the Source
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