Budge, Ernest A. Wallis [Bearb.]: The book of the dead: the Papyrus Ani in the British Museum ; the Egyptian text with interlinear transliteration and translation, a running translation, introd. etc. ([Text]) (London, 1895)

CVlll

INTRODUCTION.

and gave birth to his body, and established unending and unvarying right and
truth upon the earth.” As a solar god he is called “Ptah, the Disk of heaven, who

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illumineth the world by the fire of his eyes,”

; and in the Book of the Dead he is said to have “opened” the mouth of
the deceased with the tool A—, with which he opened the mouths of the gods.1
He is depicted in the form of a mummy standing upon maat ||, and in his hands
he holds a sceptre on the top of which are j, jj, the emblems of power, life,

and stability ; from the back of his neck hangs the menat (see p. i, note 2).2
Ptah formed at Memphis the chief member of the triacl Ptah-Sekhet and
Nefer-Tmu.

, whose

In many texts the god Ptah is often joined to the god Seker
individual attributes it is not easy to describe ; Seker is the Egyptian name of the
incarnation of the Apis bull at Memphis. That Seker was a solar god is quite clear,
but whether he “closed ” the day or the night is not certain. Originally his festival
was celebrated in the evening, wherefrom it appears that he represented some
form of the night sun ; but in later times the ceremony of drawing the image of the

god Seker in the hennu boat -A/ round the sanctuary was performed in the

morning at dawn, and thus, united with Ptah, he became the closer of the night
and the opener of the day. He is depicted as a mummied body with the head of

a hawk, and he sometimes holds in his hands ,/\, J, emblems of power,
sovereignty, and rule.3

Another form of Ptah was Ptah-Seker-Ausar wherein the

creator of the world, the sun, and Osiris as the god of the dead, were represented.
A large number of faience figures of this triune gocl are found in graves, and
specimens exist in all museums. He is represented as a dwarf standing upon a
crocodile, and having a scarabseus upon his heacl ; the scarab is the emblem of the
new life into which the deceased is about to break, the crocodile is the emblem of
the darkness of death which has been overcome. According to some the element
of Ptah in the triad is the personification of the period of incubation which follows

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Naville, Todtenbuch, Bd. I., Bl. 34, 11. 4, 5.

Lanzone. op. cit., tavv. 87-91.

3 Lanzone, op. cit., tav. 368.