ABSTRACT

This question has been treated of in some detail by von Lemm in Das Ritualbuch des Ammondienstes, and has also been touched upon by Erman in A Handbook of Egyptian Religion (English trans., pp. 45 foIL), but it has received most attention at the hands of Moret in his very learned work entitled Le rituel du culte divin journalier en Egypte. This consists of a transcription into hieroglyphic of the Berlin hieratic papyrus No. 3055,1 the so-called Ritual for Amun, and an accompanying translation and commentary. With several of Monsieur Moret's conclusions I do not find myself in agreement. I cannot, for example, accept his theory that there was a twofold performance of the pre-toilet section of the daily temple liturgy.2 Furthermore, despite its position in the Ritual for Amun, I believe him to be mistaken in associating the pouring out of sand with the replacement of the statue in the shrine3 and also in regarding what appear as the last seven episodes in that Ritual as 'final purifications.'4 On the contrary, I maintain that the pouring out of the sand was one of the last of the pre-toilet episodes, and that six of these 'final purifications,' as also the episode immediately preceding them, belong to quite the beginning of the toilet, having been placed at the end of this version of the temple service-book by a scribe utterly ignorant or heedless of their real purport.