ast. The serpent Nau is
inside me. I will set it on thee; thy flame shall not approach me.

"Get thee back, thou Crocodile of the South, that feedest upon
waste, garbage, and filth. That which is thy taboo is in me.... I
am Sept.[1]

"Get thee back, thou Crocodile of the South. I will fetter thee. My
charm is among the reeds (?). I will not yield unto thee.

"Get thee back, thou Crocodile of the North, that feedest upon what
is left by the hours. That which is thy taboo is in me. The
emissions shall [not] fall upon my head. I am Tem.[2]

"Get thee back, thou Crocodile of the North, for the
Scorpion-goddess[3] is inside me, unborn (?). I am Uatch-Merti
(?).[4]

"Created things are in the hollow of my hand, and the things that
are not yet made are inside me. I am clothed in and supplied with
thy spells, O Ra, which are above me and beneath me.... I am Ra,
the self-protected, no evil thing whatsoever shall overthrow me"
(Chap. XXXII).

[Footnote 1: A god of the Eastern Delta and a local form of the Sun-god
early in the day.]

[Footnote 2: The primeval god, a form of Pautti, the oldest Egyptian
god.]

[Footnote 3: She was called "Serqet."]

[Footnote 4: A green-eyed serpent-god, or goddess, equipped with great
power to destroy.]

CHAPTER V

BOOKS OF THE DEAD OF THE GRAECO-ROMAN PERIOD

From what has been said in the preceding chapter it will be clear that
only wealthy people could afford to bury copies of the great Book of the
Dead with their deceased relatives. Whether the chapters that formed it
were written on coffins or on papyrus the cost of copying the work by a
competent scribe must have been relatively very great. Towards the close
of the twenty-sixth dynasty a feeling spread among the Egyptians that
only certain parts of the Book of the Dead were essential for the
resurrection of the body and for the salvation of the soul, and men
began to bury with their dead copies of the most important chapters of
it in a very much abridged form. A little later the scribes produced a
number of works, in which they included only such portions of the most
important chapters as were considered necessary to effect the
resurrection of the body. In other words, they rejected all the old
magical elements in the Book of the Dead, and preserved only the texts
and formulae that appertain