tion, p. 80.] The original
purpose of the composition of this text cannot be said, but there is
little doubt that it was intended, to benefit the deceased in the
judgment, and, if we translate its title literally, it was intended to
prevent his heart from "falling away from him in the underworld." In the
first part of it the deceased, after adjuring his heart, says, "May
naught stand up to oppose me in the judgment; may there be no opposition
to me in the presence of the sovereign princes; may there be no parting
of thee from me in the presence of him that keepeth the Balance!... May
the officers of the court of Osiris (in Egyptian _Shenit_), who form the
conditions of the lives of men, not cause my name to stink! Let [the
judgment] be satisfactory unto me, let the hearing be satisfactory unto
me, and let me have joy of heart at the weighing of words. Let not that
which is false be uttered against me before the Great God, the Lord of
Amentet."

Now, although the papyrus upon, which this statement and prayer are
found was written about two thousand years after Men-kau-R[=a] reigned,
there is no doubt that they were copied from texts which were themselves
copied at a much earlier period, and that the story of the finding of
the text inscribed upon an iron slab is contemporary with its actual
discovery by Herut[=a]t[=a]f. It is not necessary to inquire here
whether the word "find" (in Egyptian _qem_) means a genuine discovery or
not, but it is clear that those who had the papyrus copied saw no
absurdity or impropriety in ascribing the text to the period of
Men-kau-R[=a]. Another text, which afterwards also became a chapter of
the Book of the Dead, under the title "Chapter of not letting the heart
of the deceased be driven away from him in the underworld," was
inscribed on a coffin of the XIth dynasty, about B.C. 2500, and in it we
have the following petition: "May naught stand up to oppose me in
judgment in the presence of the lords of the trial (literally, 'lords of
things'); let it not be said of me and of that which I have done, 'He
hath done deeds against that which is very right and true'; may naught
be against me in the presence of the Great God, the Lord of Amentet."
[Footnote: _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p. 78.] From these
passages we are right in assuming that before the end of the IVth
dynasty the idea of being "weighed in the balance" was already evolved;
that the religious schools of Egypt had assigned t