Egyptian Literature/The Book of the Dead/On Coming Forth by Day
ON COMING FORTH BY DAY
[From the Papyrus of Nebseni (British Museum No. 9,900, sheets 23 and 24).]
The Chapter of coming forth by day in the underworld. Nebseni, the lord of reverence, saith:
“I am Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow, [and I have] the power to be born a second time; [I am] the divine hidden Soul who createth the gods, and who giveth sepulchral meals unto the denizens of the Tuat (underworld), Amentet, and heaven. [I am] the rudder of the east, the possessor of two divine faces wherein his beams are seen. I am the lord of the men who are raised up; [the lord] who cometh forth from out of the darkness, and whose forms of existence are of the house wherein are the dead. Hail, ye two hawks who are perched upon your resting-places, who hearken unto the things which are said by him, who guide the bier to the hidden place, who lead along Rā, and who follow [him] into the uppermost place of the shrine which is in the celestial heights! [Hail,] lord of the shrine which standeth in the middle of the earth. He is I, and I am he, and Ptah hath covered his sky with crystal. [Hail] Rā, thou who art content, thy heart is glad by reason of thy beautiful law of the day; thou enterest in by Khemennu(?) and comest forth at the east, and the and who hath not touched women, and who hath not eaten flesh of animals or fish.”