A BOOK OF THE BEGINNINGS
END NOTES TO VOLUME 2
[1] [Num. 23:3. 'And Balaam said unto Balak, Stand by thy burnt offering, and I will go: peradventure the LORD will come to meet me: and whatsoever he showeth me I will tell thee. And he went to an high place.']
[2] [Renouf, HL, 177. 'The most accurate knowledge of the Egyptian vocabulary and grammar will, however, not suffice to pierce the obscurity arising from what M. de Rouge called symbols or allegories which are in fact simply mythological allusions. The difficulty is not in literally translating the text, but in understanding the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar words. Dr. Birch's translation, though made about thirty years ago, before some of the most important discoveries of the full meanings of words, may still be considered extremely exact as a rendering of the corrupt Turin text, and to an Englishman gives nearly as correct an impression of the original as the text itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been carefully taught the mysteries of his religion. Many parts of this translation, however, when most faithful to the original, must, in consequence of that very fidelity, be utterly unintelligible to an English reader.' See Renouf's tr., of the Book of the Dead here.]
[3] [Never issued as such. The works appeared as Sacred Books of the East, alas without Birch's Ritual.]
[4] ['The Funereal Ritual or Book of the Dead,' Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. 5, pp. 335-586. And cached here.]
[5] [HL, 29-30. 'Many of you have probably read Mr.
McLennan's articles on the "Worship of Animals and Plants." [In FR 7,
194-216.] In order to show that the ancient notions passed through what he
calls the Totem stage, which he says must have been in pre-historic times, he
appeals to the signs of the Zodiac. "The Zodiacal constellations figured on the
porticos of Dendera and Esne in Egypt are," he says, "of great antiquity." The
authority for this statement is a passage from Chambers Encyclopaedia, to the
effect that "Dupuis, in his Origine des Cultes, [cached
here;
see his appendix] has, from a careful investigation of the position of these
signs, and calculating precession at the usual rate, arrived at a conclusion
that the earliest of them date from 4000 B.C. M. Fourier, in his Recherches
sur la Science, makes the representation at Esne 1800 years older than M.
Dupuis." Mr. McLellan is here more than half a century behind his age. Every
tourist on the Nile in possession of Murray's Handbook, knows that both Dupuis
and Fourier were ludicrously mistaken. The Zodiacal representations in question,
far from being of great antiquity, belong to the very latest period of Egyptian
workmanship; they are not anterior to the Christian era or the Roman domination;
they were borrowed from the Greeks, and were entirely unknown to the ancient
Egyptians.'
See A. Collins, Gods of Eden, etc, and other authorities.]
[6] [Dumichen, Bauerkunde der Tempelanlagen von
Dendera, S. 15-19.
Brugsch, Histoire d'Égypt des les premiers temps de sen existence
jusqu'à nos jours
, pl. 5. scutch. 50.]
[7] [Egypt's Place in Universal History, vol. 1, p. 11. 'The Egyptians, therefore, alluded principally, if not exclusively, to this book, when they described Darius as having learned from their sacred books their mythology, as well as the magnanimity and clemency of their ancient rulers, for which qualities he was himself so much distinguished and beloved. The second class comprised the so-called astrological books, four in number, a knowledge of which was required on the part of the Horoscopus. The first treated of the system of the fixed stars, the second and third of the solar and lunar conjunction, and the phases of the moon; the fourth of the 'risings,' i.e. of the sun, moon, and stars in general. Originally, doubtless, their contents were purely astronomical, relating to the constellations (not the twelve signs of the zodiac, however), the synodic epochs, and the rising of particular stars.' Bunsen goes on to maintain that these books were wholly mythical and did not mean the Egyptians were on possession of knowledge relating to astronomy, and therefore also the signs of the zodiac.]
[8] [Austin, 'On a Fragmentary Inscription of Psametik I, in the Museum of Palermo.' See full text here.]