Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C. -- Fiction; Historical fiction
Amenhotep’s possession of the Book must have been a fact. How else could
he have erected the colossal Temple to the “spirit” of the late Pharaoh;
how otherwise could he have built the Temple at Kha-en-Mat, the beautiful
Temple on the Island and the great colonnaded Temple of Amen, upon
which, at the command of Pharaoh Akhten-aton, work had but recently been
relinquished.
Indeed, without Thoth to assist him, who could have raised the two great
statues of the late Pharaoh, over seven hundred tons in weight. Who could
have lifted above the court the stupendous architraves of his Mortuary
Temple, two hundred tons of stone, and, finally, who could have perfected
the huge stone tablet, thirty feet in height, and covered it with gold
and gems? None but the God Thoth, of course!
But, would Thoth willingly stop the Sunboat and descend to earth merely
to raise for men monuments that should rival the very halls of the gods
themselves?
Not unless compelled thereto by the fact that his _Names_ were known to
mortals, his stolen _Talismans_ in the possession of some inhabitant of
earth.
One object alone on earth contained those Hidden Names and Talismans,
together with the “Utterances” which could compel both Thoth and Set to
leave their appointed places in the sky and descend to earth.
This series of irresistible “incantations,” these compelling
“utterances” which could thus drag the very gods from heaven, were all
contained in the “Luminous Book of Thoth.”
Herein were inscribed the Hidden Names of all the Gods, the Triads, the
Enneads of the Sky. Herein were the Mysterious Names of the Keepers of
the Double Gates of Heaven; of the Serpents that guard the approaches of
Duat, of Ra in his Boat, of Osiris on his Throne!
So awe-inspiring a hold upon the imagination of the Thebans had the
legend of this mysterious Book that its name was never mentioned. Rarely,
indeed, was it alluded to by the priests.
Like that of Pharaoh, the sun-god manifest in the flesh, like that of
the Unseen Statue of the Great Temple of Amen, like that of the abhorred
Crocodile God of Ombos, its name was never taken upon the lips.
When the architect Amenhotep, son of Hap, was gathered to his fathers,
Pharaoh commanded that he should be buried beneath a little temple which
stood somewhat to the south of his own stupendous mortuary temple.
Here, for a time, Unis had acted as lector, intoning the prayers and
offering to the hidden _ka_-statue of the dead architect the various
portions of meat, bread and wine with which Pharaoh had endowed the tomb,
out of taxes received from the nearby town of Onit. In so doing, Unis
stood immediately above the subterranean chamber in which the mummy of
Amenhotep lay.
Unis had been called from his duties at the son of Hap’s tomb by Enana,
and set to work among the ancient manuscripts of the great library of
Amen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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