Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts, edited with TranslationsBudge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
General
Legends of the Gods: The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations
Budge, E. A. Wallis (Ernest Alfred Wallis), Sir
Egyptian literature -- Translations into English; Mythology, Egyptian
The legend, after enumerating the great names of Rameses II., goes on
to state that the king was in the "country of the two rivers," by which
we are to understand some portion of Mesopotamia, the rivers being the
Tigris and Euphrates, and that the local chiefs were bringing to him
tribute consisting of gold, lapis-lazuli, turquoise, and logs of wood
from the Land of the God. It is difficult to understand how gold and
logs of wood from Southern Arabia and East Africa came to be produced
as tribute by chiefs who lived so far to the north. Among those who
sent gifts was the Prince of Bekhten, and at the head of all his
tribute he sent his eldest daughter, bearing his message of homage and
duty. Now the maiden was beautiful, and the King of Egypt thought her
so lovely that be took her to wife, and bestowed upon her the name "Ra-
neferu," which means something like the "beauties of Ra." He took her
back with him to Egypt, where she was installed as Queen.
During the summer of the fifteenth year of his reign, whilst Rameses
II. was celebrating a festival of Amen-Ra in the Temple of Luxor, one
came to him and reported that an envoy had arrived from the Prince of
Bekhten, bearing with him many gifts for the Royal Wife Ra-neferu.
When the envoy had been brought into the presence, he addressed words
of homage to the king, and, having presented the gifts from his lord,
he said that he had come to beg His Majesty to send a "learned man,"
i.e., a magician, to Bekhten to attend Bent-enth-resh, His Majesty's
sister-in-law, who was stricken with some disease. Thereupon the king
summoned the learned men of the House of Life, i.e., the members of the
great College of Magic at Thebes, and the qenbetu officials, and when
they had entered his presence, he commanded them to select a man of
"wise heart and deft fingers" to go to Bekhten. The choice fell upon
one Tehuti-em-heb, and His Majesty sent him to Bekhten with the envoy.
When they arrived in Bekhten, Tehuti-em-heb found that the Princess
Bent-enth-resh was possessed by an evil spirit which refused to be
exorcised by him, and he was unable to cast out the devil. The Prince
of Bekhten, seeing that the healing of his daughter was beyond the
power of the Egyptian, sent a second envoy to Rameses II., and besought
him to send a god to drive out the devil. This envoy arrived in Egypt
in the summer of the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rameses II., and
found the king celebrating a festival in Thebes. When he heard the
petition of the envoy, he went to the Temple of Khensu Nefer-hetep "a
second time,"[FN#38] and presented himself before the god and besought
his help on behalf of his sister-in-law.
[FN#38] Thus the king must have invoked the help of Khensu on the
occasion of the visit of the first envoy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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