AMULETS: ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, ORIENTAL 319
Ο
ye gods who seize upon Hearts, and who pluck out the Whole Heart; and
whose hands fashion anew the Heart of a person according to what he
hath done; lo now, let that be forgiven to him by yon.
Hail to you, Ο ye Lords of Everlasting Time and Eternity !
Let not my Heart be torn from me by your fingers.
Let not my Heart be fashioned anew according to all the evil things said against me.
For
this Heart of mine is the Heart of the god of mighty names [Thoth], of
the great god whose words are in his members, and who giveth free
course to his Heart which is within him.
And
most keen of insight is his heart among the gods. Ho to me! Heart of
mine : I am in possession of thee, I am thy master, and thou art by me;
fall not away from me; I am the dictator to whom thou shalt obey in the
Netherworld.
Were
there sufficient evidence as to the use of jade by the ancient
Egyptians, we might be justified in finding an allusion to this
substance in the 160th chapter of the Book of the Dead. This chapter
was to be inscribed upon a small column made of a green stone (Benouf
translates "green feldspar"), as appears in the text, which reads, in
part, as follows :
I am the column of green feldspar which cannot be crushed, and which is raised by the hand of Thoth.
Injury
is an abomination for it. If it is safe, I am safe; if it is not
injured, I am not injured ; if it receives no cut, I receive no cut.
Said by Thoth : arise, come in peace, lord of Heliopolis, lord who resides at Pu.
The
text is accompanied by a vignette in which Thoth is represented
bringing the column enclosed in a box or casket. This is one of the
forms of the neshem-stone, a name used in Egyptian as widely and vaguely as was smaragdus in
Latin. One thing is, however, quite evident, the material designated
here must have been of exceptional hardness and toughness, for the
special virtue of the column-amulet was to make the body as hard and
indestructible as itself. Liei-
