373 
in the length of his back, living off the dead, strangling their 
spirits.” Him the Osirian beseeches — 
“ Draw thy teeth, weaken thy venom, or thou dost not pass by me. Do 
not send thy venom to me, overthrowing and prostrating me through it.” 
Or, more properly, “ Be thy teeth broken, and thy venom 
weakened ; come not against me, emit not thy venom against 
me, overthrowing and prostrating (me) through it.” (Renouf.) 
Finally, at the door of the sixteenth abode resides another 
snake, at the mouth of the heavenly Nile, who is pacified 
by offerings of food and grain. Other magical addresses 
follow these, and the rubric of the last chapter ends thus : — 
“ This book is the greatest of all mysteries ; do not let the 
Fig. 87. Wooden votive figure of the goddess Urhapt. (From a statue in the British 
Museum, restored by the help of a similar figure in the Leyden Museum.) 
eye of any one see it, that is detestable. Learn it, hide it, 
make it. The Book of the Ruler of the Secret Place is it 
named. It is ended.”* 
36. Such, then, is a summary of the contents of the most 
ancient ritual extant. From it have probably been derived 
all the later systems of Ophiolatry, as in its pages are pre- 
served the deflected echoes of a primitive revelation. Pos- 
sessing extraordinary coincidences with later dogmas, there is 
yet little doubt that the condition of the work as we now 
have it is one of great and wilful mutilation — whole chapters 
are inverted, and sentences misconstrued. Nor can the result 
be wondered at when it is recollected that, to quote Professor 
Lyell,f no language is extant after a lapse of a thousand years, 
# Ruhak or Urtuk is, as before mentioned, occasionally represented as a 
goddess in the form of an upright urseus, with its tail coiled in a kind of bow- 
knot for a pedestal. Several votivi, in wood, to this goddess are in the 
British Museum, Cases 10 and 11, Upper Egyptian Saloon, 
t Elements of Geology. 
