Description
Book SynopsisAmong the numerous deities in the ancient Egyptian mythology, whose nature and function are still vague and obscure, are mś.w Bdšt – ‘Children of Weakness’. These beings are twice mentioned in the Book of the Dead chapter 17. The text fragments contain two local versions of the myth with mś.w Bdšt – Hermopolitan (Urk. V: Abs. 1), and Heliopolitan (Urk. V: Abs. 22). Since the last text describes the combat between Re and the ‘Children of Weakness’, the same is likely to be reflected on the vignette, which depicts the battle of Re against mś.w Bdšt, metaphorically shown in the form of a serpent. This book is a comprehensive study of the ‘Children of Weakness’ myth and the scene depicting the cat, cutting off the head of the serpent under the branches of the išd-tree found on the number of Book of the Dead chapter 17 vignettes.
Table of ContentsPreface; Chapter 1: The scene with the cat, serpent and sacred tree, 19th–21st Dynasties; Chapter 2: Correlation between text and visual image; Chapter 3: Mś.w Bdšt – the sources and the plot; Chapter 4: Mś.w Bdšt in the context of BD 175A, BD 123, CT Sp. 409, pBrooklyn 47.218.84 and the Book of Heavenly Cow – the Cosmogonic myth dénouement; Chapter 5: Mś.w Bdšt in the Book of Gates; Chapter 6: Mś.w Bdšt – the name and the image; Chapter 7: Essence of mś.w Bdšt in the Egyptian world view; Conclusion; Appendix 1: Catalogue of sources; Appendix 2: Selected texts; Abbreviations; Bibliography
