as a "most wonderful" thing. This composition was greatly reverenced,
for it "would make a man victorious upon earth and in the Other World;
it would ensure him a safe and free passage through the Tuat (Under
World); it would allow him to go in and to go out, and to take at
any time any form he pleased; it would make his soul to flourish, and
would prevent him from dying the [second] death." For the deceased to
receive the full benefit of this text it had to be recited by a man
"who was ceremonially pure, and who had not eaten fish or meat, and
had not consorted with women." On coffins of the XIth dynasty and on
papyri of the XVIIIth dynasty we find two versions of the PER-T EM HRU,
one long and one short. As the title of the shorter version states
that it is the "Chapters of the PER-T EM HRU in a single chapter,"
it is clear that this work, even under the IVth dynasty, contained
many "Chapters," and that a much abbreviated form of the work was also
current at the same period. The rubric that attributes the "finding" of
the Chapter to Herutataf associates it with Khemenu, i.e., Hermopolis,
and indicates that Thoth, the god of this city, was its author.

The work PER-T EM HRU received many additions in the course of
centuries, and at length, under the XVIIIth dynasty, it contained about
190 distinct compositions, or "Chapters." The original forms of many
of these are to be found in the "Pyramid Texts" (i.e., the funerary
compositions cut on the walls of the chambers and corridors of the
pyramids of Kings Unas, Teta, Pepi I Meri-Ra, Merenra and Pepi II at
Sakkârah), which were written under the Vth and VIth dynasties. The
forms which many other chapters had under the XIth and XIIth dynasties
are well represented by the texts painted on the coffins of Amamu,
Sen, and Guatep in the British Museum (Nos. 6654, 30839, 30841),
but it is possible that both these and the so-called "Pyramid Texts"
all belonged to the work PER-T EM HRU, and are extracts from it. The