I was thinking about a project for myself. I was going to check the Stèle of Revealing and figure out the best modern translation of the hieroglyphics into my own interpretation. Well, I forgot about the modern transcription of the Stèle in the back of The Holy Books of Thelema. So, I took that and did the rest of the project. I didn’t go to The Book of the Dead and use the passages that the text of these things is based on, but that is something I could do.
I started with two additional ideas. The first is that for egyptian art, images are also fully meaningful words. This is based on ideas from Reading Egyptian Art. The second is that I wanted to tease out the meaning of the names of places and entities instead of leaving them opaque.
So here’s my notes, which I didn’t do a great job of keeping track of my sources; since this is mostly an artistic project. But, I may want to go back at some point fill that in with good ones. I honestly didn’t get too strict about where I got my information from if it seemed mostly reasonable to me.
- behdet: the winged solar disk, Heru of Edfu, he with coloured
plumage, world saviour, protector of the sacred - re-herakty: horus on the horizon, all time, beginning to end
- wesir/osiris: he sees the throne, immortal dead, the deceased
- sem priest: funereal high-priest, shaman
- monthu: nomad, war god, struggle, striving, scorching sun
- thebes: waset, was; power; cult center for The Powerful, wasret;
power, dominion; bull penis; animal of set - karnak: The Most Selected of Places
- ankh-af-na-khonsu: he lives for khonsu
- khonsu: the wanderer, the moon, devourer of hearts (devourer of hearts ~ eucharist, love under will)
- justified: pure of voice, judged worthy
- seat: throne, from the horizon
- re: noon sun, the creator
- atum: the first, the creation, the completion, setting sun, to be
complete - kephre: the motive force, the becoming, the rising sun, self created
- hathor: House of Heru (the falcon, the distant), the place of rest, the milky way, mother of light
- son of a man: inheritor / in the traditional role / from the family
- bes: protector – introduced, initiate
- en: to, for, belonging to, through, because
- mut: world-mother, primeval waters, uniter of two lands, queen of heaven
- bes-en-mut: child of midnight, initiate into secrets, fraternity of initiates
- amun-re: setting sun – noon
- taneshi: land of nesh?