Lecture: Spell 261 of the Coffin Texts

Spell 261 of the Coffin Texts is for becoming Heka, and reveals much about how the Egyptians conceived the exercise of heka. Here, Heka is identified with the primordial speech of Atum when he was yet alone, at the very moment in which the differentiated cosmos begins to emerge, and as the ongoing protection of that which Atum has commanded. Heka is thus at once the means by which the cosmos comes forth as well as the means of its maintenance and preservation. Heka says, “I am ‘If-he-wishes-he-does’, the father of the Gods,” the effective will being essential to the nature of a God. Indeed, Heka here identifies himself as “the son of Her who bore Atum,” thus placing himself prior even to the eldest among the Gods, “who was born without a mother.” This paradox, typical of Egyptian religious thought, expresses that heka is essential to the nature of the Gods and is therefore in a sense prior to them, albeit not in a generative sense, but simultaneous to their own, timeless existence. The relationship between heka and ka is underscored in Heka’s styling himself “Greatest of the owners of kas, the heir of Atum,” and in the reference to the two functions of the mouth of Atum, “the august God who speaks and eats with his mouth.” In spell 945 of the Coffin Texts, a spell for the divinization of the members of the body, the eyes are identified with Heka, and correlatively, a spell against crocodiles (no. 124 in Borghouts) affirms that their eyes are blinded by Heka. Heka can symbolize the powers of perception and cognition combined, as can be seen from the tendency for Heka to appear sometimes in place of Hu and Sia, the Gods representing the faculties of thought and perception respectively, in the boat of Re as it travels through the night in the Amduat books. In the ‘Teaching for Merikare’, it is said that heka was made by the divine for humans “as a weapon to oppose the blow of events.”

o become a magician. O you nobles who are in the presence of the Lord of All, behold, I have come to you; respect me in proportion to what you know. I am he whom the Sole Lord made before there came into being the two meals on earth, when he sent his Sole Eye when he was alone, being what came forth from his mouth; when his myriads of spirits were the protection of his companions; when he spoke with Khopri, with him, that he might be more powerful than he; when he took authoritative utterance upon his mouth.

I am indeed the son of Her who bore Atum, I am the protection of what the Sole Lord commanded, I am he who caused the Ennead to live, I am 'If-he-wishes-he-does', the father of the gods. The standard is high, the god is endowed in accordance with the command of Her who bore Atum, the august god who speaks and eats with his mouth. I have kept silence, I have bowed down, I have come <into the presence of> the Bulls of the sky, I have seated myself <in the presence of> the Bulls of the sky, in this my dignity of 'Greatest of the owners of doubles', the heir of Atum.

I have come that I may take possession of my throne and that I may receive my dignity, for to me belonged all before you had come into being, you gods; go down and come upon the hinder parts, for I am a magician.

~ Spell 261