(Click here to skip the preface).

This is a paraphrase of a translation, not a translation in its own right, so please don't treat it as a substitute for the original source material and paraphrase it in turn when writing up your own page. If one starts a process like that in motion, each paraphrasing the version of the one before, a few paraphrases later, the original material will be corrupted beyond recognition.

In the interests of being forthcoming and not corrupting the source material myself, I should point out that I did do a little extrapolation, and inserted a few sentences which seemed to make the story more intelligible, based on what I took to be the context of each passage in the translations. My feeling is that the meaning is left unaltered, at least that of the material I am paraphrasing, if not necessarily that of the Kemetic original, but look at the original translations, and you be the judge : 1 2 .

"Is it proper to write words and attribute them to a god?" is an obvious question, which I'm sure somebody will ask. One might as well ask whether or not it is appropriate for mythology to exist, a question the ancients responded to with a resounding "yes". Were we talking about paraphrasing "The Book of Coming Forth by Day", I would agree, and not do that, because it is among the scriptures of somebody's faith. Mythology, like this, however, falls under the category of "popular literature", or folklore, not scripture, and the words are those of a storyteller, not a prophet.

If ancient storytellers, back in that era when books were so scarce, were anything like modern storytellers are today, then they would have never told the same story the same way, twice, as their presentation would have changed in response to the questions their audience would ask them. In other works, the concept of "the original form" of a folktale means nothing, because every telling is a paraphrase of something that came before, with maybe a small change in meaning or two. Such is life, and such is my response to this objection.

Click here to enter the story, unless you now feel like skipping it.