214 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

her fall and restoration; as among Hellenistic exegetes, the wanderings of Odysseus are referred to the life of the soul.

II 7 (The Book of Thomas) consists of a post-resurrection dialogue between the Savior Jesus and Thomas; it was recorded by Mathaias. It is essentially a call to self- understanding and illumination.

VI 1 (Acts of Peter, etc.) develops the gos- pel parable of the pearl into a more elaborate story, with use of expressions taken from Matthew and John.

VI 2 (The Thunder, Perfect Mind) is the self-revelation of Sophia, developed with lavish use of the "I am" form already used in the biblical Proverbs, in Isiac literature, and in the Gospel of John. Since she is "the Wisdom of the Greeks and the Gnosis of the barbarians," who appears especially in Egypt but not among "barbarians" (p. 16, 3-9), she is presumably modeled upon Isis.

VI 3 (The AjOEVTLKOS hdAyO) deals with the

sufferings of "the spiritual soul" in the body, where it has as brothers lust, hate, jealousy, and "the material soul." Its sufferings can be rewarded when it leaves the body, or else it can transmigrate into an animal (p. 33, 9). The treatise, while not specifically Gnostic, contains much that is susceptible of a Gnosticizing interpretation.

VI 4 (Perception- Understanding: The Thought of the Great Power) deals with cos- mology, retells the story of Noah and the deluge, discusses cosmic eschatology, and ends with the statement that "we originated in the unchangeable Aeon" (p. 48, 13; Krause emends

N-TpOHrTOS to NaTr OTTOS;

I suggest NXTrpeCTOTS). VI 5 is an extremely obscure fragment

dealing with the creation of men, animals, and plants, with echoes of equally obscure passages in the Gospel of Thomas ("lion," "single one," "image"). Apparent references to the Chimaera and to Cerberus (p. 49, 8) do not make it any clearer.

The Hermetic treatises (VI 6-8) are some- what more interesting. The fragment without a title (VI 6) includes magical elements (p. 56, 17-22; p. 61, 9-15) and describes how this book is to be written for the temple in

Diospolis (Egypt), on blue and green irri- descent pillars. It ends with an elaborate oath to keep what Hermes has said. The prayer (VI 7), derived from the Hermetic Asclepius, is close to the Greek text used by some Christians (see A. D. Nock and A.-J. Festugiere, Corpus Hermeticum, vol. 2 (Paris, 1954), pp. 353-55). A longer passage from the Asclepius (VI 8) begins with the mystery of sexual intercourse, a subject apparently dear to the Gnostics, and goes on through an apocalyptic warning of the religious collapse of Egypt. It ends with a passage not found in the Latin version, attacking temple- robbery and describing the punishment of wicked souls (p. 78, 15-42). The text generally followed is close to the Greek ver- sion known to Lactantius:

N][.rr]e[AoS N1TO] NHPOS (p. 73, 5-6) = ayy'Aovs

7rovTqpoVg (Lact. Div. inst. 2. 15, 7); compare a longer passage (p. 73, 23-24, 7) with Lactantius, Div. inst. 7. 18, 3 f. The original Greek title, Aodyo •EAELOS, is partly confirmed by the scribe's reference to

Ao•yoL of the Father

(p. 65, 8 and 14). A future volume will contain a detailed

commentary on these treatises. Given the excellence of the presentation of the text, we can expect that the commentary will be definitive.

ROBERT M. GRANT

The University of Chicago

Syntax of the Negative Particles bw and bn in Late Egyptian. By VIRGINIA LEE DAVIS.

Miinchner Agyptologische Studien, vol. 29. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1973. Pp. 409 + 10 tables. Davis has collected the examples of the

negative particles bw and bn which occur in colloquial and formal Late Egyptian and categorized them on the basis of the identity or similarity of the constructions in which they are found. Comparable constructions in the earlier and later stages of the Egyptian language are noted. She has used linguistics as well as a more traditional philological approach, but has not recognized that surface

BOOK REVIEWS 215

similarity can be deceiving and that forms written the same way, or in very similar

ways, may reflect very different meanings and syntactical functions. Tied in with this is her dismissal of the role of semantics and of Groll's suggestions derived from applying semantics to the study of the Late Egyptian negatives.1 The result is a mechanical listing of forms which have similar surface structure,

making few contributions to our knowledge of the grammar of these negative particles. Although there are many specific statements or suggestions with which the reviewer does not agree,2 the following is a critique only of her assumptions and methodology.3

One basic assumption which Davis implicitly makes is that any given negative form in-

cluding bw or bn is identical, evidently in

meaning and syntactical function, with the form to which the bw or bn has been prefixed. Thus when she has no examples of a given negative construction, she uses examples of the

positive construction, and applies conclusions based on negative forms to positive ones, and vice versa. Even in those cases where this is valid, she must so prove. But one of the first

things that the student of Egyptian learns is that there is no one-to-one relationship between positive and negative forms in

Egyptian, and that the simple addition or subtraction of a negative particle in the sur- face form may change more than the positive/ negative aspect of the clause.4 A clear

example of this type of thinking occurs

early in chapter 1, where Davis states: "Sen- tence type 1 [bni-sdm.f] occurs in all stages of

Egyptian, although negative examples are attested only in Old, Middle and Late Egyptian," (p. 21) and "in Demotic and Coptic, the use of sentence type 1 dwindles to a single construction with the verb (r)di 'cause' " (p. 22). It is quite possible that the form of the sdm.f used after bn and the form of the sdm.f used after the verb (r)di are the same form, in one case functioning syntacti- cally as a main clause, in the other case as a subordinate clause. But the negative particle bn is never, in any stage of the Egyptian language, found in a subordinate clause after (r)di.5 Thus her sentence type 1, which is a negative construction with the negative particle bn, should not be identified with the clause construction found as object of the verb (r)di. An analysis such as Davis's does not do justice to the complexities of syntax and semantics in the Egyptian language.

A basic methodological problem is Davis's way of formulating her sentence types. She uses specific Egyptian words rather than general categories, e.g., im 'therein' rather than defining a category "adverb." Some- times the Egyptian word she uses does not accurately reflect what she is discussing. Thus, in chapter 3, sentence type 9 is defined as bn ntf ntf, where ntf is the independent pronoun; but it is stated later in the chapter "Only examples of a noun in noun phrase II are attested" (p. 28). If she had defined the sentence type as bn NPI NP11, or something of the sort, it would have been clearer and more accurate. By using the independent pronoun to define the sentence types, rather than some such terminology as N (noun) or NP (noun phrase), she distorts Egyptian grammar in her definition of sentence type 8 (bn in-ntf CLAUSE). The independent pronoun was the syntactic equivalent of in plus noun; in was never used in combination with the

independent pronoun, as her formulation would suggest.

In some cases she includes as an integral

1 Sarah Israelit Groll, The Negative Verbal System of Late Egyptian (London: Oxford University Press, 1970).

2 One comment about format: examples are cited in the text by means of the reference number used in the computer sorting of examples, not by text name, column, and line number. Thus the reader is forced to consult the appendix to discover the source of each example, which is awkward and time-consuming.

3 The reviewer would especially call attention to Groll's discussion of the particle iw and of sentences with adverbial predicates, which varies considerably from Davis's handling (chapters 4-6 and 9).

4 E.g., Middle Egyptian sdm.n.f indicates past tense, but n (negative particle) sdm.n.f indicates general lack of ability; the past tense negative was written n sdm.f.

5 The negative particles bw and bn do occur in specific types of subordinate clauses (circumstantial and relative forms using the converters iw and nty). This fact should at least have been noted somewhere in the book.

216 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES

part of the sentence type an element which she later admits may not be present in the sentence at all. For example, sentence types 17-22 include an adverb which she analyzes as the predicate of the clause, but she admits "the adverb phrase predicate receives little or no emphasis and is often omitted" (pp. 74 and 90). This discrepancy results from her forcing the Late Egyptian evidence into a pattern (nominalized verb-form plus adverbial predicate) which she believes is valid for Old Egyptian. Sentence types 17-20 are included in the same chapter as the simple and peri- phrastic forms (sentence types 15-16) actually used in Late Egyptian to stress an "adverbial adjunct." If the adverb is the important part of one sentence and in another there may be no adverb at all, the two should hardly be classified in the same group. She does admit functional differences between the Late

Egyptian forms stressing an adverb and those which she only claims did so in earlier stages of the language. When discussing Late Egyptian as she is, she should not lump together things which, at best, can be said to have been the same in an earlier period, and she should not have tried to force the Late Egyptian into the Old Egyptian patterns. She could easily have defined the Late Egyptian examples in their own terms, with the optional adverb which is possible with all main clause Egyptian constructions. If she had done so, her sentence types 17 and 18 would have been bw sdm.f (adv.) and bw ir(r).f sdm (adv.), whose primary function was negation of generalization. She would then have realized that the examples in Late Egyptian, Demotic, and Coptic of bw sdm.f, especially with the verb rh 'to know,' which do not indicate past tense but "generaliza- tion," are examples of sentence type 17 and are not related to the past tense negative (bw sdm.f and periphrastic bw pw.f sdm), where she has included them.

There are only two theoretical chapters, dealing with the development and usage of the negative particles written with n, m, or b. The suggestions often seem fanciful, and one wishes that more thought had been given to the problem. Davis may have some valid

suggestions, but she has not been able to communicate them to this reviewer.

JANET H. JoHNsoN Oriental Institute

The University of Chicago

Les Objets de toilette egyptiens au Musee du Louvre. By J. VANDIER D'ABBADIE. Paris: Editions des Musees Nationaux, 1972. Pp. 191 + 835 photographs, 2 color pls. With the exception of the volumes of the

Catalogue Gindral published by the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and the publications of a few other museums, it is rare to find specialized groups of Egyptian objects which have been gathered together in a convenient manner. The production of the work under discussion by the Department of Egyptian Antiquities of the Louvre fills a distinct need in the pub- lication of minor objects in a great collection. 831 pieces have been catalogued including every type which may have been used in any manner for cosmetic purposes. The only notable exception to this comprehensive group is the pre-Dynastic pallette. The deci- sion to omit this category is explained from the standpoint that it should be treated separately. For the scholar it is unnecessary to state that catalogues of homogeneous materials are essential. It is to the credit of the Louvre that such a publication is now available.

After a general introduction explaining the inclusion of some types and the omission of others, sections are devoted to each type in turn. Each piece (with few exceptions) is illustrated; a second illustration in color is sometimes presented. There is a description of each entry; measurements, material, state of preservation, date, provenience, and a bibliography, where it exists, are provided. All objects are illustrated half-size. This scale makes it a little difficult to see some of the smallest objects, but the use of a standard reduction has the advantage of permitting more complete illustrations.

The assemblage of objets de toilette in the Louvre had its beginnings in the early nine- teenth century with the material brought