When I was still going on the way, my heart was perplexed within me, and my mind was distracted. And I said in my heart: [“What evil deed is this that my father is doing? Is no t h e, rath er, the god o f h i s go ds, s in ce th ey come in to existence th rough his chisels and lathes, and his wisdom, and is it not rather fitting that they should worship my father, since they are his work? What is this delusion of my father i n h i s w o r k s? ] 1 5 Behold, Merumath fell and could not rise in his own temple, nor
could I, by myself, move him until my father came, and the two of us moved him; and as we were thus too weak, his head fell from him, and he (i.e. my father) set it upon another stone of
R omits.
R omits. + his god, K. of the small ones: K omits. K reads: And he cut off the head of another god of stone and fastened it upon the god Merumath which fell before, and the head which fell down from him and the rest of the other god he shattered. and: S K omit. father’s: A omits. Fandana probably = Paddan-A ram (Gen. xxv. 20). Cf. Gen. xxxvii. 25. K r eads: in order to buy from thence papyrus from the Nile. And I questioned them, and they inform ed me. S omits. A K omit; they read instead: And I deliberated in my heart, and they gave me the value. K reads: and he took the pieces of the broken gods and cas t t he m in the Dead Sea, from which it could never emerge. A K, + of the river Gur. This passage is given by A K, but is absent from S; apparently it is a later interpolation.
another god,1 which he had made without head. And the other five gods were broken in pieces down from the ass, which were able-neither to help themselves,2 nor to hurt the ass, because3 it had broken them to pieces; nor did their broken fragments come up out of the river.”4 And I said in my heart: “If this be so, how can Merumath, my father’s god, having the head of another stone, 5 and himself being made of another stone,5 rescue a man, or hear a man’s prayer and reward him?”6