ermining on any course
of action. Certain conditions were easy to carry out. Music and singing
were to be avoided on the 14th Tybi, the day of the mourning of Osiris,
and no one was allowed to wash on the 16th Tybi; whilst the name of Set
might not be pronounced on the 24th of Pharmuthi. Fish was forbidden on
certain days; and what was still more difficult in a country so rich
in mice, on the 12th of Tybi no mouse might be seen. The most tiresome
prohibitions, however, were those which occurred not infrequently,
namely, those concerning work and going out: for instance, four times in
Paophi the people had to 'do nothing at all,' and five times to sit
the whole day or half the day in the house; and the same rule had to be
observed each month. It was impossible to rejoice if a child was born on
the 23d of Thoth; the parents knew it could not live. Those born on the
20th of Choiakh would become blind, and those born on the 3d of Choiakh,
deaf."

CHARMS AND INCANTATIONS

Where such conceptions as these pertained, it goes without saying that
charms and incantations intended to break the spell of the unlucky
omens were equally prevalent. Such incantations consisted usually of the
recitation of certain phrases based originally, it would appear, upon
incidents in the history of the gods. The words which the god had spoken
in connection with some lucky incident would, it was thought, prove
effective now in bringing good luck to the human supplicant--that is
to say, the magician hoped through repeating the words of the god to
exercise the magic power of the god. It was even possible, with the aid
of the magical observances, partly to balk fate itself. Thus the person
predestined through birth on an unlucky day to die of a serpent bite
might postpone the time of this fateful visitation to extreme old age.
The like uncertainty attached to those spells which one person was
supposed to be able to exercise over another. It was held, for example,
that if something belonging to an individual, such as a lock of hair
or a paring of the nails, could be secured and incorporated in a waxen
figure, this figure would be intimately associated with the personality
of that individual. An enemy might thus secure occult power over one;
any indignity practised upon the waxen figure would result in like
injury to its human prototype. If the figure were bruised or beaten,
some accident would overtake its double; if the image were placed over
a fir