HKB
Neb-mer-ptah or Mer-neb-ptah. Such a time would well suit the tale, and that reign has been adopted here in fixing the style of the dress of Ahura and her family.
This tale shows how far the ka or double might wander from its body or tomb. Here Ahura and her child lie buried at Koptos, while her husband's tomb is at Memphis. But that does not separate them in death; her ka left her tomb and went down to Memphis to live with the ka of her husband in his tomb. Thus, when Setna forces the tomb of Na-nefer-ka-ptah, he finds Ahura seated by him with the precious magic roll between them and the child Mer-ab; and the voluble Ahura recounts all their history, and weeps when the roll is carried away by Setna. Yet all the time her body is at Koptos, and the penalty imposed on Setna is that of bringing her body to the tomb where her ka already was dwelling. If a ka could thus wander so many hundred miles from its body to gratify its affections, it would doubtless run some risks of starving, or having to put up with impure food; or might even lose its way, and rather than intrude on the wrong tomb, have to roam as a vagabond ka. It was to guard against these misfortunes that a supply of formulas were provided for it, by which it should obtain a guarantee against such misfortunes--a kind of spiritual directory or guide to the unprotected; and such formulas, when once accepted as valid, were copied, repeated, enlarged, and added to, until they became the complex and elaborate work--The Book of the Dead, Perhaps nothing else gives such a view of the action of the ka as this tale of Setna.
There is here also an insight into the arrangement of marriages in Egypt. It does not seem that anything was determined about a marriage during childhood; it is only when the children are full-grown that a dispute arises between the king and queen as to their disposal. But the parents decide the whole question. It is, of course, well known that the Egyptians had no laws against consanguinity in marriages; on the contrary, it was with them, as with the Persians, essential for a king to marry in the royal family, and also usual for private persons to marry in their family. Even to the present day in Egypt, although sister-marriage has disappeared, yet it is the duty of a man to marry his first cousin or some one in the family. The very idea of relationship being any possible impediment to marriage was un-thought of by the Egyptian; his favourite concrete expression for a self-existent or self-created being--"husband of his mother "--shows this unmistakably.
The objection made by the king to the marriage of Na-nefer-ka-ptah and Ahura turns on the point that he has only these two children, and hence, if they marry the children of the generals, there will be two families instead of only one to ensure future posterity. The queen, however, talks the king over on the matter. The cause of Ahura's being troubled at the feast is not certain, but the king evidently supposes that she has been pleading to be allowed to marry her beloved brother, and when taxed with it she only expresses her willingness to give way to his exogamic views. The brief sentence, "I laughed and the king laughed," seems to mean that she pleased and amused her father so that he gave way, and immediately told the steward to arrange for her marriage as she desired. I have here abbreviated a few needlessly precise details. We also learn, by the way, that there was a regular registry of births, in which Mer-ab was entered.