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This envoy arrived in Egypt in the summer of the twenty-sixth year of the reign of Rameses II., and found the king celebrating a festival in Thebes. Then the priests of Khensu Nefer-hetep carried the statue of this god to the place where was the statue of Khensu surnamed "Pa-ari-sekher," i.e., the "Worker of destinies," who was able to repel the attacks of evil spirits and to drive them out.
The form of the Legend which we have is probably the work of the priests of Khensu, about 1000 B.C., who wished to magnify their god, but the incidents recorded are supposed to have taken place at the end of the fourteenth century B.C., and there may indeed be historical facts underlying the Legend. The text states that the king of Egypt, Usermaātrā-setepenrā Rāmeses-meri-Amen, i.e.
When the statues of the two gods were facing each other, Rameses II. entreated Khensu Nefer-hetep to "turn his face towards," i.e., to look favourably upon Khensu. Pa-ari- sekher, and to let him go to Bekhten to drive the devil out of the Princess of Bekhten.
Be this as it may, Khensu Pa-ari-sekher received the magical power, and having been placed in his boat, he set out for Bekhten, accompanied by five smaller boats, and chariots and horses which marched on each side of him. Moret, p. 21.
Here it is clear that we have an example of the use of statues with movable limbs, which were worked, when occasion required, by the priests. The king then made a second petition to the god to transfer his sa, or magical power, to Khensu Pa-ari-sekher so that when he had arrived in Bekhten he would be able to heal the Princess.
When the statue of Khensu Pa-ari-sekher had been in Bekhten for three years and nine months, the Prince in a vision saw the god, in the form of a golden hawk, come forth from his shrine, and fly up into the air and direct his course to Egypt.
The text affords no explanation of the fact that Khensu Nefer-hetep was regarded as a greater god than Khensu Pa-ari- sekher, or why his permission had to be obtained before the latter could leave the country.
Thus Khensu returned from Bekhten in safety, and he re-entered his temple in the winter, in the thirty-third year of the reign of Rameses II. The situation of Bekhten is unknown, but the name is probably not imaginary, and the country was perhaps a part of Western Asia.
The text of this legend is cut in hieroglyphics upon a sandstone stele, with a rounded top, which was found in the temple of Khensu at Thebes, and is now preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris; it was discovered by Champollion, and removed to Paris by Prisse d'Avennes in 1846. Zeit., 1883, pp. 54-60.
He then went on to ask the god to transmit his power to Khensu, "Pa-ari-sekher-em-Uast," the god who drives out the evil spirits which attack men, and to permit him to go to Bekhten and release the Princess from the power of the evil spirit.
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