Between [ and ] are placed the ascii translations of the hex codes, claimed by MLA to be data corruptions. The fictional novel is connected to World B with its Egyptian ruins.

osiris1.txt

(Original translation by E. A. Wallis Budge. Annotations by %&$/)

The Dying Man went unto the Scribe who resided in Pr-Medjed (1) and said: “Behold, I am weak of body; my days under the holy sun of Amun-Ra (2) are coming to an end. Though I have spent my years in service of the Two Lands, I have not studied the /?/ Tell me, you who are wise in the writings of the Dead, what lies ahead on my journey? What will I face in the Land of the Westerners? (3)”

And the Scribe spoke, saying: “At the appointed time, y$§&3$§7/%$

(1) It is likely the location was changed according to who the copy of the Book was made for; the Dying Man is an avatar of the owner.
(2) In the older manuscript, this is rendered as $%§%& some controversy as to whether it
(3) The dead. Compare with Khenti-Amentiu, the Foremost of the Westerners, a title later given to Osiris.
(5) Sometimes mistaken for a mistranslation on Budge’s part, this is actually almost certainly a mistranslation by the ancient scribe. The equivalent portion of the older manuscript is sadly not extant.

Note. E.A. Wallis Budge argued in his Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection (1911) that the religion of Osiris had emerged from an indigenous African people. The text suggest that an anonymous scholar (%&$/) tries to study Budge’s translation of the book, including his own commentaries in the form of foot notes.

osiris3.txt

“The first wisdom,” the Scribe said to the Dying Man, “is that as the world is made of five elements (1), so is the soul of Man; know therefore that in this life, you are Heart and Shadow and Name; and also Ka and Ba. Without all these, you would not be a living being, but a thing.

What is a man without a Name, who cannot speak of himself?
What is a man without a Shadow, who is not anchored in the world?
What is a man without a Heart, who can neither feel nor think?
What is a man without a Ka, who has no essence?
What is a man without a Ba, who is not himself, but like unformed clay?”

Therefore praise Osiris, the King of Eternity, the Lord of Everlastingness, the eldest son of the womb of Nut, he who traverses millions of years in his existence.”

(1) Here the translator is clearly inserting his own beliefs onto the text, as &$§/$& “§$”

osiris6.txt

$%§§& knew it was the truth.

“Now I will tell you of the many perils you will face in your journey through the Duat. Listen well, for the challenges that lie before you are great, and if you do not prove yourself worthy, you may never reach the eternal reed fields of Osiris, and you may be lost forever. From the Second Death there is no awakening.”

The Scribe brought forth a great papyrus, and carefully unfolded it before the Dying Man; and the Dying Man beheld that it was a map of the Duat, showing the many paths that led to Tower of Anubis, where his Heart was to be weighed. On each of the many paths, which threaded through the Duat like the infinite threads woven by Neith (3), there were marked the dangers that a traveller must face. Also there were great walls of iron, that none but the gods could cross, and gates made of purest light; and so the traveller could not avoid the trials that had been decreed, and could only proceed towards the Tower by proving his worth, thus earning the key to each sacred gate.

Note. There is a similarity between the sketch of the perils and trails in the text and the puzzles in the game.

osiris7.txt

“Tell me of the fearsome demons of the Duat,” the Dying Man said to the wise Scribe.

“Though their terrible forms are loathsome to behold, they are not evil, for they are the servants of the gods; truly, they are the blessed doorkeepers and guardians of the holy paths. Their charge is to judge whether we are worthy to pass the gates that lead to Aaru; and so they challenge us with riddles, or in combat.”

“Is this true of all the beings that live in the Duat?”

“Some say that it is not so; that there are ancient gods whose names have been forgotten, and spirits of darkness whose name none have ever known, and that these must be avoided at all costs. But others say that these, too, serve a greater purpose in ways that Osiris has not revealed to us.”

“And what of the hidden paths, that are taken by $% %&/$&§ when the §%§%$

Note. There are similarities between the ‘demons’ being described as ‘the servants of the gods’, and the deadly contraptions the gamer is faced in the game, also called ‘servants’ by EL0HIM.

osiris11.txt

“But why,” the Dying Man said, “do the gods put all these challenges before us? Why the walls of iron and the gates of light, why the abominable demons guarding the path? Why must our heart be judged to be as light as the feather of Ma’at? Why is the road to Aaru so difficult?”

The Scribe considered these words.

“Some say that once the paths to Aaru were open, but too many sinners came, and the gods made the paths perilous to keep sin at bay. Others say that, being mortals (3), we cannot be worthy of Aaru unless we walk the path of Osiris, and so become Osiris ourselves. But I believe that Aaru could never be reached elsewise; for like the mountain path must be steep, the path to Aaru must be fraught with peril. As steepness and mountain are one, so are peril and paradise. They are inextricable. They create each other.”

(1) There is an interesting parallel to this phrase in the Penitential Psalms, wh)$%§&$§&
(2) Here the Scribe appears to be speaking of Osiris /%&( $”%§& &”/// meaning the soul of the deceased, not the god himself.
(3) %4141+§525//52055.504C4/(F4144 [Aaru]

Note. The fields of Aaru (‘reeds’) are the heavenly paradise where Osiris rules once he had displaced Anubis. The ‘Penitential Psalms’ is a term for the collective of Psalms 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, according to Cassiodorus’ 6th century commentary.

osiris21.txt

So, hearing the call of the morning birds as they greeted the dawn, the Scribe spoke:

“At the end of your journey, when every trial has been completed, when all the gates have opened before you and your soul has been weighed in the Tower of Anubis, your Ka and your Ba shall be reunited; and thus you shall become an Akh, and awaken in the eternal reed fields of Osiris; and there, in holy Aaru, you shall begin a new life amongst the gods and other blessed spirits.”

“And who will I be?” the Dying Man asked.

“You shall be the memory of all that was, and the knowledge of the journey, and the shape of the days to come.”

Thus ends the tale of the Dying Man and the Scribe. Praised be Osiris, the Foremost of the Westerners, the King of Eternity, the Lord of Everlastingness, whose Ka is holy, $&$§ DG /// ERROR ///

oxyrhynchus.html

The great irony of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri is that such a vital source of information about the ancient world exists only because of a garbage dump. While the Library of Alexandria burned at the hands of fanatics and conquerors, depriving us of unimaginable insights into history, philosophy and art, the papers carelessly thrown away by the citizens of Oxyrhynchus survived to the modern day. And though it is true that a great deal of what we know today is because of the conscious efforts of individual and organizations (such as the spectacular translation and preservation work done during the Islamic Golden Age), so much more is simply the result of coincidence and luck.

We’ve lost texts that the ancients considered to be absolutely essential, while utterly trivial – even plagiarized – work has survived unharmed! 4C 49 46 45 20 49 4E 20 44 45 41 54 48 20 42 45 47 49 4E 53 20 41 4E 45 57 [Life in death begins anew] So if we want our descendants to remember more than glittering emo-vampires and autotuned teen pop stars, we have to invest in %$&make sure that %§&$ $%$& §””!!$§%

Note. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered in the late 19th and begin 20th centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancien rubbish dumpe near Oxrhynchus in Egypte. The manuscript dated back to Ptolemaic Ehypte (3rd century BC) and the Roman periods in Egypt history (32 BC to 640 AD).

choice_of_life.txt

The whole assembly stood awhile silent and collected. “Let us return,” said Rasselas, “from this scene of mortality. How gloomy would be these mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die; that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever

[ARCHIVE: 1759CE-F991] [JOHNSON, SAMUEL] [ERROR 556] Homage to you, Osiris, Lord of Eternity, King of the Gods, whose names are manifold/ whose forms are holy, you being of hidden form in the temples, whose Ka is holy. All the gods praise you, for you are the %&$%$ (/ Those that lie here stretched before us, the wise and the powerful of ancient times, warn us to remember the shortness of our present state; they were perhaps snatched away while they were busy, like us, in the choice of life.”

Note. The first section is a quote from Samuel Johnson’s The history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), and the second from E.A. Wallis Budge’s translation of the Papyrus of Ani (also called The Egyptian book of the dead).

body_and_soul.txt

“But it is commonly supposed that the Egyptians believed the soul to live as long as the body continued undissolved, and therefore tried this method of eluding death.”

“Could the wise Egyptians,” said Nekayah, “think so grossly of the soul? If the soul could once survive its separation, what could it afterwards receive or suffer from the body?”

“The Egyptians would doubtless think erroneously,” said the astronomer, “in the darkness of heathenism and the first dawn of philosophy. The nature of the soul is still disputed amidst all our opportunities of clearer knowledge; some yet say that it may be material, who, nevertheless, believe it to be immortal.”

45 74 65 72 6E 69 74 79 20 69 73 20 69 6E 20 6C 6F 76 65 20 77 69 74 68 20 74 68 65 20 70 72 6F 64 75 63 74 69 6F 6E 73 20 6F 66 20 74 69 6D 65 2E [Eternity is in love with the productions of time.]

The text is a quote from Samuel Johnson’s The history of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) .

book_of_osiris.wiki

The Book of the Scribe of Osiris (sometimes also referred to as the Book of the Journey to Aaru) is an Ancient Egyptian text discovered in the excavation of Oxyrhynchus. It has caused a certain degree of controversy among Egyptologists, as some argue that it is a classic funerary text such as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, while others believe it to be a poetic work not intended to be understood literally.

The book tells the story of a dying man who asks a scribe about the afterlife. The scribe, a servant of Osiris, describes how the man’s Ka (life force) will become separated from his Ba (personality), and how he will have to reunite the two and become an Akh (living intellect), passing a series of trials in the Duat (underworld) in order to reach the paradise of Aaru. Unlike similar texts, the Book of the Scribe of Osiris focuses less on giving advice or /&#

A recent study (Carnahan/Hassan) suggests the text may have been intended as philosophical commentary on the world of the living through the allegory of the Duat. It remains unclear whether this was the intent of the original pre-Alexandrian author or a result of the later translation into Greek. The earlier manuscript, which is considered to be more authentic, is too fragmentary to provide answers, though perhaps further excavation may %&$/§

Note. The Book of the Scribe of Osiris is not found at the excavation in Oxyrhynchus. The named Book of coming forth by day is the Eyptian title of in the West is known as the Book of the dead. The names Carnahan and Hassan are not the names of scholars but of two characters from The Mummy series (Evelyn and Jonathan Carnahan, and Gad Hassan).

Source: FoundTexts.dlg