I got asked an important question about how I am working with the Negative Confessions, by not one but two people with the same question. The question was about the gods, i.e. Assessors, and why I was trying to match them up to other gods. It is a good question and one I had not talked about before I started writing so here is my answer.
There are two views on the assessors. The first is that the assessors are a separate set of entities from any of the other gods. The second view, and the one I have followed, is that these are titles of gods that are elsewhere in the pantheon. My reasoning for this is how the "names" of the assessors are written... "He/she who...." which is very similar to how titles are given to people in Egyptian texts. The other is that some of the gods are actually named in the texts, such as Bast. If the assessors were a separate set of entities why list Bast among them when we already know she is a goddess.
Like many things in the study of Kemetic faith it becomes confusing. To try and simplify it I will add the items as a bulleted list.
1. Assessor "names" follow the linguistic formula that is used to give titles to people and gods.
2. Several gods, Bast, Nefertum and others depending on the version, are listed in the Negative Confessions as assessors.
That being said I don't think one way or the other has more merit. It is in my personal studies that I have found the second method, i.e. assessor names being titles of gods, as more plausible than the other despite having yet to learn all of the gods associated with those titles.
I hope this clears up the confusion some. Tomorrow we will be back to working with more of the confessions.
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