1 When I was still going on the way, my heart was perplexed within me, and my mind was distracted. And I said in my heart: [“What evil deed is this that my father is doing? Is not he, rather, the god of his gods, since they come into existence through his chisels and lathes, and his wisdom, and is it not rather fitting that they should worship my father, since they are his work? What is this delusion of my father in his works?] Behold, Merumath fell and could not rise in his own temple, nor could I, by myself, move him until my father came, and the two of us moved him; and as we were thus too weak, his head fell from him, and he (i.e. my father) set it upon another stone of another god, which he had made without head. And the other five gods were broken in pieces down from the ass, which were able—neither to help themselves, nor to hurt the ass, because it had broken them to pieces; nor did their broken fragments come up out of the river.” And I said in my heart: “If this be so, how can Merumath, my father's god, having the head of another stone, and himself being made of another stone, rescue a man, or hear a man's prayer and reward him?”