Tim:

I don't think I misunderstand Pound.   I think you misunderstand me.  As I
stated, Pound in his letter to Boris specifically links a non-man made
paradise with Kati who is also linked with Antef and Kung.  I know that
Pound believed that paradise could be self-created.  I also know what he
wrote Boris, that paradise was non-man made.  Perhaps you have issues with
Boris also.  This statement of Pound's is confusing in that Antef, a man,
created well being by distributing bread and that Kung created well being by
good government.  All three seem to me to be man-created.

Probably as you said:

Pound sees Kati as a kindred spirit, as
> having taken a rather un-Egyptian undogmatic view of heaven.  Paradise is
> to be found not in "the afterlife" but here on earth in one's heart.

but this is engendered by Boris's unique translation of "Pet" as "paradise"
and Boris's unique reconstruction of the sentence such that "Paradise" is
the
subject of the translation.  The subject of the "Instruction" is properly
"Man's nature".  Pound was very well aware of the nuances that "paradise"
engenders in the modern reader and intended the reader of "The Cantos" to
expand mentally in a modern way upon the word "paradise", as you have done.
In the letter to Boris he is ecstatic about Boris's use of "paradise".
Perhaps unknown to Pound, but surely known to Boris,  the author of the
"Instruction" simply intended that his reader know that a pleasant nature
was a man's ultimate possession.

Gardiner would not have been struggling with an "undogmatic" view of the
afterlife not being heaven.  He knew well that the ancient Egyptian did not
have a concept of an unified purified paradise or heaven.  The ancient
Egyptian thought of the afterlife as a continuation in a different situation
of his life on earth.  I would think that Boris as a serious student of
Egypt would knew this.

My question remains,  why did Boris undertake a unique translation of "pet"
(to a concept foreign to an ancient Egyptian) and why did he reconstruct the
sentence to make the subject "paradise" instead of "nature"?

Rick Seddon
McIntosh, NM