Nebsecht took the ram's heart in his hand, and gazed at it with the
deepest attention, whilst the old paraschites watched him anxiously. At
length:
"I promised," he said, "to do for you what you wish, if you restore the
little one to health; but you ask for what is impossible."
"Impossible?" said the physician, "why, impossible? You open the
corpses, you go in and out of the house of the embalmer. Get possession
of one of the canopi,
[Vases of clay, limestone, or alabaster, which were used for the
preservation of the intestines of the embalmed Egyptians, and
represented the four genii of death, Amset, Hapi, Tuamutef, and
Khebsennuf. Instead of the cover, the head of the genius to which
it was dedicated, was placed on each kanopus. Amset (tinder the
protection of Isis) has a human head, Hapi (protected by Nephthys)
an ape's head, Tuamutef (protected by Neith) a jackal's head, and
Khebsennuf (protected by Selk) a sparrow-hawk's head. In one of the
Christian Coptic Manuscripts, the four archangels are invoked in the
place of these genii.]
lay this heart in it, and take out in its stead the heart of a human
being. No one--no one will notice it. Nor need you do it to-morrow, or
the day after tomorrow even. Your son can buy a ram to kill every day
with my money till the right moment comes. Your granddaughter will soon
grow strong on a good meat-diet. Take courage!"
"I am not afraid of the danger," said the old man, "but how can I
venture to steal from a dead man his life in the other world? And
then--in shame and misery have I lived, and for many a year--no man
has numbered them for me--have I obeyed the commandments, that I may be
found righteous in that world to come, and in the fields of Aalu, and
in the Sun-bark find compensation for all that I have suffered here. You
are good and friendly. Why, for the sake of a whim, should you sacrifice
the future bliss of a man, who in all his long life has never known
happiness, and who has never done you any harm?"
"What I want with the heart," replied the physician, "you cannot
understand, but in procuring it for me, you will be furthering a great
and useful purpose. I have no whims, for I am no idler. And as to what
concerns your salvation, have no anxiety. I am a priest, and take your
deed and its consequences upon myself; upon myself, do you understand?
I tell you, as a priest, that what I demand of you is right, and if the
judge of the dead shall enquire, 'Why didst thou take the heart of a
human being out of the Kanopus?' then reply--reply to him thus, 'Because
Nebsecht, the priest, commanded me, and promised himself to answer for
the deed.'"
The old man gazed thoughtfully on the ground, and the physician
continued still more urgently:
"If you fulfil my wish, then--then I swear to you that, when you die, I
will take care that your mummy is provided with all the amulets, and I
myself will write you a book of the Entrance into Day, and have it wound
within your mummy-cloth, as is done with the great.
[The Books of the Dead are often found amongst the cloths, (by the
leg or under the arm), or else in the coffin trader, or near, the
mummy.]
That will give you power over all demons, and you will be admitted to
the hall of the twofold justice, which punishes and rewards, and your
award will be bliss."
"But the theft of a heart will make the weight of my sins heavy, when my
own heart is weighed," sighed the old man.
Nebsecht considered for a moment, and then said: "I will give you a
written paper, in which I will certify that it was I who commanded the
theft. You will sew it up in a little bag, carry it on your breast, and
have it laid with you in the grave. Then when Techuti, the agent of the
soul, receives your justification before Osiris and the judges of the
dead, give him the writing. He will read it aloud, and you will be
accounted just."
[The vignettes of Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead represent the
Last Judgment of the Egyptians. Under a canopy Osiris sits
enthroned as Chief Judge, 42 assessors assist him. In the hall
stand the scales; the dog headed ape, the animal sacred to Toth,
guides the balance. In one scale lies the heart of the dead man, in
the other the image of the goddess of Truth, who introduces the soul
into the hall of justice Toth writs the record. The soul affirms
that it has not committed 42 deadly sins, and if it obtains credit,
it is named "maa cheru," i.e. "the truth-speaker," and is therewith
declared blessed. It now receives its heart back, and grows into a
new and divine life.]
"I am not learned in writing," muttered the paraschites with a slight
mistrust that made itself felt in his voice.
"But I swear to you by the nine great Gods, that I will write nothing
on the paper but what I have promised you. I will confess that I, the
priest Nebsecht, commanded you to take the heart, and that your guilt is
mine."
"Let me have the writing then," murmured the old man.
The physician wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and gave the
paraschites his hand. "To-morrow you shall have it," he said, "and I
will not leave your granddaughter till she is well again."
The soldier engaged in cutting up the ram, had heard nothing of this
conversation. Now he ran a wooden spit through the legs, and held them
over the fire to roast them. The jackals howled louder as the smell of
the melting fat filled the air, and the old man, as he looked on, forgot
the terrible task he had undertaken. For a year past, no meat had been
tasted in his house.
The physician Nebsecht, himself eating nothing but a piece of bread,
looked on at the feasters. They tore the meat from the bones, and the
soldier, especially, devoured the costly and unwonted meal like some
ravenous animal. He could be heard chewing like a horse in the manger,
and a feeling of disgust filled the physician's soul.
"Sensual beings," he murmured to himself, "animals with consciousness!
And yet human beings. Strange! They languish bound in the fetters of the
world of sense, and yet how much more ardently they desire that which
transcends sense than we--how much more real it is to them than to us!"
"Will you have some meat?" cried the soldier, who had remarked that
Nebsecht's lips moved, and tearing a piece of meat from the bone of the
joint he was devouring, he held it out to the physician. Nebsecht shrank
back; the greedy look, the glistening teeth, the dark, rough features of
the man terrified him. And he thought of the white and fragile form of
the sick girl lying within on the mat, and a question escaped his lips.
"Is the maiden, is Uarda, your own child?" he said.
The soldier struck himself on the breast. "So sure as the king Rameses
is the son of Seti," he answered. The men had finished their meal, and
the flat cakes of bread which the wife of the paraschites gave them, and
on which they had wiped their hands from the fat, were consumed,
when the soldier, in whose slow brain the physician's question still
lingered, said, sighing deeply:
"Her mother was a stranger; she laid the white dove in the raven's
nest."
"Of what country was your wife a native?" asked the physician.
"That I do not know," replied the soldier.
"Did you never enquire about the family of your own wife?"
"Certainly I did: but how could she have answered me? But it is a long
and strange story."
"Relate it to me," said Nebsecht, "the night is long, and I like
listening better than talking. But first I will see after our patient."
When the physician had satisfied himself that Uarda was sleeping quietly
and breathing regularly, he seated himself again by the paraschites and
his son, and the soldier began:
"It all happened long ago. King Seti still lived, but Rameses already
reigned in his stead, when I came home from the north. They had sent me
to the workmen, who were building the fortifications in Zoan, the town
of Rameses.--[The Rameses of the Bible. Exodus i. ii.]--I was set over
six men, Amus,--[Semites]--of the Hebrew race, over whom Rameses kept
such a tight hand.
[For an account of the traces of the Jews in Egypt, see Chabas,
Melanges, and Ebers, AEgypten und die Bucher Moses]
Amongst the workmen there were sons of rich cattle-holders, for in
levying the people it was never: 'What have you?' but 'Of what race are
you?' The fortifications and the canal which was to join the Nile and
the Red Sea had to be completed, and the king, to whom be long life,
health, and prosperity, took the youth of Egypt with him to the wars,
and left the work to the Amus, who are connected by race with his
enemies in the east. One lives well in Goshen, for it is a fine country,
with more than enough of corn and grass and vegetables and fish and
fowls, and I always had of the best, for amongst my six people were two
mother's darlings, whose parents sent me many a piece of silver. Every
one loves his children, but the Hebrews love them more tenderly than
other people. We had daily our appointed tale of bricks to deliver, and
when the sun burnt hot, I used to help the lads, and I did more in an
hour than they did in three, for I am strong and was still stronger then
than I am now.
"Then came the time when I was relieved. I was ordered to return to
Thebes, to the prisoners of war who were building the great temple of
Amon over yonder, and as I had brought home some money, and it would
take a good while to finish the great dwelling of the king of the Gods,
I thought of taking a wife; but no Egyptian. Of daughters of paraschites
there were plenty; but I wanted to get away out of my father's
accursed caste, and the other girls here, as I knew, were afraid of our
uncleanness. In the low country I had done better, and many an Amu and
Schasu woman had gladly come to my tent. From the beginning I had set my
mind on an Asiatic.
"Many a time maidens taken prisoners in war were brought to be sold, but
either they did not please me, or they were too dear. Meantime my money
melted away, for we enjoyed life in the time of rest which followed the
working hours. There were dancers too in plenty, in the foreign quarter.
"Well, it was just at the time of the holy feast of Amon-Chem, that a
new transport of prisoners of war arrived, and amongst them many women,
who were sold publicly to the highest bidder. The young and beautiful
ones were paid for high, but even the older ones were too dear for me.
"Quite at the last a blind woman was led forward, and a withered-looking
woman who was dumb, as the auctioneer, who generally praised up the
merits of the prisoners, informed the buyers. The blind woman had
strong hands, and was bought by a tavern-keeper, for whom she turns the
handmill to this day; the dumb woman held a child in her arms, and no
one could tell whether she was young or old. She looked as though she
already lay in her coffin, and the little one as though he would go
under the grass before her. And her hair was red, burning red, the very
color of Typhon. Her white pale face looked neither bad nor good, only
weary, weary to death. On her withered white arms blue veins ran like
dark cords, her hands hung feebly down, and in them hung the child. If a
wind were to rise, I thought to myself, it would blow her away, and the
little one with her.
"The auctioneer asked for a bid. All were silent, for the dumb shadow
was of no use for work; she was half-dead, and a burial costs money.
"So passed several minutes. Then the auctioneer stepped up to her, and
gave her a blow with his whip, that she might rouse herself up, and
appear less miserable to the buyers. She shivered like a person in a
fever, pressed the child closer to her, and looked round at every one as
though seeking for help--and me full in the face. What happened now was
a real wonder, for her eyes were bigger than any that I ever saw, and a
demon dwelt in them that had power over me and ruled me to the end, and
that day it bewitched me for the first time.
"It was not hot and I had drunk nothing, and yet I acted against my own
will and better judgment when, as her eyes fell upon me, I bid all
that I possessed in order to buy her. I might have had her cheaper! My
companions laughed at me, the auctioneer shrugged his shoulders as he
took my money, but I took the child on my arm, helped the woman up,
carried her in a boat over the Nile, loaded a stone-cart with my
miserable property, and drove her like a block of lime home to the old
people.
"My mother shook her head, and my father looked as if he thought me mad;
but neither of them said a word. They made up a bed for her, and on my
spare nights I built that ruined thing hard by--it was a tidy hut once.
Soon my mother grew fond of the child. It was quite small, and we called
it Pennu--[Pennu is the name for the mouse in old Egyptian]--because
it was so pretty, like a little mouse. I kept away from the foreign
quarter, and saved my wages, and bought a goat, which lived in front of
our door when I took the woman to her own hut.
"She was dumb, but not deaf, only she did not understand our language;
but the demon in her eyes spoke for her and understood what I said. She
comprehended everything, and could say everything with her eyes; but
best of all she knew how to thank one. No high-priest who at the great
hill festival praises the Gods in long hymns for their gifts can return
thanks so earnestly with his lips as she with her dumb eyes. And when
she wished to pray, then it seemed as though the demon in her look was
mightier than ever.
"At first I used to be impatient enough when she leaned so feebly
against the wall, or when the child cried and disturbed my sleep; but
she had only to look up, and the demon pressed my heart together and
persuaded me that the crying was really a song. Pennu cried more sweetly
too than other children, and he had such soft, white, pretty little
fingers.
"One day he had been crying for a long time, At last I bent down over
him, and was going to scold him, but he seized me by the beard. It was
pretty to see! Afterwards he was for ever wanting to pull me about,
and his mother noticed that that pleased me, for when I brought home
anything good, an egg or a flower or a cake, she used to hold him up and
place his little hands on my beard.
"Yes, in a few months the woman had learnt to hold him up high in her
arms, for with care and quiet she had grown stronger. White she always
remained and delicate, but she grew younger and more beautiful from day
to day; she can hardly have numbered twenty years when I bought her.
What she was called I never heard; nor did we give her any name. She was
'the woman,' and so we called her.
"Eight moons passed by, and then the little Mouse died. I wept as she
did, and as I bent over the little corpse and let my tears have free
course, and thought--now he can never lift up his pretty little finger
to you again; then I felt for the first time the woman's soft hand on my
cheek. She stroked my rough beard as a child might, and with that looked
at me so gratefully that I felt as though king Pharaoh had all at once
made me a present of both Upper and Lower Egypt.
"When the Mouse was buried she got weaker again, but my mother took good
care of her. I lived with her, like a father with his child. She was
always friendly, but if I approached her, and tried to show her any
fondness, she would look at me, and the demon in her eyes drove me back,
and I let her alone.
"She grew healthier and stronger and more and more beautiful, so
beautiful that I kept her hidden, and was consumed by the longing to
make her my wife. A good housewife she never became, to be sure; her
hands were so tender, and she did not even know how to milk the goat. My
mother did that and everything else for her.
"In the daytime she stayed in her hut and worked, for she was very
skillful at woman's work, and wove lace as fine as cobwebs, which my
mother sold that she might bring home perfumes with the proceeds. She
was very fond of them, and of flowers too; and Uarda in there takes
after her.
"In the evening, when the folk from the other side had left the City
of the Dead, she would often walk down the valley here, thoughtful and
often looking up at the moon, which she was especially fond of.
"One evening in the winter-time I came home. It was already dark, and I
expected to find her in front of the door. All at once, about a hundred
steps behind old Hekt's cave, I heard a troop of jackals barking so
furiously that I said to myself directly they had attacked a human
being, and I knew too who it was, though no one had told me, and the
woman could not call or cry out. Frantic with terror, I tore a firebrand
from the hearth and the stake to which the goat was fastened out of the
ground, rushed to her help, drove away the beasts, and carried her back
senseless to the hut. My mother helped me, and we called her back to
life. When we were alone, I wept like a child for joy at her escape, and
she let me kiss her, and then she became my wife, three years after I
had bought her.
"She bore me a little maid, that she herself named Uarda; for she showed
us a rose, and then pointed to the child, and we understood her without
words.
"Soon afterwards she died.
"You are a priest, but I tell you that when I am summoned before Osiris,
if I am admitted amongst the blessed, I will ask whether I shall meet my
wife, and if the doorkeeper says no, he may thrust me back, and I will
go down cheerfully to the damned, if I find her again there."
"And did no sign ever betray her origin?" asked the physician.
The soldier had hidden his face in his hand; he was weeping aloud, and
did not hear the question. But, the paraschites answered:
"She was the child of some great personage, for in her clothes we found
a golden jewel with a precious stone inscribed with strange characters.
It is very costly, and my wife is keeping it for the little one."
CHAPTER XVII.
In the earliest glimmer of dawn the following clay, the physician
Nebsecht having satisfied himself as to the state of the sick girl, left
the paraschites' hut and made his way in deepest thought to the 'Terrace
Temple of Hatasu, to find his friend Pentaur and compose the writing
which he had promised to the old man.
As the sun arose in radiance he reached the sanctuary. He expected to
hear the morning song of the priests, but all was silent. He knocked and
the porter, still half-asleep, opened the door.
Nebsecht enquired for the chief of the Temple. "He died in the night,"
said the man yawning.
"What do you say?" cried the physician in sudden terror, "who is dead?"
"Our good old chief, Rui."
Nebsecht breathed again, and asked for Pentaur.
"You belong to the House of Seti," said the doorkeeper, "and you do not
know that he is deposed from his office? The holy fathers have refused
to celebrate the birth of Ra with him. He sings for himself now, alone
up on the watch-tower. There you will find him."
Nebsecht strode quickly up the stairs. Several of the priests placed
themselves together in groups as soon as they saw him, and began
singing. He paid no heed to them, however, but hastened on to the
uppermost terrace, where he found his friend occupied in writing.
Soon he learnt all that had happened, and wrathfully he cried: "You are
too honest for those wise gentlemen in the House of Seti, and too pure
and zealous for the rabble here. I knew it, I knew what would come of it
if they introduced you to the mysteries. For us initiated there remains
only the choice between lying and silence."
"The old error!" said Pentaur, "we know that the Godhead is One, we name
it, 'The All,' 'The Veil of the All,' or simply 'Ra.' But under the name
Ra we understand something different than is known to the common herd;
for to us, the Universe is God, and in each of its parts we recognize
a manifestation of that highest being without whom nothing is, in the
heights above or in the depths below."
"To me you can say everything, for I also am initiated," interrupted
Nebsecht.
"But neither from the laity do I withhold it," cried Pentaur, "only
to those who are incapable of understanding the whole, do I show the
different parts. Am I a liar if I do not say, 'I speak,' but 'my mouth
speaks,' if I affirm, 'Your eye sees,' when it is you yourself who
are the seer. When the light of the only One manifests itself, then I
fervently render thanks to him in hymns, and the most luminous of his
forms I name Ra. When I look upon yonder green fields, I call upon the
faithful to give thanks to Rennut, that is, that active manifestation
of the One, through which the corn attains to its ripe maturity. Am I
filled with wonder at the bounteous gifts with which that divine stream
whose origin is hidden, blesses our land, then I adore the One as the
God Hapi, the secret one. Whether we view the sun, the harvest, or the
Nile, whether we contemplate with admiration the unity and harmony of
the visible or invisible world, still it is always with the Only, the
All-embracing One we have to do, to whom we also ourselves belong as
those of his manifestations in which lie places his self-consciousness.
The imagination of the multitude is limited.... "
"And so we lions,
["The priests," says Clement of Alexandria, "allow none to be
participators in their mysteries, except kings or such amongst
themselves as are distinguished for virtue or wisdom." The same
thing is shown by the monuments in many places]
give them the morsel that we can devour at one gulp, finely chopped up,
and diluted with broth as if for the weak stomach of a sick man."
"Not so; we only feel it our duty to temper and sweeten the sharp
potion, which for men even is almost too strong, before we offer it to
the children, the babes in spirit. The sages of old veiled indeed
the highest truths in allegorical forms, in symbols, and finally in a
beautiful and richly-colored mythos, but they brought them near to the
multitude shrouded it is true but still discernible."
"Discernible?" said the physician, "discernible? Why then the veil?"
"And do you imagine that the multitude could look the naked truth in the
face,
[In Sais the statue of Athene (Neith) has the following,
inscription: "I am the All, the Past, the Present, and the Future,
my veil has no mortal yet lifted." Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 9, a
similar quotation by Proclus, in Plato's Timaeus.]
and not despair?"
"Can I, can any one who looks straight forward, and strives to see the
truth and nothing but the truth?" cried the physician. "We both of us
know that things only are, to us, such as they picture themselves in the
prepared mirror of our souls. I see grey, grey, and white, white, and
have accustomed myself in my yearning after knowledge, not to attribute
the smallest part to my own idiosyncrasy, if such indeed there be
existing in my empty breast. You look straight onwards as I do, but in
you each idea is transfigured, for in your soul invisible shaping powers
are at work, which set the crooked straight, clothe the commonplace with
charm, the repulsive with beauty. You are a poet, an artist; I only seek
for truth."
"Only?" said Pentaur, "it is just on account of that effort that I
esteem you so highly, and, as you already know, I also desire nothing
but the truth."
"I know, I know," said the physician nodding, "but our ways run side
by side without ever touching, and our final goal is the reading of a
riddle, of which there are many solutions. You believe yourself to have
found the right one, and perhaps none exists."
"Then let us content ourselves with the nearest and the most beautiful,"
said Pentaur.
"The most beautiful?" cried Nebsecht indignantly. "Is that monster, whom
you call God, beautiful--the giant who for ever regenerates himself that
he may devour himself again? God is the All, you say, who suffices to
himself. Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from
him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of
sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his
household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a
tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is. The coward hides behind
the cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself--I
would I could strip him of the veil! Thus I see the thing that you call
God!"
"A ghastly picture," said Pentaur, "because you forget that we recognize
reason to be the essence of the All, the penetrating and moving power of
the universe which is manifested in the harmonious working together
of its parts, and in ourselves also, since we are formed out of its
substance, and inspired with its soul."
"Is the warfare of life in any way reasonable?" asked Nebsecht. "Is this
eternal destruction in order to build up again especially well-designed
and wise? And with this introduction of reason into the All, you provide
yourself with a self-devised ruler, who terribly resembles the gracious
masters and mistresses that you exhibit to the people."
"Only apparently," answered Pentaur, "only because that which transcends
sense is communicable through the medium of the senses alone. When God
manifests himself as the wisdom of the world, we call him 'the Word,'
'He, who covers his limbs with names,' as the sacred Text expresses
itself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; the
scarabaeus, 'which enters life as its own son' reminds us of the ever
self-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful and
benevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you can
the happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only male
scarabei, and this animal reproduces itself."
Nebsecht smiled. "If all the doctrines of the mysteries," he said, "have
no more truth than this happily chosen image, they are in a bad way.
These beetles have for years been my friends and companions. I know
their family life, and I can assure you that there are males and females
amongst them as amongst cats, apes, and human beings. Your 'good God' I
do not know, and what I least comprehend in thinking it over quietly is
the circumstance that you distinguish a good and evil principle in the
world. If the All is indeed God, if God as the scriptures teach, is
goodness, and if besides him is nothing at all, where is a place to be
found for evil?"
"You talk like a school-boy," said Pentaur indignantly. "All that is, is
good and reasonable in itself, but the infinite One, who prescribes his
own laws and his own paths, grants to the finite its continuance through
continual renewal, and in the changing forms of the finite progresses
for evermore. What we call evil, darkness, wickedness, is in itself
divine, good, reasonable, and clear; but it appears in another light to
our clouded minds, because we perceive the way only and not the goal,
the details only, and not the whole. Even so, superficial listeners
blame the music, in which a discord is heard, which the harper has only
evoked from the strings that his hearers may more deeply feel the purity
of the succeeding harmony; even so, a fool blames the painter who has
colored his board with black, and does not wait for the completion
of the picture which shall be thrown into clearer relief by the dark
background; even so, a child chides the noble tree, whose fruit rots,
that a new life may spring up from its kernel. Apparent evil is but an
antechamber to higher bliss, as every sunset is but veiled by night, and
will soon show itself again as the red dawn of a new day."
"How convincing all that sounds!" answered the physician, "all, even
the terrible, wins charm from your lips; but I could invert your
proposition, and declare that it is evil that rules the world, and
sometimes gives us one drop of sweet content, in order that we may more
keenly feel the bitterness of life. You see harmony and goodness
in everything. I have observed that passion awakens life, that all
existence is a conflict, that one being devours another."
"And do you not feel the beauty of visible creation, and does not the
immutable law in everything fill you with admiration and humility?"
"For beauty," replied Nebsecht, "I have never sought; the organ is
somehow wanting in me to understand it of myself, though I willingly
allow you to mediate between us. But of law in nature I fully appreciate
the worth, for that is the veritable soul of the universe. You call the
One 'Temt,' that is to say the total--the unity which is reached by the
addition of many units; and that pleases me, for the elements of the
universe and the powers which prescribe the paths of life are
strictly defined by measure and number--but irrespective of beauty or
benevolence."
"Such views," cried Pentaur troubled, "are the result of your strange
studies. You kill and destroy, in order, as you yourself say, to come
upon the track of the secrets of life. Look out upon nature, develop
the faculty which you declare to be wanting, in you, and the beauty of
creation will teach you without my assistance that you are praying to a
false god."
"I do not pray," said Nebsecht, "for the law which moves the world is
as little affected by prayers as the current of the sands in your
hour-glass. Who tells you that I do not seek to come upon the track of
the first beginning of things? I proved to you just now that I know more
about the origin of Scarabei than you do. I have killed many an animal,
not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has built
up its form. But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become
blunt rather than keen. I tell you that the beginning of things is not
more attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition."
Pentaur looked at the physician enquiringly.
"I also for once," continued Nebsecht, "will speak in figures. Look at
this wine, how pure it is, how fragrant; and yet it was trodden from the
grape by the brawny feet of the vintagers. And those full ears of corn!
They gleam golden yellow, and will yield us snow-white meal when they
are ground, and yet they grew from a rotting seed. Lately you were
praising to me the beauty of the great Hall of Columns nearly completed
in the Temple of Amon over yonder in Thebes.
[Begun by Rameses I. continued by Seti I., completed by Rameses II.
The remains of this immense hall, with its 134 columns, have not
their equal in the world.]
How posterity will admire it! I saw that Hall arise. There lay masses of
freestone in wild confusion, dust in heaps that took away my breath,
and three months since I was sent over there, because above a hundred
workmen engaged in stone-polishing under the burning sun had been beaten
to death. Were I a poet like you, I would show you a hundred similar
pictures, in which you would not find much beauty. In the meantime,
we have enough to do in observing the existing order of things, and
investigating the laws by which it is governed."
"I have never clearly understood your efforts, and have difficulty in
comprehending why you did not turn to the science of the haruspices,"
said Pentaur. "Do you then believe that the changing, and--owing to the
conditions by which they are surrounded--the dependent life of plants
and animals is governed by law, rule, and numbers like the movement of
the stars?"
"What a question! Is the strong and mighty hand, which compels yonder
heavenly bodies to roll onward in their carefully-appointed orbits, not
delicate enough to prescribe the conditions of the flight of the bird,
and the beating of the human heart?"
"There we are again with the heart," said the poet smiling, "are you any
nearer your aim?"
The physician became very grave. "Perhaps tomorrow even," he said, "I
may have what I need. You have your palette there with red and black
color, and a writing reed. May I use this sheet of papyrus?"
"Of course; but first tell me.... "
"Do not ask; you would not approve of my scheme, and there would only be
a fresh dispute."
"I think," said the poet, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder,
"that we have no reason to fear disputes. So far they have been the
cement, the refreshing dew of our friendship."
"So long as they treated of ideas only, and not of deeds."
"You intend to get possession of a human heart!" cried the poet. "Think
of what you are doing! The heart is the vessel of that effluence of the
universal soul, which lives in us."
"Are you so sure of that?" cried the physician with some irritation,
"then give me the proof. Have you ever examined a heart, has any one
member of my profession done so? The hearts of criminals and prisoners
of war even are declared sacred from touch, and when we stand helpless
by a patient, and see our medicines work harm as often as good, why is
it? Only because we physicians are expected to work as blindly as an
astronomer, if he were required to look at the stars through a board. At
Heliopolis I entreated the great Urma Rahotep, the truly learned chief
of our craft, and who held me in esteem, to allow me to examine the
heart of a dead Amu; but he refused me, because the great Sechet leads
virtuous Semites also into the fields of the blessed.
[According to the inscription accompanying the famous
representations of the four nations (Egyptians, Semites, Libyans,
and Ethiopians) in the tomb of Seti I.]
And then followed all the old scruples: that to cut up the heart of a
beast even is sinful, because it also is the vehicle of a soul, perhaps
a condemned and miserable human soul, which before it can return to the
One, must undergo purification by passing through the bodies of animals.
I was not satisfied, and declared to him that my great-grandfather
Nebsecht, before he wrote his treatise on the heart, must certainly
have examined such an organ. Then he answered me that the divinity had
revealed to him what he had written, and therefore his work had been
accepted amongst the sacred writings of Toth,
[Called by the Greeks "Hermetic Books." The Papyrus Ebers is the
work called by Clemens of Alexandria "the Book of Remedies."]
which stood fast and unassailable as the laws of the world; he wished
to give me peace for quiet work, and I also, he said, might be a chosen
spirit, the divinity might perhaps vouchsafe revelations to me too. I
was young at that time, and spent my nights in prayer, but I only wasted
away, and my spirit grew darker instead of clearer. Then I killed in
secret--first a fowl, then rats, then a rabbit, and cut up their hearts,
and followed the vessels that lead out of them, and know little more now
than I did at first; but I must get to the bottom of the truth, and I
must have a human heart."
"What will that do for you?" asked Pentaur; "you cannot hope to perceive
the invisible and the infinite with your human eyes?"
"Do you know my great-grandfather's treatise?"
"A little," answered the poet; "he said that wherever he laid his
finger, whether on the head, the hands, or the stomach, he everywhere
met with the heart, because its vessels go into all the members, and the
heart is the meeting point of all these vessels. Then Nebsecht proceeds
to state how these are distributed in the different members, and
shows--is it not so?--that the various mental states, such as anger,
grief, aversion, and also the ordinary use of the word heart, declare
entirely for his view."
"That is it. We have already discussed it, and I believe that he is
right, so far as the blood is concerned, and the animal sensations. But
the pure and luminous intelligence in us--that has another seat," and
the physician struck his broad but low forehead with his hand. "I have
observed heads by the hundred down at the place of execution, and I have
also removed the top of the skulls of living animals. But now let me
write, before we are disturbed."
[Human brains are prescribed for a malady of the eyes in the Ebers
papyrus. Herophilus, one of the first scholars of the Alexandrine
Museum, studied not only the bodies of executed criminals, but made
his experiments also on living malefactors. He maintained that the
four cavities of the human brain are the seat of the soul.]
The physician took the reed, moistened it with black color prepared from
burnt papyrus, and in elegant hieratic characters
[At the time of our narrative the Egyptians had two kinds of
writing-the hieroglyphic, which was generally used for monumental
inscriptions, and in which the letters consisted of conventional
representations of various objects, mathematical and arbitrary
symbols, and the hieratic, used for writing on papyrus, and in
which, with the view of saving time, the written pictures underwent
so many alterations and abbreviations that the originals could
hardly be recognized. In the 8th century there was a further
abridgment of the hieratic writing, which was called the demotic, or
people's writing, and was used in commerce. Whilst the hieroglyphic
and hieratic writings laid the foundations of the old sacred
dialect, the demotic letters were only used to write the spoken
language of the people. E. de Rouge's Chrestomathie Egyptienne.
H. Brugsch's Hieroglyphische Grammatik. Le Page Renouf's shorter
hieroglyphical grammar. Ebers' Ueber das Hieroglyphische
Schriftsystem, 2nd edition, 1875, in the lectures of Virchow
Holtzendorff.]
wrote the paper for the paraschites, in which he confessed to having
impelled him to the theft of a heart, and in the most binding manner
declared himself willing to take the old man's guilt upon himself before
Osiris and the judges of the dead.
When he had finished, Pentaur held out his hand for the paper, but
Nebsecht folded it together, placed it in a little bag in which lay
an amulet that his dying mother had hung round his neck, and said,
breathing deeply:
"That is done. Farewell, Pentaur."
But the poet held the physician back; he spoke to him with the warmest
words, and conjured him to abandon his enterprise. His prayers, however,
had no power to touch Nebsecht, who only strove forcibly to disengage
his finger from Pentaur's strong hand, which held him as in a clasp of
iron. The excited poet did not remark that he was hurting his friend,
until after a new and vain attempt at freeing himself, Nebsecht cried
out in pain, "You are crushing my finger!"
A smile passed over the poet's face, he loosened his hold on the
physician, and stroked the reddened hand like a mother who strives to
divert her child from pain.
"Don't be angry with me, Nebsecht," he said, "you know my unlucky fists,
and to-day they really ought to hold you fast, for you have too mad a
purpose on hand."
"Mad?" said the physician, whilst he smiled in his turn. "It may be so;
but do you not know that we Egyptians all have a peculiar tenderness for
our follies, and are ready to sacrifice house and land to them?"
"Our own house and our own land," cried the poet: and then added
seriously, "but not the existence, not the happiness of another."
"Have I not told you that I do not look upon the heart as the seat of
our intelligence? So far as I am concerned, I would as soon be buried
with a ram's heart as with my own."
"I do not speak of the plundered dead, but of the living," said the
poet. "If the deed of the paraschites is discovered, he is undone, and
you would only have saved that sweet child in the hut behind there, to
fling her into deeper misery."
Nebsecht looked at the other with as much astonishment and dismay, as if
he had been awakened from sleep by bad tidings. Then he cried: "All that
I have, I would share with the old man and Uarda."
"And who would protect her?"
"Her father."
"That rough drunkard who to-morrow or the day after may be sent no one
knows where."
"He is a good fellow," said the physician interrupting his friend, and
stammering violently. "But who 'would do anything to the child? She is
so so.... She is so charming, so perfectly--sweet and lovely."
With these last words he cast down his eyes and reddened like a girl.
"You understand that," he said, "better than I do; yes, and you also
think her beautiful! Strange! you must not laugh if I confess--I am
but a man like every one else--when I confess, that I believe I have at
length discovered in myself the missing organ for beauty of form--not
believe merely, but truly have discovered it, for it has not only
spoken, but cried, raged, till I felt a rushing in my ears, and for the
first time was attracted more by the sufferer than by suffering. I have
sat in the hut as though spell-bound, and gazed at her hair, at her
eyes, at how she breathed. They must long since have missed me at the
House of Seti, perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking me
in my room! For two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawn
away from my work, for the sake of this child. Were I one of the laity,
whom you would approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me.
But it is not that,"--and with these words the physician's eyes flamed
up--"it is not that! The animal in me, the low instincts of which the
heart is the organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, they
have mastered the pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; and
in the very moment when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you call
the Prince of knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal in
me is stronger than that which I call my God."
The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the ground
during these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened to
him wondering and full of sympathy. For a time both were silent; then
Pentaur laid his hand on his friend's hand, and said cordially:
"My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I may
use your own words, have known a like emotion. But I know that what we
feel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftier
and more precious than these, not lower. Not the animal, Nebsecht, is
it that you feel in yourself, but God. Goodness is the most beautiful
attribute of the divine, and you have always been well-disposed
towards great and small; but I ask you, have you ever before felt so
irresistibly impelled to pour out an ocean of goodness on another being,
whether for Uarda you would not more joyfully and more self-forgetfully
sacrifice all that you have, and all that you are, than to father and
mother and your oldest friend?"
Nebsecht nodded assentingly.
"Well then," cried Pentaur, "follow your new and godlike emotion, be
good to Uarda and do not sacrifice her to your vain wishes. My poor
friend! With your--enquiries into the secrets of life, you have never
looked round upon itself, which spreads open and inviting before our
eyes. Do you imagine that the maiden who can thus inflame the calmest
thinker in Thebes, will not be coveted by a hundred of the common herd
when her protector fails her? Need I tell you that amongst the dancers
in the foreign quarter nine out of ten are the daughters of outlawed
parents? Can you endure the thought that by your hand innocence may be
consigned to vice, the rose trodden under foot in the mud? Is the human
heart that you desire, worth an Uarda? Now go, and to-morrow come again
to me your friend who understands how to sympathize with all you feel,
and to whom you have approached so much the nearer to-day that you have
learned to share his purest happiness."
Pentaur held out his hand to the physician, who held it some time, then
went thoughtfully and lingeringly, unmindful of the burning glow of
the mid-day sun, over the mountain into the valley of the king's graves
towards the hut of the paraschites.
Here he found the soldier with his daughter. "Where is the old man?" he
asked anxiously.
"He has gone to his work in the house of the embalmer," was the answer.
"If anything should happen to him he bade me tell you not to forget the
writing and the book. He was as though out of his mind when he left us,
and put the ram's heart in his bag and took it with him. Do you remain
with the little one; my mother is at work, and I must go with the prisoners of war to Harmontis." |
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