Part 2 (1/2)
We are the first living men who have penetrated so far since the dead, whoever he may be, was left with eternity and the unknown in this toe,” replied the doctor; ”a king or a king's son, at the very least I shall tell you later when I have deciphered his cartouche But first let us enter this hall, the finest, the yptians called the Golden Hall”
Lord Evandale walked ahead, a few steps before the less agile scholar, though perhaps the latter deferentially wished to leave the pleasure of the discovery to the young nobleman
As he was about to step across the threshold, Lord Evandale bent forward as if soh accustomed not to ed and thoroughly British ”Oh!” On the fine gray pohich covered the ground showed very distinctly, with the ireat bone of the heel, the shape of a human foot,--the foot of the last priest or the last friend who had withdrawn, fifteen hundred years before Christ, after having paid the last honours to the dead The dust, which in Egypt is as eternal as granite, had moulded the print and preserved it for more than thirty centuries, just as the hardened diluvian mud has preserved the tracks of the animals which last traversed it
”See,” said Evandale to Rumphius, ”that human footprint which is directed towards the exit froe of the Libyan chain rests the mummified body that made it?”
”Who knows?” replied the scholar ”In any case, that light print, which a breath would have bloay, has lasted longer than eions and monuments believed eternal The noble dust of Alexander was used perhaps to stop a bung-hole, as Hayptian reed by a curiosity which did not allow them much time for recollection, the noble care, nevertheless, not to efface the wondrous footprint On entering, the ie emotion; it seemed to him, as Shakespeare says, that the ti of ot Great Britain and his nae, his seat in Lincolnshi+re, his mansion in the West End, Hyde Park, Piccadilly, the Queen's Drawing-Roolish existence An invisible hand had turned upside down the sand-glass of eternity, and the centuries which had fallen one by one, like the hours, in the solitude of the night, were falling once , Pharaoh was reigning, and he, Lord Evandale, felt elets, and had not an ena in folds upon his hips,--the only suitable dress in which to be presented to a royal h there was nothing sinister about the place, as he violated this palace of death so carefully protected against profanation His atteious, and he said to himself, ”Suppose this Pharaoh were to rise on his couch and strikefall the shroud half lifted from the body of this antique, dead civilisation, but the doctor, carried away by scientific enthusiashts, shouted in a loud voice, ”My lord, us is intact!”
These words recalled Lord Evandale to reality By swift projection of his thought he traversed the thirty-five hundred years which he had gone back in his reverie, and he answered, ”Indeed, dear doctor, intact?”
”Oh, unexpected luck! oh, marvellous chance! oh, wondrous find!”
continued the doctor, in the excite the doctor's enthusias of remorse,--the only kind of re asked more than twenty-five thousand francs ”I was a fool!” he said to hiain That nobleers to enjoy the beauty of the spectacle, the fellahs had lighted all their torches The sight was indeed strange and alleries and halls which led to the sarcophagus hall were flat-ceiled and not h; but the sanctuary, the one to which all these labyrinths led, was of reater proportions Lord Evandale and Dr Ruh they were already fahted up, the Golden Hall flamed, and for the first tis shone in all their brilliancy Red and blue, green and white, of virginal purity, brilliantly fresh and around of the figures and hieroglyphs, and attracted the eye before the subjects which they forlance it looked like a vast tapestry of the richest stuffs The vault, soh, for yellow palhty wings and the royal cartouches showed around Farther on, Isis and Nephthys waved their ars; the uraeus swelled its blue throat, the scarabaeus unfolded its wings, the animal-headed Gods pricked up their jackal ears, sharpened their hawk's-beaks, wrinkled their baboon faces, and drew into their shoulders their vulture or serpent necks as if they were endoith life
Mystical consecrated boats (baris) passed by on their sledges drawn by figures in attitudes of sadness, with angular gestures, or propelled by half-naked oars waves
Mourners kneeling, their hand placed on their blue hair in token of grief, turned towards the catafalques, while shaven priests, leopard-skin on shoulder, burned perfu a cup under the nose of the Godlike dead Other personages offered to the funeral genii lotus in bloom or in bud, bulbous plants, birds, pieces of antelope, and vases of liquors Acephalous figures of Justice brought souls before Osiris, whose arms were set in inflexible contour, and as assisted by the forty-two judges of A an ostrich-plume on their heads, the fory
All these figures, drawn in hollowed lines in the lihtest colours, were endoith that motionless life, that frozen yptian art, which was heedto utter his secret
In the centre of the hall rose, us, cut out of a solid block of black basalt and closed by a cover of the same material, carved in the shape of an arch The four sides of the funeral lyphs as carefully engraved as the intaglio of a geyptians did not know the use of iron, and the grain of basalt is hard enough to blunt the best-teination loses itself when it tries to discover the process by which that ranite as with a style on wax tablets
At the angles of the sarcophagus were set four vases of oriental alabaster, of ant and perfect outline, the carved covers of which represented the man's head of Amset, the monkey head of Hapi, the jackal head of Tuamutef, and the hawk head of Kebhsnauf The vases contained the viscerae of the us At the head of the toy of Osiris with plaited beard seemed to watch over the dead Two coloured statues of wo, with one hand a square box on their head, and holding in the other a vase for ablutions which they rested on their hip The one was dressed in a si to the hips and held up by crossed braces; the other, more richly costumed, rapped in a sort of narrow shi+ft, covered with scales alternately red and green By the side of the first there were three water-jars, originally filled with Nile water, which, as it evaporated, had left itssome alimentary paste, now dried up By the side of the second, two small shi+ps, like the model shi+ps made in seaports, which reproduced accurately, the one the minutest details of the boats destined to bear the bodies from Diospolis to Memnonia, the other the syions of the West Nothing was forgotten,--neither thesweep, nor the pilot, nor the oars under the shrine on a bed with feet forures of the funeral divinities fulfilling their sacred functions Both the boats and the figures were painted in brilliant colours, and on the two sides of the prow, beak-like as the poop, showed the great Osiris' eye, er still by the use of antimony The bones and skull of an ox scattered here and there showed that a victiht have disturbed the repose of the dead Coffers painted and bedizened with hieroglyphs were placed on the to had been touched in this palace of death since the day when the e and its two coffins had been placed upon its basalt couch The worh the closest biers, had itself retreated, driven back by the bitter scent of the bitumen and the aroyropoulos, after Lord Evandale and Doctor Rumphius had had time to admire the beauty of the Golden Hall
”Unquestionably,” replied the noblees of the cover as you put in your crow-bars, for I propose to carry off the tomb and present it to the British Museu the es were carefully driven in, and presently the huge stone was moved and slid down the props prepared to receive it The sarcophagus having been opened, showed the first bier herilding, representing a sort of shrine with syes, quadrilles, pallyphs The cover was opened, and Ruus, uttered a cry of surprise when he discovered the contents of the coffin, having recognised the sex of the mummy by the absence of the Osiris beard and the shape of the cartonnage The Greek hi experience in excavations enabled hieness of such a find The valley of Biban el Moluk contains the tos only: the necropolis of the queens is situated farther away, in another e The tombs of the queens are very sie-ways and one or two rooms Women in the East have always been considered as inferior to men, even in death Most of these tombs, which were broken into at a very distant period, were used as receptacles for shapeless mummies carelessly embalmed, which still exhibit traces of leprosy and elephantiasis How did this wous, in the centre of this cryptic palace worthy of the most illustrious and most powerful of the Pharaohs?
”This,” said the doctor to Lord Evandale, ”upsets all my notions and all my theories It overthrows the systeyptian funeral rites, which nevertheless have been so carefully followed out during thousands of years No doubt we have cootten mystery of history A woypt She was called Tahoser, as we learn froraved upon older inscriptions hammered away She usurped the tomb as she usurped the throne Or perhaps some other ambitious woman, of whom history has preserved no trace, renewed her attempt”
”No one is better able to solve this difficult problem than you,” said Lord Evandale ”We will carry this box full of secrets to our boat, where you will, at your leisure, decipher this historic document and read the riddle set by these hawks, scarabaei, kneeling figures, serrated lines, winged uraeus, and spatula hands, which you read as readily as did the great Chayropoulos, carried off the huge coffer on their shoulders, and thein an inverse direction the funeral travel it had accoilded bari preceded by a long procession, was eht the travellers, soon reached the vessel moored on the Nile, and was placed in the cabin, which was not unlike, so little do foryropoulos, having arranged about the box all the objects which had been found near it, stood respectfully at the cabin door and appeared to be waiting Lord Evandale understood, and ordered his valet to pay him the twenty-five thousand francs
The open bier was placed upon rests in the centre of the cabin; it shone as brilliantly as if the colours had been put on the day before, and frae, the workmanshi+p of which was reypt more carefully wrapped up one of her children for the eternal sleep Although no shape was indicated by the funeral Her in a sheath from which stood out alone the shoulders and the head, one could guess there was under that thick envelope a young and graceful for eyes outlined with black and brightened with enamel, the nose with its delicate nostrils, the rounded cheek-bones, the half-open lips s with an indescribable, sphinx-like smile, the chin somewhat short in curve but of extreyptian ideal, and testified by a thousand small, characteristic details which art cannot invent, to the individual character of the portrait Numberless fine plaits of hair, tressed with cords and separated by bandeaux, fell in opulentfrom the back of the neck, bowed over the head and opened its azure calyx over the dead, cold brow, coant head-dress
A broad necklace, coold and formed of several rows, lay upon the lower portion of the neck, and allowed to be seen the clean, firolden cups
The sacred rareen horns the red disc of the setting sun and supported by two serpents wearing the pschent and swelling out their hoods, showed on the boso Lower down, in the spaces left free by the crossed zones, and rayed with brilliant colours representing bandages, the vulture of Phra, croith a globe, with outspread wings, the body covered with syed feathers, and the tail spread out fanwise, held in its talons the huge Tau, ereen-faced, with the esture hieratic in its stiffness the whip, the crook, and the sceptre The eye of Osiris opened its red ball outlined with antimony Celestial snakes swelled their hoods around the sacred discs; syures projected their feathered ar and the End, their hair powdered with blue dust, bare down to below the breasts and the rest of the body wrapped in a close-fitting skirt, knelt in Egyptian fashi+on on green and red cushi+ons adorned with heavy tufts
A longitudinal band of hieroglyphs, springing fro down to the feet, contained no doubt some formal funeral ritual, or rather, the names and titles of the deceased, a problem which Dr