Part 2 (2/2)
Rumphius promised hi, the boldness of the lines, the brilliancy of the colours in all these paintings denoted in the plainest ed to the finest period of Egyptian art
When the English nobleman and his companion had sufficiently studied this outer case, they drew the cartonnage froainst the side of the cabin, where the funeral fore spectacle, standing upright like aattitude of life, after having preserved so long the horizontal attitude of death on a basalt bed in the heart of the mountain, opened up by impious curiosity The soul of the deceased, which had reckoned on eternal rest and which had taken such care to preserve its remains from violation, must have been moved, beyond the worlds, in the circuit of its travels and transrations
Dr Rumphius, armed with a chisel and a hae of the enii which wear a bestial ea crowding around the dead in the perforhtful and mysterious rite; the clean profile of Lord Evandale, cal the soul to be judged
The operation having been at length co,--the box, resting on the ground, was separated into two parts like the casing of a cast, and the mummy appeared in all the brilliancy of its death toilet, coquettishly adorned as if it had wished to char the case, a faint, delightful, aromatic odour of cedar liquor, of sandal powder, of h the cabin of the vessel; for the body had not been gu the bodies of ordinary persons, and all the skill of the embalmers, the former inhabitants of Memnonia, seemed to have been directed to the preservation of these precious remains
The head was enveloped in a network of narrow bands of fine linen, through which the face showed faintly The essences in which they had been steeped had dyed the tissue a beautiful tawny tint Over the breast a network of fine tubes of blue glass, very like the long jet beads which are used to eolden drops wherever the tubes crossed, fell down to the feet and formed a pearly shroud worthy of a queen The statuettes of the four Gods of Aold shone brilliantly, and were sye of the network, which ended below in a fringe of most tasteful ornaolden plate, above which a lapis-lazuli scarabaeus spread out its long golden wings Under the mummy's head was placed a rich ive the dead soul an opportunity of beholding the spectre of its beauty during the long night of the tomb By the mirror lay a coffer of enamelled ware, of most precious works alternating with beads, gold, lapis-lazuli, and cornelian By the side of the beauty had been placed also a narrow, square sandal-wood basin in which, during her lifetime, the dead woman had performed her perfumed ablutions Three vases of wavy alabaster fastened to the bier, as was also the mummy, by a layer of natron, contained, the first two, essences, the scent of which could still be noticed, and the third, anti the edge of the eyelids and extending the outer angle according to the antique Egyptian usage, still practised at the present ti custoht of these treasures; ”what a touching custo wo woman unquestionably that these linen bands, yelloith tiyptians, we are downright barbarians; hurried on by our brutal way of living, we have lost the delicate sense of death How ard, how much love do not these minute cares reveal, these infinite precautions, these useless caresses bestowed upon a senseless body,--that struggle to snatch from destruction an adored form and to restore it intact to the soul on the day of the supreme reunion!”
”Perhaps,” replied Lord Evandale, very thoughtful, ”our civilisation, which we think so highly developed, is, after all, but a great decadence which has lost even the historical reantic societies which have disappeared We are stupidly proud of a few ingenious pieces of et the colossal splendours and the vast works impossible to any other nation, which are found in the ancient land of the Pharaohs We have steam, but steam is less powerful than the force which built the Pyraea, carved mountains into the shapes of sphinxes and obelisks, sealed halls with one great stone which all our engines could not move, cut out monolithic chapels, and saved frail human remains from annihilation,--so deep a sense of eternity did it already possess”
”Oh, the Egyptians,” said Dr Ru artists, and great scholars A priest of Meht even our Gerreater than any symbolists of our day But we shall succeed eventually in deciphering their hieroglyphs and penetrating their reat Champollion has ranite books Meanwhile, let us strip, as delicately as possible, this young beauty who is e”
”Poor wo lord ”Profane eyes will now behold the mysterious charms which love itself perhaps never saw Truly, under the empty pretext of scientific pursuit, we are as barbarous as the Persians of Ca to despair this worthy scholar, I should enclose you again, without having stripped off your last veil, within the triple box of your bier”
Dr Ru the an to unwrap it with htness of touch He first of all undid the outer envelope of linen, sewed together and inated with palirdled the body Then he took hold of the end of a thin, narrow band, the infinite windings of which enclosed the liyptian He rolled up the band on itself as cleverly as theit up in all its ressed in his work, the mummy, freed from its envelope, like a statue which a sculptor blocks out of the marble, appearedbeen unrolled, another narrower one was seen, intended to bind the body more closely It was of such fine linen, and so finely woven, that it was coe followed accurately every outline, i like a h the thin tissue The aromatic balm in which it had been steeped had stiffened it, and as it caave out a little dry sound like that of paper that is being crushed or torn There reh he ith such work, Dr Ruh respect for the dead, or through that feeling which prevents aa door, fro a veil which hides a secret that he burns to learn He ascribed his ue, and as afroreat blue-checked handkerchief; but fatigue had nothing to do with it Meanwhile the dead forold work shone faintly through it as well
The last wrapping taken off, the young wo, in spite of so many centuries that had passed away, the fulness of her contours, and the easy grace of her pure lines Her pose, an infrequent one in the case of mummies, was that of the Venus of Medici, as if the embalmers had wished to save this beautiful body froidity of the cadaver
A cry of admiration was uttered at the saht of the marvel Never did a Greek or Roman statue present a more beautiful appearance The peculiar characteristics of the Egyptian ideal gave indeed to this lovely body, soin antique h-bred, narrow feet, the nails shi+ning like agate, the slender waist, the shape of the breasts, small and turned up like a sandal beneath the veil which enveloped it, the slightly protruding contour of the hip, the roundness of the thigh, the sorace of the musicians and dancers represented on the frescoes of funeral repasts in the Thebes hypogea It was a shape still childish in its gracefulness, yet possessing already all the perfections of a woyptian art expresses with such tender suavity, whether it paints the walls of the passages with a brush, or whether it patiently carves the hard basalt
As a general rule mummies which have been filled with bitumen and natron resemble black simulacra carved in ebony; corruption cannot attack the; the bodies have not returned to the dust whence they came, but they have been petrified in a hideous shape, which one cannot conteust and terror
In this case, the body, carefully prepared by surer, longer, and more costly processes, had preserved the elasticity of the flesh, the grain of the skin, and alolden tint of a new Florentine bronze, and the aione and titian covered with a smoky varnish, was not very different froyptian during her lifetime She seeed with their long lashes, allowed eyes lustrous with the huleam of life to shi+ne between their lines of antimony One could have sworn they were about to shake off, as a light dream, their sleep of thirty centuries The nose, delicate and fine, preserved its pure outline; no depression deformed the cheeks, which were as round as the side of a vase; the mouth, coloured with a faint blush, had preserved its imperceptible lines, and on the lips, voluptuously moulded, fluttered a entleness, sadness, and charned smile which pouts so prettily the lips of the adorable heads which surmount the Canopean vases in the Louvre
Around the forehead, low and smooth in accordance with the laws of antique beauty, was massed jet-black hair divided and plaited into a multitude of fine tresses which fell on either shoulder Twenty golden pins stuck into the tresses, like flowers in a ball head-dress, studded with brilliant points the thick dark hair which reat earrings, round discs reseht by the side of the brown cheeks A nificent necklace, coold and precious stones, encircled the neck of the coquettishtwo other collars, the pearl, gold, lapis-lazuli, and cornelian rosettes of which alternated syirdle of nearly the saeold and cornelian beads adorned her left wrist, and on the index of the left hand shone a very solden cloisonne enaold thread e were the sensations of the twowho had lived in the days when history was yet young and was collecting the stories told by tradition; face to face with a body contemporary with Moses, which yet preserved the exquisite fornated with perfuered the hair, ranitenobleht of a statue or a painting representing a woman of past days famous for her beauty It seemed to him that he would have loved, had he lived three thousand years earlier, that beauty which nothingness had refused to destroy; and the syht perhaps reached the restless soul that fluttered above its profaned fra noblee them off; for Evandale had ordered that the mummy should not be deprived of this last frail consolation To take away gems from a woman, even dead, is to kill her a second time Suddenly a papyrus roll concealed between the side and arht the doctor's eye
”Oh!” said he, ”this is no doubt a copy of the funeral ritual placed in the inner coffin and written withto the wealth and rank of the person”
He unrolled the delicate band with infinite precautions As soon as the first lines showed, he exhibited surprise, for he did not recognise the ordinary figures and signs of the ritual In vain he sought in the usual places for the vignettes representing the funeral, which serve as a frontispiece to such papyri, nor did he find the Litany of the Hundred Names of Osiris, nor the soul's passport, nor the petition to the Gods of As of a peculiar kind illustrated entirely different scenes connected with hue of the shade to the world beyond Chapters and paragraphs seemed to be indicated by characters written in red, evidently for the purpose of distinguishi+ng them from the re the attention of the reader to interesting points An inscription placed at the head appeared to contain the title of the work, and the narammat who had written or copied it,--so acious intuition of the doctor lance
”Undoubtedly, yropoulos,” said he to Evandale, as he pointed out the differences between the papyrus and the usual ritual ”This is the first tiyptianelse than hieratic forht, even if rows thrice around ypt!
Yes, I shall learn your story, you lovely dead; for that papyrus pressed close to your heart by your lovely arlory, become the equal of Champollion, and make Lepsius die of jealousy”
The nobleman and the doctor returned to Europe The es and replaced within its three cases, rests within Lord Evandale's park in Lincolnshi+re, in the basalt sarcophagus which he brought at great expense froive to the British Museuus, sinks into a deep reverie, and sighs
After three years of unflagging application, Dr Ru the ed parts, and in others which contained unknown signs And it is his translation into Latin--which we have turned into French--that you are about to read, under the name, ”The Romance of a Mummy”