An Egyptian Princess (Historical Novel). Georg Ebers

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      “But, by our father Zeus, and by Apollo—”

      “Yes, I understand thy indignation and I share it; but every position has its duties, and as a king of a people who venerate tradition as the highest divinity, I must submit, at least in the main, to the ceremonies handed down through thousands of years. Were I to burst these fetters, I know positively that at my death my body would remain unburied; for, know that the priests sit in judgment over every corpse, and deprive the condemned of rest, even in the grave.”

      [This well-known custom among the ancient Egyptians is confirmed,

       not only by many Greek narrators, but by the laboriously erased

       inscriptions discovered in the chambers of some tombs.]

      “Why care about the grave?” cried Croesus, becoming angry. “We live for life, not for death!”

      “Say rather,” answered Amasis rising from his seat, “we, with our Greek minds, believe a beautiful life to be the highest good. But Croesus, I was begotten and nursed by Egyptian parents, nourished on Egyptian food, and though I have accepted much that is Greek, am still, in my innermost being, an Egyptian. What has been sung to us in our childhood, and praised as sacred in our youth, lingers on in the heart until the day which sees us embalmed as mummies. I am an old man and have but a short span yet to run, before I reach the landmark which separates us from that farther country. For the sake of life’s few remaining days, shall I willingly mar Death’s thousands of years? No, my friend, in this point at least I have remained an Egyptian, in believing, like the rest of my countrymen, that the happiness of a future life in the kingdom of Osiris, depends on the preservation of my body, the habitation of the soul.

      [Each human soul was considered as a part of the world-soul Osiris,

       was united to him after the death of the body, and thenceforth took

       the name of Osiris. The Egyptian Cosmos consisted of the three

       great realms, the Heavens, the Earth and the Depths. Over the vast

       ocean which girdles the vault of heaven, the sun moves in a boat or

       car drawn by the planets and fixed stars. On this ocean too the

       great constellations circle in their ships, and there is the kingdom

       of the blissful gods, who sit enthroned above this heavenly ocean

       under a canopy of stars. The mouth of this great stream is in the

       East, where the sun-god rises from the mists and is born again as a

       child every morning. The surface of the earth is inhabited by human

       beings having a share in the three great cosmic kingdoms. They

       receive their soul from the heights of heaven, the seat and source

       of light; their material body is of the earth; and the appearance or

       outward form by which one human being is distinguished from another

       at sight—his phantom or shadow—belongs to the depths. At death,

       soul, body, and shadow separate from one another. The soul to

       return to the place from whence it came, to Heaven, for it is a part

       of God (of Osiris); the body, to be committed to the earth from

       which it was formed in the image of its creator; the phantom or

       shadow, to descend into the depths, the kingdom of shadows. The

       gate to this kingdom was placed in the West among the sunset hills,

       where the sun goes down daily,—where he dies. Thence arise the

       changeful and corresponding conceptions connected with rising and

       setting, arriving and departing, being born and dying. The careful

       preservation of the body after death from destruction, not only

       through the process of inward decay, but also through violence or

       accident, was in the religion of ancient Egypt a principal condition

       (perhaps introduced by the priests on sanitary grounds) on which

       depended the speedy deliverance of the soul, and with this her

       early, appointed union with the source of Light and Good, which two

       properties were, in idea, one and indivisible. In the Egyptian

       conceptions the soul was supposed to remain, in a certain sense,

       connected with the body during a long cycle of solar years. She

       could, however, quit the body from time to time at will, and could

       appear to mortals in various forms and places; these appearances

       differed according to the hour, and were prescribed in exact words

       and delineations.]

      “But enough of these matters; thou wilt find it difficult to enter into such thoughts. Tell me rather what thou thinkest of our temples and pyramids.”

      Croesus, after reflecting a moment, answered with a smile: “Those huge pyramidal masses of stone seem to me creations of the boundless desert, the gaily painted temple colonnades to be the children of the Spring; but though the sphinxes lead up to your temple gates, and seem to point the way into the very shrines themselves, the sloping fortress-like walls of the Pylons, those huge isolated portals, appear as if placed there to repel entrance. Your many-colored hieroglyphics likewise attract the gaze, but baffle the inquiring spirit by the mystery that lies within their characters. The images of your manifold gods are everywhere to be seen; they crowd on our gaze, and yet who knows not that their real is not their apparent significance? that they are mere outward images of thoughts accessible only to the few, and, as I have heard, almost incomprehensible in their depth? My curiosity is excited everywhere, and my interest awakened, but my warm love of the beautiful feels itself in no way attracted. My intellect might strain to penetrate the secrets of your sages, but my heart and mind can never be at home in a creed which views life as a short pilgrimage to the grave, and death as the only true life!”

      “And yet,” said Amasis, “Death has for us too his terrors, and we do all in our power to evade his grasp. Our physicians would not be celebrated and esteemed as they are, if we did not believe that their skill could prolong our earthly existence. This reminds me of the oculist Nebenchari whom I sent to Susa, to the king. Does he maintain his reputation? is the king content with him?”

      “Very much so,” answered Croesus. “He has been of use to many of the blind; but the king’s mother is alas! still sightless. It was Nebenchari who first spoke to Cambyses of the charms of thy daughter Tachot. But we deplore that he understands diseases of the eye alone. When the Princess Atossa lay ill of fever, he was not to be induced to bestow a word of counsel.”

      “That is very natural; our physicians are only permitted to treat one part of the body. We have aurists, dentists and oculists, surgeons for fractures of the bone, and others СКАЧАТЬ