Cairo to Kisumu : $b Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya ColonyCarpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
History
Cairo to Kisumu : $b Egypt—The Sudan—Kenya Colony
Carpenter, Frank G. (Frank George)
Egypt -- Description and travel; Kenya -- Description and travel; Sudan -- Description and travel
There are mummies of children in this Egyptian museum. There are some
also in London, but I know of none anywhere else. The children were
embalmed for the same reason as the grown-ups, the parents believing
that they could have no union with their little ones unless they met
them in their original bodies after the resurrection. The faces on some
of these are gilded, while the pictures on the bandages represent the
children offering sacrifices to the gods. Above the feet is sometimes
seen the funeral boat, showing the little child lying upon its bier, and
upon other parts of the coffin are tiny people who seem to be engaged in
propelling the boat. This probably represents the ferry of the dead to
their tombs in the mountains on the banks of the Nile. In other cases
the caskets of the children are beautifully decorated and some are even
plated with gold.
I mused long over two statues as old as any in the world. These are
life-size sitting figures, representing Prince Ra-Hotep and his wife,
the Princess Nefert, who lived something like four thousand years before
Christ, and whose statues are as perfect now as when they were made,
before the Pyramids were built. The Prince has African features, and
his light attire reminds one of the inhabitants of the valley of the
Congo. The Princess is dressed in a sheet, and looks as though she were
just out of her bath. Her husband evidently cut her hair, and it takes
considerable imagination to believe that she can be so old and still look
so young. There is no doubt of her age, however, for the scientists say
that she has seen over six thousand years, and the scientists know.
One of the most important records of the customs and beliefs of the
Pharaohs concerning the dead has been taken away from Egypt. This is a
papyrus manuscript which is now in the British Museum. It is known as
the Book of the Dead and contains two hundred chapters. It is written in
hieroglyphics, but many of the passages have been translated. It sets
forth that every man was believed to consist of seven different parts of
which the actual body was only one and the other parts related to the
soul and its transmigration. Upon the preservation of the body depended
the bringing together of these seven parts in the after life. On this
account corpses were mummified, and for the same reason they were hidden
away in tombs under the desert and in the great Pyramids, which their
owners believed would be inaccessible to the men of the future.
This Book of the Dead contains, also, some of the Egyptian ideals of
right living, reminding one of the Psalm which, in Rouse’s version,
begins:
That man hath perfect blessedness
Who walketh not astray
In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinner’s way.
Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair,
But placeth his delight
Upon God’s law, and meditates
On that law day and night.
The Book of the Dead reads:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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