Now we have a darkness on which we can paint, an unspoiled twilight. We
need not call it the Arabian's cave. There is a tomb we might have
definitely in mind, an Egyptian burying-place where with a torch we might
enter, read the inscriptions, and see the illustrations from the Book of
the Dead on the wall, or finding that ancient papyrus in the mummy-case,
unroll it and show it to the eager assembly, and have the feeling of
return. Man is an Egyptian first, before he is any other type of
civilized being. The Nile flows through his heart. So let this cave be
Egypt, let us incline ourselves to revere the unconscious memories that
echo within us when we see the hieroglyphics of Osiris, and Isis. Egypt
was our long brooding youth. We built the mysteriousness of the Universe
into the Pyramids, carved it into every line of the Sphinx. We thought
always of the immemorial.
The reel now before us is the mighty judgment roll dealing with the
question of our departure in such a way that any man who beholds it will
bear the impress of the admonition upon his heart forever. Those Egyptian
priests did no little thing, when amid their superstitions they still
proclaimed the Judgment. Let no one consider himself ready for death,
till like the men by the Nile he can call up every scene, face with
courage every exigency of the ordeal.
There is one copy of the Book of the Dead of especial interest, made for
the Scribe Ani, with exquisite marginal drawings. Copies may be found in
our large libraries. The particular fac-simile I had the honor to see was
in the Lenox Library, New York, several years ago. Ani, according to the
formula of the priesthood, goes through the adventures required of a
shade before he reaches the court of Osiris. All the Egyptian pictures on
tomb-wall and temple are but enlarged picture-writing made into tableaus.
Through such tableaus Ani moves. The Ani manuscript has so fascinated
some of the Egyptologists that it is copied in figures fifteen feet high
on the walls of two of the rooms of the British Museum. And you can read
the story eloquently told in Maspero.
Ani knocks at many doors in the underworld. Monstrous gatekeepers are
squatting on their haunches with huge knives to slice him if he cannot
remember their names or give the right password, or by spells the priests
have taught him, convince the sentinels that he is Osiris himself. To
further the illusion the name of Osiris is inscribed on his breast. While
he is passing these perils his little wife is looking on by a sort of
clairvoyant sympathy, though she is still alive. She is depicted mourning
him and embracing his mummy on earth at the same time she accompanies him
through the shadows.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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