The Pharaoh And The Priest Part 133

Preparations for the funeral of Osiris-Mer-Amen-Rameses were ended.

The revered mummy of the pharaoh was inclosed in a white box, the upper part of which repeated perfectly the features of the departed.

The pharaoh seemed to see with enamelled eyes, while the G.o.dlike face expressed a mild regret, not for the world which the ruler had left, but for the people condemned to the sufferings of temporal existence.

On its head the image of the pharaoh had an Egyptian cap with white and sapphire stripes; on its neck, a string of jewels; on its breast, the picture of a man kneeling with crossed hands; on its legs, images of the G.o.ds, sacred birds, and eyes, not set into any face, but, as it were, gazing out of infinity.

Thus arrayed, the remains of the pharaoh rested on a costly couch in a small cedar chapel, the walls of which were covered with inscriptions celebrating the life and deeds of the departed sovereign. Above hovered a miraculous falcon with a human head, and near the couch night and day watched a priest clothed as Anubis, the G.o.d of burial, with a jackal's head on his body.

A heavy basalt sarcophagus had been prepared which was to be the outer coffin of the mummy. This sarcophagus had also the form and features of the dead pharaoh. It was covered with inscriptions, and pictures of people praying, of sacred birds and also scarabs.

On the 17th of Famenut, the mummy, together with its chapel and sarcophagus, was taken from the quarter of the dead to the palace and placed in the largest hall there.

This hall was soon filled with priests, who chanted funeral hymns, with attendants and servants of the departed, and above all with his women, who screamed so vehemently that their cries were heard across the river.

"O lord! thou our lord!" cried they, "why art thou leaving us? Thou so kind, so beautiful. Thou art silent now, thou who didst speak to us so willingly. Thou didst incline to our society, but to-day thou art far from us."

During this time the priests sang,--

_Chorus I._ "I am Tum, who alone exists."

_Chorus II._ "I am Re, in his earliest splendor."

_Chorus I._ "I am the G.o.d who creates himself."

_Chorus II._ "Who gives his own name to himself, and no one among the G.o.ds can restrain him."

_Chorus I._ "I know the name of the great G.o.d who is there."

_Chorus II._ "For I am the great bird Benu which tests the existent."[37]

[37] "Book of the Dead."

After two days of groans and devotions a great car in the form of a boat was drawn to the front of the palace. The ends of this car were adorned with ostrich plumes and rams' heads, while above a costly baldachin towered an eagle, and there also was the ureus serpent, symbol of the pharaoh's dominion. On this car was placed the sacred mummy, in spite of the wild resistance of court women. Some of them held to the coffin, others implored the priests not to take their good lord from them, still others scratched their own faces, tore their hair, and even beat the men who carried the remains of the pharaoh.

The outcry was terrible.

At last the car, when it had received the divine body, moved on amid a mult.i.tude of people who occupied the immense s.p.a.ce from the palace to the river. There were people smeared with mud, torn, covered with mourning rags, people who cried in heaven-piercing voices. At the side of these, according to mourning ritual, were disposed, along the whole road, choruses.

_Chorus I._ "To the West, to the mansion of Osiris, to the West art thou going, thou who wert the best among men, who didst hate the untrue."

_Chorus II._ "Going West! There will not be another who will so love the truth, and who will so hate a lie."

_Chorus of charioteers._ "To the West, oxen, ye are drawing the funeral car, to the West! Our lord is going after you."

_Chorus III._ "To the West, to the West, to the land of the just! The cities which thou didst love are groaning and weeping behind thee."

_The throng of people._ "Go in peace to Abydos! Go in peace to Abydos!

Go thou in peace to the Theban West!"

_Chorus of female wailers._ "O our lord, O our lord, thou art going to the West, the G.o.ds themselves are weeping."

_Chorus of priests._ "He is happy, the most revered among men, for fate has permitted him to rest in the tomb which he himself has constructed."

_Chorus of drivers._ "To the West, oxen, ye are drawing the car, to the West! Our lord is going behind thee."

_The throng of people._ "Go in peace to Abydos! Go in peace to Abydos, to the western sea."[38]

[38] Authentic expression.

Every couple of hundred yards a division of troops was stationed which greeted the lord with m.u.f.fled drums, and took farewell with a shrill sound of trumpets.

That was not a funeral, but a triumphal march to the land of divinities.

At a certain distance behind the car went Rameses XIII., surrounded by a great suite of generals, and behind him Queen Nikotris leaning on two court ladies. Neither the son nor the mother wept, for it was known to them then (the common people were not aware of this), that the late pharaoh was at the side of Osiris and was so satisfied with his stay in the land of delight that he had no wish to return to an earthly existence.

After a procession of two hours which was attended by unbroken cries, the car with the remains halted on the bank of the Nile. There the remains were removed from the boat-shaped car and borne to a real barge gilded, carved, covered with pictures, and furnished with white and purple sails.

The court ladies made one more attempt to take the mummy from the priests; again were heard all the choruses and the military music.

After that the lady Nikotris and some priests entered the barge which bore the royal mummy, the people hurled bouquets and garlands--and the oars began to plash.

Rameses XII. had left his palace for the last time and was moving on the Nile toward his tomb in Theban mountains. But on the way it was his duty, like a thoughtful ruler, to enter all the famed places and take farewell of them.

The journey lasted long. Thebes was five hundred miles distant higher up the river, along which the mummy had to visit between ten and twenty temples and take part in religious ceremonies.

Some days after the departure of Rameses XII. to his eternal rest, Rameses XIII. moved after him to rouse from sorrow by his presence the torpid hearts of his subjects, receive their homage and give offerings to divinities.

Behind the dead pharaoh, each on his own barge, went all the high priests, many of the senior priests, the richest landholders, and the greater part of the nomarchs. So the new pharaoh thought, not without sorrow, that his retinue would be very slender.

But it happened otherwise. At the side of Rameses XIII. were all the generals, very many officials, many of the smaller n.o.bility and all the minor priests, which more astonished than comforted the pharaoh.

This was merely the beginning. For when the barge of the youthful sovereign sailed out on the Nile there came to meet him such a ma.s.s of boats, great and small, rich and poor, that they almost hid the water.

Sitting in those barges were naked families of earth-tillers and artisans, well-dressed merchants, Phnicians in bright garments, adroit Greek sailors, and even a.s.syrians and Hitt.i.tes.

The people of this throng did not shout, they howled; they were not delighted, they were frantic. Every moment some deputation broke its way to the pharaoh's barge to kiss the deck which his feet had touched, and to lay gifts before him: a handful of wheat, a bit of cloth, a simple earthen pitcher, a pair of birds, but, above all, a bunch of flowers. So that before the pharaoh had pa.s.sed Memphis, his attendants were forced repeatedly to clear the barge of gifts and thus save it from sinking.

The younger priests said to one another that except Rameses the Great no pharaoh had ever been greeted with such boundless enthusiasm.

The whole journey from Memphis to Thebes was conducted in a similar manner and the enthusiasm of people rose instead of decreasing.

Earth-tillers left the fields and artisans the shops to delight themselves with looking at the new sovereign of whose intentions legends were already created. They expected great changes, though no one knew what these changes might be. This alone was undoubted, that the severity of officials had decreased, that Phnicians collected rent in a less absolute manner, and the Egyptian people, always so submissive, had begun to raise their heads when priests met them.

"Only let the pharaoh permit," said people in inns, fields and markets, "and we will introduce order among the holy fathers. Because of them we pay immense taxes, and the wounds on our backs are always open."

Among the Libyan hills, about thirty-five miles south of Memphis, lay the country of Piom or Fayum, wonderful through this, that human hands had made it.

There was formerly in this province a sunken desert surrounded by naked hills. The pharaoh Amenhemat first conceived the daring plan of changing this place into a fruitful region, three thousand five hundred years before the Christian era.

With this object he divided the eastern part of the depression from the rest and put a mighty dam around it. This dam was about eight metres high, one hundred yards thick at the base, and its length more than four hundred kilometres.

In this way was created a reservoir which held three milliards of cubic metres of water, the surface of which occupied about three hundred square kilometres. This reservoir served to irrigate two hundred thousand hectares of land, and besides, in time of overflow, it took in the excess of water and guaranteed a considerable part of Egypt from sudden inundation.