An Egyptian Princess. Georg Ebers
who brought to me the noblest human being I ever met, Pythagoras. I endeavored to introduce Greek art and manners among ourselves, seeing what folly lay in a self-willed adherence to that which has been handed down to us, when it is in itself bad and unworthy, while the good seed lay on our Egyptian soil, only waiting to be sown.
“I portioned out the whole land to suit my purposes, appointed the best police in the world, and accomplished much; but my highest aim, namely: to infuse into this country, at once so gay and so gloomy, the spirit and intellect of the Greeks, their sense of beauty in form, their love of life and joy in it, this all was shivered on the same rock which threatens me with overthrow and ruin whenever I attempt to accomplish anything new. The priests are my opponents, my masters, they hang like a dead weight upon me. Clinging with superstitious awe to all that is old and traditionary, abominating everything foreign, and regarding every stranger as the natural enemy of their authority and their teaching, they can lead the most devout and religious of all nations with a power that has scarcely any limits. For this I am forced to sacrifice all my plans, for this I see my life passing away in bondage to their severe ordinances, this will rob my death-bed of peace, and I cannot be secure that this host of proud mediators between god and man will allow me to rest even in my grave!”
“By Zeus our saviour, with all thy good fortune, thou art to be pitied!” interrupted Croesus sympathetically, “I understand thy misery; for though I have met with many an individual who passed through life darkly and gloomily, I could not have believed that an entire race of human beings existed, to whom a gloomy, sullen heart was as natural as a poisonous tooth to the serpent. Yet it is true, that on my journey hither and during my residence at this court I have seen none but morose and gloomy countenances among the priesthood. Even the youths, thy immediate attendants, are never seen to smile; though cheerfulness, that sweet gift of the gods, usually belongs to the young, as flowers to spring.”
“Thou errest,” answered Amasis, “in believing this gloom to be a universal characteristic of the Egyptians. It is true that our religion requires much serious thought. There are few nations, however, who have so largely the gift of bantering fun and joke: or who on the occasion of a festival, can so entirely forget themselves and everything else but the enjoyments of the moment; but the very sight of a stranger is odious to the priests, and the moroseness which thou observest is intended as retaliation on me for my alliance with the strangers. Those very boys, of whom thou spakest, are the greatest torment of my life. They perform for me the service of slaves, and obey my slightest nod. One might imagine that the parents who devote their children to this service, and who are the highest in rank among the priesthood, would be the most obedient and reverential servants of the king whom they profess to honor as divine; but believe me, Croesus, just in this very act of devotion, which no ruler can refuse to accept without giving offence, lies the most crafty, scandalous calculation. Each of these youths is my keeper, my spy. They watch my smallest actions and report them at once to the priests.”
“But how canst thou endure such an existence? Why not banish these spies and select servants from the military caste, for instance? They would be quite as useful as the priests.”
“Ah! if I only could, if I dared!” exclaimed Amasis loudly. And then, as if frightened at his own rashness, he continued in a low voice, “I believe that even here I am being watched. To-morrow I will have that grove of fig-trees yonder uprooted. The young priest there, who seems so fond of gardening, has other fruit in his mind besides the half-ripe figs that he is so slowly dropping into his basket. While his hand is plucking the figs, his ear gathers the words that fall from the mouth of his king.”
“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