DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5073#0123
112
INCONGRUITIES.
mark of a vulture, a beetle under his tongue, and his
tail was double,—all which was, of course, managed by
the priests. In fact, this Apis-worship shows what a
monstrous system of priestly imposture the religion
had become: how hard it must have been for the
spiritually-minded, in these later times, to get at the
ground-work of deep truth that underlay many of the
myths with which the priests had covered it, and changed
it, as far as the ignorant and vulgar went, into a de-
grading and gross idolatry!
But these are things to sigh over, and to think upon
with an earnest, grave attention; what people find " so
amusing" in the "bulls and cats," I never could
understand; one would think that even the most
frivolous would be sobered, and the most trifling
impressed into something like reverence after a few
days at Thebes; yet even in the silent solemnity of the
Valley of the Dead Kings, one's mind is jarred and
worried with the strangest and most disagreeable
contrasts; one may be lost to all the realities around
one, and then be interrupted, as we were one day, by a
voice close to one's ear, calling to the unhappy drago-
man, "I say—you there—awsk that feller oose tomb
this is ! " Being answered " Belzoni's tomb," the owner
of the voice says lie believes " that was the name of the
king who built Abou Simbil; " and then he goes back to
his dahabieh and his dinner, and confidingly remarks
to his neighbour, after Iris champagne, " I say — wawt
a bawr these tombs are! Egypt's quite a sell for a
man like me!" in which latter sentiment we agree
with him.
INCONGRUITIES.
mark of a vulture, a beetle under his tongue, and his
tail was double,—all which was, of course, managed by
the priests. In fact, this Apis-worship shows what a
monstrous system of priestly imposture the religion
had become: how hard it must have been for the
spiritually-minded, in these later times, to get at the
ground-work of deep truth that underlay many of the
myths with which the priests had covered it, and changed
it, as far as the ignorant and vulgar went, into a de-
grading and gross idolatry!
But these are things to sigh over, and to think upon
with an earnest, grave attention; what people find " so
amusing" in the "bulls and cats," I never could
understand; one would think that even the most
frivolous would be sobered, and the most trifling
impressed into something like reverence after a few
days at Thebes; yet even in the silent solemnity of the
Valley of the Dead Kings, one's mind is jarred and
worried with the strangest and most disagreeable
contrasts; one may be lost to all the realities around
one, and then be interrupted, as we were one day, by a
voice close to one's ear, calling to the unhappy drago-
man, "I say—you there—awsk that feller oose tomb
this is ! " Being answered " Belzoni's tomb," the owner
of the voice says lie believes " that was the name of the
king who built Abou Simbil; " and then he goes back to
his dahabieh and his dinner, and confidingly remarks
to his neighbour, after Iris champagne, " I say — wawt
a bawr these tombs are! Egypt's quite a sell for a
man like me!" in which latter sentiment we agree
with him.