DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0418
400
A THOUSAND MILES UP 'THE NILE.
pillars. Here yawns a great pit half-full of debris. Yonder
opens a suite of unfinished chambers abandoned by the
workmen. The farther we go the more weird become our
surroundings. The walls swarm with ugly and evil things.
Serpents, bats and crocodiles, some with human heads and
legs, some vomiting fire, some armed with spears and darts,
pursue and torture the wicked. These unfortunates have
their hearts torn out; are boiled in caldrons; are sus-
pended, head downward, over seas of flame; are speared,
decapitated and driven in headless gangs to scenes of further
torment. Beheld by the dim and shifting light of a few
candles, these painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly
reality. They start into life as we pass, then drop behind
us into darkness. That darkness alone is awful. The at-
mosphere is suffocating. The place is ghostly and peopled
with nightmares.
Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun
emerges from the lower hemisphere. The justified dead sow
and reap in the Elysian fields, gather celestial fruits, and
bathe in the waters of truth. The royal mummy reposes in
its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshiped
with incense and offerings of meat and libations of wine.*
Finally the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last
stage of his spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the gods,
ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into tho
abode of the blest, f
* Those funerary statues are represented each on a stand or plat-
form, erect, with one foot advanced, as if walking, the right hand
holding the ankh, or symbol of life, the left hand grasping a
staff. The attitude is that of the wooden statue at Boulak; and it is
worth remark that the figures stand detached, with no support at
the hack, which was never the case with those carved in stone or
granite. There can be no doubt that this curious series of funerary
statues represent those which were actually placed in the tomb; and
that the ceremonies here represented were actually performed before
them, previous to closing the mouth of the sepulcher. One of these
very wooden statues, from this very tomb, was brought to England
by Belzoni, and is now in the British Museum (No. <S5-1, Central
Saloon). The wood is much decayed, and the statue ought undoubt-
edly to be placed under glass. The tableaux representing the above
ceremonies are well copied in Kosellini, "Mon. del Culto," plates
GO-63.
f A remarkable inscription in this tomb, relating the wrath of Ha
and the destruction of mankind, is translated by M. Naville, vol. iv,
l't. i, " Translations of the Biblical Arch. Society." In this singular
A THOUSAND MILES UP 'THE NILE.
pillars. Here yawns a great pit half-full of debris. Yonder
opens a suite of unfinished chambers abandoned by the
workmen. The farther we go the more weird become our
surroundings. The walls swarm with ugly and evil things.
Serpents, bats and crocodiles, some with human heads and
legs, some vomiting fire, some armed with spears and darts,
pursue and torture the wicked. These unfortunates have
their hearts torn out; are boiled in caldrons; are sus-
pended, head downward, over seas of flame; are speared,
decapitated and driven in headless gangs to scenes of further
torment. Beheld by the dim and shifting light of a few
candles, these painted horrors assume an aspect of ghastly
reality. They start into life as we pass, then drop behind
us into darkness. That darkness alone is awful. The at-
mosphere is suffocating. The place is ghostly and peopled
with nightmares.
Elsewhere we come upon scenes less painful. The sun
emerges from the lower hemisphere. The justified dead sow
and reap in the Elysian fields, gather celestial fruits, and
bathe in the waters of truth. The royal mummy reposes in
its shrine. Funerary statues of the king are worshiped
with incense and offerings of meat and libations of wine.*
Finally the king arrives, purified and justified, at the last
stage of his spiritual journey. He is welcomed by the gods,
ushered into the presence of Osiris, and received into tho
abode of the blest, f
* Those funerary statues are represented each on a stand or plat-
form, erect, with one foot advanced, as if walking, the right hand
holding the ankh, or symbol of life, the left hand grasping a
staff. The attitude is that of the wooden statue at Boulak; and it is
worth remark that the figures stand detached, with no support at
the hack, which was never the case with those carved in stone or
granite. There can be no doubt that this curious series of funerary
statues represent those which were actually placed in the tomb; and
that the ceremonies here represented were actually performed before
them, previous to closing the mouth of the sepulcher. One of these
very wooden statues, from this very tomb, was brought to England
by Belzoni, and is now in the British Museum (No. <S5-1, Central
Saloon). The wood is much decayed, and the statue ought undoubt-
edly to be placed under glass. The tableaux representing the above
ceremonies are well copied in Kosellini, "Mon. del Culto," plates
GO-63.
f A remarkable inscription in this tomb, relating the wrath of Ha
and the destruction of mankind, is translated by M. Naville, vol. iv,
l't. i, " Translations of the Biblical Arch. Society." In this singular