In the earliest glimmer of dawn the following clay, the physician
Nebsecht having satisfied himself as to the state of the sick girl, left
the paraschites’ hut and made his way in deepest thought to the ‘Terrace
Temple of Hatasu, to find his friend Pentaur and compose the writing
which he had promised to the old man.
As the sun arose in radiance he reached the sanctuary. He expected to
hear the morning song of the priests, but all was silent. He knocked and
the porter, still half-asleep, opened the door.
Nebsecht enquired for the chief of the Temple. “He died in the night,”
said the man yawning.
“What do you say?” cried the physician in sudden terror, “who is dead?”
“Our good old chief, Rui.”
Nebsecht breathed again, and asked for Pentaur.
“You belong to the House of Seti,” said the doorkeeper, “and you do not
know that he is deposed from his office? The holy fathers have refused
to celebrate the birth of Ra with him. He sings for himself now, alone
up on the watch-tower. There you will find him.”
Nebsecht strode quickly up the stairs. Several of the priests placed
themselves together in groups as soon as they saw him, and began
singing. He paid no heed to them, however, but hastened on to the
uppermost terrace, where he found his friend occupied in writing.
Soon he learnt all that had happened, and wrathfully he cried: “You are
too honest for those wise gentlemen in the House of Seti, and too pure
and zealous for the rabble here. I knew it, I knew what would come of it
if they introduced you to the mysteries. For us initiated there remains
only the choice between lying and silence.”
“The old error!” said Pentaur, “we know that the Godhead is One, we name
it, ‘The All,’ ‘The Veil of the All,’ or simply ‘Ra.’ But under the name
Ra we understand something different than is known to the common herd;
for to us, the Universe is God, and in each of its parts we recognize
a manifestation of that highest being without whom nothing is, in the
heights above or in the depths below.”
“To me you can say everything, for I also am initiated,” interrupted
Nebsecht.
“But neither from the laity do I withhold it,” cried Pentaur, “only
to those who are incapable of understanding the whole, do I show the
different parts. Am I a liar if I do not say, ‘I speak,’ but ‘my mouth
speaks,’ if I affirm, ‘Your eye sees,’ when it is you yourself who
are the seer. When the light of the only One manifests itself, then I
fervently render thanks to him in hymns, and the most luminous of his
forms I name Ra. When I look upon yonder green fields, I call upon the
faithful to give thanks to Rennut, that is, that active manifestation
of the One, through which the corn attains to its ripe maturity. Am I
filled with wonder at the bounteous gifts with which that divine stream
whose origin is hidden, blesses our land, then I adore the One as the
God Hapi, the secret one. Whether we view the sun, the harvest, or the
Nile, whether we contemplate with admiration the unity and harmony of
the visible or invisible world, still it is always with the Only, the
All-embracing One we have to do, to whom we also ourselves belong as
those of his manifestations in which lie places his self-consciousness.
The imagination of the multitude is limited.... ”
“And so we lions,
[“The priests,” says Clement of Alexandria, “allow none to be
participators in their mysteries, except kings or such amongst
themselves as are distinguished for virtue or wisdom.” The same
thing is shown by the monuments in many places]
give them the morsel that we can devour at one gulp, finely chopped up,
and diluted with broth as if for the weak stomach of a sick man.”
“Not so; we only feel it our duty to temper and sweeten the sharp
potion, which for men even is almost too strong, before we offer it to
the children, the babes in spirit. The sages of old veiled indeed
the highest truths in allegorical forms, in symbols, and finally in a
beautiful and richly-colored mythos, but they brought them near to the
multitude shrouded it is true but still discernible.”
“Discernible?” said the physician, “discernible? Why then the veil?”
“And do you imagine that the multitude could look the naked truth in the
face,
[In Sais the statue of Athene (Neith) has the following,
inscription: “I am the All, the Past, the Present, and the Future,
my veil has no mortal yet lifted.” Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 9, a
similar quotation by Proclus, in Plato’s Timaeus.]
and not despair?”
“Can I, can any one who looks straight forward, and strives to see the
truth and nothing but the truth?” cried the physician. “We both of us
know that things only are, to us, such as they picture themselves in the
prepared mirror of our souls. I see grey, grey, and white, white, and
have accustomed myself in my yearning after knowledge, not to attribute
the smallest part to my own idiosyncrasy, if such indeed there be
existing in my empty breast. You look straight onwards as I do, but in
you each idea is transfigured, for in your soul invisible shaping powers
are at work, which set the crooked straight, clothe the commonplace with
charm, the repulsive with beauty. You are a poet, an artist; I only seek
for truth.”
“Only?” said Pentaur, “it is just on account of that effort that I
esteem you so highly, and, as you already know, I also desire nothing
but the truth.”
“I know, I know,” said the physician nodding, “but our ways run side
by side without ever touching, and our final goal is the reading of a
riddle, of which there are many solutions. You believe yourself to have
found the right one, and perhaps none exists.”
“Then let us content ourselves with the nearest and the most beautiful,”
said Pentaur.
“The most beautiful?” cried Nebsecht indignantly. “Is that monster, whom
you call God, beautiful--the giant who for ever regenerates himself that
he may devour himself again? God is the All, you say, who suffices to
himself. Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth from
him is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain of
sand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for his
household, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by a
tyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is. The coward hides behind
the cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself--I
would I could strip him of the veil! Thus I see the thing that you call
God!”
“A ghastly picture,” said Pentaur, “because you forget that we recognize
reason to be the essence of the All, the penetrating and moving power of
the universe which is manifested in the harmonious working together
of its parts, and in ourselves also, since we are formed out of its
substance, and inspired with its soul.”
“Is the warfare of life in any way reasonable?” asked Nebsecht. “Is this
eternal destruction in order to build up again especially well-designed
and wise? And with this introduction of reason into the All, you provide
yourself with a self-devised ruler, who terribly resembles the gracious
masters and mistresses that you exhibit to the people.”
“Only apparently,” answered Pentaur, “only because that which transcends
sense is communicable through the medium of the senses alone. When God
manifests himself as the wisdom of the world, we call him ‘the Word,’
‘He, who covers his limbs with names,’ as the sacred Text expresses
itself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; the
scarabaeus, ‘which enters life as its own son’ reminds us of the ever
self-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful and
benevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you can
the happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only male
scarabei, and this animal reproduces itself.”
Nebsecht smiled. “If all the doctrines of the mysteries,” he said, “have
no more truth than this happily chosen image, they are in a bad way.
These beetles have for years been my friends and companions. I know
their family life, and I can assure you that there are males and females
amongst them as amongst cats, apes, and human beings. Your ‘good God’ I
do not know, and what I least comprehend in thinking it over quietly is
the circumstance that you distinguish a good and evil principle in the
world. If the All is indeed God, if God as the scriptures teach, is
goodness, and if besides him is nothing at all, where is a place to be
found for evil?”
“You talk like a school-boy,” said Pentaur indignantly. “All that is, is
good and reasonable in itself, but the infinite One, who prescribes his
own laws and his own paths, grants to the finite its continuance through
continual renewal, and in the changing forms of the finite progresses
for evermore. What we call evil, darkness, wickedness, is in itself
divine, good, reasonable, and clear; but it appears in another light to
our clouded minds, because we perceive the way only and not the goal,
the details only, and not the whole. Even so, superficial listeners
blame the music, in which a discord is heard, which the harper has only
evoked from the strings that his hearers may more deeply feel the purity
of the succeeding harmony; even so, a fool blames the painter who has
colored his board with black, and does not wait for the completion
of the picture which shall be thrown into clearer relief by the dark
background; even so, a child chides the noble tree, whose fruit rots,
that a new life may spring up from its kernel. Apparent evil is but an
antechamber to higher bliss, as every sunset is but veiled by night, and
will soon show itself again as the red dawn of a new day.”
“How convincing all that sounds!” answered the physician, “all, even
the terrible, wins charm from your lips; but I could invert your
proposition, and declare that it is evil that rules the world, and
sometimes gives us one drop of sweet content, in order that we may more
keenly feel the bitterness of life. You see harmony and goodness
in everything. I have observed that passion awakens life, that all
existence is a conflict, that one being devours another.”
“And do you not feel the beauty of visible creation, and does not the
immutable law in everything fill you with admiration and humility?”
“For beauty,” replied Nebsecht, “I have never sought; the organ is
somehow wanting in me to understand it of myself, though I willingly
allow you to mediate between us. But of law in nature I fully appreciate
the worth, for that is the veritable soul of the universe. You call the
One ‘Temt,’ that is to say the total--the unity which is reached by the
addition of many units; and that pleases me, for the elements of the
universe and the powers which prescribe the paths of life are
strictly defined by measure and number--but irrespective of beauty or
benevolence.”
“Such views,” cried Pentaur troubled, “are the result of your strange
studies. You kill and destroy, in order, as you yourself say, to come
upon the track of the secrets of life. Look out upon nature, develop
the faculty which you declare to be wanting, in you, and the beauty of
creation will teach you without my assistance that you are praying to a
false god.”
“I do not pray,” said Nebsecht, “for the law which moves the world is
as little affected by prayers as the current of the sands in your
hour-glass. Who tells you that I do not seek to come upon the track of
the first beginning of things? I proved to you just now that I know more
about the origin of Scarabei than you do. I have killed many an animal,
not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has built
up its form. But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has become
blunt rather than keen. I tell you that the beginning of things is not
more attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition.”
Pentaur looked at the physician enquiringly.
“I also for once,” continued Nebsecht, “will speak in figures. Look at
this wine, how pure it is, how fragrant; and yet it was trodden from the
grape by the brawny feet of the vintagers. And those full ears of corn!
They gleam golden yellow, and will yield us snow-white meal when they
are ground, and yet they grew from a rotting seed. Lately you were
praising to me the beauty of the great Hall of Columns nearly completed
in the Temple of Amon over yonder in Thebes.
[Begun by Rameses I. continued by Seti I., completed by Rameses II.
The remains of this immense hall, with its 134 columns, have not
their equal in the world.]
How posterity will admire it! I saw that Hall arise. There lay masses of
freestone in wild confusion, dust in heaps that took away my breath,
and three months since I was sent over there, because above a hundred
workmen engaged in stone-polishing under the burning sun had been beaten
to death. Were I a poet like you, I would show you a hundred similar
pictures, in which you would not find much beauty. In the meantime,
we have enough to do in observing the existing order of things, and
investigating the laws by which it is governed.”
“I have never clearly understood your efforts, and have difficulty in
comprehending why you did not turn to the science of the haruspices,”
said Pentaur. “Do you then believe that the changing, and--owing to the
conditions by which they are surrounded--the dependent life of plants
and animals is governed by law, rule, and numbers like the movement of
the stars?”
“What a question! Is the strong and mighty hand, which compels yonder
heavenly bodies to roll onward in their carefully-appointed orbits, not
delicate enough to prescribe the conditions of the flight of the bird,
and the beating of the human heart?”
“There we are again with the heart,” said the poet smiling, “are you any
nearer your aim?”
The physician became very grave. “Perhaps tomorrow even,” he said, “I
may have what I need. You have your palette there with red and black
color, and a writing reed. May I use this sheet of papyrus?”
“Of course; but first tell me.... ”
“Do not ask; you would not approve of my scheme, and there would only be
a fresh dispute.”
“I think,” said the poet, laying his hand on his friend’s shoulder,
“that we have no reason to fear disputes. So far they have been the
cement, the refreshing dew of our friendship.”
“So long as they treated of ideas only, and not of deeds.”
“You intend to get possession of a human heart!” cried the poet. “Think
of what you are doing! The heart is the vessel of that effluence of the
universal soul, which lives in us.”
“Are you so sure of that?” cried the physician with some irritation,
“then give me the proof. Have you ever examined a heart, has any one
member of my profession done so? The hearts of criminals and prisoners
of war even are declared sacred from touch, and when we stand helpless
by a patient, and see our medicines work harm as often as good, why is
it? Only because we physicians are expected to work as blindly as an
astronomer, if he were required to look at the stars through a board. At
Heliopolis I entreated the great Urma Rahotep, the truly learned chief
of our craft, and who held me in esteem, to allow me to examine the
heart of a dead Amu; but he refused me, because the great Sechet leads
virtuous Semites also into the fields of the blessed.
[According to the inscription accompanying the famous
representations of the four nations (Egyptians, Semites, Libyans,
and Ethiopians) in the tomb of Seti I.]
And then followed all the old scruples: that to cut up the heart of a
beast even is sinful, because it also is the vehicle of a soul, perhaps
a condemned and miserable human soul, which before it can return to the
One, must undergo purification by passing through the bodies of animals.
I was not satisfied, and declared to him that my great-grandfather
Nebsecht, before he wrote his treatise on the heart, must certainly
have examined such an organ. Then he answered me that the divinity had
revealed to him what he had written, and therefore his work had been
accepted amongst the sacred writings of Toth,
[Called by the Greeks “Hermetic Books.” The Papyrus Ebers is the
work called by Clemens of Alexandria “the Book of Remedies.”]
which stood fast and unassailable as the laws of the world; he wished
to give me peace for quiet work, and I also, he said, might be a chosen
spirit, the divinity might perhaps vouchsafe revelations to me too. I
was young at that time, and spent my nights in prayer, but I only wasted
away, and my spirit grew darker instead of clearer. Then I killed in
secret--first a fowl, then rats, then a rabbit, and cut up their hearts,
and followed the vessels that lead out of them, and know little more now
than I did at first; but I must get to the bottom of the truth, and I
must have a human heart.”
“What will that do for you?” asked Pentaur; “you cannot hope to perceive
the invisible and the infinite with your human eyes?”
“Do you know my great-grandfather’s treatise?”
“A little,” answered the poet; “he said that wherever he laid his
finger, whether on the head, the hands, or the stomach, he everywhere
met with the heart, because its vessels go into all the members, and the
heart is the meeting point of all these vessels. Then Nebsecht proceeds
to state how these are distributed in the different members, and
shows--is it not so?--that the various mental states, such as anger,
grief, aversion, and also the ordinary use of the word heart, declare
entirely for his view.”
“That is it. We have already discussed it, and I believe that he is
right, so far as the blood is concerned, and the animal sensations. But
the pure and luminous intelligence in us--that has another seat,” and
the physician struck his broad but low forehead with his hand. “I have
observed heads by the hundred down at the place of execution, and I have
also removed the top of the skulls of living animals. But now let me
write, before we are disturbed.”
[Human brains are prescribed for a malady of the eyes in the Ebers
papyrus. Herophilus, one of the first scholars of the Alexandrine
Museum, studied not only the bodies of executed criminals, but made
his experiments also on living malefactors. He maintained that the
four cavities of the human brain are the seat of the soul.]
The physician took the reed, moistened it with black color prepared from
burnt papyrus, and in elegant hieratic characters
[At the time of our narrative the Egyptians had two kinds of
writing-the hieroglyphic, which was generally used for monumental
inscriptions, and in which the letters consisted of conventional
representations of various objects, mathematical and arbitrary
symbols, and the hieratic, used for writing on papyrus, and in
which, with the view of saving time, the written pictures underwent
so many alterations and abbreviations that the originals could
hardly be recognized. In the 8th century there was a further
abridgment of the hieratic writing, which was called the demotic, or
people’s writing, and was used in commerce. Whilst the hieroglyphic
and hieratic writings laid the foundations of the old sacred
dialect, the demotic letters were only used to write the spoken
language of the people. E. de Rouge’s Chrestomathie Egyptienne.
H. Brugsch’s Hieroglyphische Grammatik. Le Page Renouf’s shorter
hieroglyphical grammar. Ebers’ Ueber das Hieroglyphische
Schriftsystem, 2nd edition, 1875, in the lectures of Virchow
Holtzendorff.]
wrote the paper for the paraschites, in which he confessed to having
impelled him to the theft of a heart, and in the most binding manner
declared himself willing to take the old man’s guilt upon himself before
Osiris and the judges of the dead.
When he had finished, Pentaur held out his hand for the paper, but
Nebsecht folded it together, placed it in a little bag in which lay
an amulet that his dying mother had hung round his neck, and said,
breathing deeply:
“That is done. Farewell, Pentaur.”
But the poet held the physician back; he spoke to him with the warmest
words, and conjured him to abandon his enterprise. His prayers, however,
had no power to touch Nebsecht, who only strove forcibly to disengage
his finger from Pentaur’s strong hand, which held him as in a clasp of
iron. The excited poet did not remark that he was hurting his friend,
until after a new and vain attempt at freeing himself, Nebsecht cried
out in pain, “You are crushing my finger!”
A smile passed over the poet’s face, he loosened his hold on the
physician, and stroked the reddened hand like a mother who strives to
divert her child from pain.
“Don’t be angry with me, Nebsecht,” he said, “you know my unlucky fists,
and to-day they really ought to hold you fast, for you have too mad a
purpose on hand.”
“Mad?” said the physician, whilst he smiled in his turn. “It may be so;
but do you not know that we Egyptians all have a peculiar tenderness for
our follies, and are ready to sacrifice house and land to them?”
“Our own house and our own land,” cried the poet: and then added
seriously, “but not the existence, not the happiness of another.”
“Have I not told you that I do not look upon the heart as the seat of
our intelligence? So far as I am concerned, I would as soon be buried
with a ram’s heart as with my own.”
“I do not speak of the plundered dead, but of the living,” said the
poet. “If the deed of the paraschites is discovered, he is undone, and
you would only have saved that sweet child in the hut behind there, to
fling her into deeper misery.”
Nebsecht looked at the other with as much astonishment and dismay, as if
he had been awakened from sleep by bad tidings. Then he cried: “All that
I have, I would share with the old man and Uarda.”
“And who would protect her?”
“Her father.”
“That rough drunkard who to-morrow or the day after may be sent no one
knows where.”
“He is a good fellow,” said the physician interrupting his friend, and
stammering violently. “But who ‘would do anything to the child? She is
so so.... She is so charming, so perfectly--sweet and lovely.”
With these last words he cast down his eyes and reddened like a girl.
“You understand that,” he said, “better than I do; yes, and you also
think her beautiful! Strange! you must not laugh if I confess--I am
but a man like every one else--when I confess, that I believe I have at
length discovered in myself the missing organ for beauty of form--not
believe merely, but truly have discovered it, for it has not only
spoken, but cried, raged, till I felt a rushing in my ears, and for the
first time was attracted more by the sufferer than by suffering. I have
sat in the hut as though spell-bound, and gazed at her hair, at her
eyes, at how she breathed. They must long since have missed me at the
House of Seti, perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking me
in my room! For two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawn
away from my work, for the sake of this child. Were I one of the laity,
whom you would approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me.
But it is not that,”--and with these words the physician’s eyes flamed
up--“it is not that! The animal in me, the low instincts of which the
heart is the organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, they
have mastered the pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; and
in the very moment when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you call
the Prince of knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal in
me is stronger than that which I call my God.”
The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the ground
during these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened to
him wondering and full of sympathy. For a time both were silent; then
Pentaur laid his hand on his friend’s hand, and said cordially:
“My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I may
use your own words, have known a like emotion. But I know that what we
feel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftier
and more precious than these, not lower. Not the animal, Nebsecht, is
it that you feel in yourself, but God. Goodness is the most beautiful
attribute of the divine, and you have always been well-disposed
towards great and small; but I ask you, have you ever before felt so
irresistibly impelled to pour out an ocean of goodness on another being,
whether for Uarda you would not more joyfully and more self-forgetfully
sacrifice all that you have, and all that you are, than to father and
mother and your oldest friend?”
Nebsecht nodded assentingly.
“Well then,” cried Pentaur, “follow your new and godlike emotion, be
good to Uarda and do not sacrifice her to your vain wishes. My poor
friend! With your--enquiries into the secrets of life, you have never
looked round upon itself, which spreads open and inviting before our
eyes. Do you imagine that the maiden who can thus inflame the calmest
thinker in Thebes, will not be coveted by a hundred of the common herd
when her protector fails her? Need I tell you that amongst the dancers
in the foreign quarter nine out of ten are the daughters of outlawed
parents? Can you endure the thought that by your hand innocence may be
consigned to vice, the rose trodden under foot in the mud? Is the human
heart that you desire, worth an Uarda? Now go, and to-morrow come again
to me your friend who understands how to sympathize with all you feel,
and to whom you have approached so much the nearer to-day that you have
learned to share his purest happiness.”
Pentaur held out his hand to the physician, who held it some time, then
went thoughtfully and lingeringly, unmindful of the burning glow of
the mid-day sun, over the mountain into the valley of the king’s graves
towards the hut of the paraschites.
Here he found the soldier with his daughter. “Where is the old man?” he
asked anxiously.
“He has gone to his work in the house of the embalmer,” was the answer.
“If anything should happen to him he bade me tell you not to forget the
writing and the book. He was as though out of his mind when he left us,
and put the ram’s heart in his bag and took it with him. Do you remain
with the little one; my mother is at work, and I must go with the
prisoners of war to Harmontis.”