Wise Egypt, prodigal of her embalmments, wrapped up her princes and
great commanders in aromatical folds, and, studiously extracting from
corruptible bodies their corruption, ambitiously looked forward to
immortality; from which vainglory we have become acquainted with many
remnants of the old world, who could discourse unto us of the great
things of yore, and tell us strange tales of the sons of Mizraim and
ancient braveries of Egypt. Wonderful indeed are the preserves of time,
which openeth unto us mummies from crypts and pyramids, and mammoth
bones from caverns and excavations; whereof man hath found the best
preservation, appearing unto us in some sort fleshly, while beasts must
be fain of an osseous continuance.
In what original this practice of the Egyptians had root, divers authors
dispute; while some place the origin hereof in the desire to prevent the
separation of the soul by keeping the body untabified, and alluring the
spiritual part to remain by sweet and precious odors. But all this was
but fond inconsideration. The soul, having broken its ..., is not stayed
by bands and cerecloths, nor to be recalled by Sabaean odors, but fleeth
to the place of invisibles, the _ubi_ of spirits, and needeth a surer
than Hermes's seal to imprison it to its medicated trunk, which yet
subsists anomalously in its indestructible case, and, like a widow
looking for her husband, anxiously awaits its return....
That mummy is medicinal, the Arabian Doctor Haly delivereth, and divers
confirms; but of the particular uses thereof, there is much discrepancy
of opinion. While Hofmannus prescribes the same to epileptics, Johan de
Muralto commends the use thereof to gouty persons; Bacon likewise extols
it as a stiptic, and Junkenius considers it of efficacy to resolve
coagulated blood. Meanwhile, we hardly applaud Francis the First of
France, who always carried mummies with him as a panacea against all
disorders; and were the efficacy thereof more clearly made out, scarce
conceive the use thereof allowable in physic, exceeding the barbarities
of Cambyses, and turning old heroes unto unworthy potions. Shall Egypt
lend out her ancients unto chirurgeons and apothecaries, and Cheops and
Psammitticus be weighed unto us for drugs? Shall we eat of Chamnes and
Amosis in electuaries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures?
Surely, such diet is dismal vampirism, and exceeds in horror the black
banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except in those Arabian
feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.
But the common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption
thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea,
wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carcasses
and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from
crosses and gibbet leavings. There wanted not a set of Arabians who
counterfeited mummies so accurately that it needed great skill to
distinguish the false from the true. Queasy stomachs would hardly fancy
the doubtful potion, wherein one might so easily swallow a cloud for his
Juno, and defraud the fowls of the air while in conceit enjoying the
conserves of Canopus....
For those dark caves and mummy repositories are Satan's abodes, wherein
he speculates and rejoices on human vainglory, and keeps those kings and
conquerors, whom alive he bewitched, whole for that great day when he
will claim his own, and marshal the kings of Nilus and Thebes in sad
procession unto the pit.
Death, that fatal necessity which so many would overlook or blinkingly
survey, the old Egyptians held continually before their eyes. Their
embalmed ancestors they carried about at their banquets, as holding them
still a part of their families, and not thrusting them from their places
at feasts. They wanted not likewise a sad preacher at their tables to
admonish them daily of death,--surely an unnecessary discourse while
they banqueted in sepulchres. Whether this were not making too much of
death, as tending to assuefaction, some reason there is to doubt; but
certain it is that such practices would hardly be embraced by our modern
gourmands, who like not to look on faces of _mortua_, or be elbowed
by mummies.
Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the builders
whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to raise sepulchres
or temples to death as to contemn and disdain it, astonishing heaven
with their audacities, and looking forward with delight to their
interment in those eternal piles. Of their living habitations they made
little account, conceiving of them but as _hospitia_, or inns, while
they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and, planting thereon lasting
bases, defied the crumbling touches of time and the misty vaporousness
of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all
things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh
unto Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth
semisomnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of
Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh
beneath her cloud. The traveler, as he paceth amazedly through those
deserts, asketh of her, Who builded them? and she mumbleth something,
but what it is he heareth not.
Egypt itself is now become the land of obliviousness, and doteth. Her
ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma.
Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and
tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens; astronomy is dead unto her, and
knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth
not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but
hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous
deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the
principle of vicissitude and the effluxion of things, but receiveth
little oblation.