Speaker 1: Chapter ten of Unknown London, written by Walter George Bell.
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Janet.
Speaker 1: Chapter ten The Bones of Mean cow Rah. Idly the
Speaker 1: people go by, for the Egyptian rooms of the British
Speaker 1: Museum are never without visitors, attracted there, in large part,
Speaker 1: no doubt, by that morbid curiosity and death and its
Speaker 1: impenetrable mystery, which is an inherited sense with most of us.
Speaker 1: Few stay to give more than a glance at these
Speaker 1: bones lying out on a tray, toned to a bright
Speaker 1: yellow buff by the process by which they have been
Speaker 1: preserved by the embalmers, Or at the broken coffin lid
Speaker 1: with its double row of meaningless hieroglyphics. Meaningless, yes, but
Speaker 1: not to those who know. They tell of man's fears
Speaker 1: and aspirations, long ages back towards the dawn. This is
Speaker 1: almost the oldest piece of writing in the world that
Speaker 1: has come down to us. Puzzle out the hieroglyphics with
Speaker 1: the aid of some student in Egyptology, and you will
Speaker 1: read this Osiris, king of the North and South, Mean
Speaker 1: chaw Rah, living forever, born of Heaven, Conceived by nut
Speaker 1: Thou comest of the race of the god seb thy
Speaker 1: mother Nut. She grants that thou shalt be a god.
Speaker 1: Never more shalt thou have enemies. King of the North
Speaker 1: and South, omen Kharrah, living forever. This then was a king,
Speaker 1: a pharaoh of the Pyramids, ruler over Egypt. Ko Foe
Speaker 1: and Kahirah had gone before him, and had built in
Speaker 1: stone higher and more massively. But his tomb stands beside theirs,
Speaker 1: above the sands at Ghizi by the Nile, and is
Speaker 1: still accounted third of the most wonderful tombs in the world.
Speaker 1: It will last so long as the world lasts. The
Speaker 1: divine ruler had willed that his remains should rest amidst
Speaker 1: that vast heap of masonry, while through the appointed cycles
Speaker 1: of years his soul should wander in the unknown. And
Speaker 1: here he lies in Bloomsbury, the least considered of this
Speaker 1: company of the dead. For all around the ritual of
Speaker 1: death is presented in its most gorgeous form, with plates
Speaker 1: of beaten gold and bright paintings, and little Yushabti gods
Speaker 1: of a religion which perished with these people thousands of
Speaker 1: years ago, and mummy cases fashioned to preserve the form
Speaker 1: and features that nature herself is so quick to destroy.
Speaker 1: The wayfarer who lingers here stands almost at the beginning
Speaker 1: of things, so far as human records are concerned. Babylon
Speaker 1: in its rise and fall, Greece Rome substantially all that
Speaker 1: is known of the human race, save what is gleamed
Speaker 1: from the message of Chipp's flints and scratchings by prehistoric
Speaker 1: man on reindeer and ox bones and old human skulls
Speaker 1: in a drift, all have had their place and time
Speaker 1: on the world stage, and have disappeared. Since these were
Speaker 1: the bones of a living king, and this pathetic inscription,
Speaker 1: with its longings for immortality, was deep cut on the
Speaker 1: wooden lid of his coffin nearly sixty centuries ago that
Speaker 1: modern Greek Carotidus stood at the pyramid tomb of Mean
Speaker 1: chah Rah. Call him classic if you will, But nearly
Speaker 1: four thousand years had then come and gone between Herododus
Speaker 1: and this Egyptian king. The traveler learnt much, but it
Speaker 1: was not history. A web of tradition had grown about
Speaker 1: the personality of this remote and shadowy ruler, that his
Speaker 1: reign was just and beneficent, and that he was beloved
Speaker 1: by his people, a belief likely to have had its
Speaker 1: origin in the simple fact that, in the building of
Speaker 1: his pyramid tomb, his opposition had been less burdensome than
Speaker 1: that of those larger builders his predecessors. Kopho, whom the
Speaker 1: Greeks called Chiops, erected the grandest monument that ever man
Speaker 1: had raised. To his vanity and ambition, Kara Cephron built
Speaker 1: but little smaller. The third pyramid of mean Kara Miseranus
Speaker 1: is but one tenth the mass of the great Pyramid.
Speaker 1: So vast and yet so small in the majestic conception
Speaker 1: of these monuments that with the ground surface of little
Speaker 1: more than two acres, it might rise and fill a
Speaker 1: London square. The secret of the pyramids has been well kept,
Speaker 1: no doubt. Prisoners, taking in thousands into captivity in the
Speaker 1: wars which Egypt interminably waged, were largely employed as slaves
Speaker 1: in the task of building. But is there not another
Speaker 1: and simpler explanation of all the huge public works carried
Speaker 1: out in Egypt. It is found in the annual rise
Speaker 1: of the Nile. The period of the inundation stopped all labor,
Speaker 1: throwing the entire populations along the river, and the river
Speaker 1: was Egypt idle and free to do what the royal
Speaker 1: master willed. Herodotus learned more of this pharaoh, Micawa, that
Speaker 1: he opened the temples and permitted the people worn down
Speaker 1: by labor by his father Karah to the last extremity,
Speaker 1: to return to their employments and to sacrifices, That he
Speaker 1: made the most just decisions of all the kings. That
Speaker 1: he had a daughter, an only child, concerning whom the
Speaker 1: traveler tells two tales, one of affecting in its simplicity,
Speaker 1: the other obscene. The pharaoh, extremely afflicted by her death
Speaker 1: and desiring her burial in the most sumptuous manner, caused
Speaker 1: a hollow, wooden image of a kneeling cow to be
Speaker 1: made the image of the sacred goddess Hather. This he
Speaker 1: had covered with gold, the orb of the sun, imitated
Speaker 1: in gold, being set between the horns and into the
Speaker 1: body of the cow. He placed the mummy of his daughter.
Speaker 1: When dying, she had entreated her father to permit her
Speaker 1: to see the sun once every year, and once each
Speaker 1: year at a great religious festival. The cow was brought
Speaker 1: from its richly furnished chamber at Sayes out into the sunshine,
Speaker 1: that rich Egyptian sunshine, the rays emanating from the Giver
Speaker 1: of Life, which gleamed from every stone building, and carpeted
Speaker 1: the city with velvet black shadows of pylons and temples.
Speaker 1: In an anti chamber were placed wooden statues of the
Speaker 1: king's concubines, twenty in number, all formed naked. That was
Speaker 1: the story told by the priests of Seas concerning their charge.
Speaker 1: The other Herododus learned from the people that the girl
Speaker 1: was betrayed and had strangled herself through grief, and that
Speaker 1: her mother cut off the hands of the servants who
Speaker 1: had betrayed her, and their images were made in like
Speaker 1: manner to show the mutilation. The cow he saw at
Speaker 1: face and the twenty wooden images, but his quicke eye
Speaker 1: noticed that the hands had fallen off by agent decay,
Speaker 1: and even then were lying at the feet, so he
Speaker 1: made little of the tale. This too, Herododus learned from
Speaker 1: the priests that an oracle reached the king from a
Speaker 1: sacred city, imparting that he had no more than six
Speaker 1: full years to live, and he should die. In the
Speaker 1: seventh Miankowrah ventured a reproachful menssge to the god, complaining
Speaker 1: that his father and uncle, who had shut up the
Speaker 1: temples and paid no regard to the gods, and moreover
Speaker 1: had oppressed their subjects, had lived long together for one
Speaker 1: hundred and six years. Why was it that he must
Speaker 1: die so soon, he who had worshiped the gods and
Speaker 1: dutifully had made sacrifices to them. The oracle replied that
Speaker 1: it was needful that Egypt should be afflicted for one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty years. The two who were kings before
Speaker 1: him understood this, but he did not. When the pharaoh
Speaker 1: thus realized that sentence was pronounced against him, he ordered
Speaker 1: a great number of lamps to be raised, and, having
Speaker 1: lighted them, whenever night came on, he drank and enjoyed himself,
Speaker 1: never ceasing day or night, roving about the marshes and
Speaker 1: palm groves, whenever he could hear of places most suited
Speaker 1: for pleasure. To this artifice he restored in order that
Speaker 1: by turning the knights into days, he might have twelve
Speaker 1: years of life instead of the six allotted. The coffin
Speaker 1: bones and huge sarcophagus of the king were found in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty seven by Colonel Howard Weiss, an English officer,
Speaker 1: when exploring under a fur man granted by the Pasha.
Speaker 1: They were in the tomb chambers, cut sixty feet deep
Speaker 1: in a living rock from which the Third Pyramid rises.
Speaker 1: Robbers had been there before him. Indeed, there is an
Speaker 1: Arab record of twelve twenty six a d. Describing how
Speaker 1: the pyramid had been attacked by treasure seekers who labored
Speaker 1: at their task with axes for six months. They at
Speaker 1: length forced an entrance, and in the sarcophagus, after they
Speaker 1: had broken off the lid, saw the decayed, rotten remains
Speaker 1: of a man, but no treasure by his side, except
Speaker 1: some golden tablets inscribed with care of a language which
Speaker 1: no man could understand. Each robber's share of these tablets
Speaker 1: amounted to one hundred dinars, about the value of fifty pounds.
Speaker 1: When Colonel Howard Weiss entered the pyramid, the basalt sarcophagus
Speaker 1: had not been displaced. The mummy had been lifted out
Speaker 1: and taken for examination into an outer chamber still within
Speaker 1: the tomb. There it had been rifled the rolls of
Speaker 1: bandages yard upon yard of almost interminable length. The robbers
Speaker 1: had unwound, in order that they might ascertain if jewels
Speaker 1: or gold plates were concealed among the swathings. If so,
Speaker 1: they have disappeared. Centuries ago, fragments of the linen told
Speaker 1: of the sacrilegious act. In the candle light, among the
Speaker 1: debris that littered the stone floor, was found intact only
Speaker 1: the broken cow and the skeleton substantially complete save for
Speaker 1: the head. To day, the visitor to the British Museum
Speaker 1: will notice that the skull is missing. Upon this one fact,
Speaker 1: not easily I agree to be explained, an ingenious story
Speaker 1: has been woven. These are no bones of a king.
Speaker 1: They tell of a grim tragedy. In the dark, dank
Speaker 1: stone chambers and passages of the pyramid. Robbers breaking into
Speaker 1: the tomb had quarreled over the treasure they found there.
Speaker 1: One they had left behind, slain, in fear lest others
Speaker 1: coming after might identify him and so bring home the
Speaker 1: crime to its authors. They had carried away the head.
Speaker 1: This theory, however, is completely disposed of by the fact
Speaker 1: that the bones of the legs and feet, when found,
Speaker 1: were partially enveloped in coarse mummy cloth of a yellow color,
Speaker 1: to which a small quantity of resinous substance and gum
Speaker 1: adhered even there. The misadventures that have befallen the relics
Speaker 1: of this Egyptian monarch did not end with infinite pains.
Speaker 1: The heavy sarcophagus, it weighed three tons, was removed into
Speaker 1: the outer air through passages so foul that the flame
Speaker 1: of candles dwindled and went out, and the air was
Speaker 1: poisonous to the workers. It was shipped from Alexandria for London.
Speaker 1: In the autumn of the following year, a storm arose
Speaker 1: in which the vessel was lost off the iron bound
Speaker 1: coast near Gibraltar. The ship, her crew, and the precious
Speaker 1: burden in their charge have never since been heard of.
Speaker 1: Some wreckage was washed up, and only these bones in
Speaker 1: the coffin lid survived till the sea shall give up
Speaker 1: the secrets it holds in its bed. The sarcophagus is lost,
Speaker 1: but we know from the hieroglyphics so laboriously cut into
Speaker 1: the stone of a hundred others, from inscriptions carved in
Speaker 1: the passages of funeral chambers, and pen writings on the
Speaker 1: native papyri, amid what kind of pictures and texts to
Speaker 1: the gods. Minkawrah lay there awaiting the new life. The
Speaker 1: ritual of the dead changing but Little was among the
Speaker 1: oldest of Egypt's possessions. In it we may read the aspirations,
Speaker 1: the haunting fears, the hope of immortality, which this early
Speaker 1: pharaoh shared elsewhere in London, in the Sir john Sons
Speaker 1: Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields is the massive sarcophagus of SETI,
Speaker 1: the first father of that pharaoh who was the oppressor
Speaker 1: of the Israelites. Through the texts cut in his stone chamber,
Speaker 1: the divine ruler, struck down by death, appeals to the
Speaker 1: everlasting gods. Note one. The text here given is that
Speaker 1: of doctor Wallace Budge and Footnote O Thou, Goddess, Nut,
Speaker 1: support thou me, for I am thy son. Destroy thou
Speaker 1: the defects of my immobility, together with those who produce them.
Speaker 1: Raise thou me up I am thy son. Set thou
Speaker 1: free him whose heart is at rest from that which
Speaker 1: maketh it to be still. O Nut, lift thou me
Speaker 1: up I am thy son. Do away from me that
Speaker 1: which maketh me to be without motion. The Great Goddess
Speaker 1: of Heaven, Queen of the gods answers the prayer. This
Speaker 1: is my son, Osiris, the King, the Lord of the
Speaker 1: North and South, the son of Ra, proceeding from his body,
Speaker 1: who loveth him. I am indebt him with the soul.
Speaker 1: I have endowed him with the spirit, and I have
Speaker 1: given him power. In the body of his mother teath Nut,
Speaker 1: I who was never born, I have come. I have
Speaker 1: united myself to Osiris the King, the Lord of the
Speaker 1: North and South, the son of Ra, the Lord of crowns,
Speaker 1: with life, stability and power. He shall not die. I
Speaker 1: am Nut of the mighty Heart, and I took up
Speaker 1: my being in the body of my mother teth Nut.
Speaker 1: In my name of Nut. Over my mother, none hath
Speaker 1: gained the mastery. I have filled every place with my beneficence,
Speaker 1: and I have led captive the whole earth. I have
Speaker 1: led captive the South and the North. And I have
Speaker 1: gathered together the things which are into my arms to
Speaker 1: verify Osiris, the King, the Lord of the North and South,
Speaker 1: the son of Ra, proceeding from his body, who loveth Sheker,
Speaker 1: the Lord of crowns, the governor of the joyful Heart.
Speaker 1: His soul shall live forever. The god Seb speaks this
Speaker 1: is my son, who loveth me. I have given unto
Speaker 1: him purity upon earth and glory in heaven. Him the Osiris,
Speaker 1: the King and the company of the gods takes up
Speaker 1: that triumphant chant God, calling to God. Happy. I am happy.
Speaker 1: I have come that I may be among those who
Speaker 1: protect THEE. I bind together for THEE thy head and
Speaker 1: thy members, smitting down for THEE thine enemies beneath THEE,
Speaker 1: and I give THEE thy head Osiris, King, son of
Speaker 1: ra Kaebaysanouf, I am thy son. I have come that
Speaker 1: I may be among those who protect THEE. I gather
Speaker 1: together for THEE thy bones and thy piece, together for
Speaker 1: THEE thy limbs. I bring unto THEE thy heart, and
Speaker 1: I set it upon its seat in thy body. I
Speaker 1: make to flourish for THEE thy house after THEE. O
Speaker 1: Thou who livest forever, and Pua, I am Antpua, who
Speaker 1: dwell in the funeral chamber Mother Isis, shall come down
Speaker 1: and shall bring unto me swathings for the Osiris the King.
Speaker 1: So from the echoing chambers of death wrings down the
Speaker 1: ages the message of man's immortality. Figures of gods and
Speaker 1: goddesses were above and below him. Protective texts with magical
Speaker 1: power were about him on all sides. Thus arrayed for death,
Speaker 1: the great King believed for a certainty in his appointed
Speaker 1: future that his soul would pass through the magic tunnel
Speaker 1: opening in the lofty and unscalable mountains that compassed the
Speaker 1: flat earth of the Egyptians, out into the other world,
Speaker 1: wherein the souls of men were tried, and thence towd
Speaker 1: in its funeral boat along the Sacred River, would emerge
Speaker 1: into the radiance beyond, where he should dwell with ra
Speaker 1: among the blest Is this the coffin? And are these
Speaker 1: the actual bones of the pharaoh mean Kharah, who ruled
Speaker 1: in Egypt so many thousands of years ago. The greatest
Speaker 1: of our scholars believe that they are, But on the
Speaker 1: first point there is not universal agreement. A suggestion has
Speaker 1: been made that the coffin lid is a pious restoration
Speaker 1: of the rulers of a latter dynasty, this being based
Speaker 1: mainly upon certain peculiarities in the hieroglyphics too technical for
Speaker 1: discussion here mean Kharah curious at two pyramid tombs, Urku
Speaker 1: has told us in an inscription that he was a
Speaker 1: priest of mean Kharah and keeper of a place belonging
Speaker 1: to the pyramid her identified as the third pyramid above
Speaker 1: the sands. At Gizi. Debuhun, a high official of this king,
Speaker 1: records an inscription of the min Kara pyramid Nedder, a
Speaker 1: small pyramid at Abu Rowish, showing conspicuously on the highest
Speaker 1: hill of the western cliffs. At Abu Rowish, the king's
Speaker 1: funeral statue was found, but not his bones at Gizi
Speaker 1: bones but not his funeral statue. What does this mean?
Speaker 1: These things are among the Egyptian mysteries, and that greater
Speaker 1: mystery still, the mystery of life and death, that too
Speaker 1: is unsolved. Much we know of the curious beliefs of
Speaker 1: the Egyptian in the composite nature of his being, his
Speaker 1: spiritual body, his heart, his soul, his double, his shadow,
Speaker 1: the intangible, shining casing which encompassed him. But nowhere do
Speaker 1: the text's tell of a belief that his corruptible body
Speaker 1: would rise again. Yet that such a conviction was held
Speaker 1: we feel from the extraordinary care taken to preserve the mummy,
Speaker 1: and the strength with which this pharaoh built his enduring
Speaker 1: pyramid tomb, which still is accounted one of the world's wonders.
Speaker 1: The cycles of years go by, the bones do not stir.
Speaker 1: To day. They lie in prosaic Bloomsbury, far away from
Speaker 1: his own land, and a British governor stands behind his
Speaker 1: throne by the Nile, ruler of the kingdoms of the
Speaker 1: North and South. But human nature does not change the
Speaker 1: dread of oblivion, man's helpless longing for immortality, which are
Speaker 1: so strong with thus to day, were just the same
Speaker 1: sixty centuries ago when the priests of Egypt inscribed upon
Speaker 1: this coffin lid, nevermore shalt thou have enemies? King of
Speaker 1: the North and South? O mean Cowrah living forever. End
Speaker 1: of Chapter ten.