But This Cloud Lifts And Floats
From You In The Cheerful Tomb Of Thi, That Royal Councillor, That
Scribe And Confidant, Whose Life Must Have Been Passed In A Round Of
Serene Activities, Amid A Sneering, Though Doubtless Admiring,
Population.
Into this tomb of white, vivacious figures, gay almost, though never
wholly frivolous - for these men were full of
Purpose, full of an ardor
that seduces even where it seems grotesque - I took with me a child of
ten called Ali, from the village of Kafiah; and as I looked from him
to the walls around us, rather than the passing away of the races, I
realized the persistence of type. For everywhere I saw the face of
little Ali, with every feature exactly reproduced. Here he was bending
over a sacrifice, leading a sacred bull, feeding geese from a cup,
roasting a chicken, pulling a boat, carpentering, polishing,
conducting a monkey for a walk, or merely sitting bolt upright and
sneering. There were lines of little Alis with their hands held to
their breasts, their faces in profile, their knees rigid, in the happy
tomb of Thi; but he glanced at them unheeding, did not recognize his
ancestors. And he did not care to penetrate into the tombs of Mera and
Meri-Ra-ankh, into the Serapeum and the Mestaba of Ptah-hotep. Perhaps
he was right. The Serapeum is grand in its vastness, with its long and
high galleries and its mighty vaults containing the huge granite
sarcophagi of the sacred bulls of Apis; Mera, red and white, welcomes
you from an elevated niche benignly; Ptah-hotep, priest of the fifth
dynasty, receives you, seated at a table that resembles a rake with
long, yellow teeth standing on its handle, and drinking stiffly a cup
of wine.
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