On Its Arrival There, The Scared Soul Had To Parley
Successively With The Fearsome Demons Who Lay In Wait For It Along Its
Route.
If at last it was judged worthy to approach Osiris, the great
Dead Sun, it was subsumed in him
And reappeared, shining over the
world the next morning and on all succeeding mornings until the
consummation of time - a vague survival in the solar splendour, a
continuation without personality, of which one is scarcely able to say
whether or not it was more desirable than eternal non-existence.
[*] The Khou, which never returned to our world.
[+] The Bai, which might, at its will, revisit the tomb.
And, moreover, it was necessary to preserve the body at whatever cost,
for a certain /double/ of the dead man continued to dwell in the dry
flesh, and retained a kind of half life, barely conscious. Lying at
the bottom of the sarcophagus it was able to see, by virtue of those
two eyes, which were painted on the lid, always in the same axis as
the empty eyes of the mummy. Sometimes, too, this /double/, escaping
from the mummy and its box, used to wander like a phantom about the
hypogeum. And, in order that at such times it might be able to obtain
nourishment, a mass of mummified viands wrapped in bandages were
amongst the thousand and one things buried at its side. Even natron
and oils were left, so that it might re-embalm itself, if the worms
came to life in its members.
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