At Her Feet Lies The Fatal Baby, Grotesquely Shrivelled, And Veiled And Mysterious As The Mother Herself; A Sort Of Doll, It Seems, Put There To Keep Her Eternal Company In The Slow Passing Of Endless Years.

More fearsome to approach is the row of unswathed mummies that follow. Here, in each coffin over which we

Bend, there is a face which stares at us - or else closes its eyes in order that it may not see us; and meagre shoulders and lean arms, and hands with overgrown nails that protrude from miserable rags. And each royal mummy that our lantern lights reserves for us a fresh surprise and the shudder of a different fear - they resemble one another so little. Some of them seem to laugh, showing their yellow teeth; others have an expression of infinite sadness and suffering. Sometimes the faces are small, refined and still beautiful despite the pinching of the nostrils; sometimes they are excessively enlarged by putrid swelling, with the tip of the nose eaten away. The embalmers, we know, were not sure of their means, and the mummies were not always a success. In some cases putrefaction ensued, and corruption and even sudden hatchings of larvae, those "companions without ears and without eyes," which died indeed in time but only after they had perforated all the flesh.

Hard by are ranked according to dynasty, and in chronological order, the proud Pharaohs in a piteous row: father, son, grandson, great- grandson. And common paper tickets tell their tremendous names, Seti I., Ramses II., Seti II., Ramses III., Ramses IV.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 33 of 206
Words from 8718 to 8981 of 55391