He Was
Wrapped /Thousands Of Times/ In A Marvellous Winding-Sheet, Woven Of
Aloe Fibres, Finer Than The Muslin Of India, Which Must Have Taken
Years In The Making And Measured More Than 400 Yards In Length.
The
unswathing, done in the presence of the Khedive Tewfik and the great
personages of Egypt, lasted two hours, and after the last turn, when
the illustrious figure appeared, the emotion amongst the assistants
was such that they stampeded like a herd of cattle, and the Pharaoh
was overturned.
He has, moreover, given much cause for conversation,
this great Sesostris, since his installation in the museum. Suddenly
one day with a brusque gesture, in the presence of the attendants, who
fled howling with fear, he raised that hand which is still in the air,
and which he has not deigned since to lower.[*] And subsequently there
supervened, beginning in the old yellowish-white hair, and then
swarming over the whole body, a hatching of cadaveric fauna, which
necessitated a complete bath in mercury. He also has his paper ticket,
pasted on the end of his box, and one may read there, written in a
careless hand, that name which once caused the whole world to tremble
- "Ramses II. (Sesostris)"! It need not be said that he has greatly
fallen away and blackened even in the fifteen yeas that I have known
him. He is a phantom that is about to disappear; in spite of all the
care lavished upon him, a poor phantom about to fall to pieces, to
sink into nothingness.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 35 of 206
Words from 9248 to 9506
of 55391
