The Sand - The Sand Of The Primitive Seas - Which
Represents A Labour Of Erosion Of A Duration Impossible To Conceive,
And Bears Witness To A Continuity Of Destruction Which, One Might Say,
Had No Beginning.
Here, in the midst of these solitudes, is a humble habitation, old and
half buried in sand, at which we have to stop.
It was once the house
of the Egyptologist Mariette, and still shelters the director of the
excavations, from whom we have to obtain permission to descend amongst
the Apis. The whitewashed room in which he receives us is encumbered
with the age-old debris which he is continually bringing to light. The
parting rays of the sun, which shines low down from between two
clouds, enter through a window opening on to the surrounding
desolation; and the light comes mournfully, yellowed by the sand and
the evening.
The master of the house, while his Bedouin servants are gone to open
and light up for us the underground habitations of the Apis, shows us
his latest astonishing find, made this morning in a hypogeum of one of
the most ancient dynasties. It is there on a table, a group of little
people of wood, of the size of the marionettes of our theatres. And
since it was the custom to put in a tomb only those figures or objects
which were most pleasing to him who dwelt in it, the man-mummy to whom
this toy was offered in times anterior to all precise chronology must
have been extremely partial to dancing-girls.
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