And These Things Which Line The Walls On Either Side Of Us As We Pass
Also Seem To Be In The Nature Of Receptacles For The Dead.
For the
most part they are sarcophagi of granite, proud and indestructible:
some of them, in the shape of gigantic boxes, are laid out in line on
pedestals; others, in the form of mummies, stand upright against the
walls and display enormous faces, surmounted by equally enormous head-
dresses.
Assembled there they look like a lot of malformed giants,
with oversized heads sunk curiously in their shoulders. There are,
besides, some that are merely statues, colossal figures that have
never held a corpse in their interiors; these all wear a strange,
scarcely perceptible smile; in their huge sphinxlike headgear they
reach nearly to the ceiling and their set stare passes high above our
heads. And there are others that are not larger than ourselves, some
even quite little, with the stature of gnomes. And, every now and
then, at some sudden turning, we encounter a pair of eyes of enamel,
wide-open eyes, that pierce straight into the depths of ours, that
seem to follow us as we pass and make us shiver as if by the contact
of a thought that comes from the abysm of the ages.
We pass on rapidly, however, and somewhat inattentively, for our
business here to-night is not with these simulacra on the ground
floor, but with the more redoubtable hosts above. Besides our lantern
sheds so little light in these great halls that all these people of
granite and sandstone and marble appear only at the precise moment of
our passage, appear only to disappear, and, spreading their fantastic
shadows on the walls, mingle the next moment with the great mute
crowd, that grows ever more numerous behind us.
Placed at intervals are apparatus for use in case of fire, coils of
hose and standpipes that shine with the warm glow of burnished copper,
and I ask my companion of the watch: "What is there that could burn
here? Are not these good people all of stone?" And he answers: "Not
here indeed; but consider how the things that are above would blaze."
Ah! yes. The "things that are above" - which are indeed the object of
my visit to-night. I had no thought of fire catching hold in an
assembly of mummies; of the old withered flesh, the dead, dry hair,
the venerable carcasses of kings and queens, soaked as they are in
natron and oils, crackling like so many boxes of matches. It is
chiefly on account of this danger indeed that the seals are put upon
the doors at nightfall, and that it needs a special favour to be
allowed to penetrate into this place at night with a lantern.
In the daytime this "Museum of Egyptian Antiquities" is as vulgar a
thing as you can conceive, filled though it is with priceless
treasures. It is the most pompous, the most outrageous of those
buildings, of no style at all, by which each year the New Cairo is
enriched; open to all who care to gaze at close quarters, in a light
that is almost brutal, upon these august dead, who fondly thought that
they had hidden themselves for ever.
But at night! . . . Ah! at night when all the doors are closed, it is
the palace of nightmare and of fear. At night, so say the Arab
guardians, who would not enter it at the price of gold - no, not even
after offering up a prayer - at night, horrible "forms" escape, not
only from the embalmed bodies that sleep in the glass cases above, but
also from the great statues, from the papyri, and the thousand and one
things that, at the bottom of the tombs, have long been impregnated
with human essence. And these "forms" are like unto dead bodies, and
sometimes to strange beasts, even to beasts that crawl. And, after
having wandered about the halls, they end by assembling for their
nocturnal conferences on the roofs.
We next ascend a staircase of monumental proportions, empty in the
whole extent, where we are delivered for a little while from the
obsession of those rigid figures, from the stares and smiles of the
good people in white stone and black granite who throng the galleries
and vestibules on the ground floor. None of them, to be sure, will
follow us; but all the same they guard in force and perplex with their
shadows the only way by which we can retreat, if the formidable hosts
above have in store for us too sinister a welcome.
He to whose courtesy I owe the relaxation of the orders of the night
is the illustrious savant to whose care has been entrusted the
direction of the excavations in Egyptian soil; he is also the
comptroller of this vast museum, and it is he himself who has kindly
consented to act as my guide to-night through its mazy labyrinth.
Across the silent halls above we now proceed straight towards those of
whom I have demanded this nocturnal audience.
To-night the succession of these rooms, filled with glass cases, which
cover more than four hundred yards along the four sides of the
building, seems to be without end. After passing, in turn, the papyri,
the enamels, the vases that contain human entrails, we reach the
mummies of the sacred beasts: cats, ibises, dogs, hawks, all with
their mummy cloths and sarcophagi; and monkeys, too, that remain
grotesque even in death. Then commence the human masks, and, upright
in glass-fronted cupboards, the mummy cases in which the body, swathed
in its mummy cloths, was moulded, and which reproduced, more or less
enlarged, the figure of the deceased. Quite a lot of courtesans of the
Greco-Roman epoch, moulded in paste in this wise after death and
crowned with roses, smile at us provokingly from behind their windows.
Masks of the colour of dead flesh alternate with others of gold which
gleam as the light of our lantern plays upon them momentarily in our
rapid passage.
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