United States or Venezuela ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Among other fragments hereabouts, the visitor should not fail to examine the fragment found in Alexandria, at the base of Pompey's Pillar, upon which are clearly traceable the figure of the great Rameses, being crowned by divinities, and a list of his dignities; the red granite colossal fist , presented to the Museum by Earl Spencer; and a curious fragment, which represents parts of a royal scribe, with his writing slab attached to his leg . Passing the curious double statue , of a State officer of the time of the eleventh Rameses, the visitor should once more halt before a basalt statue of a functionary , of the 26th dynasty, found in 1785, in the Natron Lakes, near Rosetta, and a granite group , representing, side by side, a chief, and a royal nurse, with the chief's daughter.

In a court-yard, protected from the rays of the sun only by an awning, was a large walled bason, containing a solution of natron, in which the bodies were salted, and they were then dried in a stone vault, artificially supplied with hot air.

For all these were dead who lay in the baths of bronze, and it was not water that flowed about their limbs, but evil-smelling natron. "Here lie those," said the priest, "who last strove to come near the Holy Hathor, and to pass into the shrine of the temple where night and day she sits and sings and weaves with her golden shuttle. Here they lie, the half of a score.

In a strange way, the Egyptians had come to believe that no soul could enter the realm of Osiris without the possession of the body which had been its place of residence in this world. Therefore as soon as a man was dead his relatives took his corpse and had it embalmed. For weeks it was soaked in a solution of natron and then it was filled with pitch.

The caravans from Bornou and Houssa, which halt at Koolfu a considerable time, bring horses, natron, unwrought silk, silk cord, beads, Maltese swords from Bengazi, remounted at Kano; clothes made up in the moorish fashion, Italian looking glasses, such as sell for one penny and upwards at Malta, tobes undyed, made in Bornou, khol for the eyelids, a small quantity of attar of roses, much adulterated, gums from Mecca, silks from Egypt, moorish caps, and slaves.

On arrival at the base of the first bill, a grove of tamarinds shades a spring, at which we watered our horses, but the water is impregnated with natron, which is common throughout this country, and appears in many places as an efflorescence on the surface of the ground.

The Egyptians thought it a terrible thing to commit acts of violence upon a human being, whether dead or living, and only the lowest of the low could be hired to perform this unpopular task. Afterwards the priest took the body again and for a period of ten weeks he allowed it to be soaked in a solution of natron which was brought for this purpose from the distant desert of Libya.

In a court-yard, protected from the rays of the sun only by an awning, was a large walled bason, containing a solution of natron, in which the bodies were salted, and they were then dried in a stone vault, artificially supplied with hot air.

The heat of the room had warmed the natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschistes, who cut open the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess. It was a perfume at once sweet and penetrating, a perfume that four thousand years had not been able to dissipate. The Dream of Egypt was Eternity. Her odours have the solidity of granite and endure as long.

Thy fore parts are pure, thy hind parts are cleansed; thy interior is cleansed with incense and natron, and no member of thine hath any defect in it whatsoever. Kersher is washed in the waters of the Field of Offerings, that lieth to the north of the Field of the Grasshoppers. The goddesses Uatchet and Nekhebet purify thee at the eighth hour of the night and at the eighth hour of the day.