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Updated: June 28, 2025
The houses of the embalmers, which earlier in the evening had shone brightly out of the darkness, now made a less splendid display. The dust kicked up by the crowd dimmed the few lamps and torches which had not by this time burned out or been extinguished, and an oppressive atmosphere of balsamic resin and spices met the brother and sister on the very threshold.
She watched him go, smiling very strangely, then, still smiling, looked down at the bush whence she had plucked the flower, and Kaku noted that it was one used only by the embalmers to furnish coronals for the dead. But Abi noted no such thing.
In a long, narrow room apart hung the portraits, waiting to be attached to the upper end of the mummy-cases of those lately deceased, and still in the hands of embalmers. Here, too, most of the lamps were out, and the upper end of the room was already dark. Only in the middle, where the best pictures were on show, the lights had been renewed.
Hence the religious care taken of the human remains, the infallible methods and the minute precautions of the embalmers, the perfect solidity and the secret location of the tombs, of which the priests alone possessed the plan, the constant thought of eternity in death which characterised in so striking a manner the ancient Egyptians and makes them a nation apart, incomprehensible to modern nations, which are generally so eager to give back to the earth and to cause to disappear the generations which have preceded them.
All its buildings were devoted to the dead, and it was inhabited only by dissectors and embalmers. This division was the forecourt as it were, of the cemetery proper, the bridge which joined living society with the city of endless rest. To this place were brought corpses, and mummies were made of them; here families stipulated with priests, touching the cost of funerals.
But the shrill laughter of the children grated on his ears, and the bright pitiless sunlight mocked his sorrow, and a dull odour of strange spices, spices such as embalmers use, seemed to taint or was it fancy? the clear morning air. He buried his face in his hands, and when the Infanta looked up again the curtains had been drawn, and the King had retired.
Then he describes the colleges of priests, the quarters inhabited by the embalmers, the minutest details of the embalming processes, the funeral rites, the construction of the thousands of hypogea and mummy pits which are to receive the mummies.
When he had finished, Pharaoh said: "That this story is true I know from others. Scribe, you have done well. But for you to-day his Highness would lie upon the table of the embalmers, as indeed for his folly he deserves to do, and Egypt would mourn from Thebes to the mouths of Nile. Come hither." I came with trembling steps, and knelt before his Majesty.
He determined if the old man did not return to ask the kolchytes or embalmers to admit him into their guild and for the sake of his adroitness they were not likely to refuse him then he would make Uarda his wife, and live apart from the world, for her, for his studies, and for his new calling, in which he hoped to learn a great deal.
The queen had been torn away from the corpse of her son, which was now delivered to the embalmers, and it was not until she reached the entrance of the audience-chamber that she had succeeded in checking her tears. She had no thought of resistance; the inexorable ceremonial of court etiquette required the queen to be present at any audience of importance.
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