United States or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If Egyptian amulets and mummies had such terrible powers, you may be very sure that the modern Arabs, who are the most superstitious people in the world, would not touch the work, and the ancient sextons or guardians of the tombs, who were even more superstitious, wouldn't have dared to disturb the last slumber of a lately-buried Pharaoh.
This reminds me to tell you that in the Berlin Museum, which the King of Prussia is now finishing in high style, I saw what is said to be the most complete Egyptian collection in the world; a whole Egyptian temple, word for word pillars, paintings, and all; numberless sarcophagi, and mummies ad nauseam!
Graves, in an AEgyptian idol cut out of Loadstone and found among the Mummies; which still retains its attraction, though probably taken out of the mine about two thousand years ago." The strangeness of the figure, and its being so close akin to his own nature, attracted him.
The mummies of Amenhotep I., and Thothmes III., of Sekenenra, and Aahhotep have survived the dwellings of solid stone designed for their protection. Towards the middle of the Eighteenth Dynasty, however, all the best places were taken up, and some unoccupied site in which to establish a new royal cemetery had to be sought. Amenhotep III., Aï, and perhaps others, were there buried.
"Tell me, holy father," said he, "unless it belongs to the great secrets, what is the real difference between burning the dead and the making of mummies? for though I have heard something at school I do not understand clearly this question, to which the Greeks attach such importance." "We attach far more, the greatest importance to this question," replied Mentezufis.
The mummies, however, were highly valued by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was driven to borrow money, the mummies were thought good security by the lender, and taken as such for the loan.
They now lay, stiff and motionless as mummies, roseate as the morn, deceptively innocent, with eyes tight shut and mouths wide open save in the case of Dolly, whose natural appetite could only be appeased by the nightly sucking of two of her own fingers. In the attics three domestics slumbered in peace. Still higher, a belated cat reposed in the lee of a chimney-stack.
Amongst other fanciful conjectures concerning the history of Egypt, we may suppose some of the following to be started. 'As the banks of the Nile have been so recently colonized for the first time, the curious substances called mummies could never in reality have belonged to men.
Another hall enclosed the dull and rigid monuments of the Egyptians; of that people whose statues resembled mummies more than men, and who by their silent, stiff, and servile institutions, seem to have assimilated as much as possible, life to death.
Word Of The Day