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Updated: June 15, 2025
Rumphius was making the inventory of the gems, without, however, taking them off; for Evandale had ordered that the mummy should not be deprived of this last frail consolation. To take away gems from a woman, even dead, is to kill her a second time. Suddenly a papyrus roll concealed between the side and arm of the mummy caught the doctor's eye.
Rumphius, the Egyptologist, preserved even in this hot climate the traditional black coat of the scholar with its loose skirts, its curled up collar, its worn buttons, some of which had freed themselves of their silk covering. His black trousers shone in places and showed the warp.
Though he was dressed with scientific carelessness, Rumphius was not any the handsomer on that account. A few reddish hairs, streaked with gray, were brushed back behind his protruding ears, and were puffed up by the high collar of his coat.
The cover was opened, and Rumphius, who was bending over the sarcophagus, uttered a cry of surprise when he discovered the contents of the coffin, having recognised the sex of the mummy by the absence of the Osiris beard and the shape of the cartonnage. The Greek himself appeared amazed. His long experience in excavations enabled him to understand the strangeness of such a find.
There remained but one turn to be taken off, and familiar though he was with such work, Dr. Rumphius stopped for a moment, either through respect for the dead, or through that feeling which prevents a man from breaking open a letter, from opening a door, from raising a veil which hides a secret that he burns to learn.
Rumphius, armed with a chisel and a hammer, to separate the two parts of the cartonnage of the mummy, looked like one of those funeral genii which wear a bestial mask and which are seen in the paintings of the hypogea crowding around the dead in the performance of some frightful and mysterious rite; the clean profile of Lord Evandale, calm and attentive, made him look like the divine Osiris awaiting the soul to be judged.
"We are in the antechamber of the hall where the sarcophagus is bound to be!" cried Rumphius, his clear gray eyes flashing with joy from below his spectacles, which he had pushed back over his forehead. "Up to the present," said Lord Evandale, "the Greek has kept his word.
Rumphius relates, that it is sometimes so large that a man cannot easily lift it; and we were told by a Malay, that at Madura it is sometimes so large as not to be carried but by the united efforts of two men.
Rumphius has also given an account of this bulb and its inhabitants, vol. vi. p. 120, where he mentions another sort that are black. We found a fourth kind, which are perfectly harmless, and almost exactly resemble the white ants of the East Indies: The architecture of these is still more curious than that of the others.
Rumphius, smiling, "were wonderful architects, amazing artists, and great scholars. A priest of Memphis and of Thebes could have taught even our German scholars; and as regards symbolism, they were greater than any symbolists of our day. But we shall succeed eventually in deciphering their hieroglyphs and penetrating their mysteries.
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