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He held up his hand. "Wait! It all comes back to me. Expensive classical education, now bearing belated fruit. Scarabaeus Latin; noun, nominative a beetle. Scarabaee vocative O you beetle! Scarabaeum accusative the beetle. Scarabaei of the beetle. Scarabaeo to or for the beetle. I remember now. Egypt Rameses pyramids sacred scarabs! Right!"
There was free choice for the visitors of this pattern-room in the matter of mummy-cases and cloths, as well as of necklets, scarabaei, statuettes, Uza-eyes, girdles, head-rests, triangles, split-rings, staves, and other symbolic objects, which were attached to the dead as sacred amulets, or bound up in the wrappings.
I saw a collection of scarabaei, or beetles, which were anciently worshiped in this country. Dealers offer figures of this kind for sale, but the most of them are probably manufactured for the tourist trade. On Lord's day, October thirtieth, I attended the evening services at the American Mission, and went to Bedrashen the following day.
"Perhaps I am doubly guilty for playing such an accursed trick with the heart of a high-priest; but Rui's body will be hung round with a hundred amulets, Scarabaei And then! thou hast sworn, in that world, in the hall of judgment, to take my guilt on thyself." Nebsecht gave the old man his hand. "That I will," said he, "and I should have chosen as you did.
And, above all, there are dealers in mummies, offering for sale mysteriously shaped coffins, mummy-cloths, dead hands, gods, scarabaei and the thousand and one things that this old soil has yielded for centuries like an inexhaustible mine. Along the stalls, keeping in the shade of the houses and the scattered palms, pass representatives of the plutocracy of the world.
By an obvious play upon words, the beetle was made the emblem of terrestrial life, and of the successive "becomings" or developments of man in the life to come. A thousand mystic meanings were evolved from this first idea, each in some subtle sense connected with one or other of the daily acts or usages of life, so that scarabaei were multiplied ad infinitum.
Finally, in order to hide the patchwork effect presented at the back, the whole was lined with long strips of white, or light yellow, leather. Despite the difficulties of treatment which this work presented, the result is most remarkable. The outlines of the gazelles, scarabaei, and flowers are as clean-cut and as elegant as if drawn with the pen upon a wall-surface or a page of papyrus.
Some lean Bedouins, who exercise the office of excavators, and sleep hard by in holes like jackals, advance to sell us scarabaei, blue-glass trinkets that are half fossilised, and feet or hands of the dead. And now farewell to the fresh morning. Every minute the heat becomes more oppressive.
As good an observer of men as of beasts, he gazed quietly about him; he exchanged a few words with the Emperor, who was "quite simple," almost suppressed, his eyes always half-closed; he watched the coming and going of "the chamberlains with short breeches and silver- buckled shoes, great scarabaei, clad with café au lait wing-cases, moving with a formal gait."
On the right, scarabaei with extended wings alternate with the cartouches of King Pinotem II., and are surmounted by a lance-head frieze. In the centre we see a bunch of lotus lilies flanked by royal cartouches. Next come two antelopes, each kneeling upon a basket; then two bouquets of papyrus; then two more scarabaei, similar to those upon the other border.
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