Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt — Complete

by Georg Ebers

  CHAPTER XVII.

  In the earliest glimmer of dawn the following clay, the physicianNebsecht having satisfied himself as to the state of the sick girl, leftthe paraschites' hut and made his way in deepest thought to the 'TerraceTemple of Hatasu, to find his friend Pentaur and compose the writingwhich he had promised to the old man.

  As the sun arose in radiance he reached the sanctuary. He expected tohear the morning song of the priests, but all was silent. He knocked andthe porter, still half-asleep, opened the door.

  Nebsecht enquired for the chief of the Temple. "He died in the night,"said the man yawning.

  "What do you say?" cried the physician in sudden terror, "who is dead?"

  "Our good old chief, Rui."

  Nebsecht breathed again, and asked for Pentaur.

  "You belong to the House of Seti," said the doorkeeper, "and you do notknow that he is deposed from his office? The holy fathers have refusedto celebrate the birth of Ra with him. He sings for himself now, aloneup on the watch-tower. There you will find him."

  Nebsecht strode quickly up the stairs. Several of the priests placedthemselves together in groups as soon as they saw him, and begansinging. He paid no heed to them, however, but hastened on to theuppermost terrace, where he found his friend occupied in writing.

  Soon he learnt all that had happened, and wrathfully he cried: "You aretoo honest for those wise gentlemen in the House of Seti, and too pureand zealous for the rabble here. I knew it, I knew what would come of itif they introduced you to the mysteries. For us initiated there remainsonly the choice between lying and silence."

  "The old error!" said Pentaur, "we know that the Godhead is One, we nameit, 'The All,' 'The Veil of the All,' or simply 'Ra.' But under the nameRa we understand something different than is known to the common herd;for to us, the Universe is God, and in each of its parts we recognizea manifestation of that highest being without whom nothing is, in theheights above or in the depths below."

  "To me you can say everything, for I also am initiated," interruptedNebsecht.

  "But neither from the laity do I withhold it," cried Pentaur, "onlyto those who are incapable of understanding the whole, do I show thedifferent parts. Am I a liar if I do not say, 'I speak,' but 'my mouthspeaks,' if I affirm, 'Your eye sees,' when it is you yourself whoare the seer. When the light of the only One manifests itself, then Ifervently render thanks to him in hymns, and the most luminous of hisforms I name Ra. When I look upon yonder green fields, I call upon thefaithful to give thanks to Rennut, that is, that active manifestationof the One, through which the corn attains to its ripe maturity. Am Ifilled with wonder at the bounteous gifts with which that divine streamwhose origin is hidden, blesses our land, then I adore the One as theGod Hapi, the secret one. Whether we view the sun, the harvest, or theNile, whether we contemplate with admiration the unity and harmony ofthe visible or invisible world, still it is always with the Only, theAll-embracing One we have to do, to whom we also ourselves belong asthose of his manifestations in which lie places his self-consciousness.The imagination of the multitude is limited.... "

  "And so we lions,

  ["The priests," says Clement of Alexandria, "allow none to be participators in their mysteries, except kings or such amongst themselves as are distinguished for virtue or wisdom." The same thing is shown by the monuments in many places]

  give them the morsel that we can devour at one gulp, finely chopped up,and diluted with broth as if for the weak stomach of a sick man."

  "Not so; we only feel it our duty to temper and sweeten the sharppotion, which for men even is almost too strong, before we offer it tothe children, the babes in spirit. The sages of old veiled indeedthe highest truths in allegorical forms, in symbols, and finally in abeautiful and richly-colored mythos, but they brought them near to themultitude shrouded it is true but still discernible."

  "Discernible?" said the physician, "discernible? Why then the veil?"

  "And do you imagine that the multitude could look the naked truth in theface,

  [In Sais the statue of Athene (Neith) has the following, inscription: "I am the All, the Past, the Present, and the Future, my veil has no mortal yet lifted." Plutarch, Isis and Osiris 9, a similar quotation by Proclus, in Plato's Timaeus.]

  and not despair?"

  "Can I, can any one who looks straight forward, and strives to see thetruth and nothing but the truth?" cried the physician. "We both of usknow that things only are, to us, such as they picture themselves in theprepared mirror of our souls. I see grey, grey, and white, white, andhave accustomed myself in my yearning after knowledge, not to attributethe smallest part to my own idiosyncrasy, if such indeed there beexisting in my empty breast. You look straight onwards as I do, but inyou each idea is transfigured, for in your soul invisible shaping powersare at work, which set the crooked straight, clothe the commonplace withcharm, the repulsive with beauty. You are a poet, an artist; I only seekfor truth."

  "Only?" said Pentaur, "it is just on account of that effort that Iesteem you so highly, and, as you already know, I also desire nothingbut the truth."

  "I know, I know," said the physician nodding, "but our ways run sideby side without ever touching, and our final goal is the reading of ariddle, of which there are many solutions. You believe yourself to havefound the right one, and perhaps none exists."

  "Then let us content ourselves with the nearest and the most beautiful,"said Pentaur.

  "The most beautiful?" cried Nebsecht indignantly. "Is that monster, whomyou call God, beautiful--the giant who for ever regenerates himself thathe may devour himself again? God is the All, you say, who suffices tohimself. Eternal he is and shall be, because all that goes forth fromhim is absorbed by him again, and the great niggard bestows no grain ofsand, no ray of light, no breath of wind, without reclaiming it for hishousehold, which is ruled by no design, no reason, no goodness, but by atyrannical necessity, whose slave he himself is. The coward hides behindthe cloud of incomprehensibility, and can be revealed only by himself--Iwould I could strip him of the veil! Thus I see the thing that you callGod!"

  "A ghastly picture," said Pentaur, "because you forget that we recognizereason to be the essence of the All, the penetrating and moving power ofthe universe which is manifested in the harmonious working togetherof its parts, and in ourselves also, since we are formed out of itssubstance, and inspired with its soul."

  "Is the warfare of life in any way reasonable?" asked Nebsecht. "Is thiseternal destruction in order to build up again especially well-designedand wise? And with this introduction of reason into the All, you provideyourself with a self-devised ruler, who terribly resembles the graciousmasters and mistresses that you exhibit to the people."

  "Only apparently," answered Pentaur, "only because that which transcendssense is communicable through the medium of the senses alone. When Godmanifests himself as the wisdom of the world, we call him 'the Word,''He, who covers his limbs with names,' as the sacred Text expressesitself, is the power which gives to things their distinctive forms; thescarabaeus, 'which enters life as its own son' reminds us of the everself-renewing creative power which causes you to call our merciful andbenevolent God a monster, but which you can deny as little as you canthe happy choice of the type; for, as you know, there are only malescarabei, and this animal reproduces itself."

  Nebsecht smiled. "If all the doctrines of the mysteries," he said, "haveno more truth than this happily chosen image, they are in a bad way.These beetles have for years been my friends and companions. I knowtheir family life, and I can assure you that there are males and femalesamongst them as amongst cats, apes, and human beings. Your 'good God' Ido not know, and what I least comprehend in thinking it over quietly isthe circumstance that you distinguish a good and evil principle in theworld. If the All is indeed God, if God as the scriptures teach, isgoodness, and if besides him is nothing at all, where is a place to befound for evil?"

  "You talk like a school-boy," said Pentaur indignantly. "All that is, is
good and reasonable in itself, but the infinite One, who prescribes hisown laws and his own paths, grants to the finite its continuance throughcontinual renewal, and in the changing forms of the finite progressesfor evermore. What we call evil, darkness, wickedness, is in itselfdivine, good, reasonable, and clear; but it appears in another light toour clouded minds, because we perceive the way only and not the goal,the details only, and not the whole. Even so, superficial listenersblame the music, in which a discord is heard, which the harper has onlyevoked from the strings that his hearers may more deeply feel the purityof the succeeding harmony; even so, a fool blames the painter who hascolored his board with black, and does not wait for the completionof the picture which shall be thrown into clearer relief by the darkbackground; even so, a child chides the noble tree, whose fruit rots,that a new life may spring up from its kernel. Apparent evil is but anantechamber to higher bliss, as every sunset is but veiled by night, andwill soon show itself again as the red dawn of a new day."

  "How convincing all that sounds!" answered the physician, "all, eventhe terrible, wins charm from your lips; but I could invert yourproposition, and declare that it is evil that rules the world, andsometimes gives us one drop of sweet content, in order that we may morekeenly feel the bitterness of life. You see harmony and goodnessin everything. I have observed that passion awakens life, that allexistence is a conflict, that one being devours another."

  "And do you not feel the beauty of visible creation, and does not theimmutable law in everything fill you with admiration and humility?"

  "For beauty," replied Nebsecht, "I have never sought; the organ issomehow wanting in me to understand it of myself, though I willinglyallow you to mediate between us. But of law in nature I fully appreciatethe worth, for that is the veritable soul of the universe. You call theOne 'Temt,' that is to say the total--the unity which is reached by theaddition of many units; and that pleases me, for the elements of theuniverse and the powers which prescribe the paths of life arestrictly defined by measure and number--but irrespective of beauty orbenevolence."

  "Such views," cried Pentaur troubled, "are the result of your strangestudies. You kill and destroy, in order, as you yourself say, to comeupon the track of the secrets of life. Look out upon nature, developthe faculty which you declare to be wanting, in you, and the beauty ofcreation will teach you without my assistance that you are praying to afalse god."

  "I do not pray," said Nebsecht, "for the law which moves the world isas little affected by prayers as the current of the sands in yourhour-glass. Who tells you that I do not seek to come upon the track ofthe first beginning of things? I proved to you just now that I know moreabout the origin of Scarabei than you do. I have killed many an animal,not only to study its organism, but also to investigate how it has builtup its form. But precisely in this work my organ for beauty has becomeblunt rather than keen. I tell you that the beginning of things is notmore attractive to contemplate than their death and decomposition."

  Pentaur looked at the physician enquiringly.

  "I also for once," continued Nebsecht, "will speak in figures. Look atthis wine, how pure it is, how fragrant; and yet it was trodden from thegrape by the brawny feet of the vintagers. And those full ears of corn!They gleam golden yellow, and will yield us snow-white meal when theyare ground, and yet they grew from a rotting seed. Lately you werepraising to me the beauty of the great Hall of Columns nearly completedin the Temple of Amon over yonder in Thebes.

  [Begun by Rameses I. continued by Seti I., completed by Rameses II. The remains of this immense hall, with its 134 columns, have not their equal in the world.]

  How posterity will admire it! I saw that Hall arise. There lay masses offreestone in wild confusion, dust in heaps that took away my breath,and three months since I was sent over there, because above a hundredworkmen engaged in stone-polishing under the burning sun had been beatento death. Were I a poet like you, I would show you a hundred similarpictures, in which you would not find much beauty. In the meantime,we have enough to do in observing the existing order of things, andinvestigating the laws by which it is governed."

  "I have never clearly understood your efforts, and have difficulty incomprehending why you did not turn to the science of the haruspices,"said Pentaur. "Do you then believe that the changing, and--owing to theconditions by which they are surrounded--the dependent life of plantsand animals is governed by law, rule, and numbers like the movement ofthe stars?"

  "What a question! Is the strong and mighty hand, which compels yonderheavenly bodies to roll onward in their carefully-appointed orbits, notdelicate enough to prescribe the conditions of the flight of the bird,and the beating of the human heart?"

  "There we are again with the heart," said the poet smiling, "are you anynearer your aim?"

  The physician became very grave. "Perhaps tomorrow even," he said, "Imay have what I need. You have your palette there with red and blackcolor, and a writing reed. May I use this sheet of papyrus?"

  "Of course; but first tell me.... "

  "Do not ask; you would not approve of my scheme, and there would only bea fresh dispute."

  "I think," said the poet, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder,"that we have no reason to fear disputes. So far they have been thecement, the refreshing dew of our friendship."

  "So long as they treated of ideas only, and not of deeds."

  "You intend to get possession of a human heart!" cried the poet. "Thinkof what you are doing! The heart is the vessel of that effluence of theuniversal soul, which lives in us."

  "Are you so sure of that?" cried the physician with some irritation,"then give me the proof. Have you ever examined a heart, has any onemember of my profession done so? The hearts of criminals and prisonersof war even are declared sacred from touch, and when we stand helplessby a patient, and see our medicines work harm as often as good, why isit? Only because we physicians are expected to work as blindly as anastronomer, if he were required to look at the stars through a board. AtHeliopolis I entreated the great Urma Rahotep, the truly learned chiefof our craft, and who held me in esteem, to allow me to examine theheart of a dead Amu; but he refused me, because the great Sechet leadsvirtuous Semites also into the fields of the blessed.

  [According to the inscription accompanying the famous representations of the four nations (Egyptians, Semites, Libyans, and Ethiopians) in the tomb of Seti I.]

  And then followed all the old scruples: that to cut up the heart of abeast even is sinful, because it also is the vehicle of a soul, perhapsa condemned and miserable human soul, which before it can return to theOne, must undergo purification by passing through the bodies of animals.I was not satisfied, and declared to him that my great-grandfatherNebsecht, before he wrote his treatise on the heart, must certainlyhave examined such an organ. Then he answered me that the divinity hadrevealed to him what he had written, and therefore his work had beenaccepted amongst the sacred writings of Toth,

  [Called by the Greeks "Hermetic Books." The Papyrus Ebers is the work called by Clemens of Alexandria "the Book of Remedies."]

  which stood fast and unassailable as the laws of the world; he wishedto give me peace for quiet work, and I also, he said, might be a chosenspirit, the divinity might perhaps vouchsafe revelations to me too. Iwas young at that time, and spent my nights in prayer, but I only wastedaway, and my spirit grew darker instead of clearer. Then I killed insecret--first a fowl, then rats, then a rabbit, and cut up their hearts,and followed the vessels that lead out of them, and know little more nowthan I did at first; but I must get to the bottom of the truth, and Imust have a human heart."

  "What will that do for you?" asked Pentaur; "you cannot hope to perceivethe invisible and the infinite with your human eyes?"

  "Do you know my great-grandfather's treatise?"

  "A little," answered the poet; "he said that wherever he laid hisfinger, whether on the head, the hands, or the stomach, he everywheremet with the heart, because its vessels go into all the members, and thehear
t is the meeting point of all these vessels. Then Nebsecht proceedsto state how these are distributed in the different members, andshows--is it not so?--that the various mental states, such as anger,grief, aversion, and also the ordinary use of the word heart, declareentirely for his view."

  "That is it. We have already discussed it, and I believe that he isright, so far as the blood is concerned, and the animal sensations. Butthe pure and luminous intelligence in us--that has another seat," andthe physician struck his broad but low forehead with his hand. "I haveobserved heads by the hundred down at the place of execution, and I havealso removed the top of the skulls of living animals. But now let mewrite, before we are disturbed."

  [Human brains are prescribed for a malady of the eyes in the Ebers papyrus. Herophilus, one of the first scholars of the Alexandrine Museum, studied not only the bodies of executed criminals, but made his experiments also on living malefactors. He maintained that the four cavities of the human brain are the seat of the soul.]

  The physician took the reed, moistened it with black color prepared fromburnt papyrus, and in elegant hieratic characters

  [At the time of our narrative the Egyptians had two kinds of writing-the hieroglyphic, which was generally used for monumental inscriptions, and in which the letters consisted of conventional representations of various objects, mathematical and arbitrary symbols, and the hieratic, used for writing on papyrus, and in which, with the view of saving time, the written pictures underwent so many alterations and abbreviations that the originals could hardly be recognized. In the 8th century there was a further abridgment of the hieratic writing, which was called the demotic, or people's writing, and was used in commerce. Whilst the hieroglyphic and hieratic writings laid the foundations of the old sacred dialect, the demotic letters were only used to write the spoken language of the people. E. de Rouge's Chrestomathie Egyptienne. H. Brugsch's Hieroglyphische Grammatik. Le Page Renouf's shorter hieroglyphical grammar. Ebers' Ueber das Hieroglyphische Schriftsystem, 2nd edition, 1875, in the lectures of Virchow Holtzendorff.]

  wrote the paper for the paraschites, in which he confessed to havingimpelled him to the theft of a heart, and in the most binding mannerdeclared himself willing to take the old man's guilt upon himself beforeOsiris and the judges of the dead.

  When he had finished, Pentaur held out his hand for the paper, butNebsecht folded it together, placed it in a little bag in which layan amulet that his dying mother had hung round his neck, and said,breathing deeply:

  "That is done. Farewell, Pentaur."

  But the poet held the physician back; he spoke to him with the warmestwords, and conjured him to abandon his enterprise. His prayers, however,had no power to touch Nebsecht, who only strove forcibly to disengagehis finger from Pentaur's strong hand, which held him as in a clasp ofiron. The excited poet did not remark that he was hurting his friend,until after a new and vain attempt at freeing himself, Nebsecht criedout in pain, "You are crushing my finger!"

  A smile passed over the poet's face, he loosened his hold on thephysician, and stroked the reddened hand like a mother who strives todivert her child from pain.

  "Don't be angry with me, Nebsecht," he said, "you know my unlucky fists,and to-day they really ought to hold you fast, for you have too mad apurpose on hand."

  "Mad?" said the physician, whilst he smiled in his turn. "It may be so;but do you not know that we Egyptians all have a peculiar tenderness forour follies, and are ready to sacrifice house and land to them?"

  "Our own house and our own land," cried the poet: and then addedseriously, "but not the existence, not the happiness of another."

  "Have I not told you that I do not look upon the heart as the seat ofour intelligence? So far as I am concerned, I would as soon be buriedwith a ram's heart as with my own."

  "I do not speak of the plundered dead, but of the living," said thepoet. "If the deed of the paraschites is discovered, he is undone, andyou would only have saved that sweet child in the hut behind there, tofling her into deeper misery."

  Nebsecht looked at the other with as much astonishment and dismay, as ifhe had been awakened from sleep by bad tidings. Then he cried: "All thatI have, I would share with the old man and Uarda."

  "And who would protect her?"

  "Her father."

  "That rough drunkard who to-morrow or the day after may be sent no oneknows where."

  "He is a good fellow," said the physician interrupting his friend, andstammering violently. "But who 'would do anything to the child? She isso so.... She is so charming, so perfectly--sweet and lovely."

  With these last words he cast down his eyes and reddened like a girl.

  "You understand that," he said, "better than I do; yes, and you alsothink her beautiful! Strange! you must not laugh if I confess--I ambut a man like every one else--when I confess, that I believe I have atlength discovered in myself the missing organ for beauty of form--notbelieve merely, but truly have discovered it, for it has not onlyspoken, but cried, raged, till I felt a rushing in my ears, and for thefirst time was attracted more by the sufferer than by suffering. I havesat in the hut as though spell-bound, and gazed at her hair, at hereyes, at how she breathed. They must long since have missed me at theHouse of Seti, perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking mein my room! For two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawnaway from my work, for the sake of this child. Were I one of the laity,whom you would approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me.But it is not that,"--and with these words the physician's eyes flamedup--"it is not that! The animal in me, the low instincts of which theheart is the organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, theyhave mastered the pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; andin the very moment when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you callthe Prince of knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal inme is stronger than that which I call my God."

  The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the groundduring these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened tohim wondering and full of sympathy. For a time both were silent; thenPentaur laid his hand on his friend's hand, and said cordially:

  "My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I mayuse your own words, have known a like emotion. But I know that what wefeel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftierand more precious than these, not lower. Not the animal, Nebsecht, isit that you feel in yourself, but God. Goodness is the most beautifulattribute of the divine, and you have always been well-disposedtowards great and small; but I ask you, have you ever before felt soirresistibly impelled to pour out an ocean of goodness on another being,whether for Uarda you would not more joyfully and more self-forgetfullysacrifice all that you have, and all that you are, than to father andmother and your oldest friend?"

  Nebsecht nodded assentingly.

  "Well then," cried Pentaur, "follow your new and godlike emotion, begood to Uarda and do not sacrifice her to your vain wishes. My poorfriend! With your--enquiries into the secrets of life, you have neverlooked round upon itself, which spreads open and inviting before oureyes. Do you imagine that the maiden who can thus inflame the calmestthinker in Thebes, will not be coveted by a hundred of the common herdwhen her protector fails her? Need I tell you that amongst the dancersin the foreign quarter nine out of ten are the daughters of outlawedparents? Can you endure the thought that by your hand innocence may beconsigned to vice, the rose trodden under foot in the mud? Is the humanheart that you desire, worth an Uarda? Now go, and to-morrow come againto me your friend who understands how to sympathize with all you feel,and to whom you have approached so much the nearer to-day that you havelearned to share his purest happiness."

  Pentaur held out his hand to the physician, who held it some time, thenwent thoughtfully and lingeringly, unmindful of the burning glow ofthe mid-day sun, over the mountain into the valley of the king's gravestowards the hut of the paraschites.

  Here he found the soldier
with his daughter. "Where is the old man?" heasked anxiously.

  "He has gone to his work in the house of the embalmer," was the answer."If anything should happen to him he bade me tell you not to forget thewriting and the book. He was as though out of his mind when he left us,and put the ram's heart in his bag and took it with him. Do you remainwith the little one; my mother is at work, and I must go with theprisoners of war to Harmontis."