The Treasury of Ancient Egypt Part 8

"I went down on the Great Green Sea," continued the speaker, "in a s.h.i.+p one hundred and fifty cubits[1] in length and forty cubits in breadth, and in it were a hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of Egypt. They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their hearts were stouter than lions. They foretold the storm or ever it came, and the tempest when as yet it was not."

[Footnote 1: The average cubit was about 20-1/2 inches.]

A storm arose while they were out of sight of land, and rapidly increased in violence, until the waves, according to the very restrained estimate of the narrator, were eight cubits high--that is to say, about thirteen or fourteen feet. To one who was accustomed to the waves of the Nile this would be a great height; and the pa.s.sage thus suggests that the scribe was an untravelled man. A vessel of 150 cubits, or about 250 feet, in length might have been expected to ride out a storm of this magnitude; but, according to the story, she went to pieces, and the whole s.h.i.+p's company, with the single exception of the teller of the tale, were drowned. The survivor managed to cling to a plank of wood, which was driven by the wind towards the sh.o.r.es of an uncharted island, and here at length he was cast up by the waves.

Not far from the beach there was a small thicket, and to this the castaway hastened, sheltering therein from the fury of the storm. For three days in deep despair he lay hidden, "without a companion," as he said, "save my heart;" but at last the tempest subsided, the sun shone in the heavens once again, and the famished mariner was able to go in search of food, which, to his delight, he found in abundance.

The scene upon which he gazed as he plucked the fruit of the laden trees was most mysterious, and all that he saw around him must have had an appearance not altogether consistent with reality, for, indeed, the island was not real. It had been called into existence, perhaps, at the bidding of some G.o.d to relieve the tedium of an eternal afternoon, and suddenly it had appeared, floating upon the blue waters of the ocean.

How long it had remained there, how long it would still remain, none could tell, for at any moment the mind of the G.o.d might be diverted, and instantly it would dissolve and vanish as would a dream. Beneath the isle the seas moved, and there in the darkness the fishes of the deep, with luminous, round eyes, pa.s.sed to and fro, nibbling the roots of the trees above them. Overhead the heavens stretched, and around about spread the expanse of the sea upon which no living thing might be seen, save only the dolphins as they leapt into the suns.h.i.+ne and sank again amidst the gleaming spray.

There was abundant vegetation upon the island, but it does not appear to have looked quite real. The fig-trees were heavy with fruit, the vines were festooned from bough to bough, hung with cl.u.s.ters of grapes, and pomegranates were ripe for the plucking. But there seems to have been an unearthliness about them, as though a deep enchantment were upon them.

In the tangled undergrowth through which the bewildered sailor walked there lay great melons and pumpkins. The breeze wafted to his nostrils the smell of the incense-trees; and the scent of the flowers, after the storm, must have made every breath he breathed a pleasure of Paradise to him. Moving over the luxuriant ground, he put up flights of wonderful birds which sped towards the interior, red, green, and golden, against the sky. Monkeys chattered at him from the trees, and sprang from branch to branch amidst the dancing flowers. In shadowed pools of clear water fishes were to be seen, gliding amidst the reeds; and amongst the rocks beside the sea the castaway could look down upon the creatures of the deep imprisoned between the tides.

Food in all forms was to hand, and he had but to fill his arms with the good things which Fate had provided. "I found there," he said, "figs, grapes, and all manner of goodly onions; melons and pomegranates were there, and pumpkins of every kind. Fishes were there and fowls: there was nought that was lacking in it. I satisfied myself, and set upon the ground the abundance of that with which my arms were filled. I took the fire-borer and kindled a fire, and made a burnt-offering to the G.o.ds."

Seated in the warm suns.h.i.+ne amidst the trees, eating a roast fowl seasoned with onions or some equally palatable concoction, he seems to have found the life of a s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner by no means as distressing as he had antic.i.p.ated; and the wording of the narrative appears to be so arranged that an impression of comfortable ease and security may surround his sunlit figure. Suddenly, however, all was changed. "I heard," said he, "a sound as of thunder, and I thought it was the waves of the sea." Then "the trees creaked and the earth trembled"; and, like the Egyptian that he was, he went down on his shaking hands and knees, and buried his face in the ground.

At length "I uncovered my face," he declared, "and I found it was a serpent that came, of the length of thirty cubits"--about fifty feet--"and his tail was more than two cubits" in diameter. "His skin was overlaid with gold, and his eyebrows were of real lapis lazuli, and he was exceeding perfect."

"He opened his mouth to me," he continued, "as I lay on my stomach before him, and said to me: 'Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?--who brought thee? If thou delayest to tell me who brought thee to this island I will cause thee to know thyself (again only) when thou art ashes, and art become that which is not seen'"--that is to say, a ghost.

"Thus you spoke to me," whispered the old sailor, as though again addressing the serpent, who, in the narration of these adventures, had become once more a very present reality to him, "but I heard it not. I lay before thee, and was unconscious."

Continuing his story, he told how the great serpent lifted him tenderly in his golden mouth, and carried him to his dwelling-place, setting him down there without hurt, amongst the fruit-trees and the flowers. The Egyptian at once flung himself upon his stomach before him, and lay there in a stupor of terror. The serpent, however, meant him no harm, and indeed looked down on him with tender pity as he questioned him once more.

"Who brought thee, who brought thee, little one?" he asked again, "Who brought thee to this island of the Great Green Sea, whereof the (under) half is waves?"

On his hands and knees before the kindly monster the s.h.i.+pwrecked Egyptian managed to regain possession of his faculties sufficiently to give an account of himself.

"I was going down to the mines," he faltered, "on a mission of the sovereign, in a s.h.i.+p one hundred and fifty cubits in length and forty in breadth, and in it were one hundred and fifty sailors, picked men of Egypt. They scanned the heavens and they scanned the earth, and their hearts were stouter than lions. They foretold the storm or ever it came, and the tempest when as yet it was not. Every one of them, his heart was stout and his arm strong beyond his fellow. There was none unproven amongst them. The storm arose while that we were on the Great Green Sea, before we touched land; and as we sailed it redoubled (its strength), and the waves thereof were eight cubits. There was a plank of wood to which I clung. The s.h.i.+p perished, and of them that were in her not one was left saving me alone, who now am at your side. And I was brought to this island by the waves of the Great Green Sea."

At this point the man seems to have been overcome once more with terror, and the serpent, therefore, hastened to rea.s.sure him.

"Fear not, little one," he said in his gentle voice; "fear not. Let not thy face be dismayed. If thou hast come to me it is G.o.d who has let thee live, who has brought thee to this phantom isle in which there is naught that is lacking, but it is full of all good things. Behold, thou shalt pa.s.s month for month until thou accomplish four months upon this island.

And a s.h.i.+p shall come from home, and sailors in it whom thou knowest, and thou shalt go home with them, and shalt die in thine own city."

"How glad is he," exclaimed the old mariner as he related his adventures to the prince, "how glad is he that recounts what he has experienced when the calamity is pa.s.sed!" The prince, no doubt, replied with a melancholy grunt, and the thread of the story was once more taken up.

There was a particular reason why the serpent should be touched and interested to hear how Providence had saved the Egyptian from death, for he himself had survived a great calamity, and had been saved from an equally terrible fate, as he now proceeded to relate.

"I will tell to thee the like thereof," he said, "which happened in this island. I dwelt herein with my brothers, and my children were among them. Seventy-two serpents we were, all told, with my offspring and my brothers; nor have I yet mentioned to thee a little girl brought to me by fortune. A star came down, and all these went up in the flames. And it happened so that I was not together with them when they were consumed; I was not in their midst. I could have died (of grief) for them when I found them as a single pile of corpses."

It is clear from the story that this great serpent was intended to be pictured as a sad and lonely, but most lovable, character. All alone upon this ghostly isle, the last of his race, one is to imagine him dreaming of the little girl who was taken from him, together with all his family. Although fabulous himself, and half divine, he was yet the victim of the G.o.ds, and was made to suffer real sorrows in his unreal existence. Day by day he wandered over his limited domain, twisting his golden body amidst the pumpkins, and rearing himself above the fig-trees; thundering down to the beach to salute the pa.s.sing dolphins, or sunning himself, a golden blaze, upon the rocks. There remained naught for him to do but to await the cessation of the phantasy of his life; and yet, though his lot was hard, he was ready at once to subordinate his sorrows to those of the s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor before him.

No more is said of his distress, but with his next words he seems to have dismissed his own misfortunes, and to have attempted to comfort the Egyptian.

"If thou art brave," he said, "and restrainest thy longing, thou shalt press thy children to thy bosom and kiss thy wife, and behold thy house--that is the best of all things. Thou shalt reach home, and shalt dwell there amongst thy brothers."

"Thereat," said the mariner, "I cast me upon my stomach and touched the ground before him, and I said to him: 'I will tell of thy might to the Sovereign, I will cause him to be acquainted with thy greatness. I will let bring to thee perfume and spices, myrrh and sweet-scented woods, and incense of the sanctuaries wherewithal every G.o.d is propitiated. I will recount all that has befallen me, and that which I have seen by his might; and they shall praise thee in that city before the magistrates of the entire land. I will slaughter to thee oxen as a burnt-offering, geese will I pluck for thee, and I will let bring to thee vessels laden with all the goodly things of Egypt, as may be (fitly) done to a G.o.d who loves men in a distant land, a land unknown to men.'"

At these words the serpent opened his golden mouth and fell to laughing.

The thought that this little mortal, grovelling before him, could believe himself able to repay the kindnesses received tickled him immensely.

"Hast thou not much incense (here, then)?" he laughed. "Art not become a lord of frankincense? And I, behold I am prince of Pount," the land of perfumes, "and the incense, _that_ is my very own. As for the spices which thou sayest shall be brought, they are the wealth of this island.

But it shall happen when thou hast left this place, never shalt thou see this island more, for it shall be changed to waves."

The teller of the story does not relate in what manner he received this well-merited reproof. The gentle monster, no doubt, was tolerant of his presumptuousness, and soon put him at his ease again. During the whole period of the Egyptian's residence on the island, in fact, the golden serpent seems to have been invariably kind to him. The days pa.s.sed by like a happy dream, and the spell of the island's enchantment possessed him so that, in after times, the details of the events of every day were lost in the single illusion of the whole adventure.

At last the s.h.i.+p arrived, as it had been foretold, and the sailor watched her pa.s.sing over the hazy sea towards the mysterious sh.o.r.e. "I went and got me up into a tall tree," he said, "and I recognised those that were in it. And I went to report the matter (to the serpent), and I found that he knew it."

Very tenderly the great monster addressed him. "Fare thee well, little one," he said "Fare thee well to thy house. Mayest thou see thy children and raise up a good name in thy city. Behold, such are my wishes for thee."

"Then," continued the sailor, "I laid me on my stomach, my arms were bended before him. And he gave me a freight of frankincense, perfume and myrrh, sweet-scented woods and antimony, giraffes' tails, great heaps of incense, elephant tusks, dogs, apes and baboons, and all manner of valuable things. And I loaded them in that s.h.i.+p, and I laid myself on my stomach to make thanksgiving to him. Then he said to me: 'Behold, thou shalt come home in two months, and shalt press thy children to thy bosom, and shalt flourish in their midst; and there thou shalt be buried.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. XV. A Nile boat pa.s.sing the hills of Thebes.]

[_Photo by E. Bird._]

To appreciate the significance of these last words it is necessary to remember what an important matter it was to an Egyptian that he should be buried in his native city. In our own case the position upon the map of the place where we lay down our discarded bones is generally not of first-rate importance, and the thought of being buried in foreign lands does not frighten us. Whether our body is to be packed away in the necropolis of our city, or shovelled into a hole on the outskirts of Timbuctoo, is not a matter of vital interest. There is a certain sentiment that leads us to desire interment amidst familiar scenes, but it is subordinated with ease to other considerations. To the Egyptian, however, it was a matter of paramount importance. "What is a greater thing," says Sinuhe in the tale of his adventures in Asia, "than that I should be buried in the land in which I was born?" "Thou shalt not die in a foreign land; Asiatics shall not conduct thee to the tomb," says the Pharaoh to him; and again, "It is no little thing that thou shalt be buried without Asiatics conducting thee."[1] There is a stela now preserved in Stuttgart, in which the deceased man asks those who pa.s.s his tomb to say a prayer for his soul; and he adjures them in these words: "So truly as ye wish that your native G.o.ds should praise you, and that ye should be established in your seats, and that ye should hand down your offices to your children: that ye should reach your homes in safety, and recount your travels to your wives;--then say a prayer,"

&c.[2]

[Footnote 1: Sinuhe, B. 159, 197, 258.]

[Footnote 2: Zeit. Aeg. Spr., 39 (1901), p. 118.]

The serpent was thus giving the castaway a promise which meant more to him than all the other blessings, and it was with a light heart indeed that he ran down to the beach to greet his countrymen. "I went down to the sh.o.r.e where the s.h.i.+p was," he continued, "and I called to the soldiers which were in that s.h.i.+p, and I gave praises upon the sh.o.r.e to the lord of this island, and likewise did they which were in the s.h.i.+p."

Then he stepped on board, the gangway was drawn up, and, with a great sweep of the oars, the s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed out on to the open sea. Standing on deck amongst the new cargo, the officers and their rescued friend bowed low to the great serpent who towered above the trees at the water's edge, gleaming in the suns.h.i.+ne. "Fare thee well, little one," his deep voice rolled across the water; and again they bowed in obeisance to him.

The main-sail was unfurled to the wind, and the vessel scudded bravely across the Great Green Sea; but for some time yet they must have kept their eyes upon the fair shape of the phantom island, as the trees blended into the hills and the hills at last into the haze; and their vision must have been focussed upon that one gleaming point where the golden serpent, alone once more with his memories, watched the s.h.i.+p moving over the fairy seas.

"So sailed we northwards," said the sailor, "to the place of the Sovereign, and we reached home in two months, in accordance with all that he had said. And I entered in before the Sovereign, and I brought to him this tribute which I had taken away from within this island. Then gave he thanksgivings for me before the magistrates of the entire land.

And I was made a 'Follower,' and was rewarded with the serfs of such an one."

The old sailor turned to the gloomy prince as he brought his story to an end. "Look at me," he exclaimed, "now that I have reached land, now that I have seen (again in memory) what I have experienced. Hearken thou to me, for behold, to hearken is good for men."

But the prince only sighed the more deeply, and, with a despairing gesture, replied: "Be not (so) superior, my friend! Doth one give water to a bird on the eve, when it is to be slain on the morrow?" With these words the ma.n.u.script abruptly ends, and we are supposed to leave the prince still disconsolate in his cabin, while his friend, unable to cheer him, returns to his duties on deck.

PART III.

RESEARCHES IN THE TREASURY.

"...And he, shall be,