Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1868-11-04
he Mummy.

The BeLgrarlG discOurses at length upon
the Egyptian practice of embalming the
dead, and of the effect upon Egypt's civili-
zation which the prac ice and the religion
OF which it was typical wrought. We CON
dense portion of the paper:
The Egyptians have never been sur
passed in the religious yeneration and OBJ
servance which they expended in these
integuments of flesh and bone, which we
must all shuttle off some day or other, and
which Grecian philosopher described, on
seeing a corpse, as the shell of flown
bird
The ancient Egyptians religiously rever-
enced the body as a sacred deposit which
the soul of the departed had left behind !;
pledge of Immortality, whose preservation
and welfare were indissolubly connected
with that of the spirit itself, and whose
dishonor would incur punishment for the
living, as well as torment for the dead.
The bods, In fact. was almost as divine as
the soul and kings and chieftains were
worshipped in the flesh as much as in the
spirit.
The greater part of the national existence
of Egypt, it has been said, seems 10 have
been spent in struggle against the natural
laws of corruption for about four or five
thousand years; and the long ranges of
mummy-cases. with their painted decora-
tions, with their monotonous uniformity OF
almond-shaped eyes and hieroglyphics indie
cipherabe to the uninitiated, slowed away
III countless crypts and vaults. like the rolls
Of papvrus on the shelves Of a Roman IL
brary, represent well the interminable SIM
ilarity OF the years of Egyptian history.
This veneration Of the mummy, OF death
in an artificial, monotonous form, was
perniciously bad education for a nation.
The greatness Of the reign Of a monarch
was measured by the size OF the pyramid
he could raise, or the depth Of the hupo-
geunl which he scooped out of the mountain
for the reception of his .hrivelIed bitumin-
Gus corpse. Egypt was little else than a
kind OF tomb. The pains, and prodigality,
and expenditure of human life with which
d king endeavored to hide within noun
tain of stone one small chamber where his
worthless remains mi ght rest forever in in-
violable security, denote one Of the most
singular psychological conditions of human
ity in the whole history of the race"
balmed after death, from the monarch, who
was richly adorned and placed in his lordly
resting-place, to the slave, encased in dried
palm leaves, e but all animals, domestic or
wild. con>ecrated by the fetish worship of
Egypt were olso subject 10 the process
eats and dogs. ichneumons, crocodiles, scar
abei, and serpents. Egypt. as we have
said, expended its existence in one inter
minable revolt against the tyranny of
death, and undertook the defense, not only
of humanity, but Of the brute creation.
both in its useful and its noxious members
against the laws OF corporeal dissolution;
and indeed so mechanically fossiized be-
came life in Egypt that the innumerable
inhabitants of each gigantic metropolis
must have seemed in their silence and
darkness almost as much alive as their
descendants. whose whole energies were ex-
pended IN making preparations for sepul-
chral state when released from the ennai
and monotomy of daily life
. For the whole land of ancient Egypt
became but a kind of vestibute of the sep
ulchre-the people lived in order to die,
and the chief care of men and women
must have been to become decent mummies
the houses and palaces of the living
were but mere temporary objects of con-
sideration compared with that external
resting-place on which, according to the
condition of each, all the skill and art of
Egypt were TO be lavished'