Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1886-08-15
rnE mummrs. or KINGS
Three Ihou.ara Years Oua Recent
Rsvssssions in Egypt.
London Newsl

Rsvssssions I'm Egypt.
London News.l
Nothing is more terrible than sud
den reminder Of the way in which
.LiIgs survive "a. Every one 5s- -.
had to hunt through ng-unopensd
eseritoires and desks must have been
somewhat panied by the vestiges OF his
old self which lie before him-the
cid properties hastily thrown aside
and forgotten, which now insist
on asserting themselves and de-
claiing that we change, while the
lifeless remains. An example--an
almost poetical example-of this inn
mutability is offered to the moralist by
the unwindipg Of the mummies OF Ia
AIKEN and Seti I. ut Boulak. These
mummies, as we understand, were
found in that great deposit Of the royal
Egypt dead, discovered five years
sgo. A mummy is rather gruesome
thing, and to unwind it is like opening
a door that has been locked for three
or four thousand years. Romance has
invented the notion Of magical device
by which man might mount up the
stream of time and see the past in
mirror or q lake, and project himself
into a bygone period. AS it is Ger.
tain that to beings unconditional
by time and space, everything that oc-
ours occurs simultaneously, this license
of fancy, this notion Of reascending the
river Of things may be allowed to ro-
mantle fiction. But what novelists have
imagined as supernatural device, we
do naturally, so to speak, when we
open q mummy. First the case, with
its gilded, craven countenance. is forced
asupder, and then we come to corpse
smothered in cerements, q corpse with
face Of gold. In moment we are IN
the presence Of that which no man
has seen for many scores OF CEN
turies-are with the dead as he was
the night after he went down the
merchandising way" Since thatgold-
en- mask was made for the features .
score of empires have fallen to ashes.
Persia, Assyria, Macedon, Carthage.
Rome, the Incas, with Q multitude OF
minor Powers, came to be after these
swsrthings were sewn aud glued to-
gether, and now they are dust like the
fragrant dust Of spices which fills the
chamber. They have gone, and their
gods have gone with them. The ship OF
Isis goes forth no more to sea. The last
pod.bull has been made q mummy.
Osiris no more jnstifies the dead who
die in Osiris. There is none to offer
loayes and beer to the departed. no
man says the brief prayer for the
Egyptian dead, which secured for them
food and drink in the underworld. All
the gods are gone and all the ghosts are
starving. The younger and elder
races of divinity are outcast. Apollo
has no more his stately roof, no more
his Delphic laurel the babbling we'll of
laughing water is silent" Somewhere,
in some Hades undescribed, are gathered
all these ghosts that were gods when
the mummy was made fragrant and i'm
perishable. Pschacamac jostles Heus,
and Huitzilopochtli is with Indrs, and
Kuoum, and Sch, and Nut. They have
vanished, and the dead man remains
You see him as his friends knew him,
as his foemen beheld him, four thousand
wears ago. The centuries are like ga
mist that rolls away" and if a man
of ancient Egypt could have lived
till now, he would know, when
the mummy is unwound, the face Of
bis enemy, or the face Of the woman he
loved.
Perhaps the mummy which appeals
the more to US OF the two which M.
Masyero has just opened is the mummy
Of Seti /. We have kind Of national
concern with Seti, who was king Of
the nineteenth dynasty thirty-two cen
turies ago. We possess his white ala
baster sarcophagus in the Soane Mu-
scum. IL is an astonishing work OF
art, in shape like huge slabaster bath.
Every inch of it is covered with hero
glyphics and professions of figures OF
gods and beasts and men, black
against the white alabaster. In
the midst Of the multitudinous
wrappings of Seti's corpse flor it is q
corpse after ALL is an inscription giving
The day and date Of the Kings "re-
clothing" SIN the year X, in the
month Of seed-sowing, and the sixteenth
day of the month, was the second
clothing of the King, to whom be life,
health, and strength" What eyes were
expected by the man who scrawled
this inscription, to look on it and read
it? He must have expected the mummy
of Seti to be inviolste till Osiris came
again, and the dead rose had regained
their ancient tabernacles Of clay. Ii
is probable enough that, after
the sun Of our system Is cold,
after earth is cinder and life
extinct, this chill and empty ball will
carry round in its yearly revolutions
thousands of the dead men and women
of Egypt, each unchanged from the
thing be was two days after his re-
clothing. We may fancy the WORKOUT
globe splitting from frost, aud passing
away as star sometimes passes
Then fragments Of the learning OF the
Egyptisns may possibly be borne or
the wandering winds through cosmiC
space. and may descend on some plane
of rational beings, bearing witness
to a creed and . civilization which hA'
outlssted human time.
In Egypt nothing is impossible, ex
cept. perhaps, a healthy system o
finance. Seti's face, after more than
hundred generations have melted into
the impalpable, is still the delicate,
sweet, and smiling face which his artist
designed. His likeness to his son
Rameses H., the ROi SoteR and mag
nifcent braggadocio Louis XIV. o
Egypt, is still as plain az if father anc
son were living men Of our date. Set
was old when be died, and his eye
brows are white. His royal fingers
prove that govt was familiar in Egypt
But he died in his bed, and his face
is at peace. More awful is the face