"The sacred order of priests has lived, is living, and will live," replied Mentezufis. "The sacred order of priests settled on the Nile thirty thousand years ago. Since then it has scrutinized the heavens and the earth; it has created our wisdom, and made the plan of every field, sluice, canal, pyramid, and temple in Egypt."
"That is true. The order of priests is mighty and wise, but where are the shades? What man has seen them, and who is the person who has spoken to them?"
"Know this, lord," said Mentezufis. "There is a shade in each living man; as there are people distinguished for immense strength, or a marvelous swiftness of vision, so there are men who possess the uncommon gift that during life they can separate their own shades from their bodies.
"Our secret books are filled with the most credible narratives touching this subject. More than one prophet has been able to fall into a sleep that is deathlike. At that time his shade separated from the body and transferred itself in a moment to Tyre, Babylon, or Nineveh, examined what it wished, listened to counsels relating to us, and after the awakening of the prophet gave the most minute account of all that it had witnessed. More than one evil magician, after falling asleep in like fashion, has sent out his shade against a man whom he hated, and overturned or destroyed furniture and terrified a whole household.
"It has happened, too, that the man attacked by the shade of the magician struck the shade with a spear or a sword, and on his house bloody traces were left, while the magician received on his body that wound exactly which was inflicted on his shade.
"More than once also has a shade of a living man appeared in company with him, but some steps distant."
"I know such shades," said the prince ironically.
"I must add," continued Mentezufis, "that not only people, but animals, plants, stones, buildings, and utensils have shades also. But a wonderful thing the shade of an inanimate object is not dead, it possesses life, moves, goes from place to place, it even thinks and expresses thought through various signs, most frequently through knocking.
"When a man dies his shade lives and shows itself to people. In our books thousands of such cases are noted; some shades asked for food, others walked about in houses, worked in a garden, or hunted in the mountains with the shades of their dogs and cats with them. Other shades have frightened people, destroyed their property, drunk their blood, even enticed living persons to excesses. But there are good shades: those of mothers nursing their children, of soldiers, fallen in battle, who give warning of an ambush of an enemy, of priests who reveal important secrets.
"In the eighteenth dynasty the shade of the pharaoh, Cheops, who was doing penance for oppressing people while building the great pyramid, appeared in Nubian gold mines, and in compassion for the sufferings of toiling convicts showed them a new spring of water."