Dead Men Tell Tales

by Harry Rimmer

In the British Museum a papyrus, No. 10183, is a fine example of this common theme. This is entitled, “The Tale of the Two Brothers.” In the introductory section, the life of a humble farmer in ancient Egypt is given in detail. The familiar triangle develops between the elder brother, his wife and the younger brother. The plot develops when the wicked wife made herself sick by rancid grease, and, bruising herself with a stick, lay moaning on the floor when her husband returned. Accusing the younger brother of attempted assault, she aroused her husband’s anger to the point where he grabbed an edged weapon and set out to kill the suspected villain. The oxen, however, told the younger brother of the ambush that was set for him and he fled the home. Marvelous miracles occurred during this flight, which opened the eyes of the elder brother to the injustice that he had been about to perpetrate. Whereupon he returned home, and satisfied the demands of the stern justice of his day by slaying his wife and feeding her body to his pet dogs. The rest of the story is taken up with the wanderings and adventures of the younger brother. This record goes back to the thirteenth century B. C., and is a perfect specimen of the fiction of that time.

Limited space will not permit the introduction of other notable classics of fiction such as the story of the shipwrecked sailor; the story of the doomed prince; the story of the possessed princess; the story of the eloquent peasant, and any number of other records, nor is their presentation essential to the development of our thesis. Their value, however, is seen in the fact that not only do they depict the literary tastes of antiquity, but they delineate many of the common details and incidents of the daily life of those ages.

There are also any number of poems which have a high historical value. We shall refer later to the famed poem of Pentauer, which immortalizes the victories of Ramses the Second, which this great conqueror achieved over Egypt’s ancient enemies the Hittites. The discovery of this record was the first appearance of the Hittites in archeology and caused a sensation in the ranks of Biblical criticism.

Among the more sober types of literature will be found narratives of pure history. Such would be the lists of the kings, giving the chronology of the dynasty of each. Records of conquest, lists of tribute, and the names of captive races form the bulk of this type of material.

There are also books of maxims teaching the higher morality of the age in which the papyrus was written. In a word, the literature preserved in the papyri of Egypt deals with religious aims, books of magic, records of travel, and the science of that day. From the latter we learn their beliefs and technique in the realm of astronomy. Their system of mathematics is preserved for us in such prize records as the Rhind Papyrus which deals with the geometry of that age. This papyrus is in the British Museum and is numbered 10,057. In the Museum at Cairo is a papyrus illustrating the geography and cartography of antiquity. This famous map shows the religious divisions of that province, which is now called the Fayyum. Others of these papyri deal with medicine as it was practiced in that ancient day. There are, of course, biographical papyri that are almost innumerable, all of which reconstruct for us the lives and times of these people who are so long dead, but far from forgotten.

Among the most important of all the varieties of papyri are those which preserve for us the embalming technique practiced at various stages in the development of this art in Egypt. Since the Egyptians believed that the resurrection of the body and its eternal life depended upon the preservation of the physical form, they took great pains in their preparations for the burial of their dead. The most graphic description of the method used is given by Herodotus and is thus familiar to all students of history. This noted writer states that three general methods were used by the Egyptians and the cost of each was graduated to the thoroughness of the method.

The most expensive means of embalming was an elaborate process indeed. The abdominal cavity was opened and the viscera were removed from the body. These were carefully washed in palm wine, thoroughly dried and sprinkled with certain aromatic spices. The brains were withdrawn from the head and treated in this same fashion. These cavities were then dried and filled with a combination of bitumen, myrrh, cassia and various other expensive and astringent spices. The openings were then sewed up. A tank was prepared which was filled with a solution of soda, and the body was steeped in it for seventy days. After removal from this pickling solution the body was thoroughly dried in the hot sun and anointed with spicy compounds which had the two-fold purpose of imparting a fragrant odor to the mummy and of further preserving its structure. The process was completed when the body was wound with the strips of linen with which all students of Egyptology are so familiar.

The cost of this type of embalming varied, of course, in each dynasty, but as a general average it would be in the neighborhood of $1500 in our modern currency. When we consider the disparity between our standard of money value and that of ancient Egypt, it can be seen that such a preparation was enormously expensive.

A cheaper method of embalming consisted of dissolving the viscera by means of oil of cedar. The flesh also was dissolved with a caustic soda solution, and the skin shrunk tightly to the bones. This dessicated form was then wrapped in the traditional linen bandages. The cost of this process was in the neighborhood of $300 in the currency of our day.

For the very poor, however, a cheaper form of preparation was used. The body was dumped into the tank of soda, where it was alternately saturated and dried for a period of seventy days. The pickled body was then handed over to the relatives, who wrapped it according to their own ability and means and arranged for burial at any convenient site. This process would cost in the neighborhood of $1.50 in our present standard of currency.