“Would your lordship now like to see the Soma?”
And through the public gardens of Bruchium, along the Paneum—an artificial little rocky mountain built up in the shape of a top or pineapple—the procession trotted to the Soma, the burying-place of the Ptolemies, where it lay in the cool shade of sycamores and tamarisks. A long avenue of recumbent sphinxes, male—bearded—and female—high-breasted—led to the pyramid tombs. The travellers alighted and the old priests in charge appeared.
“These distinguished strangers wish to see the burial-places of the Ptolemies,” said Caleb. “They are princely nobles and no doubt will also be interested in the tomb of Alexander the Great.”
“Death is but a slumbering and a twilight transition to the halls of eternal sunshine,” replied the priest in charge. “Earthly greatness is the perishable step to the imperishable palace of Osiris, where our dead monarchs now sit enthroned around him, their heads circled with the pschent and their hands grasping the scarab sceptre. And great Isis has appeared to them as the splendour of truth, for she lifted her veil for their delight, so that they saw her. Life is but a dream, death is a bridge and eternity is life.”
Caleb walked mincingly in front, on the tips of his red riding-boots, and pointed out things, while the old priest went on reciting the eternal verities, as though to himself, The tombs of granite, porphyry and marble, inscribed with hieroglyphics, rose like temples, pyramid-shaped. The priest now went in front of the travellers and descended a few steps: inside, in the subterranean vault, invisible, the mummies rested in their painted sarcophagi; standing lamps burned on their tripods, perfumes rose in a cloud from vases and dishes; and daintily-coloured glass vessels, filled with oil, honey and fruit, stood on low bronze tables, while amphoræ of consecrated water awaited the hour of the resurrection, when the dead should rise and be baptized into the true new life, which was eternity. There was an overpowering scent of sickly-sweet aromatics; and in the mist of the perfumes the big, wide-open eyes of the painted images on the sarcophagus-lids stared, ghostly and superhuman, straight before them into the brightening future. They were images of bearded kings and ibis-crowned queens; sometimes they were images of children.
Through the mist of the aromatics the golden, winged suns gleamed in the embrace of the snakes coiled tail in mouth. Sacred Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, the radiant redeemer of mankind, who descended out of pity on a sinful world, bestrode Typhon, the grinning spirit of evil. There were images of the god Apis, of the god Râ, of Thoth and Anubis, with the heads of an ox, an ibis, a dog.
After this, the shade of the sycamores and tamarisks outside the tombs was silver-green and cool; and the pure air of the sunny morning seemed strange after the perfumed, sickly-sweet atmosphere of the sultry underground sepulchres. The priest in charge stopped before a gleaming marble pyramid. The narrow bronze door hung tapering upwards between pilasters carved with lotus-capitals.
“The tomb of Alexander of Macedon,” said the custodian, solemnly.
They went inside. Again, burning lamps shed their fragrance. There was a heavy mist of nard. Behind a bronze railing on a basalt pedestal stood a sarcophagus of transparent crystal, polished and engraved. And within this thick crystal, in a green watery light, where the flame of the lamps was mirrored in the glass, a mummy lay visible. It was like the chrysalis of a gigantic moth. The face was stained brown with balsam and salve and stared with eyes of beryl. The hair and short beard were painted gold. Many-coloured bandages wrapped the body in a close sheath; and the legs also were closely fastened together in a case of gold filagree.
The mummy lay on a mattress of striped byssus, the head on a byssus pillow. The scarlet lips seemed to grin in the crisp golden beard and the beryl eyes were full of amazement at what they saw in eternity.