PLATE VI.
STONE AND COMPOSITION FIGURES.
1 & 3. Heads cut in green basalt.
2. A bottle made of steatite.
4. Ushebti figure made of Nile mud and blackened.
5. Composition figure representing granite.
6. Statue made of serpentine.
7. Statue made of plaster of Paris with a weight inside.
Here is a curious story about another statue. There were two very clever men who lived in a village not far from the Great Pyramid. Both sold antiquities, but for some reason one was under the suspicion of the Government Department. A beautiful statue came into his possession, but he was afraid to offer it for sale himself, so he applied secretly to his confrère for assistance.
Shortly afterwards his people called me in to see him medically. At first sight the case was a perplexing one. There were no evidences of disease, and yet the man was sunk in a profound depression; he could not sleep, nor take any interest in the affairs of his family. He sat, sighing and silent, clasping and unclasping his fingers, day after day, surrounded by his sympathising men-friends, who smoked and drank coffee, as their custom is. The action of the heart got weaker and weaker, and his stomach would not “walk well,” while he said that he was very tired and thought he would like to die. One day I ordered all his friends out of the room, and then, after rolling out a verse of the Koran, asked him what it was that was taking “the blood from his heart”?
At first he would not answer, but after I had pointed out to him that he was walking with his eyes open towards the tomb, where the angels Munker and Nakir would not be so gentle in questioning him as I had been, he gave way and told me the whole story.
He had bought a statue from some of the fellaheen who had dug it up out of their fields. They had been hard to deal with, but he had sat for days, threatening them with the police and the wrath of the Antiquities Department. In the end he had bought the statue for the price of a feddan of land. He was as innocent as milk of doing wrong things, but some kelb (dog) had told the Department of Antiquities lies, and now he could not conduct his business without fear. It was best to be honest, as he had always said, but what could one do with men whose breath poisoned the air around them? Life was hard, and only fools went out of their way to seek for trouble. Therefore had he called in his neighbour to assist him in disposing of his treasure. His neighbour had taken the statue into his house, and in a week came an up-river man, who stayed there for a time. After many weeks, his neighbour had sent back a statue which was not the original, but a good copy, made by the man from up the river. Now, he could not take an action in the Courts to recover his statue, which was worth many hundreds of pounds, and meant, as the Pasha would understand, many acres of land, so “it is finished.” Sorrowfully he rocked himself to and fro in the most abject misery as he told the tale, and looked appealingly at me for sympathy.
It was difficult to treat a man hit so hard as this man was. It was “his chance,” which comes only once in a lifetime, and he had missed it. Bromides procured a little sleep, but the patient wasted away, and seemed not to want to live.
Then one day came some news. His neighbour had sold the statue to a museum in America for a large sum. It had been discovered to be a fraud, and had been returned; the money had had to be refunded, and the man had lost the cost of making the second statue, also his good name, and incurred sundry other expenses.
When the patient heard this, his eyes brightened forthwith. He got up from his bed, called for water, and ordered food to be prepared. Then he washed and prayed, and after that he ate a hearty meal.