CHAPTER XIII
EGYPTOLOGISTS
It would not, perhaps, be out of place to make some special reference to the men who are doing so much to throw light upon the thoughts and lives of the old Egyptians; but here is need to tread as warily as may be, for these are a race apart. Charming companions they are, delightful hosts, brilliant guests, generous and painstaking to a degree when once you have presented your card and asked to be shown around. So clever are they that after a time one learns wisdom, and refrains from advancing theories in their presence as to how the old Egyptians cut and worked their diorite, granite, and other hard stones: what lights they used when making and painting the tombs in the Valley of the Kings: or what system of mechanics they employed in raising blocks of stone weighing many tons to the tops of the Pyramids, 480 feet up: if it was an inclined plane, cradles, or levers, or what it was? These men have seen many workmen hard put to it to pull a small granite statue weighing three or four tons up an inclined plane of less than 45 degrees. And yet what wonderful patience and courtesy most of these experts show to well-meaning but ignorant questioners, even when they are perhaps burning to be free to turn back more pages of hidden history.
There is something about them which seems strange to new-comers. Perhaps, indeed probably, it is the inhalation and absorption of the desiccated and pulverised remains of the ancient Egyptians which influences them. Every one knows that the dust from tombs produces irritation of the air passages, and possibly this also accounts for the divergence of opinion among them; for never yet have I known two Egyptologists agree absolutely upon a given subject. I have heard a story that two savants read an inscription, the one beginning from right to left, and the other from left to right, and both made sense of it.
PLATE XV.
BEADS AND MUMMY CLOTH.
1. Forged Roman beads.
2. Egyptian blue beads.
3. Genuine mummy cloth recently painted.
4. Sacred cats, with genuine mummy beads.
I was somewhat surprised recently by the remarks of a learned friend to me.
“You are getting more and more like an Egyptian. I notice the change every time I see you,” he said. It may be so, although the idea is startling. We know that Continents produce types, of which fact a good example is America. Then add to this the daily dose of ancient Egyptian remains, and the mystery is one no longer, but the effect becomes possible if not probable. Among the savants some of the old characteristics reappear to-day. Listen to the speech of Amenemhat to his son, Sesostris, during the twelfth dynasty.
“Hearken to that which I say to thee,