PREPARING A MUMMY.
MUMMIES BURNED FOR FUEL.
A close-fitting case or coffin was put outside the mummy, and he was then ready to be packed away for any number of centuries. He kept well, for the work was thoroughly done; and mummies are constantly found in good preservation after a rest of four or five thousand years. The Arabs rob the tombs, and break up the mummies for the gold and silver which were concealed about them; and many a mummy has come to grief in consequence of attempting to take his money along with him. After the mummy is broken up he makes very good fuel; the Arabs occasionally burn him; and in the early days of the Cairo and Suez Railway, the firemen on the locomotives found that mummies, cut into proper lengths, made a very good substitute for wood and coal. The gums and rags that preserved the mummy are combustible, and thus facilitate his destruction. Arabs and railway stokers are, like the law, no respecters of persons, especially if the persons have been dead forty or fifty centuries. It amuses and benefits these modern Vandals to burn mummies; and it is proper to say, that the mummies don’t appear to mind it.
The subterranean tombs and other excavations on the Nile are numerous, and sometimes of great extent. Several of them are so large, that travellers who ventured into them without proper guides have been lost, and have perished for want of food and light. A modern visitor says that after going through several tombs, he felt very much as if he had been rolled in an iron mill. The passages leading into the tombs are long and dark; sometimes they extend hundreds of feet in an indefinite sort of way, and not by a straight course, as a respectable tomb ought to have its entrance. A slender man can get along much more easily than a fat one; the latter gets stuck sometimes, and can easily fancy himself a number ten gun-wad forced into a number eight barrel. An acquaintance of mine once vowed that not for the whole of Egypt would he venture into a tomb again, and that he had done with explorations.
“Ask him about the tomb of Assasseef at Thebes,” said a mutual acquaintance, who was sitting between us. We were in a café at Rome, and whiling away an evening after a visit to the Coliseum, and the ruins in its vicinity.
“Hang Thebes and all it contains,” was the curt reply. “Well, if you insist upon it, you shall have it on condition that you won’t speak of it again.”
We made the required promise; and after taking an extra sip of brandy and water, he began.
DAHABIEHS AND DONKEYS.
“There were two of us, and we were making the journey of the Nile in a dahabieh. You know what beastly things those dahabiehs are generally, though sometimes you find one that is quite comfortable. Why the beggarly Egyptians don’t call them boats, and be done with it, I never could understand. We landed at Luxor; and after looking at the ruins there, we rode to the tombs of the kings, seven or eight miles away. They mounted me on a donkey so small, that my feet dragged on the ground, and I had to take a reef in my legs to keep from wearing away my boot soles. Jack, my companion, said, that if I wore spurs, I would have to buckle them on just below my knee, as I could not raise my heels without having them so far aft, that they would not reach the animal. There was no necessity for spurs, as we had a boy to run astern of the donkey, and give him an occasional turn in the tail to help him along. The boy kept a firm hold of the tail most of the time, and was helped along by it more than the donkey was. At one time, when we were on the edge of a little ridge, the donkey watched his chance, and let his heels fly into the stomach of the urchin. A prize-fighter couldn’t have made a better blow. The boy went rolling down the ridge, and I thought we should have to pay for him, or buy a new one.
“He scrambled up again, and wasn’t hurt at all. Evidently he was used to that sort of thing, but I don’t believe he liked it, for he made some remarks that sounded very much like swearing. I gave him half a franc, and he appeared satisfied, and ready to be kicked again. He went around behind the donkey, and got into position; but the beast wouldn’t respond for an encore, and so the thing was dropped. But you can believe the boy gave that tail fits for the rest of the ride; and by the time we were through, it looked like a piece of old rope with half the strands gone.