Egyptian Tales Volume II Part 4

The light on the education of women is curious. Ahura can read the roll, but she cannot write. We are so accustomed to regard reading and writing as all one subject that the distinction is rare; but with a writing comprising so many hundred signs as the Egyptian, the art of writing or draw-Ing all the forms, and knowing which to use, is far more complex than that of reading. There are now ten students who can read an inscription for one who could compose it correctly. Here a woman of the highest rank is supposed to be able to read, but not to write; that is reserved for the skill of "a good writer, and a very learned one."

The writing of spells and then was.h.i.+ng the ink off and drinking it is a familiar idea in the East. Modern Egyptian bowls have charms engraved on them to be imparted to the drink, and ancient Babylonian bowls are inscribed with the like purpose.

An insight into the powers of the G.o.ds is here given us. The Egyptian did not attribute to them omniscience. Thoth only discovered what Na-nefer-ka-ptah had done as they were sailing away, some days after the seizure of the book. And even Ra is informed by the complaint of Thoth.

If Ra were the physical sun it would be obvious that he would see all that was being done on earth; it would rather be he who would inform Thoth. The conception of the G.o.ds must therefore have been not pantheistic or materialist, but solely as spiritual powers who needed to obtain information, and who only could act through intermediaries.

Further, nothing can be done without the consent of Ra; Thoth is powerless over men, and can only ask Ra, as a sort of universal magistrate, to take notice of the offence. Neither G.o.d acts directly, but by means of a power or angel, who takes the commission to work on men. How far this police-court conception of the G.o.ds is due to Greek or foreign influence can hardly be estimated yet. It certainly does not seem in accord with the earlier appeals to Ra, and direct action of Ra, in "Anpu and Bata."

The power of spells is limited, as we have just seen the abilities of the G.o.ds were limited. The most powerful of spells, the magic book of Thoth himself, cannot restore life to a person just drowned. All that Na-nefer-ka-ptah can do with the spell is to cause the body to float and to speak, but it remains so truly dead that it is buried as if no spell had been used. Now it was recognised that the _ka_ could move about and speak to living persons, as Ahura does to Setna. Hence all that the spells do is not to alter the course of nature, but only to put the person into touch and communication with the ever-present supernatural, to enable him to know what the birds, the fishes, and the beasts all said, and to see the unseen.

Modern conceptions of the spiritual are so bound up with the sense of omnipresence and omniscience that we are apt to read those ideas into the G.o.ds and the magic of the ancients. Here we have to deal with G.o.ds who have to obtain information, and who order powers to act for them, with spells which extend the senses to the unseen, but which do not affect natural results and changes.

The inexorable fate in this tale which brings one after another of the family to die in the same spot is not due to Greek influence, though it seems akin to that. In the irrepressible transmigrations of Bata, and the successive risks of the Doomed Prince, the same ideas are seen working in the Egyptian mind. The remorse of Na-nefer-ka-ptah is a stronger touch of conscience and of shame than is seen in early times.

There is an unexplained point in the action as to how Na-nefer-ka-ptah, with the book upon him, comes up from the water, after he is drowned, into the cabin of the royal boat. The narrator had a difficulty to account for the recovery of the body without the use of the magic book, and so that stage is left unnoticed. The successive stages of embalming and mourning are detailed. The sixteen days in the Good House is probably the period of treatment of the body, the time up to the thirty-fifth day that of wrapping and decoration of the mummy cartonnage, and then the thirty-five days more of lying in state until the burial.

We now reach the third act, of Setna's struggle to get the magic roll.

Here the strange episode comes in of the rival magicians gambling; it recalls the old tale of Rampsinitus descending into Hades and playing at dice with Ceres, and the frequent presence of draught-boards in the tombs, shows how much the _ka_ was supposed to relish such pleasures.

The regular Egyptian game-board had three rows of ten squares, or thirty in all. Such are found from the XIIth Dynasty down to Greek times; but this form has now entirely disappeared, and the _man-galah_ of two rows of six holes, or the _tab_ of four rows of nine holes, have taken its place. Both of these are side games, where different sides belong to opposite players. The commoner _siga_ is a square game, five rows of five, or seven rows of seven holes, and has no personal sides. The ancient game was played with two, or perhaps three, different kinds of men, and the squares were counted from one end along the outer edge; but what the rules were, or how a game of fifty-two points was managed, has not yet been explained.

The strange scene of Setna being sunk into the ground portion by portion, as he loses successive games, is parallel to a mysterious story among the dervishes in Palestine. They tell how the three holy shekhs of the Dervish orders, Bedawi, Erfa'i, and Desuki, went in succession to Baghdad to ask for a jar of water of Paradise from the Derwisha Bint Bari, who seems to be a sky-genius, controlling the meteors. The last applicant, Desuki, was refused like the others; so he said, "Earth!

swallow her," and the earth swallowed her to her knees; still she gave not the water, so he commanded the earth, and she was swallowed to her waist; a third time she refused, and she was swallowed to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; she then asked him to marry her, which he would not; a fourth time she refused the water and was swallowed to her neck. She then ordered a servant to bring the water ("Palestine Exploration Statement, 1894," p.

32). The resemblance is most remarkable in two tales two thousand years apart; and the incident of Bint Bari asking the dervish to marry her has its connection with this tale. Had the dervish done so he would--according to Eastern beliefs--have lost his magic power over her, just as Setna loses his magic power by his alliance with Tabubua, to which he is tempted by Na-nefer-ka-ptah, in order to subdue him. The talisman here is a means of subduing magic powers, and is of more force than that of Thoth, as Ptah is greater than he.

The fourth act recounts the overcoming of the power of Setna by Na-nefer-ka-ptah, who causes Tabubua to lead to the loss of his superior magic, and thus to subdue him to the magic of his rival. Ankhtaui, here named as the place of Tabubua, was a quarter of Memphis, which is also named as the place of the wife of Uba-aner in the first tale.

The fifth act describes the victory of Na-nefer-ka-ptah, and his requiring Setna to reunite the family in his tomb at Memphis. The contrast between Ahura's pious ascription to Ptah, and her husband's chuckle at seeing his magic successful, is remarkable. Setna at once takes the position of an inferior by addressing praises to Na-nefer-ka-ptah: after which the tomb became bright as it was before he took away the magic roll. Setna then having made rest.i.tution, is required to give some compensation as well.

The search for the tomb of Ahura and Mer-ab is a most tantalising pa.s.sage. The great cemetery of Koptos is the scene, and the search occupies three days and nights in the catacombs and on the steles.

Further, the tomb was at the south corner of the town of Pehemato, as Maspero doubtfully reads it. Yet this cemetery is now quite unknown, and in spite of all the searching of the native dealers, and the examination which I have made on the desert of both sides of the Nile, it is a mystery where the cemetery can be. The statement that the tomb was at the south corner of a town pretty well excludes it from the desert, which runs north and south there. And it seems as if it might have been in some raised land in the plain, like the spur or shoal on which the town of Koptos was built. If so it would have been covered by the ten to twenty feet rise of the Nile deposits since the time of its former use.

The appearance of the ancient to guide Setna gives some idea of the time that elapsed between then and the death of Ahura. The ancient, who must be allowed to represent two or three generations, says that his great-grandfather knew of the burial, which would take it back to five or six generations. This would place the death of Ahura about 150 years before the latter part of the reign of Ramessu II., say 1225 B.C.: thus, being taken back to about 1375 B.C., would make her belong to the generation after Amenhotep III., agreeing well with Mer-neb-ptah, being a corruption of the name of that king. No argument could be founded on so slight a basis; but at least there is no contradiction in the slight indications which we can glean.

The fear of Setna is that this apparition may have come to bring him into trouble by leading him to attack some property in this town; and Setna is particularly said to have restored the ground as it was before, after removing the bodies.

The colophon at the end is unhappily rather illegible. But the thirty-fifth year precludes its belonging to the reign of any Ptolemy, except the IInd or the VIIIth; and by the writing Maspero attributes it to the earlier of these reigns.