Address to the Mummy at Belzoni’s Exhibition

In all oriental nations, peculiar honors have always been paid to the remains of the dead. But Egypt surpasses the world in monumental works. The tombs of Thebes, are the metropolis of death. The Libyan mountains, in the rear of the city, for several miles present a perpendicular face of rock, three to four hundred feet in height. Galleries and passage ways every where penetrate these mountains, the entrances to which, are purposely made narrow, in order that closely fitting stones might hide the repositories of the departed. Passing through passages hundreds of yards in length, but often not more than a foot in diameter, the traveler finally reaches wider chambers, and, as wearied by his slow and toilsome labor, he sits upon the body of some ancient Theban, it yields to his weight, his hands thrown out to save him from falling, meet no resistance in the mouldering ruins of humanity, and he crushes through a dusty mass of what once was bone, and muscle, and flesh.

These mummies are the embalmed bodies of the ancient Egyptians. Thirty or forty centuries ago, they were citizens of Thebes, the magistrates, the merchants, or the citizens of this opulent city, and here the bodies still are amid the ruins of the temples, the obelisks, and the pyramids they may have helped to erect. It remains undecided what particular motive first induced the Egyptians to resort to this mode of disposing of their dead. It may have sprung from some peculiarity of their religious faith, or from those who had gone before them, or possibly from the scarcity of fuel for burning the bodies of the dead, a very ancient mode of sepulture. Whatever the motive, he Egyptians were long accustomed to embalming all who died, whether high or humble. The poor were simply embalmed in salt, and this preparation, with the uniform and low temperature of the tombs, was found sufficient for a long preservation of the dead. Far more elaborate care was bestowed upon the wealthier classes. The entrails were first extracted from a hole in the side, and the brain drawn through the nostrils. The body was then soaked in salt, a mixture of asphaltum, of resin, and of aromatic drugs were then forced through the cavities, into all the hollow parts of the body. Each finger and toe, after the nails had been properly gilt, were encased separately in cloths first saturated with asphaltum, and then covered with thimbles of gold. After the body had been subjected to a dyeing process, a thin envelop of cotton, also saturated with asphaltum, was glued to the body. Above this, successive layers of prepared cloth, often to the number of fifteen or twenty, were wound round the body, and the whole covered over with a fine cement, designed wholly to exclude the air. Lengthwise down the breast, hieroglyphic characters stated the name of the deceased in letters of gilt. Thus prepared, the mummy was placed in a coffin of sycamore or cedar wood, ornamented with numerous sacred hieroglyphics, often descriptions of the passage of the soul into another world, or its transmigration into different forms. Two, three, and even more cases, in some instances, inclose the first coffin; whatever the number, they all are ornamented with inscriptions and paintings. Thus preserved and prepared for burial, they were placed within their ,hambers, whose entrances were securely closed.

In viewing one of these objects, of what in a far remote antiquity, was a living man, actuated with all the hopes and desires which actuate us, how naturally are the reflections which press upon the mind, given in the well known:

Address to the Mummy at Belzoni’s Exhibition

And thou hast walked about – how strange a story
In Thebes’s streets three thousand years ego,
When the Memnonium was in all its glory,
And time had not began to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

Speak! for thou long enough best acted dummy,
Thou hast a tongue – come – let us hear its tune
Thou’rt standing on thy legs, above ground, mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;
Not like thin ghosts or disembodied creatures,
But with thy hence, and flesh, and limbs, and features.

Tell us – for doubtless thou canst recollect,
To whom should we assign the Sphinx’s fame?
Was Cheeps or Ceplircues architect
Of either Pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey’s Pillar really a misnomer?
Had Thebes a hundred gates, as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wast a mason, and forbidden
By oath to tell the mysteries of thy trade, –
Then say what secret melody was bidden
In Memnon’s statue, which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest – if so, my struggles
Are vain, for priesteraft never owns its juggles.

Perchance that very hand, now pinion’d flat,
Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;
Or dropped a halfpenny in Homer’s hat,
Or doff ‘d thine own to let Queen Dido pass;
Or held, by Solomon’s own invitation,
A torch at the Great Temple’s dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when arm’d,
Has any Roman soldier mauled and knuckled,
For thou weit dead, and buried, and embalm’d,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled: –
Antiquity appears to have begun
Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develop, if that wither’d tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen,
How the world look’d when it was fresh and young,
And the great deluge still had left it green –
Or was it then so old that history’s pages
Contain’d no record of its early ages?

Still silent? uncommunicative elf!
Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows
But, prithee, tell us something of thyself-
Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house;
Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen-what strange adventures numbered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended
We have, above ground, seen some strange mutations
The Roman Empire has began and ended –
New worlds have risen – we have lost old nation,
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother o’er thy head
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambysee,
March’d armies o’er thy tomb with thundering tread,
O’erthrew Osiris, Orus, Apis, Isis,
And chock the Pyramids with fear and wonder,
When the gigantic Memnon fell asunder?

If the tomb’s secrets may not be confess’d,
The nature of thy private life unfold;
A heart bath throbbed beneath that leathern breast,
And tears adown that dusty cheek have roll’d
Have children climbed those knees, and kiss’d that face?
What was thy name, and station, age, and race?

Statue of flesh – Immortal of the dead
Imperishable type of evanescence
Posthumous man, who quitt’st thy narrow bed,
And standest undecay’d within our presence,
Thou wilt hear nothing till the Judgment morning,
When the great trump shall thrill thee with its warning.

Why should this worthless tegument endure,
If its undying guest be lost forever?
O let us keep the soul embalmed and pure
In living virtue, that when both must sever,
Although corruption may our frame consume,
Th’ immortal spirit in the skies may bloom.

From The Nile Boat, or glimpses of the land of Egypt
by William Henry Bartlett, 1849.