This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Georg Ebers
A paved road, with a row of Sphinxes on each side, led from the Greektemple of Serapis to the rock-hewn tombs of Apis, and the temples andchapels built over them, and near them; in these the Apis bull after itsdeath—or "in Osiris" as the phrase went—was worshipped, while, so longas it lived, it was taken care of and prayed to in the temple to which itbelonged, that of the god Ptah at Memphis. After death these sacredbulls, which were distinguished by peculiar marks, had extraordinarilycostly obsequies; they were called the risen Ptah, and regarded as thesymbol of the soul of Osiris, by whose procreative power all that dies orpasses away is brought to new birth and new life—the departed soul ofman, the plant that has perished, and the heavenly bodies that have set.Osiris-Sokari, who was worshipped as the companion of Osiris, presidedover the wanderings which had to be performed by the seemingly extinctspirit before its resuscitation as another being in a new form; andEgyptian priests governed in the temples of these gods, which were purelyEgyptian in style, and which had been built at a very early date over thetomb-cave of the sacred bulls. And even the Greek ministers of Serapis,settled at Memphis, were ready to follow the example of their rulers andto sacrifice to Osiris-Apis, who was closely allied to Serapis—not onlyin name but in his essential attributes. Serapis himself indeed was adivinity introduced from Asia into the Nile valley by the Ptolemies, inorder to supply to their Greek and Egyptian subjects alike an object ofadoration, before whose altars they could unite in a common worship.They devoted themselves to the worship of Apis in Osiris at the shrines,of Greek architecture, and containing stone images of bulls, that stoodoutside the Egyptian sanctuary, and they were very ready to be initiatedinto the higher significance of his essence; indeed, all religiousmysteries in their Greek home bore reference to the immortality of thesoul and its fate in the other world.
Just as two neighboring cities may be joined by a bridge, so the Greektemple of Serapis—to which the water-bearers belonged—was connectedwith the Egyptian sanctuary of Osiris-Apis by the fine paved road forprocessions along which Klea now rapidly proceeded. There was a shorterway to Memphis, but she chose this one, because the mounds of sand oneach side of the road bordered by Sphinxes—which every day had to becleared of the desert-drift—concealed her from the sight of hercompanions in the temple; besides the best and safest way into the citywas by a road leading from a crescent, decorated with busts of thephilosophers, that lay near the principal entrance to the new Apis tombs.
She looked neither at the lion-bodies with men's heads that guarded theway, nor at the images of beasts on the wall that shut it in; nor did sheheed the dusky-hued temple-slaves of Osiris-Apis who were sweeping thesand from the paved way with large brooms, for she thought of nothing butIrene and the difficult task that lay before her, and she walked swiftlyonwards with her eyes fixed on the ground.
But she had taken no more than a few steps when she heard her name calledquite close to her, and looking up in alarm she found herself standingopposite Krates, the little smith, who came close up to her, took hol