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
Translated from the German by Clara Bell
DEDICATION TO HERR EDUARD von HALLBERGER
Allow me, my dear friend, to dedicate these pages to you. I present themto you at the close of a period of twenty years during which a warm andfast friendship has subsisted between us, unbroken by any disagreement.Four of my works have first seen the light under your care and havewandered all over the world under the protection of your name. This, myfifth book, I desire to make especially your own; it was partly writtenin your beautiful home at Tutzing, under your hospitable roof, and Idesire to prove to you by some visible token that I know how to valueyour affection and friendship and the many happy hours we have passedtogether, refreshing and encouraging each other by a full and perfectinterchange of thought and sentiment.
By a marvellous combination of circumstances a number of fragments of theRoyal Archives of Memphis have been preserved from destruction with therest, containing petitions written on papyrus in the Greek language;these were composed by a recluse of Macedonian birth, living in theSerapeum, in behalf of two sisters, twins, who served the god as "Pourersout of the libations."
At a first glance these petitions seem scarcely worthy of seriousconsideration; but a closer study of their contents shows us that wepossess in them documents of the greatest value in the history ofmanners. They prove that the great Monastic Idea—which under theinfluence of Christianity grew to be of such vast moral and historicalsignificance—first struck root in one of the centres of heathenreligious practices; besides affording us a quite unexpected insight intothe internal life of the temple of Serapis, whose ruined walls have, inour own day, been recovered from the sand of the desert by theindefatigable industry of the French Egyptologist Monsieur Mariette.
I have been so fortunate as to visit this spot and to search throughevery part of it, and the petitions I speak of have been familiar to mefor years. When, however, quite recently, one of my pupils undertook tostudy more particularly one of these documents—preserved in the RoyalLibrary at Dresden—I myself reinvestigated it also, and this studyimpressed on my fancy a vivid picture of the Serapeum under PtolemyPhilometor; the outlines became clear and firm, and acquired color, andit is this picture which I have endeavored to set before the reader, sofar as words admit, in the following pages.
I did not indeed select for my hero the recluse, nor for my heroines thetwins who are spoken of in the petitions, but others who might have livedat a somewhat earlier date under similar conditions; for it is proved bythe papyrus that it was not once only and by accident that twins wereengaged in serving in the temple of Serapis, but that, on the contrary,pair after pair of sisters succeeded each other in the office of pouringout libations.
I have not invested Klea and Irene with this function, but have simplyplaced them as wards of the Serapeum and growing up within its precincts.I selected this alternative partly because the existing sources ofknowledge give us very insufficient information as to the duties that