The Egyptian

4

As a physician I fancied I had seen all there was to see of death and suffering and had hardened myself to foul smells and the handling of boils and festering wounds. On beginning my service in the House of Death, I found I was a child and knew nothing. The poor, indeed, gave us but little trouble. They lay peacefully in their baths in the sharp smell of salt and lye, and I soon learned to handle the hook with which they were moved. But the bodies of those of the better class required more elaborate treatment, and to rinse out the entrails and put them in jars called for a hardened mind. Still more hardened must it be to witness Ammon’s plundering of the dead, exceeding that of the living. The price of embalming varied according to means, and the embalmers lied to the kindred of the dead, charging for many costly oils, salves, and preservatives that they vowed they used, though all was but one and the same sesame oil. Only the bodies of the illustrious were prepared with the full measure of skill. The others were filled with a corrosive oil that consumed the viscera, the cavity being then stuffed with reeds steeped in resin. For the poor not even this was done; after their removal from the basin on the thirtieth day they were allowed to dry and were then handed over to their relatives.

The House of Death was supervised by the priests. Nevertheless, the body washers and embalmers stole all that they could lay their hands on and looked upon this as their right. Only those accursed of the gods or criminals fleeing from authority took service as corpse washers, and they could be recognized far off by the smell of salt and lye and cadavers inseparable from their trade so that people avoided them and would not admit them to wine shop or pleasure house.

Since I had volunteered to work among them, the corpse washers supposed me to be like one of themselves, and they hid none of their actions from me. Had I not already witnessed worse things, I should have fled appalled at the way in which they defiled the bodies of even the most distinguished, mutilating them in order to sell to sorceresses the organs these had need of. If there is a Western Land-which for my parents’ sake I hope there may be-I believe many of the dead will marvel at their own dismembered condition when they start upon their journey, despite the sums paid to the temple for their burial.

But the greatest rejoicing in the House of Death occurred when the body of a young woman was brought in, no matter whether she were beautiful or plain. She was not immediately thrown into the bath, but for one night was kept as the corpse washers’ bedfellow; they squabbled and cast lots as to who should have her first. For these men were so abhorred that not the wretchedest prostitute would submit to them, though they offered her gold. Not even Negresses would have them but held them in great dread.

When once a man had entered the House of Death and taken service there as a corpse washer, he left the place but seldom because of the abhorrence in which his caste was held, and he lived out his life among the carcasses. For the first few days they all seemed to me to be under the curse of the gods, and their talk as they mocked and defiled the bodies outraged my ears. Later I found that among even these there were skilled craftsmen who held their trade in high honor, regarding it as the most important of all, and among the best of whom it was hereditary. Each of them specialized in some branch, as did the physicians in the House of Life, so that one dealt with the head, another the belly, a third the heart, a fourth the lungs, until each part of the body had been treated for its eternal preservation.

Among them was an elderly man named Ramose, whose task was the most difficult of all: he had to detach the brain and draw it out through the nose with pincers, and then swill out the skull with purifying oils. He noted the deftness of my hands with astonishment and began to instruct me so that by the time I had completed half my service in the House of Death he made me his assistant, and life for me became more bearable. I helped him in his work, which was the cleanest and most highly regarded of any in that place, and so great was his influence that others no longer dared frighten me or throw guts and offal upon me. I do not know how it was he had this power, for he never raised his voice.

When I observed the thieving and saw how little was done to preserve the bodies of the poor though the fee was large, I resolved to help my parents by myself and steal for them eternal life. For to my mind, my sin against them was already so hideous that it could be made no blacker by a theft. The one hope and joy of their old age had been that of their own eternal preservation, and in my desire to fulfill this hope I embalmed them, with Ramose’s assistance, and bound them in strips of linen, remaining for this purpose forty days and nights in the House of Death. My stay was thus prolonged in order to steal enough for the proper treatment of the bodies. But I had no tomb for them-not so much as a wooden coffin-and could do no more than sew them up together in an oxhide.

When I was ready to leave the House of Death, I became irresolute and my heart thudded in my breast. Ramose, who had noted my skill, invited me to remain as his assistant. I could then have earned and stolen much and lived out my life in the burrows of the House of Death without the knowledge of any of my friends and free from the vexations and sufferings of a normal life. Yet I would not-and who can tell why?

Having washed and purified myself most thoroughly, I stepped out of the House of Death, while the corpse washers shouted curses after me and jeered. They meant no ill by this; it was their way of talking to one another, and the only way they knew. They helped me to carry out the oxhide. Although I had washed, the passers-by gave me a wide berth, holding their noses and making insulting gestures, so steeped was I in the stench of the House of Death. No one would ferry me across the river. I waited until nightfall when, heedless of the watchman, I stole a reed boat and rowed my parents’ bodies over to the City of the Dead.