After the magistrates had left, Ameres ordered the corpse to be brought to his own house. A parade started out with the body. When the parade came to the house where Ameres and Amense lived, Amense and Mysa came out with their hair unbound and wailing and crying, they joined the parade. The parade went into their house. They had a party; the guests were especially perfumed and had a lot of flowers, which was unusual for parties. Then they went and carried the body to Chegeron, the embalmer.
When the 40 days of embalming was going on, the strictest mourning was in the house. No meat or wheaten bread was eaten and even the luxury of the bath was abandoned. The men shaved their eyebrows off and the women, for their part, their cries of lamentation echoed through the house. After the 40 days, the body was brought back all mummified, and in the special room that is in all large Egyptian houses, for the dead, they went in and brought the body. Special sacrifices, similar to those in the temple, were made. Mysa and Amense came into the room; when they did, their hair was unbound as before and they bathed the mummy's feet with their tears and they exclaimed with loud tears of grief and praises for the dead.
Then they went outside and they all went down together in a procession. The ranks were assembled from highest to lowest (I think - I'm not sure). There was a sledge pulled by four oxen and seven men. In the sledge was a boat and in the boat was the mummy with a coffin around it. Amense and Mysa were seated in the boat. (Poor men and oxen who had to pull all of that!) They reached the sacred lake near the temple and the boat was unloaded from the sledge. There were other boats there. Chebron, Amense and Mysa were sat in the boat with the coffin. There were more boats, so everyone sailed across the lake together.
No comments:
Post a Comment