Anubis Speaks!: A Guide to the Afterlife by the Egyptian God of the Dead (27 page)

I am the one who made you; I am the one who sent you. Fall to the ground, poison.

Behold, the great god has divulged his name, and Ra is living.

The poison is dead through the speech of Isis, the great mistress of the gods, who knows Ra by his name.

It wasn’t enough just to utter the spell, though.

You needed specific images to call forth the magic.

You had to say the words over the images of Ra and Isis. Plus, you had to
lick
an image of Horus painted on your hand. A healer-priest might also write the spell on strips of linen and place them at your throat.

Sometimes, he would toss these strips into a cup of beer and, when the ink dissolved, you’d drink the mix, bringing the magic physically
into
your body.

The ancient Egyptians believed this treatment was
a
million times effective
for scorpion stings and snakebites. I hate to contradict my people, but let’s just say this: I enjoyed greeting the constant stream of the dead those doctors sent my way. Oh, how I do miss the good old days. But enough reminiscing. We are approaching the next cavern. Are you ready for more?

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The Weaving of Time

Hour eight

Even though Isis, Serket, and Set made mincemeat out of Apophis, the water he sucked away has not come back. We are on the desert sand, which means we have to tow the boat again.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting tired of slogging through the sand. We gods are strong, but this is ridiculous. We have to keep the boat moving, though.

Apophis’s minions, in the form of disgusting, slime-coated snakes, suddenly emerge out of the sand to try to bite us on the ankles. Worse, they are hissing strange words. I think they are trying to uncover our secret names so they will have power over us!

That is not going to happen. Nobody—and I mean
nobody
— knows or can guess my secret name. (So don’t even bother trying, kid.)

Fortunately, a band of Ra’s magical servants emerge out of the sand to protect us. They’re in the form of the hieroglyphic letter for “follower” and each carries a giant curved knife with a human head hanging from each end. After we’ve minced and diced their leader, those slimy snakes don’t dare attack us, not with these knife-wielding protectors at our side.

The snakes take one look at them and slither away, disappearing into the sand.

Soon, we find ourselves moving through various 77

circles within the larger circle of the cavern. In one we pass a ram-headed god bearing a solar disk on his head. That is Ptah, a creator god as well as the patron of artisans and builders. We trudge past four forms of him, each one holding the symbol for linen bandages.

We also pass circles where Horus appears, and other circles where animal-headed gods sit by weaving instruments, such as spindles and looms, which have been set firmly in the sand for us to see.

The Fabric of Our Lives

I’m not surprised to see so many symbols of weaving and linen in this hour. Linen was very important to my people. The Egyptians cultivated flax, and expertly spun and wove the fiber into beautiful material famous throughout the ancient world. The Roman admiral Pliny described a bolt of Egyptian linen as so fine, it could be pulled through a signet ring. Linen bandages, of course, were also important, because they wrapped the bodies of the dead.

My people looked down their noses at people

who wore fabric made out of sheep’s wool. Egyptians believed that animal hair was impure. And besides, it smelled.

This is why you would never dream of entering a temple in anything but Egyptian linen. The insult to us gods would’ve been too great. We would’ve had to 78

smite you. (Don’t worry. We’re making an exception for you and your multi-colored modern fabrics like cotton and polyester.)

Soon we enter another circle where the ancient gods of sky, air, and moisture appear on the banks to cheer us on. They plant themselves on the hieroglyphic symbol for cloth and cry out from their souls in encouragement. Their support really does help, and we find ourselves stepping a little livelier.

Hieroglyphics:

The Writing of Magic

The fact that the gods we pass are sitting on a hieroglyphic symbol is important. It shows how much the “magic” of writing and reading was

associated with us gods. My people essentially thought that reading was magic. Even when the Egyptians developed different forms of writing, such as “hieratic”

(cursive) and “demotic,” (casual writing for everyday use), they still considered hieroglyphics a sacred language. If you could read hieroglyphics, it meant you could access its sacred power and magic.

Hieroglyphics, of course, were a form of writing using “glyphs,” or symbols, that we Egyptians invented. By the way, you read hieroglyphs in the direction of the faces of whatever creatures are represented. So, for example, if the symbols face 79