Egypt: When Pharaohs Speak ... by Cathy Lee

(Click on picture to enlarge)

I never thought that one day, I would go to Egypt to see its ancient grandeur along the fertile Nile as it snakes its way through the heart of Africa to the Mediterranean Sea.  But on this Saturday, I am on my way to Cairo to a new adventure, a new experience, and the excitement of anticipating seeing, smelling, hearing, and touching the most ancient civilization in the world. I hope by merely breathing the same air as that of the Great Pylon Temple at Edfu dedicated to Horus, the falcon god, I will be instaneously transported to the time of the Greek Ptolemies (311-44 BC), who sacrificed captives to the ancient Egyptian gods. And then, by seeing the clear blue skies and the pale yellow sand of Abu Simbel, the beginning of black Africa, that Ramses II (1298-1235 BC) had conquered in his search for Nubian gold, time will stand still for me so that yesterday and today are one. Instead of being awakened by the southern Californian sun, I will be awakened by the sound of the call to prayers at sunrise in Cairo where 16 million people live.

As I am being carried on the wings of a plane and that of my imagination to ancient Egypt, I am rudely awakened by reality to find myself in a cubbyhole. The plane rocks violently by the turbulence. No matter how often I travel by air, I do not escape uneasy moments. As I look around, I see a grandmotherly figure, alone, with tears streaking down her face sitting next to me. My neighbor is on her way to London. In an apologetic tone, she says that she would feel better once she has taken a sleeping pill. When I ask, “Would you like to hold my hand?” she nods her head. With the warmth of her hand in my mine, I feel strength coursing through my veins. We sit hand in hand, simply chatting to while away the time. She recounts vignettes of her past life: moments of triumphs and defeats, and I also in the same fashion in complete frankness to someone I’ve only met half an hour before by chance.

Before I even arrive in Egypt, I have subconsciously decided to seek out the answer ancient Egyptians provide in dealing with how man confronts death.

My lesson begins as I note the recurrent theme on the reliefs of monuments celebrating goodness, love, devotion, and life as symbolized by the goddess Isis, and her husband, the god Osiris in overcoming evil and death. When Seth, the evil brother of Osiris, kills Osiris and scatters his limbs to the four corners of Egypt, Isis travels throughout the land to gather his remains. Because of her love and devotion, Osiris returns to life and then becomes the god of the underworld. Being the judge of the underworld, he has the power to grant afterlife to the dead.

These same ancient Egyptians also depict the death of living creatures nourishing life. When bullocks are killed and dismembered, the living presents them as offerings to the gods, those who are about to make their journey to the afterlife, or simply use them as food. On a human level, these pictograms also validate the myth of Osiris and Isis.

On similar reliefs, the cows express sorrow as they say farewell to their mates being led to slaughter with a tear in their eye. Instead of just portraying man deriving strength or other superhuman characteristics from the animal kingdom, the ancient Egyptians also empathize with other sentient beings in confronting death as a necessary evil.

The ghosts, residing in the pyramids near the Giza Plateau (2620- 2501 BC) on a starlit night, also whisper that once as men they had formed a social structure of a great pyramid with the pharaoh at the pinnacle. Their shallow graves nearby is a testimony that they had willingly abandoned personal freedom and family to pool individual talent, strength, and even sacrifice their own lives for a common goal, that is to touch an even greater pyramid in the sky, where the mysteries of the unknown are revealed, among which one is the location of afterlife. Though the Pharaohs are long gone centuries ago, their voices still echo in the desert wind.