To Japanese

Literature Perusal:

The Mummy

By Atsushi Nakajima

Translated by Masatoshi Iguchi, May 2022 (Edited by Prof. Malcolm R. Mackley, August 2022)

When the king of Persia, Cambyses [1] son of Cyrus the Great and Cassandane[2], invaded Egypt, among his subordinate military officer was a man called Pariscas. His ancestors seem to have come from the eastern district around Bactria, so that he was a gloomy country fellow who did not adapt himself to the air of the city. Since he had some dreamy disposition, he was always ridiculed by people, despite being in a good high position.

From the time when the Persian army passed through Arabiya and finally entered the land of Egypt[3], the anomaly in the appearance of Pariscas began to attract the attention of his colleagues and subordinates. Pariscas looked at the unfamiliar surroundings with especially mysterious eyes and went into deep thought with an uneasy expression. He was clearly irritated as he was trying to recall something in vain. When the Egyptian war prisoners were pulled into the camp, the words of one of them entered into his ears. After listening to them for a while with a strange look, he said to the surrounding people that he felt as if he could somehow understand the meaning of their words, although he couldn’t speak the word himself. Pariscas sent his men to ask if the prisoners were Egyptians (because the major part of the Egyptian army was mercenaries from Greeks and other countries). The reply was that they were certainly Egyptians. He sunk in thought again with an anxious expression. Before then, he had neither set foot in Egypt nor been associated with an Egyptian. Despite it was in the midst of a fierce battle, he was absent-mindedly preoccupied with his thoughts.

The depressed excitement of Pariscas became even more pronounced when they entered the ancient white-walled city of Memphis in pursuit of the routed Egyptian army. He often looked to be a person who was about to have an epileptic seizure. His colleagues who were deriding him before; became a little weird.

When the king of Persia, Cambyses [1] son of Cyrus the Great and Cassandane[2], invaded Egypt, among his subordinate military officers was a man called Pariscas. His ancestors seem to have come from the eastern district around Bactria, so that he was a gloomy country fellow who did not adapt himself to the air of the city. Since he had some dreamy disposition, he was always ridiculed by people, despite being in a good high position.

From the time when the Persian army passed through Arabiya and finally entered the land of Egypt[3], the anomaly in the appearance of Pariscas began to attract the attention of his colleagues and subordinates. Pariscas looked at the unfamiliar surroundings with especially mysterious eyes and went into deep thought with an uneasy expression. He was clearly irritated as he was trying to recall something in vain. When the Egyptian war prisoners were pulled into the camp, the words of one of them entered into his ears. After listening them for a while with a strange look, he said to the surrounding people that he felt as if he could somehow understand the meaning of their words, although he couldn’t speak the word himself. Pariscas sent his men to ask if the prisoners were Egyptians (because the major part of the Egyptian army was mercenaries from Greeks and other countries). The reply was that they were certainly Egyptians. He sunk in thought again with an anxious expression. Before then, he had neither set foot in Egypt nor been associated with an Egyptian. Despite it was in the midst of a fierce battle, he was absent-mindedly preoccupied with his thoughts.

The depressed excitement of Pariscas became even more pronounced when they entered the ancient white-walled city of Memphis in pursuit of the routed Egyptian army. He often looked to be a person who was about to have an epileptic seizure. His colleagues who were deriding him before became a little weird.

In front of the obelisk on the outskirts of the city of Memphis[4], he read in a low voice the pictorial letters engraved on the surface. Then, he explained to his colleagues the name and achievements of the king who built the monument, again in a low voice. All his colleague officers looked at each other with a strange feeling. Pariscas himself had a very odd face. No one (and Pariscas himself) had ever heard that Pariscas was familiar with Egyptian history or could read Egyptian scripts.

As his eyes got used to the darkness, sculptures and instruments scattered inside, as well as reliefs and murals around them suddenly emerged in front of him. The casket was left with the lid removed and two or three heads of clay figures were lying beside it. At first glance it was clear that the tomb had been already plundered by other Persian soldiers. The smell of old dust coldly hit his nose. From the depths of the darkness, a large statue of eagle head god looked into him with a hard expression. The mural nearby depicted a melancholy procession of gods with the head of bizarre animals such as wolf, crocodile and grey heron.[9] A giant eye with no face and body joined the procession with slender legs and hands.

From that time on, King Cambyses, the boss of Pariscas seemed to have begun to be suffered from insanity. He killed the Egyptian King Psammenitus by forcing him to drink the blood of cattle. [5] As though that wasn't enough, he thought to humiliate the corpse of the former King Amasis.[6] It was because the very person whom Cambyses had concealed in his mind was King Amasis.[7] He himself led an army to Sais where the mausoleum of King Amasis was located. Upon arriving at Sais, he ordered his men to find the graveyard of the late King Amasis, dug out the corpse and bring it before him.

Probably  this was anticipated the whereabouts of King Amasis’s graveyard had been skilfully camouflaged. Then, Persian officers had to go around numerous cemeteries in and outside of the city of Sais to open and inspect them one by one.

Pariscas was in the graveyard search team. Whilst others were engrossed in plundering numerous jewels, jewellery and furnishings that were laid into the tomb with the mummy of Egyptian nobles, Pariscas alone

 paid no attention to those things and earnestly walked around from grave to grave. On his dark expression, dimly lights which resembled the sunlight from the cloudy sky often appeared but his face soon turned back to be the uneasy darkness. Something that seemed to be solvable but not solvable seemed to be stuck in his mind.

One afternoon, a few days after the search began, Pariscas was alone, standing in a very old underground tomb chamber. It was hard to tell when he was separated from his colleagues and his subordinates, and in which direction the tomb lay in the city.[8] These things were not clear to him at all. All he knew was that when he awoke from his dreamy thought he realised he was alone in the dim light of an old vault.

As his eyes got used to the darkness, sculptures and instruments scattered inside, as well as reliefs and murals around them suddenly emerged in front of him. The casket was left with the lid removed and two or three heads of clay figures were lying beside it. At first glance it was clear that the tomb had been already plundered by other Persian soldiers. The smell of old dust coldly hits his nose. From the depths of the darkness, a large statue of eagle head god looks into him with a hard expression. The mural nearby depicted a melancholy procession of gods with the head of bizarre animals such as wolf, crocodile and grey heron.[9] A giant eye with no face and body joined the procession with slender legs and hands.

Pariscas almost unconsciously proceeded into the depth. After several steps, he stumbled. He saw a mummy was lying at his feet. With almost no thought he raised the mummy and stood it on the pedestal of a god statue. It was an ordinary mummy that he had been tired of seeing for several days. As he was about to walk past, leaving it as it was, he saw its face. Immediately, something that was neither cold nor hot ran down his spine. He could no longer take his eyes off the face of the mummy. He stared the face stiffened up as if he was attracted to a magnet.

How long he had been staying there like that!

In the meantime, he felt a great change had occurred within himself. It seemed as if all the elements that constituted his body had tremendously bubbled and boiled under his skin (like an experiment that the chemists of the later times tried in a flask) and, when the reaction (boiling) ceased after a short while, the nature of his body had turned to be completely different from that before.[10]

He felt very relaxed. He realised what he had been concerned since he entered in Egypt ——something that could not be recalled like a dream of previous night —— was now clearly understandable. Was it such a thing? He instinctively said aloud. “I was originally this mummy. With no doubt!”

When Pariscas uttered these words, the mummy seemed to have distorted the corners of his lips. Wherever the light comes from, only the face of the mummy was faintly illuminated and clearly visible.

Now, in a flash of lightning that broke the darkness, the memories of the distant past, i.e, various memories of the time when his soul had lodged in this mummy, had revived at once. The memories of scorching sun on the sand, the breeze in the tree shed, the smell of mud after the flood, the appearance of people in white robes passing through the busy high street, the flavour of perfume oil after the bath, the touch of the cool stones in the depths of the dim shrine, on which he knelt, . . . Such throngs of sensational memories revived fresh from the abyss of oblivion, and flooded.

Was he a priest in the Temple of Ptah at that time? He wondered because what he had once seen, touched and experienced now revived in front of him, but his own figure at that time could not be recalled at all.

Suddenly, the sad eyes of a sacrificial bull he had dedicated to the shrine floated back in his mind. He thought they resembled the eyes of a human, someone whom he knew well. That's it. Certainly that woman. Immediately, a woman's eyes, a face made up with a thin layer of malachite powder and a slender body appeared in front of him with a familiar gesture and a nostalgic body odour. He felt nostalgic. What a lonely woman, like the red crane of the lake in the evening. It was undoubtedly the woman who was his wife.

Curiously, he could not remember any name, no person's name, no place's name, no thing's name. Anonymous shapes, colours, scents and movements quickly appeared and disappeared in front of him in the extraordinary tranquillity in which the idea of distance and time were strangely confounded.

He no longer saw the mummy. Had his soul slipped out from his body and entered the mummy?

Another scene appeared. He seemed to be lying on the floor with a terrible heat. Beside him an anxious face of his wife was watching him. Behind her there seemed to be some old people and children.

He was terribly thirsty. As soon as he moved his hand, his wife came and gave him water. Then for a while he drowsed. By the time he awoke, his temperature was already low.

When he half opened his eyes, his wife was crying beside him. Old men seemed to be crying behind her. Suddenly, a big blue shadow fell down over him, as if the shadow of a rain cloud rapidly darkened over the lake. He involuntarily closed his eyes with a sensation of dazzling descent. ——

There, his memory of the past world was completely cut off. How many hundred years had the darkness of consciousness continued? When he came to himself again (that was to say, now), he was standing in front of the mummy, or his former body, as a Persian soldier (who had lived as a Persian for several decades).

Amid the same dimness, chilliness and dusty smell as now, the self of the previous life suddenly remembered his own life in the previous-previous life.

Frightened by the revelation of a bizarre mystery, his soul was now extremely tense like the ice of a northern winter lake. It continued to stare at the bottom of the buried memories of his former life. There, like blind fish that emit their own light in the darkness of the deep sea, the experiences of his past world were silently asleep.

Then, the bottom of the darkness, the eyes of his soul found a strange figure of himself in the previous life.

In a dimly lit small room, while facing to face to to a mummy with trembling fear, he himself of the previous life had to admit that the mummy was the body of his previous-previous life.

Amid the same dimness, chilliness and dusty smell as now, the self of the previous life suddenly remembered his own life in the previous-previous life.

He was horrified. “What the hell is that, this terrifying coincidence?”. If he looked at it in detail without being frightened, then he would probably see the same figure of himself of the third previous life that he had seen in the memory of his second previous life. The ghastly series of memories might infinitely continue, like the images folded in opposite mirrors, —— might continue in an infinite and dazzling manner, mightn’t it be?

Pariscas had goose pimples on the skin of his whole body and tried to escape. But his legs were powerless. Yet he still could not leave his eyes off the mummy’s face. In a frozen posture, he just stood facing the dried corpse of amber colour.

The next day, when a Persian soldier from another unit discovered Pariscas, he was lying in the basement of the old grave, firmly embracing a mummy. He was nursed back to life but showed obvious signs of madness and began to speak out queer delirious words. Those words were Egyptian, not Persian.

References and Notes