---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “the Curve of Arctic Air” cc&d (v253) (the Jan./Feb. 2015 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Salvation (issues edition) the cc&d Jan. - June 2015 collection book		get the 318 page Jan. - June 2015 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Salvation (issues / chapbooks edition) - the cc&d Jan. - June 2015 collection book		get the 410 page Jan. - June 2015 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Sunlight in the Sanctuary (the 2015 poetry, flash fiction, prose & artwork anthology)		get this poem collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Afterlife

Daniel Stockwell

    He was being sent back to Egypt. Ramses I. His mummy, I mean. This 3,000 year old mummy had been in the United States for over 140 years, but now, the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, Georgia was returning him to Egypt.
    The museum’s website informed me of the move and of his final display in the United States. The museum would be showcasing the famous mummy for the last time from April to September. I had never seen a real mummy before, but when I was a kid, they fascinated me. What kid isn’t fascinated by mummies? I had Egyptian Lego sets, complete with sphinx, hidden tombs, booby traps, the coveted, rare red ruby, and, of course, a mummy. Also, my favorite movie for several years was The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser as Rick O’Connell, the daring explorer. I had to see him.
    I asked all my friends to go with me, but none of them seemed interested. When May finally came, I drove to Atlanta to see the mummy by myself.
    During the three hour drive from Greenville, South Carolina, I was full of energy, like I had been chain-smoking all day. I was excited, I think, because, in a way, I was driving back to my childhood. If only for a few hours, I was going to be eight years old again.

~

    “Okay, boys and girls, my name is Miss Rachel, but you can call me Rachel. I’m going to be your tour guide today, and in a second we are going to enter the pyramid!”
    I saw the tour guide. She was wearing one of those white dome-shaped safari hats and a modernized version of khaki drill, but instead of pants, she wore shorts. Her hair was blond, and she reminded me of the woman in Jurassic Park. I decided to follow her group, if I could.
    “First, I have to go over the rules. We have three rules. Number one: wear this sticker that I’m going to put on you. It tells us which tour you should be on, and it glows in the dark so you won’t get lost in the pyramid. Okay?”
    I watched her put the neon-green stickers on the twelve or so children in the tour.
    Once they were all on, Rachel said, “Our second rule is that you follow and listen to me because I want to keep you safe and teach you some pretty cool things. Don’t worry though, your parents will be following behind us.”
    Perfect, I thought. I would pretend to be a parent or older sibling, keep my distance, but still follow the tour. If I was returning to my childhood, being in a children’s tour was the thing to do.
    “Our third and final rule is that you HAVE fun! Now, who’s ready to learn about and see some CREEEE—EEEEPY stuff?”
    She bent down to be at eye level with her audience, “I said, ‘who’s ready to see some CRAZY CREEPY stuff, like bones, brains, and mu-mu-mu-MUMMIES!’”
    “Me!”
    “Meee!”
    “MEEEE!”
    The group of children screamed and swayed, they jostled to get to be closest to the tour guide to make sure she knew that they were ready.
    She took us to “the pyramid.” It was only about twenty feet high, and it obviously wasn’t real stone, like the decorations at a mini-golf place, but I’m sure to the kids it looked real. Once we entered, we were in a dark tunnel, but every few feet there were lights designed to look like torches that glowed red and showed hieroglyphics on the walls.
    “Okay, boys and girls, we are going to learn our first thing about mu-mu-mu-mummies right here,” the tour guide said as she switched on a light in a room behind glass.
    Jackal, baboon, and falcon-headed statues of various sizes stood in the room, and in the middle were two human-sized statues. One was Osiris, god of the afterlife. He was green and wearing the linens of a mummy. I recognized him from my childhood years of fascination with Egypt and pyramids and exploring and preparing for life after death. The other was Anubis, the half-jackal protector of the dead. In front of Anubis stood a set of scales with a heart on one side and a feather on the other.
    “This is where we will learn some things about what the Egyptians believed happened to them when they died. . . ”

~

    Meketre knew what would happen to him when he died. He would have to travel through the underworld. He would contend with the gods, monsters, and gatekeepers to reach the Hall of Two Truths. There, Meketre would stand before the forty-two Divine Judges and plead his innocence before them. Next, his heart would be weighed against Ma’at. Meketre’s heart would have to be light in order to pass the test. If not, Ammut, the devourer of the dead, would consume his heart, and his soul would be cast into darkness. If he passed, he would be welcomed into the afterlife, the Field of Rushes, by Osiris. Then, in the Field of Rushes, Meketre would tend his plot of land and worship the gods and goddesses in peace.

~

    Rachel took us deeper into the pyramid until we stopped again.
    “The Egyptians really cared about the afterlife and getting there safely, so they came up with some things to help them. One of the things they came up with was the mummification process. Does anyone know why they wanted to make mummies?”
    One little girl raised her hand. “They wanted to live forever.”
    “Well, yes, sweetheart, that’s almost exactly right! Good job! How did you know that?”
    The little girl turned her left foot and twisted her body a little. “My aunt gave me a book for my birthday about mummies.”
    “Well, she is a very sweet aunt,” Rachel said as she brought her hands down on her hips for emphasis. “Yes, they wanted to live forever. You see, they thought that a person’s soul left the body when the person died, and they believed the soul would need help finding its body, so they made mummies. If you look in this room, we are going to learn about the first step of mummy making, the embalming process.”
    She flipped on another light to reveal a room with a large table in the middle. On the table was a wax figure of a man. The figure on the table had a cut in its side, and surrounding the wax man were the “embalmers.” One of them was wearing a jackal mask, and he was pulling out shining intestines.
    “Ew!” said a little boy pointing at the intestines.
    “Gross!”
    “Awesome!”

~

    The embalmers took Meketre’s body to the place of purification. Together, they washed the body with palm wine. Next, they rinsed it with water from the Nile.
    They cut open his left side and removed his organs. They took out his liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines, for they are the first to decompose. The chief embalmer, who wore the mask of Anubis, made sure to leave the heart inside the body. They used a long hook to smash the brain, and the chief embalmer pulled it out of the body through the nose.
    They packed the removed organs with natron to dehydrate them, and then they stuffed the body. Next, they would wait forty days.
    After the forty days, they washed the body with water from the Nile again and covered it with oils. The embalmers wrapped the organs in linen and placed them back in the man’s body. To give the dried mass human shape, they stuffed it with sawdust, and the chief embalmer covered the body again with oils.

~

    “Wasn’t that stuff creepy?” asked Rachel. “Raise your hand if thought that stuff was gross?”
    The children raised their hands. One little girl put her finger in her mouth and pretended to vomit.
    “Now, raise your hand if you liked learning about it even though it was gross!”
    They all raised their hands again.
    “That’s what I thought. Well, we aren’t finished yet, either.” Rachel shook her head so her blond pony-tail whipped around her head several times. It reminded me of the way mops look in old Disney movies.
    “Next, we will find out what the Egyptians did with the embalmed body! Who’s ready?”
    The children bounced up and down, and one little boy tugged on a belt loop on Rachel’s shorts.
    “Ah!” she said and freed herself from his hook of a finger. “Okay, then everybody, fooooollow meeeEE!”
    We took a right down the passage way. I noticed that many of the hieroglyphs on the walls were repeats. I saw several snakes, lions, falcons, and feet. Some were blue, others were green, but they were the same design. I don’t think the kids noticed.
    Rachel stopped us right next to a torch that revealed blue snakes.
    “This is the last room we are going to visit in the pyramid.” She flicked on another light. Similar wax figurines filled up this room, but the figure on the table was wrapped in strips of linen.
    “Here, we will learn about how they wrapped the body, the last stage in the mu-mu-mummification process.”

~

    They wrapped Meketre’s head and neck first. His fingers and toes, wrapped individually, were next. Then the arms and legs. A priest positioned the Isis Knot Amulet on Meketre to protect his body and he read spells to ward off evil spirits.
    Then, they painted the original layer of linen with resin and added more layers. Meketre’s arms and legs were tied together, and the priest placed a scroll with spells from the Book of the Dead between his hands. A mask was placed over the wrapped head.
    They draped a cloth around the body, and they painted Osiris on its surface. One more cloth was wrapped around the body and tied around it. Meketre had become a mummy.

~

    “So now you know how a mummy is made, right?” She looked around at all the nodding and wiggling heads.
    “So, who wants to be a mummy?”
    Several of the parents laughed when most of the boys raised their hands, and the girls let out one high-pitched “EW!”
    “Well, hopefully not soon, anyway. Now, we have learned about how mummies were made, but we haven’t seen a real mummy yet. Would you like to?”
    “YES!”
    “Then, let’s go, but we are going to have to leave the pyramid for that because the mummy we are going to see is very famous, and he needed more space for all of his visitors. Does anyone remember his name?”
    “Raymond?”
    “Roy?”
    “Ramsey?”
    “Close enough. His name was King Ramses I, and he is going back to his home soon. He is going all the way back to Egypt, so you are some lucky kids. Let’s go see him!”
    I followed the tour out of the pyramid, and my eyes had to adjust to the brightness. We walked a few yards and came up on a large crowd of people. Obviously, they too wanted to see The Great Ramses I before he went “home.”
    The display was amazing. There were several mummies, actually, and coffins, and canopic jars. The little jars had baboon, jackal, and falcon heads. Of course, there was Ramses I, the 3,000 year old mummy. His skin was dark, dry, and stretched, almost like Georgia red clay molded around a thin wire frame. The cheeks had sunk into the mouth, and the skin was pressed in everywhere as if a masseuse had mashed the skin between the bones. He was incredible. 3,000 years old, and I could still see his face.
    I looked to the side of the display case and noticed a plaque. It read:
    “After the funeral in which the family members mourned the death of the loved one, the priests would perform the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony. The Egyptians believed that the deceased could not hear, see, or speak until the ceremony was completed. Only after this ceremony, they believed, could the deceased’s soul rejoin its body in preparation for the afterlife.”

~

    After Meketre’s funeral, the priests began the ceremony. Wearing the mask of Anubis, one priest held the coffin upright while another touched the mouth of the mummy with amulets.
    At the closing of the ceremony, the priest said, “Awake! May you be alert as a living one, rejuvenated every day, healthy in millions of occasions of god sleep, while the gods protect you.”

~

    “Okay, everybody, sadly the tour is now over.”
    “No!”
    “Please!”
    “Never!”
    “I know, I know, but I have to teach other boys and girls about mummies. You don’t want to keep them from learning and having fun do you?”
    “YES!” stamped one little boy. I noticed a woman in the group of parents turn red and cover her face with her hand.
    “Oh, no. You don’t want that. Now, thank you very much for being such great listeners! Thank you moms and dads for letting me spend this time with your great kids. Have a great rest of your day! Bye bye!”
    Rachel walked back toward the main entrance of the Michael C. Carlos Museum.

~

    According to ritual, Meketre’s soul had been prepared for the journey to the afterlife, and he would need his body for that journey, but 2,500 years after his burial, travelers dug his mummy up and burned it in their fire under a dark desert sky. The dry skin stuffed with sawdust burned fast and crackled and curled and Meketre’s ashes drifted across the sand, only to be covered again by morning.

~

    I figured it was time for me to leave. I stepped closer to Ramses’ display case for one final look.
    “So, I guess you really did get to live forever, huh?”
    I left the museum, stopped at a gas station to pick up some Camel cigarettes, and drove back to Greenville. On the way home, I smoked the entire pack.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...