β
Don't stop there. I suppose there are also, what, vampires and werewolves and zombies?"
"Of course there are. Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the voudun priests are."
"What about mummies? Do they only hang around Egypt?"
"Don't be ridiculous. No one believes in mummies.
β
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
We're called Shadowhunters. At least, that's what we call ourselves. The Downworlders have less complimentary names for us."
"Downworlders?"
"The Night Children. Warlock. The Fey. The magical folk of this dimension."
Clary shook her head. "Don't stop there. I suppose there are also what, vampires and werewolves and zombies?"
"Of course there are," Jace informed her. "Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the voudun priests are."
"What about mummies? Do they only hang around Egypt?"
"Don't be ridiculous. No one believes in mummies."
"They don't?"
"Of course not.
β
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
Haven't I heard of men more dried up than he is, being brought all the way from Egypt in cases covered with pictures?" "You idiot!βthose were mummies; they had been dead for ages.
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Jules Verne (Off On A Comet)
β
The Romans can not be condemned for the conquest of Egypt; we were conquered by time itself in the end. And all the wonders of this brave new century should draw me from my grief and yet I can not heal my heart; and so the mind suffers; the mind closes as if it were a flower without sun
β
β
Anne Rice (The Mummy (Ramses the Damned #1))
β
Where will I find you now that my heart is yours?
Where should I search? I donβt know where to look.
You fill my heart with desire and love,
The perfume of the lotus, the grace of a dove.
But then the dove flies far, far away,
All that is left is a song for my harp strings to play.
A voice in my memories like an angel of grace,
Where can I find you? Do you know how I pray?
Where will I find you now that my love belongs to you?
Wherever your heart beats, Iβm dreaming of you.
Now and forever my love belongs to youβ¦
Now and forever my love belongs to youβ¦
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Bjorn Street (Secret of the Mummy (Secret of the Mummy #1))
β
He would not now conduct little Nell to the coast; he would not convey her by a steamer to Port Said, would not surrender her to Mr. Rawlinson; he himself would not fall into his father's arms and would not hear from his lips that he had acted like a true Pole! The end, the end! In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt
β
β
Henryk Sienkiewicz (In Desert and Wilderness)
β
Anubis is associated with the mummification and protection of the dead for their journeys through Denver International Airport to the afterlife. He is usually portrayed as being half human and half jackal, and holding a metal detector in his hand ... Anubis is employed by the Department of Homeland Security to examine the hearts of all travellers to make sure they have not exceeded the weight limit for psychological baggage ... He is also shown frisking mummies and confiscating firearms and other contraband. It doesn't take much to tip the scales in favour of a dead body cavity search or an afterlifetime travel ban.
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Stephen Moles (The Most Wretched Thing Imaginable or, Beneath the Burnt Umbrella)
β
What are the hopes of man? Old Egypt's King
Cheops erected the first pyramid
And largest, thinking it was just the thing
To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;
But somebody or other rummaging,
Burglariously broke his coffin's lid:
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops.
β
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Lord Byron (Don Juan)
β
During a 10-year period the locomotives of Egypt made us of no other fuel than that furnished by the well-wrapped, compact mummies.
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Nicholson Baker (Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper)
β
It is beyond dispute that Osiris made his worshipers dream strange things of him, and that he possessed their bodies and souls forever. There is a devilish wrath against mankind with which Osiris was for Death's sake inspired. In the cool of the evening he walked among men, and upon his head was the Crown of Upper Egypt, and his cheeks were inflated with a wind that slew. His face was veiled so that no man could see it, hut assuredly it was an old face, very old and dead and dry for the world was young when tall Osiris died.
("A Visitor From Egypt")
β
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Frank Belknap Long (The Mummy Walks Among Us)
β
Of course, of course. Mr. Buzzby, did it ever occur to you that a god may live, figuratively, a dog's life?'
'Eh?'
'Gods are transfigured, you know. They go up in smoke, as it were. In smoke and flame. They become pure flame, pure spirit, creatures with no visible body.'
("A Visitor From Egypt")
β
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Frank Belknap Long (The Mummy Walks Among Us)
β
There were some hours to spare before his ship sailed, and having deposited his luggage, including a locked leather despatch-case, on board, he lunched at the Cafe Tewfik near the quay. There was a garden in front of it with palm trees and trellises gaily clad in bougainvillias: a low wooden rail separated it from the street, and Morris had a table close to this. As he ate he watched the polychromatic pageant of Eastern life passing by: there were Egyptian officials in broad-cloth frock coats and red fezzes; barefooted splay-toed fellahin in blue gabardines; veiled women in white making stealthy eyes at passers-by; half-naked gutter-snipe, one with a sprig of scarlet hibiscus behind his ear; travellers from India with solar tepees and an air of aloof British Superiority; dishevelled sons of the Prophet in green turbans, a stately sheik in a white burnous; French painted ladies of a professional class with lace-rimmed parasols and provocative glances; a wild-eyed dervish in an accordion-pleated skirt, chewing betel-nut and slightly foaming at the mouth. A Greek boot-black with box adorned with brass plaques tapped his brushes on it to encourage customers, an Egyptian girl squatted in the gutter beside a gramophone, steamers passing into the Canal hooted on their syrens.
("Monkeys")
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E.F. Benson (The Mummy Walks Among Us)
β
Because of the tendency of engineers to focus more on engineering matters rather than on archaeology, history, or anthropology, they are often accused of stripping artifacts of their cultural context and cherrypicking the evidence. Yet as an engineer, I strongly argue that the engineering context is, in fact, a cultural context in and of itself--one that is less susceptible to ambiguity than the cultural context of mummies and potsherds, which can be added decades or even centuries after a building has been completed.
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Christopher Dunn (Lost Technologies of Ancient Egypt: Advanced Engineering in the Temples of the Pharaohs)
β
In Bruges he had carried out a work which was anonymous and brought no glory, but was seen as admirable once it had been understood. He was the embalmer of the town. Being dead, it would have decomposed, disintegrated. He had mummified it in the bandages of its inert waters, its regular columns of smoke, with the gilding and polychrome decoration on the facades like gold and unguents on nails and teeth; and the lily of Memling across the corpse, like the ancient lotus on the virgins of Egypt. It was thanks to him that the town stood triumphant and beautiful in the adornment of death. In that garb it would be eternal, no less than the mummies themselves, eternally in funeral finery, which has nothing sad about it, since it has transformed death into a work of art.
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Georges Rodenbach (The Bells of Bruges)
β
Circumcision is well-known in the ancient Near East from as early as the fourth millennium BC, though the details of its practice and its significance vary from culture to culture. Circumcision was practiced in the ancient Near East by many peoples. The Egyptians practiced circumcision as early as the third millennium BC. West Semitic peoples, Israelites, Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites performed circumcision. Eastern Semitic peoples did not (e.g., Assyrians, Babylonians, Akkadians)βnor did the Philistines, an Aegean or Greek people. Anthropological studies have suggested that the rite always has to do with at least one of four basic themes: fertility, virility, maturity and genealogy. Study of Egyptian mummies demonstrates that the surgical technique in Egypt differed from that used by the Israelites; while the Hebrews amputated the prepuce of the penis, the Egyptians merely incised the foreskin and so exposed the glans penis. Egyptians were not circumcised as children, but in either prenuptial or puberty rites. The common denominator, however, is that it appears to be a rite of passage, giving new identity to the one circumcised and incorporating him into a particular group. Evidence from the Levant comes as early as bronze figurines from the Amuq Valley (Tell el-Judeideh) from the early third millennium BC. An ivory figurine from Megiddo from the mid-second millennium BC shows Canaanite prisoners who are circumcised. Southern Mesopotamia shows no evidence of the practice, nor is any Akkadian term known for the practice. The absence of such evidence is significant since Assyrian and Babylonian medical texts are available in abundance. Abraham is therefore aware of the practice from living in Canaan and visiting Egypt rather than from his roots in Mesopotamia. Since Ishmael is 13 years old at this time, Abraham may even have been wondering whether it was a practice that would characterize this new family of his. In Ge 17 circumcision is retained as a rite of passage, but one associated with identity in the covenant. In light of todayβs concerns with gender issues, some have wondered why the sign of the covenant should be something that marks only males. Two cultural issues may offer an explanation: patrilineal descent and identity in the community. (1)Β The concept of patrilineal descent resulted in males being considered the representatives of the clan and the ones through whom clan identity was preserved (as, e.g., the wife took on the tribal and clan identity of her husband). (2) Individuals found their identity more in the clan and the community than in a concept of self. Decisions and commitments were made by the family and clan more than by the individual. The rite of passage represented in circumcision marked each male as entering a clan committed to the covenant, a commitment that he would then have the responsibility to maintain. If this logic holds, circumcision would not focus on individual participation in the covenant as much as on continuing communal participation. The community is structured around patrilineal descent, so the sign on the males marks the corporate commitment of the clan from generation to generation.Β β
β
β
Anonymous (NIV, Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture)
β
The sun had set when we left the museum that day, and the holidaymakers had long since departed. The wind had dropped; already a nighttime chill had begun to creep into the air. In the brief desert twilight the pyramids stood out in all their ruined majesty, dark hulks that loomed
against the last apricot-coloured g l ow in the western sky. At night the Giza plateau is a lonely place, cold and forbidding, inhabited only by a
few guards, wrapped like mummies against the night wind, and the yapping, threatening pi-dogs of Egypt.
From a time long before King Cheops this plateau had been a sacred burying ground, and even today there is about it a sense of holiness and mystery, especially in the empty silences of the night. The ancient people who built these monuments, and apparently buried their kings within, are in a way as mysterious to us as the pyramids themselves.
β
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Nancy Jenkins
β
There are, however, explicit engineering qualities associated with the pyramids that do not support the theory that it was a temple, a tomb, or a mausoleum. The redundancy of masonry in these structures is only one good argument against the tomb theory. More persuasive is the fact that Egyptologists woefully lack the material evidence to support itβthere are no bodies! It is a widely held popular belief that Egyptian pyramids contained mummies, and that these mummies were actually discovered inside the pyramids. This is simply not true. These beliefs are only inferences that are reinforced by inaccurate documentaries that link the pyramids closely with the Valley of the Kings, where there are no pyramids, but where the mummies actually were found. In reality, the Giza Plateau and the Valley of the Kings are two vastly different sites, separated by hundreds of miles of desert. It is now becoming widely recognized by people who research the pyramid issue that of all the pyramids excavated in Egypt, there was not one that contained an original burial. Considering that more than eighty pyramids have been discovered in Egypt, this fact alone practically negates the tomb theory.
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Christopher Dunn (The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt)
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I was a US mummy tracker for years in Afghanistan and Egypt,β explains the unicorn.
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Chuck Tingle (Buttageddon: The Final Days Of Pounding Ass (A Novel))
β
The history of a place fascinates me through the echoes and remains you learn alot
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D.B. Shultz (The World Adventures of Sahara the Mummy: The magical exploration of Ancient Egypt)
β
Coincidence is a factor in life not always sufficiently considered; and the events I have related can be explained in a perfectly natural manner, if one be inclined to do so.
β
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John Richard Stephens (Into the Mummy's Tomb)
β
Contrary to John Anthony West's assertion (in his book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt) that there are no other possible interpretations of the mummy figure looking at the stars on the depiction in the tomb of Tutankhamen beyond being a matter of consciousness, many proofs point to ancient Egypt's aspiration to be among the stars and it is an essential part of its theology. It is after all evident that [the Pyramid Texts describe early conceptions of an afterlife in terms of eternal travelling with the sun god amongst the stars]. Staying loyal to the Upper Heavens' authority or breaking away from it, made ancient Egypt yearn to such a high position beyond Earth's physical realm where the Sun's shadow (i.e., snake) of the Lower Heavens' authority cannot fly.
β
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Ibrahim Ibrahim (Quotable: My Worldview)
β
The absence of cancer in mummies from Egypt and South America86 led one study to propose: βIn industrialised societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer. So it has to be a man-made disease, down to pollution and changes to our diet and lifestyle.
β
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Tim Noakes (Lore of Nutrition: Challenging conventional dietary beliefs)
β
But a cursory review of ancient Egyptian literature suggests that the Egyptians of three thousand years ago were already keenly aware of the insubstantial nature of human achievement. These monuments, these tombs, these mummies were not necessarily meant to escape the passage of time but rather to provide future generations with a past they could find, a past whose shadow would loom over them and offer them guidance. As archaeologists continue to study ancient Egypt thousands of years later, the pharaohs continue to guide posterity and provide humanity with permanent symbols of history, in more impressive and far-reaching ways than even they could have planned.
β
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Tom Head (World History 101: From ancient Mesopotamia and the Viking conquests to NATO and WikiLeaks, an essential primer on world history (Adams 101 Series))
β
Until that time in history, Egypt was the only country among the Eastern nations to have adopted the custom of circumcision. (The practice had appeared early in Egyptian history, as can be seen from mummies.)
β
β
Ahmed Osman (The Egyptian Origins of King David and the Temple of Solomon)
β
In Greece, says Suidas, "the greatest and most expensive sacrifice was the mysterious sacrifice called the Telete," a sacrifice which, according to Plato, "was offered for the living and the dead, and was supposed to free them from all the evils to which the wicked are liable when they have left this world." In Egypt the exactions of the priests for funeral dues and masses for the dead were far from being trifling. "The priests," says Wilkinson, "induced the people to expend large sums on the celebration of funeral rites; and many who had barely sufficient to obtain the necessaries of life were anxious to save something for the expenses of their death. For, beside the embalming process, which sometimes cost a talent of silver, or about 250 [pounds] English money, the tomb itself was purchased at an immense expense; and numerous demands were made upon the estate of the deceased, for the celebration of prayer and other services for the soul." "The ceremonies," we find him elsewhere saying, "consisted of a sacrifice similar to those offered in the temples, vowed for the deceased to one or more gods (as Osiris, Anubis, and others connected with Amenti); incense and libation were also presented; and a prayer was sometimes read, the relations and friends being present as mourners. They even joined their prayers to those of the priest. The priest who officiated at the burial service was selected from the grade of Pontiffs, who wore the leopard skin; but various other rites were performed by one of the minor priests to the mummies, previous to their being lowered into the pit of the tomb after that ceremony. Indeed, they continued to be administered at intervals, as long as the family paid for their performance." Such was the operation of the doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the dead among avowed and acknowledged Pagans; and in what essential respect does it differ from the operation of the same doctrine in Papal Rome?
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Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons)
β
Boy, how can you think it wise to truck with this culture of death?" Even at ten I knew the correct answer to that cataclysmic catechism: "Right you are, Father. Much better to stick with the life-embracing imagery of a cult that worships a bleeding corpse nailed to bits of wood."
... Egypt was not β I must repeat for Readers who still do not know it β a culture of death, for all the mummies and bottled lungs, the jackal-men and cobra-queens. The Egyptians were the inventors of immortality, the first men who saw they could live forever.
β
β
Arthur Phillips (The Egyptologist)