Uarda : a Romance of Ancient Egypt — Complete by Georg Ebers (find a book to read txt) 📕

plunder-seeking jackals, was wide open, and the old woman sat outside under a ragged piece of brown sail-cloth, fastened at one end to the rock and at the other to two posts of rough wood. She was sorting a heap of dark and light-colored roots, which lay in her lap. Near her was a wheel, which turned in a high wooden fork. A wryneck made fast to it by a little chain, and by springing from spoke to spoke kept it in continual motion.—[From Theocritus’ idyl: The Sorceress.]—A large black cat crouched beside her, and smelt at some ravens’ and owls’ heads, from which the eyes had not long since been extracted.

Two sparrow-hawks sat huddled up over the door of the cave, out of which came the sharp odor of burning juniper-berries; this was intended to render the various emanations rising from the different strange substances, which were collected and preserved there, innocuous.

As Paaker approached the cavern the old woman called out to some one within:

“Is the wax cooking?”

An unintelligible murmur was heard in answer.

Then throw in the ape’s eyes,

[The sentences and mediums employed by the witches, according to papyrus-rolls which remain. I have availed myself of the Magic papyrus of Harris, and of two in the Berlin collection, one of which is in Greek. ]

and the ibis feathers, and the scraps of linen with the black signs on them. Stir it all a little; now put out the fire,

“Take the jug and fetch some water—make haste, here comes a stranger.”

A sooty-black negro woman, with a piece of torn colorless stuff hanging round her hips, set a large clay-jar on her grey woolly matted hair, and without looking at him, went past Paaker, who was now close to the cave.

The old woman, a tall figure bent with years, with a sharply-cut and wrinkled face, that might once have been handsome, made her preparations for receiving the visitor by tying a gaudy kerchief over her head, fastening her blue cotton garment round her throat, and flinging a fibre mat over the birds’ heads.

Paaker called out to her, but she feigned to be deaf and not to hear his voice. Only when he stood quite close to her, did she raise her shrewd, twinkling eyes, and cry out:

“A lucky day! a white day that brings a noble guest and high honor.”

“Get up,” commanded Paaker, not giving her any greeting, but throwing a silver ring among the roots that lay in her lap,

[The Egyptians had no coins before Alexander and the Ptolemies, but used metals for exchange, usually in the form of rings.]

“and give me in exchange for good money some water in a clean vessel.”

“Fine pure silver,” said the old woman, while she held the ring, which she had quickly picked out from the roots, close to her eyes; “it is too much for mere water, and too little for my good liquors.”

“Don’t chatter, hussy, but make haste,” cried Paaker, taking another ring from his money-bag and throwing it into her lap.

“Thou hast an open hand,” said the old woman, speaking in the dialect of the upper classes; “many doors must be open to thee, for money is a pass-key that turns any lock. Would’st thou have water for thy good money? Shall it protect thee against noxious beasts?—shall it help thee to reach down a star? Shall it guide thee to secret paths?—It is thy duty to lead the way. Shall it make heat cold, or cold warm? Shall it give thee the power of reading hearts, or shall it beget beautiful dreams? Wilt thou drink of the water of knowledge and see whether thy friend or thine enemy—ha! if thine enemy shall die? Would’st thou a drink to strengthen thy memory? Shall the water make thee invisible? or remove the 6th toe from thy left foot?”

“You know me?” asked Paaker.

“How should I?” said the old woman, “but my eyes are sharp, and I can prepare good waters for great and small.”

“Mere babble!” exclaimed Paaker, impatiently clutching at the whip in his girdle; “make haste, for the lady for whom—”

“Dost thou want the water for a lady?” interrupted the old woman. “Who would have thought it?—old men certainly ask for my philters much oftener than young ones—but I can serve thee.”

With these words the old woman went into the cave, and soon returned with a thin cylindrical flask of alabaster in her hand.

“This is the drink,” she said, giving the phial to Paaker. “Pour half into water, and offer it to the lady. If it does not succeed at first, it is certain the second time. A child may drink the water and it will not hurt him, or if an old man takes it, it makes him gay. Ah, I know the taste of it!” and she moistened her lips with the white fluid. “It can hurt no one, but I will take no more of it, or old Hekt will be tormented with love and longing for thee; and that would ill please the rich young lord, ha! ha! If the drink is in vain I am paid enough, if it takes effect thou shalt bring me three more gold rings; and thou wilt return, I know it well.”

Paaker had listened motionless to the old woman, and siezed the flask eagerly, as if bidding defiance to some adversary; he put it in his money bag, threw a few more rings at the feet of the witch, and once more hastily demanded a bowl of Nile-water.

“Is my lord in such a hurry?” muttered the old woman, once more going into the cave. “He asks if I know him? him certainly I do? but the darling? who can it be hereabouts? perhaps little Uarda at the paraschites yonder. She is pretty enough; but she is lying on a mat, run over and dying. We must see what my lord means. He would have pleased me well enough, if I were young; but he will reach the goal, for he is resolute and spares no one.”

While she muttered these and similar words, she filled a graceful cup of glazed earthenware with filtered Nile-water, which she poured out of a large porous clay jar, and laid a laurel leaf, on which was scratched two hearts linked together by seven strokes, on the surface of the limpid fluid. Then she stepped out into the air again.

As Paaker took the vessel from her looked at the laurel leaf, she said:

“This indeed binds hearts; three is the husband, four is the wife, seven is the chachach, charcharachacha.”—[This jargon is fund in a magic-papyrus at Berlin.]

The old woman sang this spell not without skill; but the Mohar appeared not to listen to her jargon. He descended carefully into the valley, and directed his steps to the resting place of the wife of Mena.

By the side of a rock, which hill him from Nefert, he paused, set the cup on a flat block of stone, and drew the flask with the philter out of his girdle.

His fingers trembled, but a thousand voices seemed to surge up and cry:

“Take it!—do it!—put in the drink!—now or never.” He felt like a solitary traveller, who finds on his road the