The legend of the talking mummy
There are many interesting stories transmitted by the common people, residents of Egyptian archaeological areas, which are close to the legend in details.
Among those stories full of astonishment are what excavation and restoration workers tell in the villages and hamlets of the Qurna region, which is rich in ancient Egyptian tombs, west of the historic city of Luxor in Upper Egypt, the story of the mummy who spoke to the restoration workers and asked them to cover what was revealed about her body.
One of the restoration technicians, who requested that his name not be mentioned, told us the details of what happened years ago in the tomb of the priest Mantumhat in the Al-Asasif archaeological area near the temple of Queen Hatshepsut. .
He said that one day, when he went with others to work on a project to restore the tomb of the priest Mantumhat, famous for the Prince of Thebes, their attention caught among the groups of mummies they found in the tomb, the mummy of a woman in ancient Egypt, so he and his fellow restorers looked at her and found her lips moving and her face changing. . As if she wanted to say something, and of course they thought it was just imagination. They left her and went to do the work assigned to them.
He added that on the second day what happened was repeated and the sexy mummy caught their eyes, and when they looked at her they found that she was speaking to them in a language close to sign language, as if she wanted to say something to them!
He continued: "Just as it happened on their first day of work, they left that mummy and went to their work, but on the third day they felt that the mummy was actually talking to them and looking at them and that it wanted to convey a message to them."
He says that “on the fourth day of their work in the tomb, which is the largest of its kind among the three-story stone tombs, some workers came eager to see this mummy, and they looked at it as if they had exchanged a silent conversation with it, and then they began to tell us something exciting. They said that they had seen that mummy.” The mummy in their dreams, and that she came to them in their moments of sleep, and asked them a strange request... The mummy said when she appeared to them in their dreams, “I want you to cover my body... I have become... naked at the hands of grave robbers, please put me under the dirt. "
He said: “We have already decided to cover her body and bury it, especially since the mummy, according to archaeologists, is an ordinary mummy that does not represent any archaeological value, and there is no archaeological coffin except that it is just a mummy among thousands of mummies that filled the tombs of the Thebes Cemetery, west of Luxor.”
The former Director General of Antiquities of Luxor and Upper Egypt, Sultan Eid, refused to deny or confirm what was narrated about the mummy speaking in the tomb of the priest Mentumhat.
He added, "Ancient Egypt knew the legendary stories that the Egyptians have inherited to this day, as well as magical and supernatural stories, and that there are many ancient and contemporary legendary stories that we cannot deny and we cannot confirm such a story about the talking mummy." In the necropolis of Mentumhat, but some legends are now denied by modern science.
He also added that the myth, which means a lot of imagination and a little of the truth, occupied a large place in the lives of the ancient Egyptians, and that ancient Egyptian myths appeared since the era of the pyramid builders, and that the priests used the myth on a large scale. To spread their ideas and beliefs among the public and the rulers as well.
He pointed out that there are so-called myths among Egyptologists, and they are myths that do not stop until today, such as the talk about the curse of the Pharaohs, which appeared after the British Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun, and there is the exciting talk about the golden boat that appears one night a year in the middle of the world. The waters of the sacred lake in the Pharaonic temples of Karnak, and many other legendary stories that Egypt knew in the time of the Pharaohs, and contemporary stories transmitted by Egyptians, especially those who live near the temples and tombs of kings, queens, and nobles of the Pharaohs.
Everything that is said about stories now is an extension of the culture of myth that defined ancient Egypt.
There are many legendary stories, such as the story of the mummy who speaks in the Mintumhat cemetery, which is circulated by people in many villages, where tombs, temples, treasures, and mummies are spread. There is the watchdog, or the guard. Which sets fire to the walls and roofs of thieves, and there are golden groves that appear and then quickly disappear near the Esna Mountains south of Luxor, and there is the huge calf that stands guarding the famous statue of Memnon at the entrance to the Theban Cemetery.
There is the hanging mummy in the Saqqara area, which leaves its coffin for several hours every day to fly in the air and then returns to lie in the coffin again, and whose story has been the subject of research by Egyptian scholars and scholars from several countries.
The ancient Egyptians were keen to bury their dead, and they believed that the soul could live in eternity after death, as long as the human body was in a good state of preservation, and therefore they were keen to preserve the body and protect it from corrosion through mummification.
Here ends today's topic on ancient and contemporary Egyptian mythology through eyewitnesses.
Translated from the German News Agency d.p.a