People who have descendants from ancient Egyptians

The modern Egyptians also believe that when any serpent reaches extreme old age it grows long hair. There is the ancient story of the Middle Kingdom of the Shipwrecked Sailor who was saved by a bearded serpent. (Blackman, 1932, p 41-48) Local belief says that an aged cobra with long blond hair lives in the Osirion, at the back of the Temple of Seti I. There certainly is a large cobra living there, but it has not hair, blond or brunette. A similar story is told of a cobra living in the so-called Campbell's Tomb, near the Great Sphinx of Giza. Probably someone saw these creatures when they were shedding their skins and mistook some loose shreds of the transparent outer skin for blond hair.

Many modern Egyptians believe that if a cobra decides to come and live in a house, and it is not molested by the human tenants, it will attack and bite thieves. This may well be true, for if a thief entered a house and encountered a cobra, his first reaction would be to attack, in which case, the reptile would retaliate in self-defense.

I once shared a house with a cobra and found it to be not only harmless, but even friendly, in a dignified way. It would drink fresh milk, but turned up its nose at the dry powdered variety, and would suck raw eggs. Unseemly bulges in its anatomy indicated a fondness for sparrows and the neighbor's baby chicks. Its capacity as a guardian was never put to the test.

In a field not far from the Temple of Sety I at Abydos is a pumping machine, which until very recently was used to irrigate some land. The mechanic in charge kept two cobras in a small hut beside the machine and fed them regularly on raw eggs. He regarded them as guardians of the machine and certainly he was never bothered by thieves who, unable to steal a heavy piece of machinery, made practice of stealing some small, but essential part of it, which they then hold for ransom. The presence of his cobras being well-known locally prevented even the mechanic's friends from visiting him after dark!

There is a story, frequently told and firmly believed in, that a cobra once lived in a house where the residents always treated her kindly. She had produced a young one, but one day the latter disappeared. His mother, thinking that someone in the house had killed him, went at once to the water storage jar and spit poison into it in order to avenge her son by killing off the whole human family.

However, before anyone had the occasion to take water from the jar, the young snake appeared. After assuring herself that he was quite unharmed, the female cobra went back to the jar and struck it hard blows with her head, until it broke and the water was spilled harmlessly on the ground. The story, which is told all over Egypt, invariably happened in the house of a "friend of a friend" of the teller! (Variations of this legend can be found in Gayer-Anderson, 1951, 59-61 and Keimer, 1947, 90.)

If there is a grain of truth in the story, the cobra was probably only drinking from the jar, and in any case, snake venom is harmless taken internally, unless there is any small wound in the drinker's mouth, and even then, the small quantity ejected would be completely ineffective in a jar full of water.

The idea of a cobra as a guardian was well known to the ancient Egyptians, this being the function of the uraeus worn on the pharaoh's brow. In the Pyramid Texts it says: "His gods are over him; his uraeus is upon his brow. The leader-serpent of Unas is upon his forehead, she who perceives the soul, a diadem of flame." (Sethe 1910, 396 b-c)

Elsewhere, the cobra is again regarded as a guardian: "You are loosed, O wfi-serpent, cause Unas to be protected." (Sethe 1910, 442a-b)

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There is a widespread belief in modern Egypt that after death, the corpse still retains a mysterious life of its own, and although unable to speak, is conscious of everything taking place around it. Some people even believe that the corpse is capable of physical sensation and for this reason have a profound horror of post-mortem autopsies. In fact, a common curse is [Arabic sentence] "May a doctor slit open your belly!"

Some believe that this mysterious life is only temporary, lasting from one to three days after death, and this gives rise to the custom of watching with the dead mentioned above, either in the room in which he expired or at the tomb in the cemetery. It is often said that the corpses of women, who were known during life to have been pious and modest, have actually been seen to move their hands to cover their pudenda when the female corpse-washer came to prepare them for burial.

Other people believe that this life-force in a corpse is permanent or will last as long as any fragment of the skeleton remains. This belief in a mysterious life remaining in a corpse certainly dates back to ancient Egypt. In those days they believed that the dead, corruptible body, h3t, when embalmed became a s'h, or mummy, and the ceremony of "Opening the Mouth" restored to it all the functions of life.

A woman from Meir, personally known to me, heard that her brother had been fatally injured in an accident in Cairo. The man had died in the hospital without regaining consciousness; as his identity was unknown to the authorities, he was buried by the government. On hearing of this, his sister was terribly upset, as the death had occurred mid-winter, and she was afraid that the shroud provided by the government would be skimpy, not cover the feet properly and consequently the corpse would suffer from the cold. Happily, she was later able to visit the tomb and even enter the community burial chamber. It was a great comfort to her to find that her brother was very well and completely enshrouded, and that his feet were decently covered. Nevertheless, she added the padded quilt that she had brought with her, just in case the weather should get colder! Was she very different from her Western sisters who buy expensive stainless steel individual burial vaults in order to, as the advertisements say, "keep your loved ones safe and dry"?

There is a chapter of the Book of the Dead known as the "Chapter of Making Heat to be under the Head of the Glorified One (the deceased)." The rubric to this chapter reads: "Words spoken over the image of a cow made of fine gold and placed upon the neck of the glorified one (the deceased). It shall be written upon new papyrus and placed under his head, then shall warmth be in him throughout, even like that which was in him when he was upon earth."

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