THE FIRST PAPYRUS
Reading edition
I, who have been, or will be, Nicholas Crabbe of Crabs Herborough in the duchy of Kent—and who am Odysseys son of Laertes, an immortal and sometime inhabitant of olympian palaces—but now known as King Balthazar of Moxoene which will be called (or which was once called) in the time whence I came (or in the time to which I yet shall come) Van in Armenia—I swear, by my honour and by my faith as a king who never has built altars to Roma and Julius (like the Ephesians and Nikaians) or to Rome and Augustus (like Bithynia and Asia), that the things which I here cause to be written, and write, are true.
May Osiris, and Zeys, and Mithra, and all great gods of the past and the present and the future, masters of wisdom, blast me—and may The One Signified scorn me, if these written words do not agree with the facts which befell me, who am fallen backward through the rolling wheels of time. Thus, I, an immortal and a king, swear. And may he who belies me rot and wither and evanesce in the uttermost depths of Tartaros whither I have been thrice, or of Amentet, whither I have been once, or of that Hell to which I will not go. I have sworn.[1]
Now I, King Balthazar of Moxoene in Naïri or Armenia, the Viceroy of Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans, say thus to Empedokles my scribe, in my royal palace on the shore of my Thospitian Sea, within my kingdom, which I do not hold from Rome, having taken it myself by favour of Great Zeys.
Let it be known that I, King Balthazar, was called, in an age which is to come, Nicholas Crabbe the Impossible. I lived peacefully as might be. I have nothing to say of my origin in that life, or of my early years: for, in good sooth, most of the things which then happened to me were so incredibly cruel and so unspeakably hideous that I wish to forget most of them, and the rest have been smudged (mercifully) on the tablets of my memory. It shall be enough to tell that, as a scope for my energy, I forced myself (in default of all other interests) to become a seeker after wisdom, a client of the Muses and of far-darting Phoibos Apollon, an ardent student of all branches of music and gymnastic,[2] and chiefly of those branches which taught my subtile adept mind to do what all other men never even dreamed of doing, and my strong nimble body to do what all other men dare not do. For I penetrated into the occult arcana.
Under pretext of studying the surgery of ancient Egypt, I learned to read hieroglyphics; and, in time, my exertions and my energies culminated in a single desire to get to the root of white magic as contained on papyri in tombs of archpriests of temples of Isis. For a whole year I pondered the difficulties and the dangers, delaying to gratify my desire, expecting a sign or a companion from the blessed gods. None came.
Arrived at the end of my patience, I acted very suddenly. For, having provided myself with gold money and circular notes,[3] I went my own way to Alexandria, departing from my native land which now is the barbarian Britannia. And, at Alexandria, I hired a boat with boatmen and servants: for it was in my noble mind to sail up River Nile, staying when and where I listed, exploring ruins above Assiut, specially small ruins, in the hope of finding mummy-chests ripe for rifling or hieroglyphics crying to be read on pillars or walls of unknown temples. During eight months, thus I did: but I found no more than three unopened mummy-chests, and (beside them) little of worth. Nevertheless, one of the said chests contained certain superior matters: to wit, a magic staff of silver and ebony, and a silver divination-cup chased with sacred creatures, which things I did not examine closely till I came to Philai. But, there, my labours were rewarded: for a small temple at Philai yielded no less than three-and-forty mummy-chests, carven and painted, containing the remains of persons who (in their time) had been most mighty. And, of these, I will name one, having many matters to narrate concerning him. But he was the priest Amenemhat, sometime hierarch of the temple of Isis at Tanis by the mouth of Nile. Moreover, I found a manual intitled For the Use of Priests; and it contained the rules by which mortal men may communicate with the immortals, whom the Egyptians call Osirians. And this was by far the most noble thing which I discovered. But I must not omit to mention also a divination-ball, of rock-crystal of the bigness of a baby’s head, which I found in a mummy-chest: it was banded with silver set with large blue moonstones, and a silver chain was attached to it. Now I took this for a favourable omen, very apt indeed to me: for, having been born under the moon and the sign of the crab, and being therefore crab by nature as well as Crabbe by name, the heart in my dear breast rejoiced greatly to possess so beautiful a jewel, formed (indeed) of the very stones and of the very metal which (as is well known) are proper to a native of that sign and of that planet. But I hanged it by its chain to the magic staff already named.
When, at length, I had leisure to study the papyrus manual, I became aware of the vast power which it put into my hands. It contained a very long and useless introduction, including oft-reiterated laments because Okhos (the Persian successor of the deposed Nebk-Neft) had degraded the hierarchy of Khem, striking a blow at the prestige of all hierarchs. But, this being ended, the gist of the work was clearly set down: nor could anything more be added necessary to enable one (possessed of the magic implements, as I was), to commune with long-dead sages, mages who had relinquished the use of their bodies and dwelt no more in the sweet sunlight, obtaining from them the wisdom of the past, and the power which such wisdom gives, both unpossessed by men alive.
But it appeared that I still lacked certain spices and sacred combustibles, both essential in magic operations. Wherefore, being always young and headstrong and (therefore) of a spasmodic habit, I turned about instantly to those places where I could purchase myrrh and cassia and gum-olibanon and gum-tragacanth and spikenard and red-sanders and saffron and cinnamon and sulphur and powdered ivory and pepper and pepperwort and mastic and certain other substances the names of which may not be written on account of a religious reason. And four months passed before I had finished this quest in Cairo and Alexandria and Arabia and Byzantion and Massilia, filling a cabinet with potent essences and very virtuose quintessences.
In this manner I reascended the sacred river, until I came to Korte.