Collecting Concepts

THIRD PLACE: TEEN DIVISION
GARTH’S AUCTIONS
“Biography of an Object” Writing Contest
The Bird of Two Worlds
By Jackie N. of Greenville, NC
Egypt, 1498 B.C.

“You cannot be serious.”  Ramose glanced at the bird carcass, and then again at  Amenophis. The older priest simply shrugged.  Ramose paced around the room, agitated. “I haven’t spent the last three years learning embalming to prepare a bird for the afterlife.”

“Ridiculous or not, we are being paid to do this,” another priest reminded him.  “You, of all people, should not be complaining about the opportunity.”  Ramose glared at him. The other priest came from a wealthy family and never missed a chance to remind Ramose that he wasn’t.

“I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful,” he snapped back. “It just seems like a waste of time and money.” It could take a month, maybe more, for the bird to be completely embalmed and would cost the bird’s owners a fortune. “Why do you care if it’s a waste of money?” The same priest persisted. “You’re not the one spending it.”  Amenophis cut off Ramose’s reply. “Be silent, both of you!” The two stopped talking, but continued glaring at each other. “Get the knife, Ramose,” and sent the other to fetch the other instruments needed to mummify the deceased bird.

Amenophis carefully laid the bird in the center of the table. Ramose looked at it. It was small, not much longer than a man’s hand, with brown and white feathers. It was just an ordinary songbird some rich man had kept as a pet, but it was to be sent to the afterlife like it was a pharaoh.  It irritated him a little, that this stupid little bird had had the comforts of life ‐‐and death‐‐ when so many people did not. Had he not become an embalmer, Ramose knew none of his family
members would have been able to afford a decent funeral, let alone eternal preservation.
After carefully washing the bird, Amenophis made a clean incision down its chest with the knife Ramose had brought. Ramose had observed the mummification process enough times to know what would happen next. He retrieved the miniature canopic jars for the bird’s organs. Amenophis reached inside the incision and pulled out the organs. Each one was covered with salt and wrapped in linen before being placed in its appropriate jar.

Ramose began stuffing the bird with natron. The salt would dry it out, helping to preserve it. After the bird’s insides were filled with natron, he sprinkled the body with it until it was covered.  He was finished with the bird, for now. Ramose figured he would have a few weeks of nothing to do while the bird dried. He was wrong, however.  Illness struck several of the noble families, giving their children severe fevers and sending many to an early grave. Physicians were constantly busy and so were the embalmers. It seemed to Ramose that every time he stopped working to take a breath, another child died.  

“Ramose!” He looked up from the body of the little girl he was working on. The priest he disliked held up the bird he’d worked on several weeks before. “It’s ready to be wrapped up and buried.”  “Really, is this the time, Hunefer? We have all these people to work on and I don’t want to waste time on a bird.” He struggled to keep the anger out of his tone. Inwardly, he cursed.
“I’ll work on her. Now go finish the bird!” Hunefer’s superior tone irritated Ramose.

“I can handle both,” he snapped. He quickly washed the bird and wrapped it several times. He coated the strips with resin and wrapped it again. Several layers of resin and linen later, the bird was finished. Or it was physically finished.   Ramose didn’t know if animal mummification required as many rituals as the human version did. If so, he was probably supposed to chant and place amulets on the bird. He was also supposed to perform an Opening of the Mouth ceremony,
which enabled humans to speak and eat in the afterlife. Well, in the bird’s case, it was probably more like an Opening of the Beak. Ramose glanced at the dead girl who lay on his table and then back at the bird. He knew some animals were sacred, but this was an ordinary songbird. No god or goddess would take the form of a bird like this. He set the bird aside and started working on the girl again.

The fevers continued to rage, and more and more dead found their way into the shop. Ramose and the other priests were exhausted. They started work before sunrise and ended hours after dusk, sometimes working all day and all night. When Ramose did sleep, he was tormented with nightmares. Every night, he would hear his name being called in an eerie whisper. “Ramose, Ramose…..” Then something flew behind him. He couldn’t see it, but somehow he sensed it in
his dream. He knew its talons were about to sink into his shoulders and carry him off to the land of the dead. He would wake up terrified, panting for breath and unwilling to go back to sleep.  After several nights of the dreams, he was glad, almost relieved to work through the night, until the creature visited him in the daytime, too.  He would see the bird appear suddenly and disappear a few seconds later. After it had appeared several times, Ramose recognized it. He ran to his workbench and found the small bird he had embalmed several weeks earlier. He did the
appropriate chants for the bird and gently laid it in its miniature sarcophagus.  He traced the tiny lines of hieroglyphics on the sides of the coffin, expecting to see the bird’s name.  Instead, he saw.
Finish what you start.