Harry Potter’s Morning Light

  Chapter 1164 Louvre’s Wizard (1)

  The bottom floor below the glass pyramid of the Louvre is both the entrance and exit and the reception hall. I don’t know if this is a coincidence or intentional. This hall is called the Napoleon Hall.

  In many people’s images, the pyramid is used to bury the pharaoh, but not all the pharaoh’s tombs are under the pyramid.

  Below the pyramid is a lost underground world, with tunnels and caves, and not only the elite class, but the mummies of ordinary people and even animals can also be buried under the pyramid. In one of the tombs, there is an altar table dedicated to Osiris, and the underworld master Osiris is portrayed on the wall. He is responsible for the trial of the dead.

  In fact, many of Egypt’s royal tombs had been stolen before Napoleon. The lime layer on the pyramids was transported to Cairo to build buildings, and valuable burials were looted by tomb robbers.

  It would be better to just take away the gold and silverware, the point is that those tomb robbers will destroy the murals on the wall and leave traces of their past. Even without Napoleon, Egyptian cultural relics are "naturally consumed."

  Since the first pharaoh was buried, the tomb robbery has existed. In order to prevent these tomb robbers, the designers of the tomb have tried their best to defend them.

  Quicksand shafts, giant stone gates, hidden entrances. Hidden the entrance of the tomb, relying on the strong structure of the pyramid itself, tomb robbers cannot enter.

  In addition, the designer of the tomb will also design a "maze", as long as the intruder does not enter the place where the coffin is parked, there is no need to worry about the burial goods being stolen.

  However, even with such a lot of trouble, the high-powered pharaohs still had no way to stop the tomb thief’s pickaxe.

  Not only the tombs of the nobles will be stolen, in fact, everyone is hardly immune. If the situation is difficult, the living people on the ground will "borrow money" from the dead. Family members will steal the property of their ancestors, and these "house thieves" are more difficult to guard against than tomb robbers wandering outside.

The tomb robbers come from all walks of life, not just the poor and crazy bottom, the nobles who once ruled Thebes, the High Priest of Amon also entered the Valley of the Kings many times, opened the local tombs one by one, and took everything they felt was valuable Items.

  No matter how ingenious the mechanism is designed, it can't stop people who know how to crack it.

  The biggest difference between tomb robbery and archeology is the speed of excavation. Archaeologists will use a small brush to brush away the sealed soil and dust layer by layer.

  The tomb thief snatched everything that can be quickly packed, such as jewelry and utensils, and then took them to the market for sale.

  Westerners "archaeology" are more severe, and even those stone sculptures that cannot be removed were taken away by explosives.

  The first curator of the Egyptian Pavilion at the Louvre, Jean-François Chamblyan, known as the "Father of Egyptology", moved the entire ancient Egypt to try to restore a complete ancient Egyptian world.

  Not only the pharaoh’s coffin, writing instruments, crop specimens, clothing, musical instruments, and toys used by the ancient Egyptians have all been collected. Perhaps Westerners know more about ancient Egypt than modern Egyptians know about their ancestors.

  Pomona did not go to see the seated statues of the pharaohs, nor did she go to see the famous sculpture of the bookkeeper. She was concerned about a small sculpture.

  Its base is inlaid with silver, and in front of a golden eagle that is out of proportion is a man kneeling on his knees, holding two spherical objects in his hands.

The eagle is a symbol of sacredness in Egypt. Horus, the son of Osiris, is an eagle-headed god, but Seth only took away one eye of Horus, which represents the left eye of the moon. This sculpture seems to be Horus. Both eyes are lost.

  Horus’ right eye represents the sun, and the Egyptians also worship the sun. What made the Egyptians lose the sun?

  Pomona remembered Egypt’s ten hardships, one of which was the disaster of darkness.

  It is also possible that this sculpture is not used to "realistic", but to express a certain emotion of the Egyptians, fear of darkness.

  However, there is no shortage of black stone sculptures in the Egyptian Pavilion. Black always feels solemn and solemn, and it is most suitable for tombs.

  The black skirt initially represented mourning clothes, but now it has become a daily wear. It seems that people no longer care about this taboo.

   Sirius Black, his name "Siris" represents Sirius worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. Every time Sirius rises from the eastern horizon, it is also a time when the Nile is flooded every year.

  The flooded river does not represent a disaster, but a bumper harvest. It will wash the fertile soil from the upstream to the downstream.

  Of course there will be sacrifices on such an important day. Ancient Egyptians would build temples to enshrine sculptures and offer sacrifices to sculptures.

  The ancient Egyptians did this not to seek psychological comfort, but to perform a ritual to allow the gods to live in the sculptures and portraits that were enshrined.

  In addition to reciting the scriptures, those who worship the Nile God also need to use an eagle, take eleven drops of blood, and sprinkle it next to the sculpture of the Nile God, and ask the spirit of the Nile God to be attached to the sculpture.

   means that these sculptures stored in the Egyptian pavilion may have had a spiritual descending ceremony, and they have a certain supernatural power.

  Many Egyptian sculptures have no noses, including the famous Sphinx, which is written in popular science books because of natural weathering.

  In the era of underdeveloped science, people test whether a person is dead or alive, usually by sniffing and breathing, and then the person dies.

  The statues of ancient Egypt are alive. This "life" is different from the ancient Greek sculptures seen in the Pillar Hall before. In other words, the ancient Egyptians did not have the concept of art, and all these sculptures were "equipment."

  The statue represents the intersection of the gods and the world. Destroying the sculpture means destroying the powerful force contained in the sculpture. Breaking the nose of the sculpture will make the statue unable to breathe.

  Of course, not all sculpture noses will be destroyed. Those who destroy sculptures can accurately destroy the sculpture nose without destroying other parts of the sculpture. At least it proves that they are well-trained.

  In the early Christian period, these ancient Egyptian gods who were attached to statues were treated as pagan demons.

Before Chinese papermaking was introduced to the West, papyrus and parchment were the main writing tools, especially papyrus, which was the official writing tool of the church. Even the edicts of the pope were written with it. This kind of thin paper Kraft paper and parchment paper are more durable in humid environments.

  At the same time, Egypt is also an important place for the spread of Christianity.

  If the early Christian monks knew the hieroglyphs written on papyrus, then they might have deliberately destroyed those sculptures according to the description on the inscription.

  With the passing of time, one thousand years later, there are almost no people who know hieroglyphs. It was not until the Rosetta Stone was unearthed that people regained the ability to decipher the language.

Shang Boliang was the first scholar to decipher hieroglyphics and decipher the Rosetta stele. He is like a star and he will be treated courteously wherever he goes. Pope Leo XII wants to appoint him as cardinal. In order to pay tribute to him, the French Academy gave him a post of Egyptology chairman.

  But he was only forty-one when he died of a stroke. Most strokes occur in 65-year-olds, and a small number of young people also have them. There is no specific age limit for strokes. After all, there are many reasons for strokes.

  For example, in a summer when the night was as cold as water, Shang Boliang forgot to close the window, let the night wind blow his face, and then died.

  When Shang Boliang's reputation was in full swing, a young man named John Gardner Wilkinson came to Alexandria.

  He was not as keen on digging like other "Egyptians", but copied the rubbed copies of those inscriptions and sorted them silently.

  He worked almost alone, and the translation of Egyptian hieroglyphs was almost a nationalist incident. The French took the lead in finding a way to translate, and almost all the cultural relics with text were searched by the British in the British Museum.

  In addition to the popular collections of the upper class at that time, each house will have one or two Egyptian cultural relics in its own showcase, so the translation of Egyptian characters is supported by government funds.

  Unlike Shang Boliang who has huge resources to support, Wilkinson completely relied on the least resources to overthrow Shang Boliang’s domineering authority.

  At that time, it was generally believed that Shang Boliang deciphered pictographs, but Wilkinson believed that Shang Boliang only knew a part of the text and did not decipher it.

Unlike the authority in the bustling Paris, who had access to social occasions, Wilkins lived in a tomb that had been stolen on the west bank of Thebes, covered carpets, displayed his Egyptian home, and furnished the library. , While enjoying the sunset over the Nile, while copying those ancient scrolls.

  According to Albus, Egyptian scholars at the time had a strange habit of burning the wooden coffin of mummies in the fireplace in winter.

I don’t know who started this custom. The burning of wood will give off an extremely unpleasant odor. The mummies will be preserved before being buried, sprinkled with spices, and there will be no corpse oil and corpse water. Going over the shroud, contaminated the wood.

But Wilkinson didn’t care about these details. He happily entertained his friends in his secluded place, and the smell was pungent but very weak. A hearty breakfast was enough to disperse it, far inferior to Paris. The stench from Dung Mountain is unpleasant.

   Wilkinson lived a long life and lived until 1875. It was only because of his research that the ruins of Thebes were destroyed, the stones of the temple were demolished to build factories, and many stone statues were thrown into the Nile.

  Albus likes to listen to chamber music. There is a song he heard in Cairo when he was young. A harpist sang like this:

  How is their residence?

  Their walls are broken.

  Their residence has disappeared.

  It's like they never existed.

  Perhaps this is why he values ​​the friendship with the historian Bagshot so much.

  Even though he has already taken the chocolate frog picture, he is remembered by every contemporary wizard, and he hopes that future wizards will know him.

'do not forget me. ’

  This may be Albus’s true thoughts.

  However, he said that he will really leave when everyone forgets him.

  But when did Albus say this sentence?

Pomona frowned and recalled that there was no reflection. She turned her head and looked strangely at the person who told her this sentence. At this moment, he was looking at a very realistic sculpture. A bookkeeper spread out the papyrus scroll. Read in front of a baboon sculpture.

  The characters written on the papyrus on the sculpture’s Facebook page are clearly legible. The baboon’s nose has been "weathered", and nature can really find a place with its uncanny workmanship.

  She sneered and shook her head. She didn't ask where Severus heard Albus say these words. She continued to visit this glorious and now forgotten exhibition hall.

  (End of this chapter)